Page:Manifest Destiny in the West.pdf/1

148 garments, glides in as noiselessly as a ghost, and lights the candles before the altar. Trinita di Monte is a convent church, belonging to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Their pupils come in two by two, bow before the altar, and are seated in silence. The Sisters, in their turn, follow. All these are separated from us by a high iron fence dividing the church laterally. Afterward the priests appear and prostrate themselves before the cross. As they kneel in the gathering gloom, the organ in the gallery begins a low prelude. Then a woman's voice rises from the curtained choir, in a strain so pure in tone, so sweet and so spiritual in melody and rhythm, that it steals upon us as the echo of a far-off angel song. There are no labored flights, no sudden transitions, no trills or quavers, or other vocal tricks; but the melody flows as smoothly, as unaffectedly, and as pure as a baby's dream. When it has ceased, the priests kneeling in the chancel respond in rougher but subdued voices. Back from chancel to organ loft the antiphon is passed; then the chancel takes up the strain anew; and we sit listening to this double monologue of earth and heaven, wherein each is meditating upon the love of God, thought answering thought, praise following praise. Meanwhile the shadows are deepening in chancel, chapels, and choir. The lamps before the shrines burn softly, surrounding themselves with a miniature halo. Now a few rays of crimson light, thrown level from the setting sun, rest high up upon a pillar here and there, like messengers from heaven about to bear away the prayers of saints. They tremble a moment over painting and statue, kissing farewell to the beatified guardians of the place; then move upward noiselessly, and are gone. The light dies out; the song floats still more faintly, and is lost. The worshipers rise and move homeward in the twilight; the candles are extinguished, and the church is left to darkness and to silence.

HAT remarkable succession of circumstances quoted oftentimes as "Manifest Destiny," is nowhere in history more wonderfully illustrated than in the rapid spread of Americanism from the eastern to the western shores of the North American continent.

Does this opening sentence seem to smack of the national self-praise and confidence in our sacred mission as exemplars of all the highest virtues of republicanism and free institutions? Belief in a manifest destiny ought, indisputably, to inspire us with enthusiasm to fulfill it to the utmost. But it was not of that belief or that sentiment we were thinking when we took up the pen to utter our dogmatical first sentence. It was the result of a mental review of the written and unwritten history of the last eighty years, as it applies to the march of empire in the Western hemisphere.

It was about eighty years ago that Spain finally despaired of holding her discovered territories in the Pacific north of the forty-second parallel, and quietly retired from her most northern post on Vancouver and Quadra's Island, having first made a treaty with Great Britain to the effect that the British lion should not seize it in absence of its original claimant. Perhaps Spain hoped to gain a little strength in some way; or, at the worst, to make an advantageous bargain with