From "The Wilmingtons."

A SAD SPECTACLE.

The poor sufferer died in doubt, irresolution, and ill-defined terrors, as she had lived.

She was a believer without a strengthening faith; amiable and affectionate, without selfdevotion and courage; sensible of her defects, repentant, and contrite, without power to correct, or effort to amend.

Her life had been like a confused skein of delicate and valuable thread, tangled for want of careful development. She came to the end of it, and all was still confusion, and all useless in spite of its adaptation to so many fine purposes; and may those in danger of the same waste of existence, for want of courage to meet its demands and defy its pains, and they are many,-pause upon the slight sketch of this ineffectual character. Forbear to sigh, for sighs are weakness, but brace up the feeble knees, and endeavour to amend.

A NARROW MIND.

Mrs. Vernon was a very excellent woman, in that form of excellence which was the result of the strict but somewhat narrow education of many years ago. She thought justly, but she judged rigidly. She was ready to make every personal sacrifice to duty herself, but she was too fond to impose her own notions of duty upon others. She was sympathetic and kind where she understood the sentiment before her, but she was cold, and almost pitiless, to sorrow of which she could not appreciate the cause; and what she could not understand was sure to appear to her unreasonable. She was enthusiastic in her love of the excellence which she comprehended, but some of the finer forms of excellence she did not comprehend. Then, she had not a shadow of indulgence for the frailties of our nature. Every thing took a positive form with her, for good or bad. She had not breadth of understanding sufficient to take in the whole of a matter, and strike the balance of equity between contending qualities.

From "Mordaunt Hall."

AN ENGLISH GARDEN.

A beautiful garden it was, the sun brightly shining, and every thing around breathing freshness and sweetness. She passed through the arched walk amid the thick shrubberies, which led to the fine gardens of Mordaunt Hall.

The walls were lofty, and covered with fruittrees; and the beds, laid out in fine symmetrical order, were filled with rows of vegetables in prodigious abundance, growing with a luxuriance and in a profusion that showed neither pains nor expense was spared upon their cultivation. The area of two acres thus occupied was traversed each way by a broad gravel-walk, on either side of which were beds filled with gay, but common, flowers; with knots of roses from distance to distance, alternating with honeysuckles, all cut in low, round bushes. The bloom of these was gone, but there was no deficiency, as yet, of gay coloring; for rich tufts of China asters, purple and

pink convolvuluses, African marigolds, sun-flowers, purple phlox, and, in short, an abundance of those common though autumn flowers, of which I, old man as I am, find myself, from association, so fond, were growing there. Opposite to the door at which she entered, the long line of forcing-houses was glittering in the morning sun. There were vines, loaded with purple and amber bunches of fruit growing in inexhaustible profusion; while the crimson peaches and green and purple figs, in their full ripeness, were peeping temptingly among their leaves. The abundance of every thing around was so great, that it was evidently impossible that the family could consume one half of what was thus produced; and, in spite of the calls upon Penny's stores, resulting from the recent wedding-day, over-ripe fruit strewed the ground unheeded, while peas and bean-stalks, still loaded, were blackening and yellowing in the sun; and vegetables running on all sides to waste.

This prodigality of wealth was, however, the only thing that at all militated, to the judicious eye, against the pleasure afforded by the spectacle of these fine, well-ordered gardens.

The dew hung sparkling upon the leaves and flowers, the sun shone reflected from a plashing fountain, that played in the middle of a small pond in the centre of the garden, where the walks crossed. The sweet smell of the plants, the fresh, pure air of the morning playing upon her cheek, and the early birds hopping about, and along the walks, saluting her with their cheerful carols and chirpings, filled her with a sensation of unusual delight, as Alice opened for her the garden door.

THE CHRISTIAN.

He who walks with God, who lives in his presence, whose mind is filled with the image of wisdom far above human wisdom, goodness far above human goodness, justice to which a last appeal may be made, and with whom justice will ever be found he who sees his beauty in this garb of external nature, so exquisite an exposition of the Divine mind; for, shattered and disordered as it is by some evidently external force, enough remains to prove the beauty, grace, and order of the unblemished original-he who does this lives in a new element. His thoughts, his imagination, his views, are purified and elevated.

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. Oh, vice is a hideous thing!

A hideous, dark mystery- the mystery of iniquity! Its secret springs are hidden from our view, but its more obvious causes and consequences are palpable and demonstrable; and it is with its consequences, in our narrow circle of knowledge, that we alone should attempt to deal.

