pigeon shrinks to her covert at the scream of the wood-hawk, and the roe-buck bounds fleetly from the yell of the panther; while ye, who are encompassed with many foes, having eyes, see not, and ears, hear not, or heed not the voice of the prowler. Wot ye not that ye, like that poor panting hind, are hunted up and down in this dark wilderness of the world? Flee to the fold of God! Doth not temptation haunt your footsteps, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof? Doth not remorse dart his fiery arrows into your bleeding hearts at every turn? Doth not conscience smite ye with its avenging sword, whenever ye turn a deaf ear to the warnings of the still small voice? Flee to the fold of God! Do not the cares of the world, its vanity and vexation of spirit, surround ye, when ye rise up, and when ye lie down, yea, and when ye dream dreams? Flee to the fold of God! Is not death the ever-present shadow of your earthliness, and doth not the prince of the power of the air-the mighty Nimrod of your priceless souls-track your guilty steps along this pilgrimage of sin? O flee, then, fellow-sinners, flee to the fold of God, wherein ye shall surely find a refuge and a rest!'

Vain were the attempt to depict the scene which followed this thrilling peroration. The sighs, the sobs, the groans, the hysteric shrieks of terrified females, and indeed the convulsive shudder of the whole assembly, I leave to the reader's imagination or memory, if he has ever witnessed a spectacle so thrilling. After the first burst of feeling had a little subsided, the tremulous yet not unmusical voice of the late speaker was heard, chanting that striking hymn:

'Stop, poor sinner! stop and think,

Before you farther go;

Will you sport upon the brink
Of everlasting wo?'

One listener after another joined in the rising strain, till presently ten thousand voices were blended in swelling symphony. I have listened to the midnight peal of the roused ocean, and trembled amid the thunders of Niagara; but never was my heart so hushed to breathlessness, as by the living chorus of that solemn anthem. The place, the scene, and the music of that vast choir, filling the midnight depths of the mute forest with echoes of terrible warning, were all calculated to make a vivid impression, even on a mind the most obdurate. I sunk down upon my bended knees, awe-struck and overpowered. It seemed to me that every eye and every voice were directed to myself, in eager impetration to fly from the brink of the dread abyss to which hope never comes, that comes to all.' The services closed with the hymn, the worshippers slowly retired to their respective tents, and silence and sleep resumed their quiet empire; but there I remained, riveted to the earth, faint, motionless, and alone. Yet not alone, for the voice of a mysterious presence kept whispering in my ear, Flee to the fold of God!' and ever the monitory Stop!' of that thrilling hymn rung like a trump from heaven through the chambers of my smitten heart. I bowed myself to the earth, and there all night long, amid the gloom of that lonely forest, and the moan of its solemn pines, gazed on the phantoms of mis-spent hours, imploring light to my darkened spirit, energy to subdue its fiery passions, strength to unmask the specious vanities of the world, and wisdom to forego its momentary pleasures for the unimaginable cycle of

an eternal beatitude, till morning dawned upon my solemn vigil, and found me blest with that inward peace which seems the antepast of heaven.

At the close of the ensuing year, I entered upon the sublime duties of the ministry; but a keen sense of its awful responsibilities, heightened by a subsequent conviction of my unworthiness for the office, operating on a morbid despondency of mind inherited from my mother, compelled me at length to abandon the sacred calling for some other more appropriate to my imperfect nature. In the course of my theological studies, I had been led collaterally into those of civil jurisprudence, and chancing to read the life of Sir William Jones about this period, the moral grandeur of his almost faultless character influenced me to adopt the profession he had so highly adorned, and I entered on the requisite course of study without delay. Some few months subsequent to my admission to the bar, I was engaged as assistant advocate in the cause of a good old man, whose only daughter, young, innocent, and unsuspecting, the idol of his widowed heart, and the living image of her for whom that heart still bled, had been lured from his fond endearments, and afterward discarded, and abandoned to infamy by her fiendish betrayer. The wretch was but little older than herself; yet from early precocity in vice, he had already gathered to his soul the dark experience of grayhaired licentiousness.

