when compared with his power, has set a new signal of his reign in heaven. If, to-night, fellow-citizens, you will look out from the glare of your illuminated city into the northwestern heavens, you will perceive, low down on the edge of the horizon, a bright stranger, pursuing its path across the sky. Amid the starry hosts that keep their watch, it shines, attended by a brighter pomp and followed by a broader train. No living man has gazed upon its splendors before, no watchful votary of science has traced its course. for nearly ten generations. It is more than three hundred years since its approach was visible from our planet. When last it came it startled an emperor on his throne, and while the superstition of his age taught him to perceive in its presence a herald and a doom, his pride saw in its flaming course and fiery train, the announcement that his own light was about to be extinguished. In common with the lowest of his subjects, he read omens of destruction in the baleful heavens, and prepared himself for a fate which alike awaits the mightiest and the meanest. Thanks to the present condition of scientific knowledge, we read the heavens with a far clearer perception. We see, in the predicted return of the rushing, blazing comet through the sky, the march of a heavenly messenger along its appointed way and around his predestined orbit. For three hundred years he has traveled amid the regions of infinite space. "Lone wandering, but not lost," he has left behind him shining suns, blazing stars, and gleaming constellations, now nearer to the Eternal Throne, and again on the confines of the universe. He returns, with visage radiant and benign; he returns, with unimpeded march and unobstructed way; he returns, the majestic, swift electric telegraph of the Almighty, bearing upon his flaming front the tidings that, throughout the universe, there is still peace and order-that, amid the immeasurable dominions of the Great King, his rule is still perfect that suns and stars and systems tread their endless circle and obey the Eternal law.

When Pericles, the greatest of Athenian statesmen, stood in the suburb of the Kerameikus, to deliver the funeral oration of the soldiers who had fallen in the expedition to

Samos, he seized the occasion to describe, with great but pardonable pride, the grandeur of Athens. It was the first year of the Peloponnesian war, and he spoke amid the trophies of the Persian conquest and the creations of the Greek genius. In that immortal oration he depicted, in glowing colors, the true sources of national greatness, and enumerated the titles by which Athens claimed to be the first city of the world. He spoke of constitutional guarantees, of democratic principles, of the supremacy of law, of the freedom of the social march. He spoke of the elegance of private life of the bounteousness of comforts and luxuriesof a system of education-of their encouragement to strangers of their cultivated taste--of their love of the beautiful-of their rapid interchange of ideas; but, above all, he dwelt upon the courage of her citizens, animated by reflections that her greatness was achieved "by men of daring, full of a sense of honorable shame in all their actions."

Fellow-citizens: In most of these respects we may adopt the description; but if in taste, in manners, if in temples and statues, if in love and appreciation of art, we fall below the genius of Athens, in how many respects is it our fortune to be superior? We have a revealed religion, we have a perfect system of morality; we have a literature based, it is true, on their models, but extending into realms of which they never dreamed. We have a vast and fertile territory within our own dominion, and science brings the whole world within our reach. We have founded an empire in a wilderness, and poured fabulous treasures into the lap of commerce.

But amid all these wonders, it is obvious that we stand upon the threshold of new discoveries, and at the entrance to a more imperial dominion. The history of the last three hundred years has been a history of successive advances, each more wonderful than the last. There is no reason to believe that the procession will be stayed, or the music of its march be hushed; on the contrary, the world is radiant with hope, and all the signs in earth and heaven are full of promise to the race. Happy are we to whom it is given to share and spread these blessings; happier yet if we shall

transmit the great trust committed to our care undimmed and unbroken to succeeding generations.

I have spoken of three hundred years past-dare I imagine three hundred years to come? It is a period very far beyond the life of the individual man; it is but a span in the history of a nation, throughout the changing generations of mental life. The men grow old and die, the community remains, the nation survives. As we transmit our institutions, so we shall transmit our blood and our names to future ages and populations. What multitudes shall throng these shores, what cities shall gem the borders of the sea! Here all people and all tongues shall meet. Here shall be a more perfect civilization, a more thorough intellectual development, a firmer faith, a more reverent worship.

