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From the time of Alice's flight, the tilting-ground, the fields, as the circumstances called forth. A spruce young courtier the fencing-school, the summer-evening sports, knew Hugh no was the first who approached; he uhsheathed a weapon of more. His spirit was dead within him. He rose to great burnished steel that shone and glistened in the sun, and handeminence and repute among the citizens, but he was nevered it with the newest air to the officer, who finding it exactly seen to smile, and never mingled in their revelries or re- three feet long, returned it with a bow. Thereupon the galjoicings. Brave, humane, and generous, he was loved by all. lant raised his hat and crying, " God save the Queen," passed He was pitied too by those who knew his story; and these on amidst the plaudits of the mob. Then came another-a were so many, that when he walked along the streets alone at better courtier still-who wore a blade but two feet long, dusk, even the rude common people doffed their caps, and whereat the people laughed, much to the disparagement of his mingled a rough air of sympathy with their respect. honor's dignity. Then came a third, a sturdy old officer of the army, girded with a rapier at least a foot and a half beyond her Majesty's pleasure; at him they raised a great shout and most of the spectators (but especially those who were armorers or cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage which would ensue. But they were disappointed, for the old cam. paigner, coolly unbuckling his sword and bidding his servant carry it home again, passed through unarmed, to the great indignation of all the spectators. They relieved themselves in some degree by hooting a tall blustering fellow with a prodi gious weapon, who stopped short on coming in sight of the preparations, and after a little consideration turned back again; but all this time no rapier had been broken although it was high noon, and all cavaliers of any quality or appearance were taking their way towards Saint Paul's churchyard.

One night in May-it was her birthnight, and twenty years since she had left her home-Hugh Graham sat in the room she had hallowed in his boyish days. He was now a grayhaired man, though still in the prime of life. Old thoughts had borné him company for many hours, and the chamber had gradually got quite dark, when he was roused by a low knocking at the outer door.

He hastened down, and, opening it, saw by the light of a lamp which he had seized in the way, a female figure crouching in the portal. It hurried swiftly past him, and glided up He looked out for pursuers. There were none

the stairs.

in sight.

He was inclined to think it a vision of his own brain when suddenly a vague suspicion of the truth flashed upon his mind. He barred the door and hastened wildly back. Yes, there she was there, in the chamber he had quitted,-there in her old innocent, happy home, so changed that none but he could trace one gleam of what she had been-there upon her knees with her hands clasped in agony and shame before her burning face.

"My God, my God!" she cried, "now strike me dead! Though I have brought death and shame and sorrow on this roof, oh, let me die at home in mercy!"

There was no tear upon her face then, but she trembled and glanced round the chamber. Every thing was in its old place. Her bed looked as if she had risen from it but that morning. The sight of these familiar objects marking the dear remembrance in which she had been held, and the blight she had brought upon herself was more than the woman's better nature that had carried her there, could bear. She wept and fell upon the ground.

A rumor was spread about, in a few days' time, that the Bowyer's cruel daughter had come home, and that Master Hugh Graham had given her lodging in his house. It was rumored too that he had resigned her fortune, in order that she might bestow it in acts of charity, and that he had vowed to guard her in her solitude, but that they were never to see each other more. l'hese rumors greatly incensed all virtuous wives and daughters in the ward, especially when they appeared to receive some corroboration from the circumstance of Master Graham taking up his abode in another tenement hard by. The estimation in which he was held, however, forbade any questioning on the subject, and as the Bowyer's house was close shut up, and nobody came forth when public shows and festivities were in progress, or to flaunt in the public walks, or to buy new fashions at the mercers' booths, all the well-conducted females agreed among themselves that there could be no woman there.

These reports had scarcely died away when the wonder of every good citizen, male and female, was utterly absorbed and swallowed up by a Royal Proclamation, in which her Majesty, strongly censuring the practice of wearing long Spanish rapiers of preposterous length (as being a bullying and swaggering custom, tending to bloodshed and public disorder) commanded that od a particular day therein named, certain grave citizens should repair to the city gates, and there, in public, break all rapiers worn or carried by persons claiming admission, that exceeded, though it were only by a quarter of an inch, three standard feet in length.

Royal Proclamations usually take their course, let the public wonder never so much. On the appointed day two citi zens of high repute took up their stations at each of the gates, attended by a party of the city guard: the main body to enforce the Queen's will, and take custody of all such rebels (if any) as might have the temerity to dispute it: and a few to bear the standard measures and instruments for reducing all unlawful sword-blades to the prescribed dimensions. In pur-. suance of these arrangements, Master Graham and another were posted at Lud Gate, on the hill before Saint Paul's.