Like all men of the world,' he had studied the gentler sex with long and patient assiduity - their keen sensibilities, their delicate tastes, and their passionate devotedness of affection-till, by a fiendish perspicacity of evil, he had scrutinized all their weaknesses, and explored those sunny avenues through which the blandishments of masked sensuality seek entrance to the paradise of woman's love. If there is one crime for which Justice herself can find no adequate retribution, it is that of seduction-cold, calculating, crafty, and deliberate seduction. The knife of the assassin but anticipates the lingering stroke of the inevitable destroyer, hastening the chill of the grave upon this sensible warm being, and speeding the unshrived spirit to its last account; but the contamination of the betrayer falls like a hopeless leprosy upon soul and body, consigning the one to loathsomeness, and the other to a carking and protracted torture, for which earth has no solace but the numbness of dissipation, and which the hope of eternal forgiveness, bought by the bitter tears of contrition, can scarcely alleviate. The betrayer of friendship is haunted by the finger of scorn; the needy defaulter is visited by the dungeon, and the inappealable verdict of public reproach; but what should be the retribution of him who, by the gilded pretences of honorable love, wins the priceless treasure of a confiding heart, to gratify a fiendish vanity, or pamper a reckless and accursed sensuality! Educated in New-England, where this dark crime is almost unknown among the stern descendants of the sterner pilgrims, I entered into the bitter feelings of the distracted parent, with a yearning sympathy, and a resoluteness of purpose, which such a cause might well inspire. Alas! for my precipitate ardor, we were destined to be nonsuited; for when the trial came on, the defendant's counsel seized upon a flaw in the indictment, and his remorseless client was suffered to escape, notwithstanding the most damning proofs of his guilt, corroborated by the collateral evidence of a life of notorious licentiousness. Turning from the crowded

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court-room, I retired to my lonely chamber with a heavy heart. is this the sacred majesty of law!' murmured I, bitterly, to be mocked and set at nought by the paltry quibbles of pettifogging cunning? Is this the triumph of human equity, to dismiss unrebuked the destroyer of confiding innocence, and parental hope, while the wronged and broken-hearted are sent back to mourn amid the ruins of their household gods, without even the miserable consolation of having awakened the sympathies of the good, or given to the bad an example of arrested depravity? Is this the terror of inexorable justice, the earthly vicegerent of the Divinity, when her arm is palsied, or the uplifted sword turned aside from the head of her guilty victim, by the shameless circumvention of human chicanery? Out on the vacillating equity of law! Out on its well-named chancery!— where the chances of right, amid the studied trickeries of wrong, have all the glorious uncertainties of a die.' Alas! for the sordid spirits who convert the sacred temple of justice into the shambles of error and venal craftiness! I can readily pardon the man who, appointed to the defence of the friendless and penniless criminal, uses all honest and honorable efforts for the acquittal of his client, or the extenuation of his offence; but the grasping wretch who, for the paltry consideration of money, voluntarily comes forward to advocate the cause of purse-proud depravity, and by legal perversion to screen the guilty from the righteous retribution of offended justice, disgraces his exalted profession, gathers upon his ermine the contami nations of reflected infamy, and forfeits the esteem of all high-minded and right-hearted men. It is to such ready advocates of injustice, often astute, subtle, and persevering, self-trained to make the wrong appear the better reason, that the legal profession owes the sarcastic opprobium to which it is not unfrequently subjected. The history of their influence upon society has never been written, though it presents a theme on which the profoundest philosopher might profitably moralize. They batten on the evils which spring from the licentiousness of the bad. They are, in fact, the abettors of lawlessness; for in their legal astuteness, and mercenary readiness to exercise it, the vicious have ever a trusty and emboldening advocate, to throw himself between crime and its impending penalty.

Dissatisfied with myself and my profession, or rather with this mortifying instance of its inability to smite the wronger through the interposed shield of technical cunning, I next turned my attention to the high vocation of a teacher of youth. Here,' thought I, 'is a field broad and white for the sickle of benevolent enterprise.' The errors and imperfections of my own desultory and unguided education rose palpably before me, and I resolved that others should have the opportunity at least to profit by my sad experience. Accordingly I purchased a delightful and appropriate situation for a private school, on the eastern bank of the Hudson, and in the immediate vicinity of the Highlands. I had been biassed to this selection by my predilection for mountain scenery, but more especially by a persuasion, which experience only serves to strengthen, that the grand and the beautiful in nature exert a powerful influence in expanding and ennobling the mind, particularly at that plastic age when curiosity is alive to all the presentations of the external world. The house stood in the midst of an ample lawn which sloped gradually down to the pebbly margin of the majestic river, while

