may believe that we should not have had to blush for the cowardice and recreancy of the crew, nor weep for the untimely dead. But, apparently, each subordinate officer lost all presence of mind, then courage, and so honor. In a wild scramble, that ignoble mob of firemen, engineers, waiters, and crew, rushed for the boats, and abandoned the helpless women, children, and men to the mercy of the deep! Four hours there were from the catastrophe of collision to the catastrophe of SINKING ! Oh, what a burial was here! Not as when one is borne from his home, among weeping throngs, and gently carried to the green fields, and laid peacefully beneath the turf and the flowers. No priest stood to pronounce a burial-service. It was an ocean grave. The mists alone shrouded the burial-place. No spade prepared the grave, nor sexton filled up the hollowed earth. Down, down they sank, and the quick returning waters smoothed out every ripple, and left the sea as if it had not been. H. W. Beecher. CIII. THE GLORY AND GRANDEUR OF PEACE. HATEVER may be the judgment of poets, of moralists, WH of satirists, or even of soldiers, it is certain that the glory of arms still exercises no mean influence over the minds of men. The art of war, which has been happily termed by a French divine, the baleful art by which men learn to exterminate one another, is yet held, even among Christians, to be an honorable pursuit; and the animal courage, which it stimulates and develops, is prized as a transcendent virtue. It will be for another age, and a higher civilization, to appreciate the more exalted character of the art of benevolence, the art of extending happiness and all good influences, by word or deed, to the largest number of mankind, — which, in blessed contrast with the misery, the degradation, the wickedness of war, shall shine resplendent, the true grandeur of peace. All then will be willing to join with the early poet in saying, at least, 66 Though louder fame attend the martial rage, Then shall the soul thrill with a nobler heroism than that of battle. Peaceful industry, with untold multitudes of cheerful and beneficent laborers, shall be its gladsome token. Literature, full of sympathy and comfort for the heart of man, shall appear in garments of purer glory than she has yet assumed. Science shall extend the bounds of knowledge and power, adding unimaginable strength to the hands of man, opening innumerable resources in the earth, and revealing new secrets and harmonies in the skies. Art, elevated and refined, shall lavish fresh streams of beauty and grace. Charity, in streams of milk and honey, shall diffuse itself among all the habitations of the world. Does any one ask for the signs of this approaching era? The increasing beneficence and intelligence of our own day, the broadspread sympathy with human suffering, the widening thoughts of men, the longings of the heart for a higher condition on earth, the unfulfilled promises of Christian progress, are the auspicious auguries of this happy future. As early voyagers over untried realms of waste, we have already observed the signs of land. The green twig and fresh red berry have floated by our bark; the odors of the shore fan our faces; nay, we may seem to descry the distant gleam of light, and hear from the more earnest observers, as Columbus heard, after midnight, from the mast-head of the Pinta, the joyful cry of Land! Land! and lo! a new world broke upon his early morning gaze. C. Sumner. THE CIV. ANCIENT AND MODERN PRODUCTIONS. HE classics possess a peculiar charm, from the circumstance that they have been the models, I might almost say the masters, of composition and thought, in all ages. In the contemplation of these august teachers of mankind, we are filled with conflicting emotions. They are the early voice of the world, better remembered and more cherished still than all the intermediate words that have been uttered, as the lessons of childhood still haunt us when the impressions of later years have been effaced from the mind. But they show with most unwelcome frequency the tokens of the world's childhood, before passion had yielded to the sway of reason and the affections. They want the highest charm of purity, of righteousness, of elevated sentiments, of love to God and man. It is not in the frigid philosophy of the porch and academy that we are to seek these; not in the marvellous teachings of Socrates, as they come mended by the mellifluous words of Plato; not in the resounding line of Homer, on whose inspiring tale of blood Alexander pillowed his head; not in the animated strain of Pindar, where virtue is pictured in the successful strife of an athlete at the Isthmian games; not in the torrent of Demosthenes, dark with self-love and the spirit of vengeance; not in the fitful philosophy and intemperate eloquence of Tully; not in the genial libertinism of Horace, or the stately atheism of Lucretius. No! these must not be our masters; in none of these are we to seek the way of life. For eighteen hundred years the spirit of these writers has been engaged in weaponless contest with the Sermon on the Mount, and those two sublime commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets. The strife is still pending. Heathenism, which has possessed itself of such siren forms, is not yet exorcised. It still tempts the young, controls the affairs of active life, and haunts the meditations of