was shoved with great effort, by men who waded deep into the semi-fluid mass for the purpose. But scarcely had she reached the outer edge of the surf, when a refluent sea conquered and filled her. Fortunately, she had not gone so far, but that a long and slender warp, cast from the shore, reached one of the men. He caught it and attached it to the boat, which was drawn back to land by their friends, and no lives were lost.

They on the wreck had gazed with soul-absorbing interest on this attempt at their rescue. They witnessed its failure, and their hearts died within them. One of them was soon after seen to go forward and sit down on the windlass. Rise, rise, and stir yourself,' exclaimed many voices at once. They had not read the maxim of Dr. Solander, concerning people exposed to severe cold: 'He that sits down will sleep, and he that sleeps will wake no more.' They knew this truth by the sterner teachings of the experience of associates of their own, and by the sayings of their fathers, whose wisdom they revered. Hence their exclamation to him who had taken his seat. It was Smith. He rose not, however, at their call, and they said mournfully, one to another, he will never rise again.' He did not. In truth, in a little while he was so encrusted with ice, that they could not distinguish the human form from other equally disguised objects that lay around it; and when afterwards they got on board the body was gone. It had been washed away, no one knew when, nor has it ever been known that the sea has given up this dead."

The father and son now stood alone. The only shelter they could obtain from the icy wind and drenching sea, was by occasionally screening themselves on the lee side of the low binnacle. But there they experienced so soon the commencement of the deadly torpor, that they ceased making use of this refuge, and only sought to keep themselves in motion. But resolution, struggling against a disposition of nature, fails at last. The father was seen to go forward and seat himself as Smith had done before. Again the warning cry was raised, and again it was disregarded. We will save him yet,' it was exclaimed by the sympathising spectators. The boat was again manned, and again launched, and reached beyond the surf in safety. But to get on board the wreck was utterly impossible. They came so near that they could speak to the younger Ellis, and hear his voice in reply. But such was the violence of winds and waves dashing on the rocks and over the wreck, that they could approach no nearer. They were compelled to turn about, leaving the father to sleep the sleep of death, with scarce a hope that the son could be saved. But they encouraged him to persevere in his efforts to keep from falling asleep. They told him that the rising tide would probably lift the vessel from her present position and bring her where they could come on board: that they would keep a constant watch, and embrace the first practicable means for his deliverance. He heard them, saw them depart, and with a sad heart took his station on the cabin stairs, where, standing knee-deep in the half frozen water that filled the cabin, he could in some measure screen his thin-clad form from the cold wind. But here he twice detected himself in falling asleep, and left the dangerous post; preferring to expose himself to the bleak wind on the quarter rather than sit down beneath a shelter and die. There he made it his object to keep himself in motion, and the people, when they saw him in danger of relinquishing this only means of preservation, shouted, and moved and stirred him to new effort.

It took place as the seamen had predicted. The rising tide lifted the vessel from her dangerous position, and brought her on to a sand, where the people with much effort got on board, about four o'clock in the afternoon. They found young Ellis on the quarter-deck holding on to the tiller ropes. He had become too much exhausted to continue his life-preserving movements, and the stillness of an apparently last sleep had been for some time stealing over him. His hands were frozen to the ropes which they grasped, his feet and ankles were encrusted with ice, and he was so far gone that he was scarce conscious of the presence of his deliverers.

Their moving him roused him a little. Yet he said nothing, till, as they bore him by his father's body, he muttered, 'There lies my poor father,' and relapsed into a stupor, from which he only awaked after he had been conveyed on shore, and customary means were employed for his restoration. Through the humane attention of the inhabitants, he was restored, but with the ultimate loss of the extremities of his hands, and his feet. He still survives, a useful citizen, notwithstanding these mutilations. But the memory of that fearful night and day is fresh in his mind. It taught him, in truth, the inefficiency of human strength, when matched against

the elements of nature; and made manifest, likewise, the value of that kindness of man to man, which leads him to watch and labour, and expose even his life, for the shipwrecked stranger: to minister to his wants, and nurse his weakness, and safely restore him to his family and friends. A child of their own could not have been more kindly or carefully attended than he was, nor more liberally provided for, by the humane people among whom he was cast. doubt not there is a recompense for them, with Him who hath said, 'inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'

I

Reader, I know not what interest you may take in my simple narrative, but I have given you a true account of the SHIP

WRECKED COASTER.

MRS. ELIZABETH HAMILTON.

