does the whole in spite of them. I was converted in spite of such books. I wish I could give you my clinical theology. I have used my evangelical philosophy all my lifetime, and relieved people without number out of the sloughs of high Calvinism.

It was many months that I suffered; and, finally, the light did not come in a sudden blaze, but by degrees. I began to see more into the doctrines of the Bible. Election and decrees were less a stumblingblock. I came in by that door.

SOON

THE YOUNG DIVINE'S FIRST HOME.

[From the Same.]

OON after our marriage we were riding together from Sag Harbor. With great good-nature we were reconnoitring to find if there were any faults in each other which might be the occasion of trouble. I told her I did not know as I had any faults-unless one: that I was passionate, quick, and quick over; but if she answered quick we might have trouble. Her face overspread with a glow of emotion, and tears flowed; and that single thing prevented the realization of the evil forever. If she saw I was touched, she never said a word—she appreciated the thing; she entered into my character entirely.

I scarcely ever saw her agitated to tears. Once, soon after we had moved into our new house, the two pigs did something that vexed me; I got angry and thrashed them. She came to the door and interposed. The fire hadn't got out. I said quickly, "Go along in!" She started, but hadn't more than time to turn before I was at her side, and threw my arms round her neck and kissed her, and told her I was sorry. Then she wept.

In the spring of 1800 I bought a house and five acres of ground for $800. It was a two-story framed house, shingled instead of clapboarded on the sides, the gable end to the street. I laid new pitch-pine floors, had a new fireplace made, and finished the back rooms and chambers, also a small bedroom below.

There was not a store in town, and all our purchases were made in New York by a small schooner that ran once a week. We had no carpets; there was not a carpet from end to end of the town. All had sanded floors, some of them worn through. Your mother introduced the first carpet. Uncle Lot gave me some money, and I had an itch to spend it. Went to a vendue, and bought a bale of cotton. She spun it, and had it woven; then she laid it down, sized it, and painted it in oils,

with a border all around it, and bunches of roses and other flowers over the centre. She sent to New York for her colors, and ground and mixed them herself. The carpet was nailed down on the garret floor, and she used to go up there and paint. She also took some common wooden chairs and painted them, and cut out figures of gilt paper, and glued them on and varnished them. They were really quite pretty.

Old Deacon Tallmadge came to see me. He stopped at the parlor door, and seemed afraid to come in.

"Walk in, deacon, walk in," said I.

"Why, I can't," said he, "thout steppin' on't." Then, after surveying it a while in admiration, "D'ye think ye can have all that, and heaven too?"

Perhaps he thought we were getting too splendid, and feared we should make an idol of our fine things.

Well, we got nestled down in our new house, Grandmother Foote, Roxana, Mary, and L. Aunt Ruth, our good nurse, took tea with us the first evening; and when we sat down at our own table for the first time, I felt strong emotion, very much like crying.

Soon after our first child was born. I shall never forget my feelings when Grandma Foote put her in my arms. "Thou little immortal!" was all I could say.

IT

John Henry Hobart.

BORN in Philadelphia, Penn., 1775. DIED at Auburn, N. Y., 1830.

AMERICA AND ENGLAND.

[From a Discourse delivered in Trinity Church, New York, October, 1825.]

may, without the Actual observa

T is in our civil and religious institutions that we imputation of vain-glory, boast the pre-eminence. tion will compel every traveller through those nations of the continent that now submissively yield to the yoke of despotic power, mild and benevolent as in some instances is its administration, to feel, however reluctant, the full force of the remark, which he may have thought evil discontent alone had raised, "that the labor and independence and freedom and happiness of the many are sacrificed to the ambition and power and luxury of the few."

Let us never withhold the acknowledgment, that from the first of European nations, drawing our origin, we have also derived our admir able principles of civil freedom. Rejecting indeed the feudal character.

VOL. IV.-23

istics of her polity, the monarchical and aristocratic features of her constitution, we broadly and fearlessly recognize the great truth, that though, in its general powers and in its sanctions government is "ordained of God," in the particular form of its administration, “it is the ordinance of man;" and that, in this sense, the people only are the source of that political power which, when exercised according to the legitimate forms of the constitution which they have established, cannot be resisted but under the penalty of resisting the "ordinance of God." Still, though in these respects our governments differ from that of England, let us gratefully remember, that from her we have derived not only many of her unrivalled maxims of jurisprudence—those which protect the freedom of the subject and secure the trial by jury-but those great principles which constitute the superiority of the modern republics above the ancient democracies. These are, the principle of representation; the division of the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments; the check on the exercise of the power of legislation, by its distribution among three branches; the independence of the judiciary on all influence, except that of the constitution and the laws; and its accountability, and that of the executive, to the people in the persons of their representatives; and thus what constitutes the characteristic blessing of a free people, a government of laws securing to all the enjoyment of life, of liberty, and of property.