Perhaps, as we look back to the struggles of an earlier age, and mark the steps of our ancestors in the career we have traced, so some thoughtful man of letters in ages yet to come, may bring to light the history of this shore or of this day. I am sure, fellow-citizens, that whoever shall hereafter read it, will perceive that our pride and joy is dimmed by no stain of selfishness. Our pride is for humanity; our joy is for the world; and amid all the wonders of past achievement and all the splendors of present success, we turn with swelling hearts to gaze into the boundless future, with the earnest conviction that it will yet develop a universal brotherhood of man.

JUNIPERO SERRA, THE FOUNDER OF CALIFORNIA.

UNIPERO SERRA, the founder of the Missions, which were the first settlements of civilized man in California, was born on the Island of Majorca, part of the kingdom of Spain, on the 24th of November, 1713. At the age of sixteen, he became a Monk of the order of St. Francis, and the new name of Junipero was then substituted for his baptismal name of Miguel José. After entering the convent, he

went through a collegiate course of study, and before he had received the degree of Doctor, was appointed lecturer upon philosophy. He became a noted preacher, and was frequently invited to visit the larger towns of his natiye island in that capacity.

Junipero was thirty-six years of age when he determined to become a missionary in the New World. In 1749 he crossed the ocean in company with a number of brother Franciscan Monks, among them several who afterward came with him to California. He remained but a short time in the City of Mexico, and was soon sent a missionary to the Indians in the Sierra Madre, in the district now known as the State of San Luis Potosi. He spent nine years there, and then returned to the City of Mexico where he stayed for seven years, in the Convent of San Fernando.

In 1767, when he was fifty-four years of age, he was appointed to the charge of the Missions to be established in Upper California. He arrived at San Diego in 1769, and, with the exception of one journey to Mexico, he spent all the remainder of his life here. He died at the Mission of Carmel, near Monterey, on the 28th of August, 1784, aged seventy-one years.

Our knowledge of his character is derived almost exclusively from his biography by Palou, who was also a native of Majorca, a brother Franciscan Monk, had been his disciple, came across the Atlantic with him, was his associate in the college of San Fernando, his companion in the expedition to California, his successor in the Presidency of the Missions of Old California, his subordinate afterward in New California, his attendant at his death-bed, and his nearest friend for forty years or more. Under the circumstances, Palou had a right to record the life of his preceptor and superior.

Junipero Serra, as we ascertain his character directly and inferentially in his biography, was a man to whom his religion was every thing. All his actions were governed by the ever-present and predominant idea that life is a brief probation, trembling between eternal perdition on the one side, and salvation on the other. Earth, for its own sake, had

no joys for him. His soul did not recognize this life as its home. He turned with dislike from nearly all those sources of pleasure in which the polished society of our age delights. As a Monk he had, in boyhood, renounced the joys of love, and the attractions of woman's society. The conversation of his own sex was not a source of amusement. He was habitually serious. Laughter was inconsistent with the terrible responsibilities of this probationary existence. Not a joke or a jovial action is recorded of him. He delighted in no joyous books. Art or poetry never served to sharpen his wits, lighten his spirit, or solace his weary moments. The sweet devotional poems of Fray Luis de Leon, and the delicate humor of Cervantes, notwithstanding the perfect piety of both, were equally strange to him. He knew nothing of the science and philosophy which threw all enlightened nations into fermentation a hundred years ago. The rights of man and the birth of chemistry did not withdraw his fixed gaze from the other world, which formed the constant subject of his contemplation.

It was not sufficient for him to abstain from positive pleasure; he considered it his duty to inflict upon himself bitter pain. He ate little, avoided meat and wine, preferred fruit and fish, never complained of the quality of his food, nor sought to have it more savory. He often lashed himself with ropes, sometimes of wire; he was in the habit of beating himself in the breast with stones, and at times he put a burning torch to his breast. These things he did while preaching or at the close of his sermons, his purpose being, as his biographer says, "not only to punish himself but also to move his auditory to penitence for their own sins."

We translate the following incident, which occurred during a sermon which he delivered in Mexico, the precise date and place are not given :

"Imitating his devout San Francisco Solano, he drew out a chain, and letting his habit fall below his shoulders, after having exhorted his auditory to penance, he began to beat himself so cruelly that all the spectators were moved to tears, and one man rising up from among them, went with all haste to the pulpit and took the chain from the penitent