During these proceedings Master Graham had stood apart, strictly confining himself to the duty imposed upon him, and taking little heed of anything beyond. He stepped forward now as a richly dressed gentleman on foot, followed by a sin gle attendant, was seen advancing up the hill.

As this person drew nearer, the crowd stopped their clamor and bent forward with eager looks. Master Graham standing alone in the gateway, and the stranger coming slowly towards him, they seemed, as it were, set face to face. The nobleman (for he looked one) had a haughty and disdainful air, which bespoke the slight estimation in which he held the citizen.The citizen, on the other hand, preserved the resolute bearing of one who was not to be frowned down or daunted, and who cared very little for any nobility but that of worth and man hood. It was, perhaps, some consciousness on the part of each, of these feelings in the other, that infused a more stern expression into their regards as they came closer together. "Your rapier, worthy Sir !"

the

At the instant that he pronounced these words Graham started, and falling back some paces, laid his hand upon dagger in his belt.

"You are the man whose horse I used to hold before the Bowyer's door? You are that man? Speak!” "Out, you 'prentice hound!" said the other. "You are he! I know you well!" cried Graham. "Let no man step between us two, or I shall be his murderer." With that he drew his dagger and rushed in upon him.

The stranger had drawn his weapon from the scabbard ready for the scrutiny, before a word was spoken. He made a thrust at his assailant, but the dagger which Graham clutched in his left hand being the dirk in use at the time for parrying such blows promptly turned the point aside. They closed. The dagger fell rattling upon the ground, and Graham wresting his adversary's sword from his grasp, plunged it through his heart. As he drew it out it snapped in two, leaving a fragment in the dead man's body.

All this passed so swiftly that the bystanders looked on without an effort to interfere; but the man was no sooner down than an uproar broke forth which rent the air. The attendant rushing through the gate proclaimed that his master, a nobleman, had been set upon and slain by a citizen; the word quickly spread from mouth to mouth; Saint Paul's cathedral and every book-shop, ordinary, and smoking-house in the churchyard poured out its streams of cavaliers and their fol lowers, who, mingled together in a dense tumultuous body, struggled, sword in hand, toward the spot.

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With equal impetuosity and stimulating each other by loud cries and shouts, the citizens and common people took quarrel on their side, and encircling Master Graham a hun dred deep, forced him from the gate. In vain he waved the broken sword above his head, crying that he would die on London's threshold for their sacred homes. They bore him on, and ever keeping him in the midst so that no man could attack him, fought their way into the city.

The clash of swords and roar of voices, the dust and heat A pretty numerous company were gathered together at this and pressure, the trampling under foot of men, the distracted spot, for, besides the officers in attendance to enforce the pro- looks and shrieks of women at the windows above as they reclamation, there was a motley crowd of lookers-on of various cognized their relatives or lovers in the crowd, the rapid tolldegrees, who raised from time to time such shouts and criesing of alarm bells, the furious rage and passion of the scene

vacant chairs in that old room of yours. Don't reject me without full consideration, for if you do you'll be sorry for it afterwards-you will upon my life.

were fearful. Those who being on the outskirts of each crowd could use their weapons with effect fought desperately, while those behind maddened with baffled rage struck at each other over the heads of those before them, and crushed their own "I enclose my card, sir, in this letter. I never was ashamed fellows. Wherever the broken sword was seen above the of my name, and I never shall be. I am considered a devilpeople's heads, towards that spot the cavaliers made a new ish gentlemanly fellow, and I act up to the character. If you rush. Every one of these charges was marked by sudden gaps want a reference, ask any of the men at our club. Ask any in the throng where men were trodden down, but as fast as fellow who goes there to write his letters, what sort of converthey were made, the tide swept over them, and still the multi-sation mine is. Ask him if he thinks I have the sort of voice tude pressed on again, a confused mass of swords, clubs, staves, that will suit your deaf friend, and make him hear, if he can broken plumes, fragments of rich cloaks and doublets, and an- hear any thing at all. Ask the servants what they think of gry bleeding faces, all mixed up together in inextricable dis- me. There's not a rascal among 'em, sir, but will tremble to order. hear my name. That reminds me-don't you say too much about that housekeeper of yours; it's a low subject, damned low.

But

The design of the people was to force Master Graham to take refuge in his dwelling, and to defend it until the authorities could interfere or they could gain time for parley. either from ignorance, or in the confusion of the moment, they stopped at his old house which was closely shut. Some time was lost in beating the doors open and passing him to the front. About a score of the boldest of the other party threw themselves into the torrent while this was being done, and reaching the door at the same moment with himself, cut him off from his defenders.