in the back-ground towered up the lofty pinnacles of the Highlands, as if to confront the kindred peaks which frowned from the opposite side of the Hudson. The eastern extremity of the lawn was bounded by a tumultuous stream, whose bright waters had their source in the neighboring mountains, and came laughing along their sylvan way, like merry travelers on a pleasant journey, till they lost themselves, at a little distance from the house, in a charming bay of the maternal river. The remoter landscape was dotted here and there by neat farm-houses, and the summer mansions of opulent citizens, peering out from groves of locust and tulipiferas; while nearer by, two pretty villages, with their bordering dwellings and gardens, overlooked by two tapering spires, gave a more busy and social aspect to the scene. The situation was in all respects delightful, and the prospect of usefulness and quiet felicity opened bright and cheerily before me. 'Here then,' said I to myself, after years of idle wanderings and misguided efforts, I shall settle down in a peaceful home, and in the exercise of an exalted benevolence. Here will I gather around me the young and the ingenuous, and by a faithful and affectionate culture, fit them for an exalted destiny. I will teach them that ambition is laudable, when its aim is not self— that humility is not meanness, nor pride magnanimity. I will teach them to regard none as their inferiors, but the sordid and the vicious; none as their superiors, but their elders in virtue and active philanthropy. I will teach them that gentleness may triumph where arrogance would fail, and that one thought of forgiveness is sweeter than a thousand memories of revenge. I will teach them that it is honorable to fly from dishonor, though chivalry herself should brand them with pusillanimity. I will teach them to curb the impetuous cravings of the senses, to hold the passions in abeyance, and to carry forward the tenderness, simplicity, and purity of youth, through all the temptations and harsh besettings of manhood, into the calm and sober retrospection of declining years. I will teach them that the plaudits of a world are but a discordant babblement, unless the still small voice of an approving conscience gives harmony to the pan, and that the fame of unhallowed ambition is only the precursive echo of the obloquy of posterity. I will teach them that this sublunary labyrinth wherein we are doomed to grope, amid the darkness of error, and the perils of mortality, is but the fitting vestibule to the temple of eternal blessedness, and that to guide us thither through the gloom and jeopardy of our fallen nature, the All-benignant has put into our hand the clue and the lamp of an unerring revelation. Here will I unfold to their young imagination the sublimity and beauty of classic lore. In fancy, we will listen to the grandeur of Homer, and the thunders of Demosthenes. In fancy, we will re-string the broken harp of the passionate Sappho, and awake the tragic echoes of Sophocles and Euripides. Beneath yon broad catalpas, we will repeat the chastened numbers of the Mantuan bard, or yield ourselves up to the fascinations of Horace and Catullus, and the splendid philosophies of the immortal Tacitus and Lucretius. Nor shall the equal glories of our own land's language' be neglected or forgotten. The inapproachable Shakspeare, Milton the seraph-winged, Spenser, and Taylor, and Addison, and Goldsmith, and Scott, and Byron, and Shelley the imaginative, and Locke, and Newton, heaven's golden compass-bearer, and Davy, and Fulton, and Bryant, and countless others of their immortal kin, shall be to us a

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study and a delight. From these calm retreats, I will send forth scholars whose after-reputation shall be the glory of the world. their own and my country's gratitude, shall I realize a recompense for my labors, above the guerdon of affluence, or the favor of kings, and leave behind me a name which shall not be forgotten among the benefactors of my kind.'

Such were the pleasing dreams which preceded the commencement of my scholastic enterprise; but the sequel may prove that the visions of the purest benevolence are not always destined to be realized. My school was limited to twelve pupils, and to their improvement in all the essentials of a generous education, moral and intellectual, I devoted all my time and all the abilities I could bring to the engrossing task. They were the sons of affluent and respectable families of the metropolis, and I resolved that their hopes should not be blasted, nor their trust misplaced. Dwelling with my pupils under the same roof; gathering them round the same hearth, the same board, the same fami ly altar; supervising their manners and their morals; and leading them with a fond enthusiasm along the pleasant walks of science and literature; removing the obstacles which thwarted their inexperience, and pointing out to their young imagination the glorious prospects and perspectives of beauty which were ever opening upon their progress, I came, ere long, to regard them with the tenderest solicitude-to look upon them as sons, indeed, for whose welfare and honorable distinction I was ready to make a father's sacrifice. Nor was my affection unrequited, except in two or three instances where the moral education had been so neglected, or the feelings so warped by parental indulgence, that all kindness seemed worse than thrown away upon the unhappy individuals. To them, the mildest suasion, the gentlest restraints, appeared tyrannical, for they contravened the stubborn self-will which hitherto had met with no proper check amid the endearments of home. Believing, however, that the most depraved can be softened and swayed by a course of continued kindness, I never suffered their perversities to disquiet me for a moment, but treated them ever with the gentlest solicitude, giving to reproof the tones of affection, and to chastisement the sympathy of friendship, till at length I won upon their better natures, and felt that I should yet open in their hearts the sealed fountains of gratitude and love. Ah, how little knows the scholastic tyrant that there is a sceptre more potent than the ferule or the rod! These may overawe, but they do not subdue; these may compel, but they do not conquer. But in the accents of a gentle voice, and in the glance of an approving eye, and in the chidings of a benevolent heart, feelingly alive to the well-being of those committed to its charge, there is a magic and a power, to which, sooner or later, the most unfeeling and refractory must bend with cheerful submission and reverence. Regarding the acquisition of even the most trivial science as not devoid of utility, I summoned to my aid skilful assistants in all the various departments of a magnanimous education. Over all these I exercised a careful and continued supervision. Each study had its allotted time, each recreation its appointed period, and all moved on with the order and regularity of a well-adjusted mechanism. As I watched the progress of my pupils, from day to day, and marked their young delight as the beauties of the classics and the wonders of the mathematics were unfolded before them, I