CHARACTER OF THE PURITANS.

THE Puritans were men whose minds had deriv. ed a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The dif ference between the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him, on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognised no title to superiority but his favour; and, confident of that favour, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away!

On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language; nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being, to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged; on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events, which shortsighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the Idead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God!

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men,-the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels, or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the

beatific vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried, in the bitterness of his soul, that God had hid his face from him. But, when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the Puritans but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh, who encountered them in the hall of debate, or in the field of battle.

The Puritans brought to civil and military af fairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose, which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were, in fact, the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors, and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world like Sir Artegales's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to

pain; not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.

Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners; we dislike the gloom of their domestic habits; we ackowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach; and we know that, in spite of their hatred of popery, they too often fell into the vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body.

EDINBURGH REVIEW.

THE PRAIRIE.

THE passing cloud which had swept over the prairie in the morning, had left nothing but beauty. A cool freshness exhaled from the tall grass glittering with its water beads. The rich, though parched foliage seemed to have given place to a young and luxuriant growth of the richest green. The clusters of flowers which had worn a dried and feverish look, now rose in renovated beauty, as if from their bed of sickness, and spread their perfumes through the morning air.

In the spring of the year, these prairies are covered with a profusion of pale pink flowers, rearing their delicate stalks among the rough blades of the wild grass. These were too fragile to withstand the scorching heat of summer; they had disappeared, and their stalks had also wither

ed. Others had succeeded them. There was a gorgeous richness in the summer apparel of the prairie. Flowers of red, yellow, purple and crimson, were scattered in profusion among the grass, sometimes growing singly, and at others spreading out in beds of several acres in extent. Like many beauties in real life, they make up in the glare of their colours, what they want in delicacy; they dazzle but a distance, and will not bear closer scrutiny.

There is a sensation of wild pleasure, in traversing these vast and boundless wastes. At one moment we were standing upon the crest of some wavelike hill, which commanded a wide view of the green desert before us. Here and there, were small clumps of trees, resting, like islands, upon the bosom of this sea of grass. Far off, a long waving line of timber winding like a serpent over the country, marked the course of some hidden stream. But a hundred steps of our horses carried us from the point of look-out. Passing down the sides of the hill, we splashed through the water at the bottom; tore a path through the grass, which frequently rose, in these hollows, to the height of eight or ten feet, and the next moment stood upon the crest of a hill similar to the first. This was again cut off as we descended a second time into the trough which followed the long surge-like swell of land.

Such is the prairie-hill follows hill, and hollow succeeds hollow, with the same regularity as the sweeping billows of the ocean. Occasionally a high broken bluff rears its solitary head in the midst, like some lonely sentinel overlooking the country. Upon the tops of these we frequently saw an Indian, standing in bold relief against the sky,