"I never will turn in such a righteous cause, so help me Heaven!" cried Graham in a voice that at last made itself heard, and confronting them as he spoke. "Least of all will I turn upon this threshold which owes its desolation to such men as ye. I give no quarter, and I will have none! Strike!" For a moment they stood at bay. At that moment a shot from an unseen hand-apparently fired by some person who had gained access to one of the opposite houses,-struck Graham in the brain and he fell dead. A wail was heard in the air; many people in the concourse cried that they had seen a spirit glide across the little casement window of the Bowyer's house.

I tell you what, sir. If you vote me into one of those empty chairs, you'll have among you a man with a fund of gentlemanly information that'll astonish you. I can let you into a few anecdotes about some fine women of title, that are quite high life, sir-the tip-top sort of thing. I know the name of every man who has been out on an affair of honor within the last five-and-twenty years; I know the private particulars of every cross and squabble that has taken place upon the turf, at the gaming-table or elsewhere, during the whole of that time. I have been called the gentlemanly chronicle. You may consider yourself a lucky dog; upon my soul you may congratulate yourself, though I say so.

"It's an uncommon good notion that of yours, not letting any body know where you live. I have tried it, but there has always been an anxiety respecting me which has found me out. Your deaf friend is a cunning fellow to keep his name so close. I have tried that too, but have always failed. I shall be proud to make his acquaintance-tell him so, with my compliments.

"You must have been a queer fellow when you were a child, confounded queer. It's odd all that about the picture in your first paper-prosy, but told in a devilish gentlemanly sort o way. In places like that, I could come in with great effec with a touch of life-Don't you feel that?

A dead silence succeeded. After a short time some of the flushed and heated throng lay down their arms and softly carried the body within doors. Others fell off or slunk away in knots of two or three, others whispered together in groups, and before a numerous guard, which then rode up, could musther your friends live upon the premises, and at your expense, ter in the street, it was nearly empty.

Those who carried Master Graham to the bed up-stairs were shocked to seer woman lying beneath the window with her hands clasped together. After trying to recover her in vain, they laid her near the citizen, who still retained, tightly grasped in his right hand, the first and last sword that was broken that day at Lud Gate.

The Giant uttered these concluding words with sudden precipitation, and on the instant the strange light which had filled the hall faded away. Joe glanced involuntarily at the eastern window, and saw the first pale gleam of morning. He turned his head again towards the other window in which the Giants had been seated. It was empty. The cask of wine was gone, and he could dimly make out that the two great figures stood mute and motionless upon their pedestals.

After rubbing his eyes and wondering for full half an hour, during which time he observed morning come creeping on, he yielded to the drowsiness which overpowered him, and fell into a refreshing slumber. When he awoke it was broad day; the building was open, and workmen were busily engaged in removing the vestiges of last night's feast.

Stealing gently down the little stairs, and assuming the air of some early lounger who had dropped in from the street, he walked up to the foot of each pedestal in turn, and attentively examined the figure it supported. There could be no doubt about the features of either; he recollected the exact expression they had worn at different passages of their conversation, and recognized in every line and lineament the Giants of the night. Assured that it was no vision but that he had heard and seen with his own proper senses, he walked forth, determining at all hazards to conceal himself in the Guildhall again that evening. He further resolved to sleep all day, so that he might be very wakeful and vigilant, and above all that he might take notice of the figures at the precise moment of their becoming animated and subsiding into their old state, which he greatly reproached himself for not having done already.

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"I am anxiously waiting for your next paper to know whewhich I take it for granted is the case. If I am right in this impression, I know a charming fellow (an excellent compacoti and most delightful company) who will be proud to join you. Some years ago he seconded a great many prize-fighters, and once fought an amateur match himself; since then, he has driven several mails, broken at different periods all the lamps on the right-hand side of Oxford-street, and six times carried away every bell-handle in Bloomsbury-square, besides turning off the gas in various thoroughfares. In point of gentlemanliness he is unrivaled, and I should say that, next to myself, he is of all men the best suited to your purpose.