Many subtle and questioning intellects perplex themselves with the inquiry, Whence the remote, original cause of the sin and evil around us, and why?-a question it is not given to any man, under the condition of our present existence, to answer; but scarcely any one sufficiently fixes his attention upon that which it is our main business to know, and which we can know: the efficient

causes, and more especially the consequences, of sin.

Oh, if we steadily kept our minds alive to this most important subject of thought; if men, before they did evil, would only remember its inevitable results; if all the wide-extended sufferings, the sorrows, the pains, the tears, inevitably following upon wrong, were but present to the wrong-doer at the moment of his crime, it is scarcely possible that heart of flesh could resist the piteous picture; that heart of man but must turn appalled from the criminal course upon which he was about to enter.

But we are selfish, careless, unreflecting, blinded by inclination and passion, or by that darkness worse than death which attends upon the slothful indifference to questions of right and wrong. Men pass from day to day, yielding to the temptations of covetousness or pleasure, thoughtless of consequences to themselves in many cases, almost utterly insensible as regards the results to others.

The true moral painter's part it is to hold up a faithful picture to the heart of the long succession of evils which from one crime spring.

The long agonies of a woman's heart, whose affections have been disappointed by the carelessness with which men in ordinary society give rise, by their attentions, to feelings which are the legitimate and natural return of such attentions, is a very serious breach of the law of doing as we would desire to be done by; a breach upon which they, most of them, never reflect at all: but light is this indeed to the crime here perpetrated.

A man should be forced to look steadily into the gulf of despair or far, far, far worse-of degradation and moral ruin into which, for the gratification of the idlest vanity or licentious passion, he plunges a young, innocent, trusting creature, whose only error, it may be, was to love him too well. Men, if they would reflect, must and would shudder and turn aghast from the horrid, horrid spectacle!

But they will not reflect, they will not learn to shudder; the subject is painful, and they pass it from their mind, with a few wicked commonplaces, at which they are too ready. Ridley's treachery was double-dyed in wickedness; but had he not carried his deceit so far-had his victim been a more easy prey, would her fate have been less cruel? As for the fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, of those thus led to folly, no one, of course, thinks of them. No man, the slave of his own vices, can be expected to cast a thought upon them; the sum of their misery is never even calculated the figures are not even set down.

And the children! Reflect upon that; varnish it over as you may, provide for them handsomely if you will, one reflection, at least, make: "What are to be the

moral impressions of a child whose being sprang from a parent's sin?" I ask you only to think of the dark confusion of affections and principles, on the hardness and indifference, or both, which must be the result. Did Ridley, intelligent, reflecting, a weigher of things, a deep searcher into metaphysical and moral truths, a man with at least all the intellectual elements which ought to form a great man-did Ridley ever trouble himself once to consider these things, things so nearly connected with his own and with another's soul? No, certainly.

His was an imagination-ah, were mine as bright!-that might have painted to him, in living images, all the consequences of his criminal self-indulgence and most wicked treachery. His mind had power, had it possessed the will, to draw with the pencil of Dante, the appalling picture of that inner hell to which he had condemned the being he pretended to love-once had loved. And the poor father!-the agonies of the gentle, unoffending man, who had welcomed him so hospitably under his lowly roof; whose heart was so full of kind affections, so free from guile, or jealousy, or pride! Yes, Ridley possessed power to have pictured in a way my feeble hand vainly attempts to do, the long death of the soul, the awful dark despair, of a father wounded in a daughter's honour.

A parent disgraced in his own loving, innocent child. He shall render a heavier account for all this, because he is great, and gifted, and wise, and powerful, and fitted to guide a state and rule the interests of a nation-he shall be the less forgiven, because in the plenitude of his powers he has chosen to step aside to crush a poor little insect in its humble path- he shall be the less forgiven, because the wider the knowledge, and the higher the intellect, and the larger the observation, so much the greater is the power of estimating the claims and appreciating the sufferings of whatever breathes; and that the thoughtless cruelty which we lament and pardon in the untutored child, is odious, is execrable in the man!

ILLEGITIMACY.

Nothing can compensate to any child the simple fact meeting us at the outset, that of belonging to parents not legally and inseparably united.

This is no evil created, as some have perhaps been led to think, by the artificial arrangements and conventions of man in society; its source is in nature-in that nature, the Author of which made marriage coeval with the creation of man; healthfully to rear the precious plant wherein lies the hidden germ of eternity, requires the element of home-and marriage is the foundation of home. Wherever or howsoever the sacredness of marriage is not reverenced, depend upon it, there the man will ever be found imperfectly developed.

