and appetites which he has in common with the inferior creatures. Although a social organization cannot exist without competition, yet it does not necessarily follow that we are to oppose each other with the ferocity and cruelty of wild beasts. It is the intention of Providence that we should seek to ennoble each other by mutual rivalry, that the struggle should improve our moral and intellectual nature. As society advances, for the world moves onward, those will be most successful who fight the inevitable battles of life bravely and HONORABLY. Even now the tendency of the age is to offer increased inducements to a meritorious line of action. What is a mere millionaire after all? Frail and perishable mortal, whom men so much envy and admire, you shall not survive the grave! To-day your name is in everybody's mouth; to-morrow you will be forgotten! Money never rescued any man's name from oblivion, unless it was expended so as to benefit society. Virtue alone is enduring. The mind is the noblest part of man. What of the mind of the millionaire? Are these the men whose spirits converse with us when their bodies have been mouldering in the grave for ages? Do you rank the millionaire with such men as Newton and Franklin, Clay and Webster, and the venerable Humboldt? These men are not dead; they live, and they will continue to live for ages yet to come. Who remembers the millionaire? Does his picture adorn the poor man's home?

That which is the most remarkable about a tree, is not only the variety, the perfect harmony, and freedom of its individual parts, but that power of centralization by which all these parts are combined together into one harmonious whole. That is only a harmonious ordered whole, whose parts are free, and those parts are only free which unfold their peculiarities subordinate to a common law, and which in their independent forms equally realize the idea of the whole. In the tree, then, we have presented for contemplation an illustration, clear and beautiful as the unclouded sun, of a perfectly natural and equitable social system of labor, combining the highest individual freedom with subordination. The tree shows us a system of harmoniously

adjusted labor, where not only the branch and branchlet, but even the little twig, leaf, and leaf-scale are all fully employed to the extent of their capacity. Where the individual talent of a community is thus fully and universally developed, there must be freedom.

There always will be individuals pre-eminently gifted, but where talent abounds, there is less danger from the inherent selfishness of those thus liberally endowed by Nature. Let knowledge be diffused on the most enlarged and liberal scale, and the sceptre of tyrants is broken, the throne of delusion crumbles, and individual freedom is fully insured. It is impossible for a people, thoroughly enlightened, ever to be enslaved? Tyranny can never flourish on the soil of this country.

In nothing is the supremacy of America so apparent, as in the fact that when men of talent, accustomed to sway the mind of the ignorant masses in Europe, are exiled to these shores, they have to settle down here after awhile as ordinary men. America extends to them a hospitable welcome, but because they have come to a "free country," they cannot monopolize, for any length of time, any exorbitant share of popular attention and favor. They may be eloquent orators and journalists, but that is nothing in a country where such gifts are abundantly developed. It is true they may contrive to create a local disturbance for awhile, but then it is soon over; their names are forgotten, never mentioned, and they take their ranks as ordinary mortals.

The truth is, that society in America resembles a widespread and well-developed tree, where a great many branches make an equally powerful growth on all sides, so that it is not easy to distinguish amongst them any particular branch which takes the lead. It is not an easy thing for any man to render himself conspicuous by his abilities in a country where there is so much individual talent called forth by education. Now this is all right. It is good policy founded on Nature.

Continue to educate thy children, Columbia! Inspire them with an inextinguishable love of truth and freedom,

and thy place shall be foremost among the nations in wealth, in science, and in empire! Oh! tyranny, leave these shores forever! There is no chance for thee here! Away with thy dungeons and thy chains! It is not in America that enfranchised humanity can ever be incarcerated! In this country, men are not disposed to cringe before any despotism, however ancient and colossal. Here we live in peace and charity with our neighbor, although we differ in religious opinions. Is this a condition of things to be lamented? Have you the effrontery to deny the fact that men live together more happily, now that religious and political freedom is enjoyed by all? You would have the people to give up this "infidel freedom," (the language of baffled imposture !) those precious liberties claimed for them by their greatest statesmen, and purchased by the blood of heroes! You would revive in our midst the bloody massacres, barbarous cruelties, and inveterate religious hatreds of former ages! Is it possible that you expect a people, now happy, enlightened, and free, making daily advances in science and in all the arts that humanize mankind, to succumb to your wretched, darkening, and enslaving policy? Yet you are moving forward in the dark with slow and stealthy step; but the friends of freedom are on the watch, and the moment you boldly reveal in the broad glare of day the tyranny of your purpose, Columbia will prove, as ever, the bravest defender of the religious and political liberties of mankind. Nothing but benevolence and good-will to the human race is written on her youthful, noble, starry brow.