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In one of the middle counties of Scotland, no matter whether on the eastern or the western side of the great spinal ridge of mountains by which the said country, northward of the Forth and Tay, is divided into two parts; the one exposed to the cold east winds which come from continental Europe, and the other to the soft but dripping gales of the Atlantic; in one of those counties there is a beautiful little river, the primary streams of which are collected from a mossy table land of great elevation, and of the most bleak, blackened, and forbidding character. When collected, they dance down a steep slope of many hundred feet; and at the end of this slope they dash over a rock of great elevation, forming a cascade which is beautiful at all times, and truly splendid during the heavy falls of rain to which such districts are subject in the autumn. Immediately at the bottom of the fall the river becomes tranquil, and even expands into a lake, upon whose surface not a sunbeam fulls for several months during the win

This contribution is from the pen of a distir rshed Author though we are not at liberty to give his name

ter.

joining one; and no sound has been heard within the walls of this one, since the Catholic times. The inhabitants are most sturdy Presbyterians; and thus the fact of the old church being a Catholic remain, conspires, with the supposed assem blage of spirits, to render these ruins pecularly obnoxious to them. Accordingly, the whole fabric and its adjuncts are left in the hands of time; for no man will venture to appropriate a particle of the materials, or a twig of the trees in the church-yard, which exhibit strong instances of decay.The only use to which this ground is appropriated, is the inhumation of those who have been guilty of suicide, a crime which is melancholy every where, and which is held in such abhorrence by the rustics of this part of Scotland, that were they to know the resting-piace of the body of one who had been guilty of it, they would tear it from its place of sepulchre, rend it in pieces, and scatter it over the desert as food for the raven. Therefore, when any hapless person commits this sad and sickening crime, within a reasonable distance of the old church-yard now mentioned, the body is brought silently hither under the cloud of night, interred without ceremony, and the turf over it so smoothed as that no one shall discover at the dawn of the morning what has been done during the night.

This lake is itself a lovely sheet of water; and there are some associations connected with it, that render it dear to every lover of the ancient and genuine character of Scotland. At the lower part of it there are a rustic church, a small village, and a schoolhouse; in the latter of which there once lived a poet, who is, perhaps, the last writer of any thing approaching to the Anglo-Saxon style, and his simple muse was perchance the spark at which the more brilliant light of the amiable Dr. Beattie, the author of the Minstrel,' was enkindled. The little churchyard is full of monumental scraps of this rural bard's production; and, in consequence of the pure morality and sweet cadence of these, it may be regarded as the model of rural cemeteries; while the loneliness of the place throws over it a sepulchral shade, which is in delightful harmony with such meditations as a place of this description calls forth. Reposing upon the little bank of camomile, against the western edge of the schoolhouse, which, in times long gone by, was the favorite reclining place of the bard in summer evening, and looked along the lake in the direction of the waterfall, there is a scene to which Poussin or Claude could hardly do justice. If a gentle wind is on the lake, and the rays of the declining sun steal toward it through the gorges of the rifted rocks and the dark brown heather, it flings back the light in countless rainbow links, blended in the most A good many years ago, an amiable but thoughtless young curious manner, and readily explaining how the former inhab- girl, of the name of Mary Lindsey, had been crossed in love; itants of such places should, in the eagerness of their mind and, not being able to bear the feeling, she had flung herself (for knowledge was not then to be found,) have peopled such into the pool, and by one rash act terminated her love and localities with flitting spirits, and with fairy elves. On one's her days together. Her sorrowing friends-for except this right, the precipice, down which the adventurous Wallace de- unfortunate love feeling, she was an amiable and excellent scended to the attack of a neighboring fortress, then garri-girl-resolved to bury her body in the haunted church-yard soned by the English, rises, ledge over ledge, and crag over crag, to the height of some 1500 or 2000 feet. High in the flue of this rock Iwells that queen of the Scottish desert, the golden eagle, while on the erags to the left sundry pairs of her progeny have taken up their abode; and, we may say with truth, that this is perhaps the only spot among the Caledonian hills where six, or even four eagles may be seen in the sky, at one and the same instant, floating in that splendid majesty of which this eagle alone is the typical possessor.— One hour of observation in such a place as this is worth more than ninety spent in all the museums, or other artificial collections of natural subjects that human skill, and labor, and expense have ever brought, or can bring together.

under cloud of night, and within the guardianship of those unearthly things which were currently believed to keep nightly watch there.