The legitimate orphan child, be he who he may, or where he may, has one great advantage with which he starts in life: his place is marked; he is to set out from the place occupied by his parents. Every well-meaning friend has at once a sort of measure given him as to how he ought to be treated

and how educated. Every indifferent person understands this, acquiesces in and supports it. But how different is the case of the unhappy natural | child!-his place is undefined; he has literally none in society; he is the sport of the caprice, the prejudices, the carelessly adopted notions, of every one with whom he has to do. By some he will be pitied, as most unfortunate; by others almost loathed, as tainted and degraded by the vices to which he owed his being. One is for elevating him to the rank and treating him as belonging to that of the best-endowed of his parents; another for sinking him almost below the level of the lowest. What one does for him another undoes; the kind consideration of one but renders him more susceptible to the unkindness and contempt of others. He has not even the memory of a parent to cheer his poor solitary heart-that sacred memory so cherished, so sacred, which consoles while it hallows and elevates the soul of the orphan. He cannot even aspire to purity himself, without inflicting a wound upon that deep piety of the heart, that foundation-stone of the great infinite of piety, the reverence of the child for its parent. Mystery of iniquity! Trailing serpent, endless involutions of the consequences of sin!

MARTINEAU, HARRIET,

BORN in 1802, was one of the youngest of a family of eight children. Her father was proprietor of one of the manufactories of Norwich, in which place his family, originally of French origin, had resided since the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Miss Martineau has herself ascribed her taste for literary pursuits to the delicacy of her health in childhood, and to her deafness, which, without being complete, has obliged her to seek occupations and pleasures within herself; and also to the affection which subsisted between her and her brother, the Rev. James Martineau. When her family became unfortunate in worldly affairs, she was able, by her writings, to relieve them entirely from the burden of her support, and she has since realized "an elegant sufficiency" from her writings.

Her first work, "Devotional Exercises, for the use of Young Persons," was published in 1823. The following year, appeared "Christmas Day;" and in 1825, "The Friends," being a sequel of the last named. In 1826, she wrote " Principle and Practice," a tale, "The Rioters," and "Original Hymns." In 1827, "Mary Campbell" and "The Turnout" were published; and in 1829, "Sequel to Principle and Practice," "Tracts for Houlston," and "My Servant Rachel." In 1830, appeared her best work, because evincing more tenderness of feeling and faith in religion than any other she has written.-this was "Traditions of Palestine;" also a prize essay, "The Essential Faith of the Universal Church," and "Five Years of Youth." In the following year, 1831, she obtained prizes for two essays, "The Faith, as unfolded by Many Prophets," and "Providence, as manifested through Israel."

Miss Martineau seems here to have reached her culminating point in religious sentiment; her faith never rose above sentiment, except in the "Traditions of Palestine," which has passages of, seemingly, true and holy fervour of spirit. In 1832, she commenced her series of tales, as "Illustrations of Political Economy," "Illustrations of Taxation," of "Poor Laws," &c. Miss Martineau was induced to prepare these books, from reading Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations on Political Economy," and thinking that illustrations through stories, theory put in action, would be most effective in producing reforms. The books were very popular when they appeared; but we doubt if their influence on the public mind was productive of any beneficial improvement. The tales were read for amusement; the political notions were forgotten, probably, before the incidents of the story had been effaced by some newer work of fiction.

In 1835, she visited the United States, where she had many friends, warm admirers of her talents, and of the philanthropy with which her writings was imbued. She was welcomed as a sister; and throughout her "Tour in America," the kindest hospitality of the American people was lavished on her. She published the result of her observations and reflections in 1837. She found what she came to find, and no more. Her philosophical and political opinions were fully formed before she set her foot on American ground, and her two works, "Society in America" and "Retrospect of Western Travel," are essentially a bundle of facts and deductions, to prove that Harriet Martineau's opinions were right. But she brought to these investigations some excellent qualities and much benevolent feeling. She was earnest, enthusiastic and hopeful; her books, though marred by many mistakes, some misrepresentations, and, of course, with absurd and erroneous deductions drawn from wrong premises, were yet far more candid in tone and true in spirit, than any preceding works of British travellers in America had ever been. The style is spirited, graphic, and frequently eloquent. Miss Martineau is remarkable for her power of portraying what she sees; she revels in the beauties of landscape, and has a wonderful command of

language. Her writings are usually entertaining, even to those who do not agree with her in theory and sentiment.