But even in this, next to our own the freest of nations, it is impossible not to form a melancholy contrast between the power, the splendor, and the wealth of those to whom the structure of society and the aristocratic nature of the government assign peculiar privileges of rank and of political consequence, and the dependent and often abject condition of the lower orders, without drawing the conclusion that the one is the unavoidable result of the other.

Advantages confessedly there may be in privileged orders, as constituting an hereditary and permanent source of political knowledge and talent, and of refinement and elevation of character, of feeling, and of manners. In this view no men can be more imposing or more interesting than the high-minded noblemen and gentlemen of England. But in this imperfect world, we cannot enjoy at the same time all possible advantages. And those which result from the hereditary elevation of one small class of society, must produce in all the noble qualities which distinguish independent freemen, a corresponding depression of the great mass of the community. Can we for a moment hesitate which state of society to prefer? No. It is the glorious characteristic of our admirable polity, that the power, the property, and the happiness which in the old nations of the world are confined to the few, are distributed among the many; that the liveliness and content which pervade the humblest

classes among us, are not the mere result of that buoyancy of animal spirits which nature seems to have kindly infused into our frame, and which man shares with the beast that sports in the field or courses over the plain-but a sober sentiment of independence, nurtured by the consciousness that in natural rights and original political power all are equal.

Philander Chase.

BORN in Cornish, N. H., 1775. DIED at Peoria, Ill., 1852.

A STRANGE SCENE.

[Bishop Chase's Reminiscences. Second Edition. 1848.]

WHILE we lived "down the coast," two persons, a gentleman and a

lady, of genteel appearance, used to pass in their phaeton back and forth often to town. It was Mr. X and the widow of his deceased brother. Their object was amusement and pleasure, by attending public balls, the theatre and gaming tables. They had purchased a plantation some few miles below the city, hired an overseer, and left it to its own productiveness.

In the course of the summer, the writer and his wife were sent for to visit this family in sickness. The mother of Mr. X was suffering from the effects of a long-protracted fever, evidently much neglected by her son and daughter-in-law, who were too much taken up with the amusements of the town to stay at their retired home, and minister to the necessities of their venerable, sick, and apparently dying mother. In ordering the means of relief to this aged and very worthy woman, a female slave of uncommon comeliness of person and tenderness of manner was observed. There were also two little girls, the children of the widow, who hung round the sick-bed of their suffering grandmotherthe eldest about twelve years of age, and of attracting sweetness. The lady, old Mrs. X—, recovered from her bed of sickness, and the painful neglects of her pleasure seeking son and daughter were forgotten and banished from her charitable heart.

Nearly a year after this, the writer was sitting in his study in the city, in Dauphin Street. It was late at night, and all was silent as if gone to rest. A gentle rap was heard at the door of the study which communicated with the street. On opening it he discovered a person, poorly clad in a blanket great-coat, standing by the side of a mule attached to a cart, all covered with mud, as if the roads had been very bad after a long rain.

The first word uttered was mingled with sobs, and evidently from a female breast, no stranger to grief. "Who are you, and what do you wish, in calling here with your cart at this time of the night?" The poor creature could scarce make her words understood, while she stated that she was the servant of Mr. X, and that she had seen the writer when her mistress was sick-that she had come to town with the corpse of her dear young mistress, which was now in the cart, and which she begged the writer to receive into his house and to bury in the morning-that her old mistress had been left alone, and her granddaughter, her dear, little young mistress, had died in her arms-that she was now too ill to come so far up to town-that, being left by her son and daughter, she had no other way but this of getting the corpse buried, and no one to send but her-that if the writer would allow her to carry in her dead young mistress, she would be very thankful, and then if he would bury her in the morning, she would return to the plantation, where she knew her old mistress would be waiting, and would take no rest nor victuals till she came home. Here the sympathetic heart of the poor slave, having restrained its pent-up feelings till her errand was done and her petition finished, now allowed her the luxury of bursting into a flood of refreshing tears.

It need not be stated what was said and done in answer to all this. The lifeless corpse of that innocent young person was received into the study of the writer, and the night was spent in deep reflection. On the morrow the whole school and many pious neighbors joined in a procession to the grave. In going thither, and while the earth was throwing in and covering from our sight the remains of this sweet creature, the writer looked around for her mother and her uncle, but they were not there: the world's pleasures had unfitted them for a scene like this. No one but a poor slave negress wept over the untimely tomb of one who, if cherished by Christian and not worldly-minded parents, might have lived to be a blessing to her family and friends.

AN INCIDENT AT GAMBIER.

[From the Same.]

IH. was the head carpenter on Gambier hill, and often was he with

the writer in consultation on the ways and means of proceeding with the buildings. On entering the college service, he had agreed, as all the rest had agreed, to refrain from the use of spirituous liquors. The writer thought him friendly to this measure, and as he was a "Baptist