In advance about five miles distant from this scene of romantic beauty and romances of goblins, there lives, and haply lives still, a medical man of no small eminence in all the parts of his profession, and of great worth as a man. This gentleman had two apprentices, both lads of promise; and one of them at least of high public name at the present day, though the other, and, we may add, the more promising of the two, found an early grave in the jungles of Hindostan.These young gentlemen were zealous withal in their studies. They had nearly got by rote the delightful little volume of From the lake downward, the river threads the middle, the great Chepelden, they had scrutinized every plate in Alopen, wild, but lovely glen, for a considerable number of binus, and they had carefully conned the laborious prelec miles, descending rapidly throughout the whole extent, but not tions of Fyffe. All this, however, was mere book learning; forming any remarkable cascade or exhibiting any extraordi- and they longed for a demonstration of the human subject nary feature at any part of the descent. This is continuous itself. Hearing of the melancholy fate of Mary Lindsey, and until the gorge of the mountains is arrived at; and here a knowing the place of her intended sepulchre, they resolved to new scene begins. The velocity of the river has worn for it- obtain possession of her body, as the only one of which they self a channel some hundred feet in depth, and extending could by possibility get hold. In the town where they lived, many miles in length, not only through the sand and gravel, a public thoroughfare bisected the church-yard; and besides and other ruins of the mountains, but through the red sand- this, there were watchmen and lookers from the windows on stone and all the softer rocks: and it has carried the frag- every side, and at every hour of the night, and to have dese ments sheer onward to the sea, where very extensive pebbly crated the tomb there, would have exposed them to serious beaches have been formed by the conflict between its action vengeance on the part of the populace. Therefore, they had and that of the tide. At the upper part of the singular no sooner heard of the suicide, and learned the night of the chasm along which it flows, its destructive powers have been interment, than they resolved to obtain possession of the selfpartially arrested by a dyke of precious jasper, which here devoted victim, unknown to any one but themselves. It was seems the base of the mountains to a considerable extent, and during the summer, which in that part of Scotland is peculiar which, from its beauty, would be of great value as an orna- ly sweet, that they put their design in execution. Closing mental stone, were it not for the expense and labor of the cut- their master's surgery at the usual Lour, they marched along ting and polishing it. Hard as it is, this jasper has not wholly and the hope of possessing a first subject for dissection, prewithstood the action of the stream; for it is worn into a deep vented them from feeling the length of their way, which notch, and a pool has been scooped above it, while a cascade might be some seven or eight miles across a very delightful thunders over the other side, adding the deep tones of its mu- part of the country, and when the various wild flowers, to sic to the softer and sweeter notes of the songsters, where-gether with the field bean, were perfuming the nocturnal air with the neighboring groves abound. Immediately over it with unrivalled fragrance. there stands a monument of mock-antiquity, styled the goblin turna-Scottice‘The Dolly Tower;' and firmly believed to be ha inted by supernatural beings.

From this highly picturesque commencement, the dell or ravine, which has probably been for thousands of years in the course of formation, winds onward in a very beautiful manner, now narrowing into gorges, where one might almost leap from rock to rock; and anon expanding into pools, bored by soft little meadows from which the banks ascend in easy and singularly beautiful slopes. At the top of one of these there stand the ruins of a church, which are hoary with time, and horrible to the rustics because of the supernatural beings which they verily believe or used, not many years ago, to believe, held their midnight revels here. The parish of which this ruin was once the church, has long been united to an ad

They reached the scene of action, and crossed the rustic wooden bridge: the stilly pool above them reflecting the glories of the nocturnal sky like a faithful mirror. They as cended the opposite banks threading the balmy brakes, and gained the portal of the abode of the ancient dead, the whole wall of which, by the decay of time, has become one success sion of gateless entrances. Twilight lingers there during the live-long summer night; and thus the old church with its tower, the dark yew-tree which had witnessed the burial of many generations of men long forgotten, and all the other at tributes of the wild and haunted locality, came sharply out against the silver gray of the evening sky. How were they to proceed? It was resolved that one should climb into the

yew-tree, veil himself in its dark foliage, note the place of sepulture, and descend and join the other when the mourners

were gone. The other betook himself to the shelter of one
of the ruined isles of the church, which it was known none
of the parties attending the funeral would dare to enter at
the dead hour of midnight. These aisles were vaulted, and
the vaults still held their places, notwithstanding the slipping
of the grey slates, and the decay of the beams and boards
which had supported the external roof. The bell, too, hung
naked in the little tower, with various ends of beam and
pieces of board around it, which, from the cause already men-
tioned, no rustic would dare to touch. It was the same with
two great oaken coffins of ancient date, which were placed on
end in the aisle, where the would-be anatomist sheltered him-
self, and they leaned slantingly against the wall, by which
means the outer part of the end was raised a few inches
above the floor. These coffins were of great weight and
thickness, and the length of time which they had been in the
ground had given them the blackness of ebony. In one of
these ancient coffins, the more cautious of our adventurers en-
sconced himself, until his coadjutor should come to tell him
that the party were gone and the place of sepulture was as-
certained. Thus each party 'took his position,' as military
men say, with such tactics as he deemed best for ultimately
'carrying' the body of Mary Lindsey.
Several hours passed in these positions, not very pleasantly,
as may be understood, to him who was ensconced in the old
cothin within the haunted church; but of what he saw or what
he fancied, there is nothing in the record. Hearing is the un-
toward sense in such situations; and at all shiftings of the
wind, the little hurricanes and gusts will sport for a time.
These whispered through the sprays, rattled the loose boards
and slates, and something struck the old bell, and owls (there
were several in the neighborhood) filled up the nocturnal con-
The coffin occupier became alarmed. He raised him-
self on tiptoe. His weight on the fore part of the coffin
which was off the floor, swung it from its poise, and over it
fell with a crash like thunder, not hurting the adventurer, but
holding him in a trap from which he had no power of extrac-
tion. The sound and its echo from the vault into the trees,

