We have thus traced the main lines of difference between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, and have seen that the latter was meant to be, and is the organic law of a developed and completed nationality. Under it, every one of us becomes an American citizen, exercising, as is right, certain local privileges, and dependent for their immediate protection on the State authorities, but possessing other wider and nobler rights, which inhere in him as a citizen of the United States, and which are asserted and supported by the power and dignity of the entire nation. No words can more fully express the lofty majesty of that state of nationality on which we have entered, never, under God, to fall from it, than those of the Constitution itself, to support which every member of every government, the local as well as the national, is bound by solemn oath. 'This Constitution, and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made under the authority of the United States, shall be the SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.'
Before such words as these, binding these States together as one nation, whose integrity nothing but treason would seek to destroy or weaken, the fierce invective of the Southern, and the feeble sophistry of the Northern traitor shrink to insignificance. They are at once the record and the prophecy of our success, declaring the foundation on which the Government is based, and pointing to yet greater glories to be attained in the superstructure.
REASON, RHYME, AND RHYTHM.
CHAPTER II.—THE SOUL OF ART.
'In diligent toil thy master is the bee;
In craft mechanical, the worm that creeps
Through earth its dexterous way, may tutor thee;
In knowledge, couldst thou fathom all its depths,
All to the seraph are already known:
But thine, o Man, is Art—thine wholly and alone!'—Schiller.
'The contemplation of the Divine Attributes is the source of the highest enjoyment: their manifestation is the enduring base and unfailing spring of all true Art.'
Many good and great men persist in refusing to teach, save through abstract dogmas and logical formulæ, always disagreeable to and rarely comprehended by the masses, those high moral truths, which they are so eager to imbibe when presented to them under the attractive form of art. It is indeed impossible for man to grasp the essential truths of life through the understanding alone; because, created in the image of the triune God, he can only make vital truths fully his own in the symbolic unity of his triune being. If considered only as body or sensuous perception, only as soul or heart, only as spirit or intellect—he cannot be said to live at all, since it is only in the perfect union of the Three that his essential life is found. To make instruction really available to him, he must be taught as God and nature always teach him—as soul, spirit, and body. To sever them is to disintegrate the mystic core of his very being; to disregard the triune image in which he was made. As art is symbolic of man himself, it addresses itself to his whole being. Thus, man exists as:
Soul-Spirit-Body: to which the corresponding senses are—
Hearing-Seeing—Touching: the corresponding arts—