MRS. ELIZABETH HAMILTON, one of the most amiable and useful writers of her time, was born at Belfast, in Ireland, on the 25th of July, 1758. She lost her father the year after her birth, but, by the care of a worthy and affectionate mother, her infant years, and those of her brother and sister, were watched over with great solicitude, and, in lack of fortune, she brought them up in the opinion that a good education is the best patrimony. When Elizabeth was but six years of age, circumstances arose which led to a dismemberment of the family, and she was put under the care of an uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall, at a retired estate near Stirling, in Scotland. Mr. Marshall is described by Mrs. Hamilton as a man to whom might well be applied what Burns said of an Ayrshire friend, that he held his patent of nobility direct from Almighty God,-one whose sentiments would have done honour to the most exalted station. With these excellent people Elizabeth spent two years in Stirlingshire, where she acquired habits of hardihood and enterprise, readily joining in fording the burns in summer, and sliding over them in winter; her preceptress, Mrs. Marshall, following the opinion of Dugald Stewart, that, "when nature is allowed free object and to every external occurrence. scope, the curiosity during early youth is alive to every external Whenever a child contracts a dislike for those amusements suited to its age, the best of all education is lost, which nature has prepared amidst the active sports and hazardous adventures of childhood. It is from these alone that we can acquire, not only that force of character which is suited to the more arduous situations of life, but that complete and prompt command of attention to things external, without which the highest endowments of the understanding, however they may fit a man for the solitary speculations of the closet, are but of little use in the practice of affairs, or for enabling him to profit by his personal experience:"-a passage which Mrs. Hamilton often quoted in reference to her own happy

childhood.

"In

Two or three of

Under Mrs. Marshall she became an adept in reading.* books she soon discovered a substitute even for a playmate: her first hero was Wallace, with whom she became enamoured, by learning to recite Blind Harry's lays. Shakspeare's plays came in her way; the History of England followed. She happened to meet with Ogilvie's translation of Homer's Iliad, and soon learned to idolise Achilles, and almost to dream of Hector." At eight she was put to a school in the town of Stirling, where she learnt writing, geography, and the Manson,) who, in a poem written forty years after, reverted with use of the globes. Her assiduity delighted her master, (Mr. pride to the period when Elizabeth Hamilton had been his pupil. writes of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall:In her ninth year she lost her mother, and in after-life she thus adopted, and educated with a care and tenderness that has been :-"By this worthy couple I was seldom equalled. No child ever spent so happy a life; nor, indeed, have I ever met with anything at all resembling the way in which we lived, except the description given by Rousseau of Wolmar's farm and vintage."

In her thirteenth year she left school, and returned to her aunt's. At this time an intimate of the family had taken some pains to shake her religious principles. The sceptical arguments were new to her and attractive; but she found it difficult to believe that her aunt had been the dupe of error. To solve the doubt, she determined to study the Bible by stealth, and decide

Miss Benger's Memoirs; from which, and an article in the Monthly Magazine for 1816, the substance of this is principally taken.

the question by her own unbiassed judgment. The result was a conviction that the moral precepts and doctrines of Christianity were too pure to have been promulgated by an impostor. To the example still more than the precepts of her excellent friends she always referred the formation of her moral and religious sentiments.

Miss Hamilton was now allowed to spend some months in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and she had an introduction to Dr. Mayne, who was then giving lectures on experimental philosophy; and a correspondence was commenced, in which the lecturer undertook to direct the studies of his youthful pupil. period of her life she often regretted that she had not devoted to classical or scientific pursuits the time unprofitably wasted in

music.

Of this

After a visit from her brother, who was five years older, a mutual correspondence was established, which she acknowledged soon became to her a second education: her opportunities, she allowed, were superior to what is usually allotted to her sex and station, since she had learned to think.

Like many solitary thinkers, Miss Hamilton was irresistibly impelled to become a writer. She had recourse to her pen by stealth, but accident divulged her secret. On an excursion to the Highlands, she had kept a journal for her aunt's amusement, and the MS. coming into the hands of one of the party, in the warmth of his admiration he sent it to provincial Magazine. At this early stage of her life she had also tried, what most young thinkers try, especially if their natures are sensitive, to make poetry.

In 1780 she lost her aunt, to which she always adverted as the first sorrow of her life. She continued, however, with her uncle, and fulfilled the domestic superintendence of his house; and for six years she scarcely ever ventured from the solitude of their country residence.