cert.

terrified him in the yew-tree, and he lost his hold, tumbled headlong, and stunned himself to insensibility, in which state he lay he knew not how many hours. While he lay thus, the funeral was performed, and not a trace left on the sod; and when he came to his senses, it was a fine sunny morning, and the ancient sward of the church-yard showed not a trace of disturbance. He looked around for his companion, but found him not. He however heard a strange thumping in the church: and upon entering the aisle he heard the melancholy complaint-"It's me aneth [under] the coffin!". Finding that his unaided strength was unable to remove this premature dwelling from his associate, he obtained a stake from an adjoining pailing, and using that as a lever, and the stave as a fulcrum, delivered the mourner from his prison-house. This being done, the pair wended their way back to the town, where they arrived about mid-day, jaded and fatigued, but without the body of Mary Lindsey; and this, we believe, began and ended the adventures of both of them in the ignoble act of body-snatching.

NATIONAL HUMILIATION.

tells these triumphing soldiers that it was for the sins of Judah
that God had delivered these captives into their hands; "And
now," adds he, "ye purpose to keep under the children of
Judah and Jerusalem, for bondmen and bondwomen unto you.
But, are there not with you, even with you, sins against the
Lord your God? Now hear me, therefore, and deliver the
captives again, which ye have taken captive of your brethren;
for the fierce wrath of the Lord is upon you."
This was, certainly, very plain speaking, for one poor
prophet who stood, single handed, against a host of armed
men, flushed with victory-their swords scarcely yet dry from
the slaughter of a hundred and twenty thousand men, and
their two hundred thousand captives following in their train.
But, from a little historical fragment like this, that preserves,
in their original connection, the words before us, we see what
sort of men the prophets of God used to be; what those who
speak in his name and for the interests of his kingdom, al-
ways ought to be; and what those who are true to their office,
as interpreters of his law, always will be.
The question which this intrepid prophet of Jehovah ad-
dresses to the captains of Israel's hosts, seems to me to be
peculiarly appropriate when addressed, by one of those who,
in this Commonwealth, or in this great community of Com-
monwealths, are officially called to speak of "the kingdom of
God and his righteousness," to this great people, or to the
rulers of this people, on a day like this; when, by the voice
of those rulers themselves, we are called to acts of general
and public humiliation of ourselves before God.
not with you, even with you, sins against the Lord your God?"
We are called together to-day, my Christian friends, not as
individuals, to consider that part of our conduct which begins
and ends with ourselves, in our own persons, of our domestic
relations; and therefore I do not now propose to speak of
ourselves, personally. Nor are we convoked by the voice of
civil authority, to consider our relations to each other as con-
stituent parts of a Christian church or congregation; and I
shall therefore, not speak of affairs that pertain to this church
or society; nor do I propose to make any allusion to any thing
private or personal or parochial. Nor yet, when speaking, as
I do mean to speak, of public, state, or national affairs, do I
intend to speak, nor shall allow myself to speak as a politi-
cal partizan, of any badge, party or interest; for such I am
not, and such I will not be—but simply as a prophet of the
Lord, as a Christian moralist, as an observer of events, and
as a lover of his race: as an observer, especially, of the people
of this great and good land, of the moral laws of the Creator,
and of the manner in which the people of this land bear upon
those laws; and those laws, in turn, upon the people of this
land.

"Are there

The Chief Magistrate, in his proclamation says-" I invite the whole people of this Commonwealth, to assemble, on that day, in their usual places of public worship, and, collectively This, indeed, is daintily and individually, to reflect with humble contrition, on the imperfection of their services." enough expressed-as if the imperfection of our services were all that for which, as a people, we ought to bow ourselves in deep humiliation before God. The old prophet asks-" Are there not with you, even with you, sins against the Lord your God?"

Let us seriously turn our attention for a while, to this question of the Samaritan prophet.

