It is with real pleasure that this second number of the "Dime Speaker" is given to the public. The issue of the first number has been followed with such a demand as to render this additional volume quite necessary to meet the calls of teachers, students, and others. The experiment of "giving a dollar book for ten cents," which should embrace _more_ new and _adaptable_ pieces for reading and rehearsal--in prose and poetry, serious and humorous--than any single work yet offered, has, it is needless to say, proven a success in every respect; and this second number of our DIME SPEAKER is given to teachers and scholars in the full assurance of its meeting with their approbation in all respects. It will be found to include some unusually valuable and beautiful pieces for the school-stage, both in prose and verse--most of the matter being from speeches and contributions lately given to the world by the best of our living orators and writers. The effort has been to give as great variety as possible--to suit all tastes and capacities, from the child to the man. It is the purpose of the publishers to continue the series in yearly issues, thus to place in the hands of the youth of our land, at the smallest possible price, books which can not fail to expand their tastes for what is best in style and sentiment, while they shall also offer instruction and amusement, as well to the home circle as to the school-room and exhibition.
THE UNION AND ITS RESULTS.--_Edward Everett, July 4th, 1860._
Merely to fill up the wilderness with a population provided with the ordinary institutions and carrying on the customary pursuits of civilized life--though surely no mean achievement--was, by no means, the whole of the work allotted to the United States, and thus far performed with signal activity, intelligence, and success. The founders of America and their descendants have accomplished more and better things. On the basis of a rapid geographical extension, and with the force of teeming numbers, they have, in the very infancy of their political existence, successfully aimed at higher progress in a generous civilization. The mechanical arts have been cultivated with unusual aptitude. Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, navigation, whether by sails or by steam, and the art of printing in all its forms, have been pursued with surprising skill. Great improvements have been made in all those branches of industry, and in the machinery pertaining to them, which have been eagerly adopted in Europe. A more adequate provision has been made for popular education than in almost any other country. There are more seminaries in the United States, where a respectable academical education may be obtained--more, I still mean, in proportion to the population--than in any other country except Germany. The fine arts have reached a high degree of excellence. The taste for music is rapidly spreading in town and country; and every year witnesses productions from the pencil and the chisel of American sculptors and painters, which would adorn any gallery in the world. Our Astronomers, Mathematicians, Naturalists, Chemists, Engineers, Jurists, Publicists, Historians, Poets, Novelists, and Lexicographers, have placed themselves on a level with those of the elder world. The best dictionaries of the English language since Johnson, are those published in America. Our constitutions, whether of the United States or of the separate States, exclude all public provision for the maintenance of religion, but in no part of Christendom is it more generously supported. Sacred science is pursued as diligently and the pulpit commands as high a degree of respect in the United States, as in those countries where the Church is publicly endowed; while the American Missionary operations have won the admiration of the civilized world. Nowhere, I am persuaded, are there more liberal contributions to public-spirited and charitable objects. In a word, there is no branch of the mechanical or fine arts, no department of science, exact or applied, no form of polite literature, no description of social improvement, in which, due allowance being made for the means and resources at command, the progress of the United States has not been satisfactory, and in some respects astonishing.