In 1785 Miss Hamilton's first voluntary contribution to the press was the Paper No. 46 of the "Lounger;" and of the same date is a sportive poem called "Anticipation." In 1788 she first visited London, with her brother. In this metropolis she soon discovered all the charms of novelty and congeniality; and it was here, perhaps, that she first became conscious of her own mental strength. In the summer of the same year her uncle died. Two years afterwards she had the happiness of procuring the friendship of the celebrated Dr. Gregory, who became her adviser in literary pursuits and chosen friend for thirty years.

It was a remarkable characteristic of Miss Hamilton, that, whatever place or family she visited, she always acquired in it a new friend. "She gave her suffrage to merit; her sympathy was yielded to misfortune; and, whilst she admitted to her confidence the worthy, or selected for intimacy the cultivated, she delighted to foster unprotected talent, to animate the lambent flame of hope, and to refresh the neglected germs that were withering in dreary desolation."

In 1792 Miss Hamilton lost her brother, a promising young officer attached to the East-India Company's service, and the translator of the "Hedaya. This for some time produced great dejection; and, in the retirement of Sunning, in Berkshire, she composed her first work, the "Hindoo Rajah;" in composing which she not only recalled the ideas she had acquired from her brother's conversation, but portrayed his character, and commemorated his talents and virtues. She submitted it to Mrs. Gregory, with this note:-"I am afraid," she observes, "to inquire what you will say to my black baby: I had no sooner given it out of my hands than I passed sentence of condemnation on it myself, and was almost ashamed at having exposed it even to your eye; but there is one thing of which I must beg leave to assure you, and that is, I have so little of authorship about me, that there is no occasion for the smallest degree of delicacy in pointing out its defects, or indeed in condemning in toto any child of my brain, towards whom I am so unnatural a parent that I have hitherto seen them smothered without remorse. That which has been done by my own diffidence will be still more easily accomplished when aided by the judgment of a friend :-on you, then, my dear madam, it will depend whether my poor Rajah shall sleep in peace on his native mountains, or expose himself to the dangers of criticism by a trip to England. If you think him too weak to stand the dangers of the voyage, he shall never move a step farther." It was published in 1796, and she reluctantly put her name to the work.

Under the encouraging approbation of Dr. Gregory, her next

semblance.

Miss Hamilton's next work was "Letters on Education," the first volume of which appeared in 1801, and procured for the author the acquaintance and correspondence of many celebrated individuals, and among others of Dugald Stewart. From the spring of 1802 till the autumn of 1803, Miss Hamilton, and her sister Mrs. Blake, made a tour of Wales, the Lakes of Westmoreland, and Scotland. From Llangollen she proceeded to Liverpool, where she participated in the hospitality of Dr. Currie, whom she ever after spoke of with enthusiasm. Whilst at the Lakes, Bishop Watson became her intimate acquaintance; and of this distin, guished prelate she thus writes to Mrs. Gregory: "We are more and more delighted with the Bishop's conversation, which is always a first-rate feast; the sentiments are always so just, and expressed with so much energy, yet without the least degree of dogmatism: he is always cheerful, even sometimes playful, but never without dignity; in short, he is a man of a million, whom I shall ever consider it a happiness to have known." While amongst the Lakes, she prepared the materials for the Memoirs of Agrippina, (which exhibits in a small compass a correct epitome of Roman laws, customs, and manners,) and is considered a valuable addition to English school classics,

The sisters proceeded to Edinburgh, where they acquired the friendship of Miss Edgeworth; which was afterwards maintained with mutual cordiality, attachment, and affection.

Soon after the publication of "Agrippina," in 1804, George III. in acknowledgment of her exertions in the cause of religion and virtue, conferred on her a pension; the prime minister paying a spontaneous tribute to her talents, which enhanced the value of the gift. On her return to England, she became the neighbour of her friends, Dr. and Mrs. Gregory, at West Ham, in Essex; and composed a volume of " Letters to the Daughter of a Nobleman," published in 1806, which had a most favourable reception. Miss Hamilton had lately resided for six months in the family of this nobleman, and directed the education of his children, who had been deprived of their mother. From this time she chose to be designated Mrs. Hamilton.