Not a little has been said, within the last twenty years, by foreign travellers, especially by English travellers, of the boastful spirit of our countrymen. It is said that, as a people, we love to glorify ourselves, our land, and all that pertains

▲ Sermon, preached in Hollis street Church, Boston, on Fast-Day thereto. In our own eyes we are the cleverest, the richest, Morning, April 2, 1840.

BY JOHN PIER PONT.

the freest, the most enterprising, the most enlightened, and the most moral people in the world. Now, this spirit of boasting is offensive to our English brethren; and the reason is very obvious; for it is showing ourselves to them, in the same attitude in which they show themselves to the rest of

2 CHRON. XXVIII. 10....Are there not with you, even with you, sins the world; in all which, if it be not ourselves, there is probaagainst the Lord God?

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This question was addressed by Oded, a Samaritan prophet of God, to the captains of the host of Israel, who, having slain in battle a hundred and twenty thousand valiant men of Judah -because Judah, as a nation, had followed Ahaz their king, in forsaking the God of their fathers--were returning to the royal city of Israel, and had already approached its gates, with much spoil, and with two hundred thousand captiveswomen, sons and daughters of Judah. This bold prophet

bly not a prouder or more boastful nation to be found. And, when we consider that the present English, and the present American people, are brothers, both being children of the same maternal stock, it is not very wonderful that there should be a great family likeness, in the character of the two nations in the point of self-glorification; or that they should both seize upon the same subjects as causes of self-commendation. The genius of the two nations is essentially similar. Their currents of thought, to a great extent, run in the same channels. The objects of pursuit are very much the same; and it is

neither to be denied, nor winked out of sight, that, if national boasting is ever justifiable, there is much in each of these nations to justify it.

we not abundant reason for deep humiliation, in the sight of God, and of the other nations of the earth, when we consider -what is capable of abundant proof, if any one should dare to deny it-that these two nations, the mother and the daughter, Great Britain and the United States-nations that have done more for the last half century than all the rest of christendom, to bring men to the knowledge of God through Jesua Christ our Lord the two most commercial nations of the globe, and the wealthiest by means of their commerce-the two nations that, in that time, have raised more money to publish the Bible in all languages, and to send forth the heralds of the everlasting gospel to Mahomedan and pagan lands, than all the other Christian nations combined-that these two nations have, for the last half century done, and at this hour are doing, more to injure the human race-to impoverish mankind-to destroy the health-to break down the spirit-to corrupt the morals of the human family-in one word for eternity, than all the Mahomedan and all the pagan nations on the globe! These two nations-the freest nations of the world, and the most enlightened, if we may receive as true their own opinions of themselves-the most Christian nations, if their own boastings are to be trusted-are doing more, at this hour, by means of their wars for conquest, by their oppression of the conquered, and by their poisonous drugs-to desolate God's earth, to break down his kingdom upon the face of it, and to efface his image from the human soul, than is done by all other nations, Christian, Mahomedan, and Pagan combined; and where, after all their boasting, these nations, between them, have invested one dollar in the means of Christian salvation, they have invested ten to corrupt and destroy their fellow men, in body and in spirit, for time and for eternity!

