messenger," that he would second the views of the Bishop in promoting temperance. But in this there was sad disappointment. What with the love of liquor, the fondness of being the head of a party to maintain the “unalienable rights of the oppressed people," and the desire of humbling the Bishop, the promise made when he came on the hill was laid aside, and a combination with the hands was formed, and their grievances were made known by petition. Mr. H. was the "scribe," and the first to subscribe; and a majority of the rest, to the number of nineteen, chief men of the company, "men of renown," followed his example.

This petition was sent to the writer, when in his log cabin all alone. He read it, and was considering its unhappy consequences, when a voice struck his ear from behind him.

"Mr. H. wants an answer," said the little boy who waited on the hands. "Tell Mr. H. please get the hands together under the shady trees near the timber, and I will come and talk with them about the matter."

And now, gentle reader, what dost thou think were the feelings of the writer, as this little messenger ran swiftly away, to carry tidings that the Bishop was coming to speak with them?

Remember, the Bishop then "stood alone." The great temperance reform had then hardly commenced its movements among individuals. Till the writer had begun it the year before, he had never heard of its existence, and there was no example before him of carrying on a set of public buildings without the use of liquor. Yet he was determined to keep to his purpose; and what could be done? To refuse them their request, would evidently be followed by a general strike, and where and when could other hands be obtained? Not from the immediate neighborhood, whence the most of these came; and that others from the state in general could be induced, under such circumstances, to come, was equally hopeless, for many had predicted the very thing which had now taken place, and would regard it as an evidence of the folly, and as a proof of the mental weakness, of the projector; of the madness of all his schemes of founding colleges in the woods, by the means of temperance. Such reflections as these tended to despair. Yet, "somehow or other," there was a ray of hope left. Who knows but God may help in this time of need! It is He, after all, who can assuage the raging of the sea, "and the madness of the people." But how this could now be effected without giving up the whiskey law, the writer had no conception. He went on with a heavy, but a prayerful spirit. As he approached the place where the hands were seated, there were signs of great unanimity— significant nods and bold looks; none spoke, and the suppressed, yet half-uttered laugh indicated their expected speedy triumph.

The writer now took his seat on a piece of elevated timber, with a view to say something, yet found himself unable to utter a word, and for

a considerable period there was nothing said; and when he did begin to say a word or two, it was not in language of reproach of their conduct, nor in any attempt to display his own oratory. Something different was now required. Their affections were to be won, their minds enlightened, and their wills persuaded. In short, he saw it was necessary to speak to them as members of the human family, and make them friends to himself, to their own selves, and to the true interests of the institution. To this end, he told them his own history, and in so doing, gained their sympathy, and enlisted their affections in his behalf. Many of them were in tears, and all arose and went to work without a drop of whiskey.

John Blair Linn.

BORN in Shippensburg, Penn., 1777. DIED in Philadelphia, Penn., 1804.

IN PRAISE OF LAURELLED WOMEN.

[The Powers of Genius. A Poem in Three Parts. Revised Edition. 1802.]

Y Fancy crowned, to every bosom known,

BY

Amid those scenes which Truth and Nature own,

See Burney move, with her creative wand,

And bind our passions with her silken band!

Draw Evelina from her native shade,

In artless innocence and love arrayed!

Bid us to follow all her devious way,

To own and feel the impulse of her sway.

While Nature howls, and Mirth's gay whispers die,
Her eye on fire—her soul in ecstacy!

See bolder Radcliffe take her boundless flight,
Clothed in the robes of Terror and of Night!

O'er wilds, o'er mountains, her high course extends,
Through darkened woods, and through banditti's dens!
At length she lights within some ruined tower,
While from the turret tolls the midnight hour!
A thousand phantoms follow at her call,
And groans ascend along the mouldering wall!
Dim shadows flutter o'er the sleeping vale,
And ghostly music comes upon the gale!
A light appears-some hollow voice is near-
Chill terror starts—and every pulse is fear!
To man not only has kind Nature given
Genius, which rolls her piercing eye on Heaven,
Enchanting woman bears an equal claim,
To her unfold the golden doors of Fame.