Of her subsequent writings, we will quote the opinion of an eminent British critic.* "Her first regular novel appeared in 1839, and was entitled Deerbrook.' Though improbable in many of its incidents, this work abounds in eloquent and striking passages. The democratic opinions of the authoress (for in all but her anti-Malthusian doctrines, Miss Martineau is a sort of female Godwin) are strikingly brought forward, and the characters are well drawn. 'Deerbrook' is a story of English domestic life. The next effort of Miss Martineau was in the historical romance. The Hour and the Man,' 1840, is a novel or romance, founded on the history of the brave Toussaint L'Ouverture, and with this man as hero, Miss Martineau exhibits as the hour of action the period when the slaves of St. Domingo threw off the yoke of slavery. There is much passionate as well as graceful writing in this tale; its greatest defect is, that there is too much disquisition, and too little connected or regular fable. Among the other works of Miss Martineau are several for children, as The Peasant and the Prince,' The Settlers at Home,' How to Observe,' &c. Her latest work, Life in the Sick-Room, or Essays by an Invalid,' 1844, contains many interesting and pleasing sketches, full of acute and delicate thought and elegant description."

In 1846, Miss Martineau, in company with intelligent friends, made a journey through Egypt, to Palestine, Greece, Syria, and Arabia. She has given her impressions of those countries in her work, "Eastern Life; Present and Past," published in 1848. That she is an intelligent traveller, and knows "how to observe," better than almost any tourist who had preceded her, there is no doubt. Her work is exceedingly interesting; but it is marred by the mocking infidelity which she allows for the first time to darken her pages, and testify to the world her disbelief in divine revelation!

A new work from the pen of Miss Martineau, "Letters on Man's Nature and Developments," has lately appeared in London; it is decidedly atheistic in its tone; the only foundation of morality, the belief in God, is disavowed, and His holy word derided as a book of fables, unworthy the study of rational beings. There is something in this avowal by a woman of utter unbelief in Christianity which so shocks the mind, that we are troubled to discuss it; we draw back, as from a pit of destruction, into which to gaze, even, is to sin. In commenting on this infidel work, an American critic, after paying a high compliment to the great talents of Miss Martineau, even allowing she has "masculine power and activity of mind," adds, evidently intending to depreciate the sex, "but the constitutional feebleness, waywardness, and wilfulness of woman is nevertheless not unfrequently evinced by her; and as she grows older the infirmities of her nature are more and more conspicu

* Chambers' Cyclopedia of English Literature.

ous." If to become an atheist and avow infidelity be the sign of "feebleness, waywardness," &c.. how happens it that the great mass of infidels are men? Miss Martineau must now be ranked with Hume, Gibbon, Shelley, Byron, and a host of eminent masculine writers in Great Britain, besides the greater portion of French savans and German philosophers. Even Milton denied, in his old age, the divinity of the Saviour; a fitting sequence to his elevation of the reason of man above the intuitive goodness of woman. Why is it more shocking for a woman to deny the Saviour, and disbelieve the Bible, than for a man? Is it not because she is the conservator of morals, endowed with a quicker capacity of recognizing or feeling divine truth, and with a nature more in consonance with the requirements of the Gospel? Do men show strength, wisdom, and decision of character, when elevating human reason above divine revelation? The apostle declares that to those who "believe," the Gospel is "the power of God, and the wisdom of God." Four-fifths of these believers are now women. Is not the power and wisdom, which the Christian faith gives, with the female sex?

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Miss Martineau has indeed become weak, because she has deserted this tower of strength — "faith in the Lord Jesus Christ;" and bowed down her noble nature to worship reason unenlightened by revelation, an idol set up by the feebleness, waywardness, and wilfulness" of men. May God give her grace to see and escape the snare of the tempter. The triumph of woman's genius is to follow the Saviour in doing good, to hold fast her faith in God, her hope in a blessed immortality. What higher aim than this can the ingenuity of man devise, or his reason prove beneficial to the human race?

From "How to Observe."

CHRISTIANITY.

It is not by dogmas that Christianity has permanently influenced the mind of Christendom. No creeds are answerable for the moral revolution by which physical has been made to succumb to moral force; by which unfortunates are cherished by virtue of their misfortunes; by which the pursuit of speculative truth has become an object worthy of self-sacrifice. It is the character of Jesus of Nazareth which has wrought to these purposes. Notwithstanding all the obscuration and defilement which that character has sustained from superstition and other corruption, it has availed to these purposes, and must prevail more and more now that it is no longer possible to misrepresent his sayings and conceal his deeds, as was done in the dark ages. In all advancing time, as corruption is surmounted, there are more and more who vividly feel that life does not consist in the abundance that a man possesses, but in energy of spirit, and in a power and habit of self-sacrifice; there are perpetually more and more who discern and live by the persuasion that the pursuit of worldly power and ease is a matter totally apart from the function of Christianity; and this persuasion has not been wrought into activity by