For, observe, what this, even our American people, has done, within only two centuries. See a great part of a vast continent conquered from a powerful race, from a multitude of nations, of brave and formidable men. See its forests cleared away by the free woodman's axe, and replaced by wide and waving wheat fields and pastures, that show themselves in green and gold to the traveller, who, in security, sweeps through them on roads of iron, driven by a power that sets winds and waters at defiance. See wigwams supplanted by cheerful villages and splendid cities. See its streams and waterfalls driving the wheels that do the work of millions of hands, and clothe their millions of men, while they have, of themselves, neither backs to clothe nor mouths to feed. See its commerce spreading its wings to every wind of every zone, and plowing the bosom of every sea, and bring--done more to destroy mankind, body and soul, for time and ing home its fruits and its treasures from the multitude of the isles. Then, see its school-houses, standing modestly by the way-side, and inviting to their shelter and their discipline, the children of the whole community-the poorest as heartily as the richest its tribunals of justice, open, uncorrupt, and generally incorruptible; and its churches, from the unpretending tabernacle, built of logs, to the splendid sanctuary of granite or marble, calling the citizen or the villager to enter in and bow himself before the High God, with worship, thanksgiving, prayer or humiliation. See its ships of war, visiting the farthest corner of the globe, to claim redress for the wrongs that savage hordes or pirate crews dare to do to its merchant flag. See its academies and colleges pouring forth their light upon the hundreds of thousands of quiet and comfortable homes, where the cultivator of the field, or the ingenious artisan sits, surrounded by his loved ones, and feels that he and they are there secure from the hand of power. Hear the voice of praise that its young artists are exciting in other lands. Read the history of its deeds in arms on the land and the ocean; and the outpourings of its eloquence from the Senate hall, the pulpit and the press. See the tide of its myriad children flowing back, wave after wave, still swelling and towering, till it pours over the Alleghanies, sweeps across the infinite valley of the Mississippi, and dashes up against the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains. See her philanthropists, like the Howards of her mother island, visiting and cheering prisons, and laboring to infuse, and actually infusing more and more of the Christian spirit into the great mass of of criminal legislation. See them reaching their arms across the Atlantic, and, Joining hands with the philanthropists of Britain, translating the sacred volume into all the languages of the globe, making its presses groan with the holy work of multiplying copies of the Word of Life, and then calling up his sons and its daughters, and sending them forth with that holy book, in the spirit of self-sacrifice and of a holy trust, to shed its blessed light upon the millions who, at the feet of a false prophet, or around the altars of false gods, are sitting in darkness and the shadow of death. Hear the voice of both these great nations sounding across the oceans, louder than all their waters, declaring the African slave-trade piracy, and denouncing against it the punishment of death; and see one of them, at least, sending forth her armaments to seize those fiends in human form who are guilty of that crime, and to see the law enforced. Hear her, too, lifting up her voice to her own slaves, and bidding them be free; and, at a blow, striking off the chains-not of two hundred thousand captives, like those before Samaria's gates-but of eight hundred thousand, that had toiled in bondage for her on our Indian Isles.

Have not these nations, then, it may be asked-have not these boastful nations, something to boast of? something in which-if glory may ever be allowed-they may well glory? Have not all other nations heard of their great deeds, and beheld their glory, and wondered? Have not the mother and the daughter nations taken each other by the hand, and marched forth in their congenial might, and in their common majesty, to redeem the victims of oppression? and, have they not girdled the globe with the golden bands of their beneficent power, and with the cords of their Christian philanthropy?

Well, admit all this, for I believe that it is all true. Admit. moreover that, were there nothing which stern justice requires us to throw into the other basin of the balance, as a counterpoise to this exceeding weight of glory,' there would be ample grounds for their national boasting. But is it so? Have

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I say not which of these great destroyers of God's crea tures and of his glory upon earth, has been the greater. The mother has had the greater power-has.enjoyed and abused it longer; and I would that I could believe that her action has been more intense according to her power. The sanguinary wars by which she has subjugated the hundred millions of India, and the stern despotism with which she rules and starves them, that her merchant princes may roll in splen dor and lap themselves in voluptuousness, have a voice which the whole thickness of the globe cannot keep out of our ears. "A more beautiful country," says a brother clergyman recently of this city,* "than that from Cuddalore to Tanjore, (in Madras) cannot possibly be imagined. The dense population and rich soil give their energies to each other, and produce a scene of surpassing loveliness. But the taxes and other causes keep down the laborers to a state below that of our Southern slaves." Turn your eyes backward," says a speaker of their own, no longer ago than last September,t Turn your eyes backward upon the scenes of the past year. Go with me into the North-West provinces of the Bengal presidency, and I will show you the bleaching skeletons of five hundred thousand human beings who perished of hunger in the space of a few short months. Yes-died of hunger in what has been justly called the granary of the world. The air, for miles, was poisoned with the effluvia emitted from the putrefying bodies of the dead. The rivers were choked with the corpses thrown into their channels. Mothers cast their little ones beneath the rolling waves because they would not see them draw their last gasp and feel them stiffen in their arms." "Jackals and vultures approached and fastened upon the bodies of men, women and children, before life was ex tinct. Madness, disease, despair stalked abroad, and no hu man power present to arrest their progress." And this occurred in British India, in the reign of Victoria_the_first.Nor was the event extraordinary or unforeseen. Far from it. Eighteen hundred thirty-five witnessed a famine in the Northern provinces. Eighteen hundred thirty-three beheld one in the Eastern. Eighteen hundred twenty-two saw one in the Deccan. They have continued to increase in frequency and extent under our sway, for more than half a century. Under the administration of Lord Clive, a famine in the Bengal provinces swept off three millions! and, at that time, the British speculators in India had their granaries filled to repletion with corn. Horrid monopoly of the necessaries of life! Three millions died, while there was food enough and to spare locked up in the store houses of the rich. To add to the horror with

Rev. H. Malcom.

† See Thompson's Lectures at Manchester, pp. 58, 59.

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