were not prepared for it; but it was a bold enunciation of God's truth, and his hearers sat still, and listened somewhat as children do to God's thunder. He has also condemned in the strongest language the fugitive slave act, so that his views upon this part of the great compromise are everywhere known. But he deals usually in great general principles, rather than every-day applications of such principles. Perhaps he errs in this; we have thought it would be a greater service to the world if he would dwell more upon the sins which are eating into its very heart; but we cannot ignore the fact, that all his productions and performances tend toward reform in church and state.

Horace Bushnell is a native of the town of Litchfield, Connecticut, and is about fifty years of age. His father was a clothier, a man of sterling character and intellect. His mother was one of the gentlest and most affectionate of women. When Horace was two years old, his father moved into the town of New Preston, where we believe he continued to reside for a number of years. The little that we know of Dr. Bushnell's early life can quickly be written. He entered Yale College, and graduated in the year 1827. Two years afterward he was appointed a tutor in the same institution, which office he filled for two years. He next removed to the city of New York, where for a time he edited a newspaper. He at length entered

upon a theological course, to prepare himself for the ministry. He was ordained over the North church, in Hartford, May 22, 1833, and has continued to preach with great acceptance to the same church until the present day. He was married when young, to Miss Mary Apthorpe, of New Haven, by whom he has had five children, three of whom are living.

In Dr. Bushnell's discourse, delivered at the centennial celebration of Litchfield county, he has given us a picture or two of his boyish days, which are sufficiently graphic and beautiful to excuse us for quoting them here. He says:

"But the schools-we must not pass by these if we are to form a truthful and sufficient picture of the home-spun days. The schoolmaster did not exactly go round the district to fit out the children's minds with learning, as the shoe-maker often did to fit their feet with shoes, or the tailors to measure and cut for their bodies; but, to come as near it as possible, he boarded round, (a custom not yet gone by,) and the wood for the common fire was supplied in a way equally primitive, viz: by a contribution of loads from the several families, according to their several quantities of childhood.

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There

was no complaint in those days of the want of ventilation; for the large open fire-place held a considerable fraction of a cord of wood, and the windows took in just enough air to supply the combustion. Besides, the bigger lads were occasionally ventilated by being sent out to cut wood enough to keep the fire in action. The seats were made of the outer slabs from

the saw-mill, supported by slant legs driven into and a proper distance through auger holes, and planed smooth on the top by the rather tardy process of friction. But the spelling went on bravely, and we ciphered away again and again, always till we got through "loss and gain." The more advanced of us, too, made light work of Lindley Murray, and went on to the pars. ing, finally, of extracts from Shakspeare and Milton, till some of us began to think we had mastered their tough sentences in a more consequential sense than was exactly true. O, I remember (about the remotest thing I can remember) that low seat, too high, nevertheless, to allow the feet to touch the floor, and that friendly teacher who had the address to start a fresh feeling of enthusiasm and awaken the first sense of power. He is living still, and whenever I think of him, he rises up to me in the far background of memory, as bright as if he had worn the seven stars in his hair."

Still farther on, he says:

"I remember being despatched, when a lad, one Saturday afternoon, in the winter, to bring home a few bushels of apples engaged of a farmer a mile distant; but the careful, exact man looked first at the clock, then out the window at the sun, and turning to me said, 'I cannot measure out the apples in time for you to get home before sundown, you must come again Monday; then how I went home venting my boyish impatience in words not exactly respectful, assisted by the sunlight playing still upon the eastern hills, and got for my comfort a very unaccountably small amount of specially silent sympathy."

In 1833 Dr. Bushnell, we have said, was ordained over the North church, in Hartford. Twenty years afterward-last May-he preached a "commemorative discourse," in which he alluded, in the following language, to his first visit to said church:

"I received a letter in February, 1833, inviting me to come and preach, for a time, to this congregation, of which I knew nothing save that you had recently parted with your pastor. I arrived here late in the afternoon, in a furious snow storm, after floundering all day in the heavy drifts the storm was raising among the hills between here and Litchfield. I went, as invited, directly to the house of the chairman of the committee; but I had scarcely warmed me, and not at all relieved the hunger of my fast, when he came in and told me that arrangements had been made for me with one of the fathers of the church, and immediately sent me off with my baggage to the quarters assigned. Of course I had no complaint to make, though the fire seemed very inviting and the house attractive; but when I came to know the hospitality of my friend, as I had abundant opportunity of knowing it afterward, it became somewhat of a mystery to me that I should have been despatched in this rather summary fashion. But it came out three or four years after, that as there were two parties strongly marked in the church, an old and new school party, as related to the New Haven controversy, the committee had made up their mind, very prudently, that it would not do for me to stay even for an hour with the new school brother of the committee; and for this reason they had made interest with the elder brother

referred to, because he was a man of the school simply of Jesus Christ. And here, under cover of his good hospitality, which I hope he has never found reason to regret-extended by him and received by me in equal simplicity-I was put in hospital and kept away from the infected districts, preparatory to a settlement in the North church, of Hartford. I mention this fact to show the very delicate condition prepared for the young pastor, who is to be thus daintily inserted between an acid and an alkali, having it for his task both to keep them apart and to save himself from being bitten of one or devoured by the other."

No pastor was ever more loved and respected than is Dr. Bushnell by his church and congregation. For twenty years he has occupied the pulpit of the old North church, and not a whisper of his dismission ever yet was heard. We do not mean that he has never raised a storm in the church by his faithful preaching, but his hearers have loved him so well that they could not remain angry with him. When he came out so fearlessly in condemnation of the corrupt politics of the time, an angry agitation for a little while surrounded him, but it soon passed away. In his "Discourse," preached May, 1853, he speaks thus pithily of it:

"I preached a fast-day sermon, showing that "politics are under the law of God." Wise or unwise in the manner, it was greatly offensive to some, but the offense was soon forgiven; in consideration, I suppose, of the fact that, apart from the