This truth, those names which we have past declare,
Whom Fiction wafts transported through the air.

How sweet and musically flows that lay,
Which now in murmurs softly dies away;

Colonna bending o'er her husband's bier,

Breathes those sad numbers hallowed with her tear.
With active zeal, with honest thirst of fame,
Hear Dacier vindicate her Homer's name.

Hear Montague repel light Voltaire's rage,
Who like a butcher mangled Shakespeare's page.
Hear from the bosom of the pious Rowe
The tender strain and warm devotion flow.
In Wollstonecraft's strong lines behold confest
The fatal errors of the female breast.
Behold enforced in More's instructive page,
Lessons of virtue for this careless age.
Hear Seward weeping over André's grave;
And call for Cook the spirit of the wave.
To Smith's romances fairy scenes belong
And Pity loves her elegiac song.

Carter both Science and Invention own

And Genius welcomes from her watchful throne.

On Barbauld's verse the circling muses smile,

And hail her brightest songstress of the British isle.

Henry Clay.

BORN in "The Slashes," Hanover Co., Va., 1777. DIED at Washington, D. C., 1852.

FOR THE HUMANE TREATMENT OF CAPTIVE INDIANS.

[Speech on the Seminole War. 1819.—The Life and Speeches of Henry Clay. 1843.]

SIR, I have said that you have no right to practise, under color of

retaliation, enormities on the Indians. I will advance in support of this position, as applicable to the origin of all law, the principle, that whatever has been the custom, from the commencement of a subject, whatever has been the uniform usage, coeval and coexistent with the subject to which it relates, becomes its fixed law. Such is the foundation of all common law; and such, I believe, is the principal foundation of all public or international law. If, then, it can be shown that from the first settlement of the colonies, on this part of the American continent, to the present time, we have constantly abstained from retaliating upon the Indians the excesses practised by them towards us, we are morally

bound by this invariable usage, and cannot lawfully change it without the most cogent reasons. So far as my knowledge extends, from the first settlement at Plymouth or at Jamestown, it has not been our practice to destroy Indian captives, combatants or non-combatants. I know of but one deviation from the code which regulates the warfare between civilized communities, and that was the destruction of Indian towns, which was supposed to be authorized upon the ground that we could not bring the war to a termination but by destroying the means which nourished it. With this single exception, the other principles of the laws of civilized nations are extended to them, and are thus made law in regard to them. When did this humane custom, by which, in consideration of their ignorance, and our enlightened condition, the rigors of war were mitigated, begin? At a time when we were weak, and they comparatively strong; when they were the lords of the soil, and we were seeking, from the vices, from the corruptions, from the religious intol erance, and from the oppressions of Europe, to gain an asylum among them. And when is it proposed to change this custom, to substitute for it the bloody maxims of barbarous ages, and to interpolate the Indian public law with revolting cruelties? At a time when the situation of the two parties is totally changed-when we are powerful and they are weak at a time when, to use a figure drawn from their own sublime eloquence, the poor children of the forest have been driven by the great wave which has flowed in from the Atlantic ocean almost to the base of the Rocky mountains, and, overwhelming them in its terrible progress, has left no other remains of hundreds of tribes, now extinct, than those which indicate the remote existence of their former companion, the mammoth of the new world! Yes, sir, it is at this auspicious period of our country, when we hold a proud and lofty station among the first nations of the world, that we are called upon to sanction a departure from the established laws and usages which have regulated our Indian hostilities. And does the honorable gentleman from Massachusetts expect, in this august body, this enlightened assembly of Christians and Americans, by glowing appeals to our passions, to make us forget our principles, our religion, our clemency, and our humanity? Why is it that we have not practised towards the Indian tribes the right of retaliation, now for the first time asserted in regard to them? It is because it is a principle proclaimed by reason, and enforced by every respectable writer on the law of nations, that retaliation is only justifiable as calcu lated to produce effect in the war. Vengeance is a new motive for resorting to it. If retaliation will produce no effect on the enemy, we are bound to abstain from it by every consideration of humanity and of justice. Will it then produce effect on the Indian tribes? No; they care not about the execution of those of their warriors who are taken