age. Our own productions, though they may yield to those of the ancients in the arrangement of ideas, in method, in beauty of form, and in freshness of illustration, are immeasurably superior in the truth, delicacy, and elevation of their sentiments, - above all, in the benign recognition of that great Christian revelation, the brotherhood of man. How vain are eloquence and poetry, compared with this heaven-descended truth! Put in one scale that simple utterance, and in the other the lore of antiquity, with its accumulating glosses and commentaries, and the last will be light and trivial in the balance. Greek poetry has been likened to the song of the nightingale as she sits in the rich, symmetrical crown of the palm-tree, trilling her thick-warbled notes; but even this is less sweet and tender than the music of the human heart. C. Sumner. CV. THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE. WHY ought the slave trade to be abolished? Because it is incurable INJUSTICE! How much stronger, then, is the argument for immediate than gradual abolition! By allowing it to continue even for one hour, do not my right honorable friends weaken - do they not desert their own arguments of its injustice? If on the ground of injustice it ought to be abolished at last, why ought it not now? Why is injustice to be suffered to remain for a single hour? I know of no evil that ever has existed, nor can imagine any evil to exist, worse than the tearing of EIGHTY THOUSAND PERSONS annually from their native land, by a combination of the most civilized nations in the most enlightened quarter of the globe; but more especially by that nation which calls herself the most free and the most happy of them all. Even if these miserable beings were proved guilty of every crime before you take them off, of which however not a single proof is adduced, ought we to take upon ourselves the office of executioners? And even if we condescend so far, still can we be justified in taking them, unless we have clear proof that they are criminals? I have shown how great is the enormity of this evil, even on the supposition that we take only convicts and prisoners of war. But take the subject in the other way; take it on the grounds stated by the right honorable gentleman over the way, and how does it stand? Think of EIGHTY THOUSAND PERSONS carried away out of their country, by we know not what means, for crimes imputed; for light or inconsiderable faults; for debt, perhaps; for the crime of witchcraft; or a thousand other weak and scandalous pretexts, besides all the fraud and kidnapping, the villanies and perfidy, by which the slave trade is supplied. Reflect on these eighty thousand persons thus annually taken off! There is something in the horror of it, that surpasses all the bounds of imagination. Admitting that there exists in Africa something like to courts of justice; yet what an office of humiliation and meanness is it in us, to take upon ourselves to carry into execution the partial, the cruel, iniquitous sentences of such courts, as if we also were strangers to all religion, and to the first principles of justice. But that country, it is said, has been in some degree civilized, and civilized by us. It is said they have gained some knowledge of the principles of justice. What, sir, have they gained the principles of justice from us? Is their civilization brought about by us! Yes, we give them enough of our intercourse to convey to them the means, and to initiate them in the study of mutua. destruction. We give them just enough of the forms of justice to enable them to add the pretext of legal trials to their other modes of perpetuating the most atrocious iniquity. We give them just enough of European improvements, to enable them the more effectually to turn Africa into a ravaged wilderness. But I refrain from attempting to enumerate half the dreadful consequences of this system. Do you think nothing of the ruin and the miseries in which so many other individuals, still remaining in Africa, are involved in consequence of carrying off so many myriads of people? Do you think nothing of their families which are left behind; of the connections which are broken; of the friendships, attachments, and relationships which are burst asunder? Do you think nothing of the miseries in consequence, that are felt from generation to generation; of the privation of that happiness which might be communicated to them by the introduction of civilization, and of mental and moral improvement? A happiness which you withhold from them so long as you permit the slave trade to continue. How shall we hope to obtain, if it be possible, forgiveness from Heaven for these enormous evils we have committed, if we refuse to make use of those means which the mercy of Providence hath still reserved for us, for wiping away the guilt and shame with which we are now covered. If we refuse even this degree of compensation; if, knowing the miseries we have caused, we refuse even now to put a stop to them, how greatly aggravated will be the guilt of Great Britain! and what a blot will these transactions forever be in the history of this country! Shall we, then, delay to repair these injuries, and to begin rendering justice to Africa? Shall we not count the days and hours that are suffered to intervene, and to delay the accomplishment of such a work? Reflect what an immense object is before you; what |