This then is the true social policy which is plainly indicated by the tree. We see that the sap has a natural tendency to pass to the leading branches from the branchlets and smaller twigs; so power passes away naturally from the hands of the many, who are, comparatively speaking, without energy, to those of the few who possess it in a pre-eminent degree. But power, accumulated in the hands of any one man or body of men, is ever dangerous to liberty. Human nature is not to be trusted with irresponsible power, no matter what the plea. The encroach

ments of monopoly, whether political, religious, or commercial, must therefore be withstood. The tree must be made to spread out on all sides. In a world like this it is necessary for people to look out; for the individual liberty of those who occupy a subordinate and inferior position "can only be maintained at the price of eternal vigilance."

We have shown that the tree is a compound plant, built up by the labors of individual phytons or plants, called leaves. One generation of these phytons perishes every year, but not before each individual of the generation has formed a bud, which remains when the leaf falls, through the winter months; the embryo, leaves and stem which it contains, developing on the return of the next vegetative season. If, therefore, the leaves are regarded as phytons or individual plants, the series of buds which they produce and from which comes forth, when circumstances are favorable, new families of leaves, may be correctly regarded as a new generation; and if we consider the first set of leaves as the parent, or the entire shoot, built up by them, as the mother-shoot, the first set of buds produced by them which unfold to shoots and leaves, may be called the daughtershoots or the first generation, and the second set of buds generated by the leaves of the daughter-shoots, the second generation, &c.

Now if all leaves produced buds the first year, and if all buds, thus produced, unfolded to shoots and leaves the second year, then the number of generations of shoots would exactly correspond with the number of years during which the tree had lived, and we should have an easy but simple method of determining its age. But in reality it is not so, because in the development of the main axis of a branch, often single or numerous seasons occur, during which the growth is greatly retarded, and only such leaves are produced whose axilla remain unfruitful, whilst the growth of the side-shoots is still more retarded, and they, for the same reason, consequently remain unbranched. Hence, the greatest difference predominates between the number of generations of shoots on a branch and its age. Compare in this respect the growth of the first side-shoot

in Fig. 1, page 31, with that of the whole branch, estimating, in both instances, from the bud-traces marked 53. The age of both shoot and branch is the same, five years; yet how great the difference in the extent to which development has been carried. In five years, there has been no side production from the shoot, with the exception of a single bud, and its entire length is only four inches and six lines, whilst in the same time the primary axis has grown twenty-three inches and three lines, and put forth two generations of shoots, one of which is fifteen inches in length.

It may be stated as a general rule, that, in very favorable conditions, very powerfully growing branches will put forth as many as four or five generations of side-shoots, but the vegetative power here expires, and the last generation of shoots are entirely rudimentary, appearing as mere rosettes or clusters of leaves, no intervals of stem whatever being formed between them.

Hence, the power of a branch to give forth branchlets is not indefinite, but diminishes with each succeeding generation, until the vegetative power ultimately arrives at a minimum. A single glance at the branches of a tree is all that is necessary to satisfy the reader that there is a retarded growth in length and thickness of each successive generation of shoots or branchlets. And this remission of growth is not founded on a difference of age between the branch and branchlet, nor on a cessation of growth at a certain stage of the same, for all axes, so long as they continue to live, grow forth indefinitely; but this circumspection of growth is rather founded on a difference in the intensity of growth from the commencement, on a positive loss of vegetative energy.

When, therefore, the growth of the axis becomes compound, other considerations must enter into our calculations with reference to the development of any individual axis, such as its relative position on the primary axis, or in regard to the number of successive generations. If it occupies an inferior and subordinate position on the primary axis, or in the chain of successive generations, its growth will be necessarily very limited.