Her return to Edinburgh was cordially greeted by her friends, and in the society of the partners of her youth she was again at home. On this occasion she composed the pleasing song of " My ain Fireside;" the second stanza of which most happily describes her feelings :

"Ance mair (Gude be praised) round my ain heartsome ingle,
Wi' the friends o' my youth I may cordially mingle;
Nae forms to compel me to seem wae or glad,

I may laugh when I'm merry, or sigh when I'm sad;
Nae falsehood to dread, and nae malice to fear,
But truth to delight me, and kindness to cheer:
Oh! the best road to happiness ever I tried,
Was the road brought me home to my ain fireside.'

The most popular of Mrs. Hamilton's works was that on which she bestowed least consideration. This was the "Cottagers of Glenburnie;" and it was not without some diffidence on the part of the publisher that it went to press. Its success was universal: it was a favourite in all the three kingdoms. A cheap edition was also printed for circulation among the peasantry of Ireland and in the Highlands of Scotland; and even the wild genius of the mountains confessed the influence of good sense and the importance of domestic economy. "I canna be fash'd," became a popular phrase, and the name of Mrs. M'Clarty resounded in the polished circles of fashion and of elegance. "Glenburnie" might be called a tale in the manner of Wilkie: it is a faithful representation of human nature in general, as well as local manners and customs, maxims of economy and industry.—the principles of truth, justice, family affection, and religion, which it inculcates by striking examples, and by exquisite strokes of pathos mixed with humour,are independent of all local peculiarity of manner or language, and operate upon the feelings of every class of readers.

The

With simple and uniform habits, Mrs. Hamilton had never to complain of a dull or monotonous existence. Such was the relish for her society, that her private levee was attended by the most brilliant persons in Edinburgh. Of anecdote she was inexhaustible, and in narrative she dramatised with such effect that she almost personated those whom she described. Her "Cottagers of Glenburnie" is a lasting monument of the interest she took in the bettering the condition of the poor. Perhaps few books have been more extensively useful.

In 1812, her health being impaired, she removed to Bath, where, becoming convalescent, she had printed "Popular Essays on the Elementary Principles of the Human Mind." Although Mrs. Hamilton never lost her relish for works of humour and imagination, she had, during the last six years of her life, a decided preference for works of a higher order. Dugald Stewart, Paley, and Alison, had been the companions of her private hours. In 1815 she published her last work, a small volume, intitled "Hints addressed to the Patrons and Directors of Public Schools," recommending a partial adoption of the plan introduced into Switzerland by Pestalozzi.

Her delicate health, and several bereavements in her family, induced her to remove from Edinburgh (where she had lived for some time) to England, and she had travelled as far as Harrogate, when her last illness overtook her; and at this watering-place she expired July 23, 1816, in the sixtieth year of her age.

Mrs. Hamilton kept a private journal for twenty-seven years, which consisted of a series of papers composed with a view to assist the writer in the exercise of self-examination, which she considered as the basis of moral and religious improvement. It is dated from 1788, and concluded 1815. This journal, with her correspondence, is published along with Miss Benger's Memoirs of her, in two .vols., Longman and Co. 1818.

Her early friend, Hector M'Neil, Esq., the poet of Stirling, who had watched over her childhood, pays the following tribute to her memory, which he himself did not survive to see printed :— "In all my intercourse with the world, I never knew one with a finer mind, a warmer heart, a clearer head, or a sounder understanding; and, perhaps, were we to particularise the most prominent feature in Mrs. Hamilton's intellectual character, we might select the two last mentioned as the most remarkable. Such was the clearness of her conceptions, and such the quickness of her discrimination, that she seldom or never hesitated a moment to give her opinion decidedly on any subject introduced; and, what is equally remarkable, seldom or never were her opinions erroneous. Such is the result of my observations on one I knew above forty years, during which she continued to rise in my estimation. In her death I have sustained a loss which I have reason to think I never can repair; but, while my heart bleeds at the thought, it ceases not to glow at the remembrance of her virtues."

WAR AND PEACE.*

WAR is a parricide, having madman and murderer written indelibly on his forehead. Such is the faith of that great number who believe in the progressive advancement of man. Therefore do they rejoice in whatever, in the present day, makes for PEACE. The steam-boat, ploughing the Atlantic, is an apostle of peace; the rail-road, with its flying train, cries out for peace; the printing machine utters many sounds, but it joins in a peaceful chorus. A deep persuasion is sinking into all men's hearts that peace is the world's chief good,—the great medium through which other good must be transmitted. The merchant at his desk, and the mechaand sword into each other's dominions; and from a high place has nic at his toil, are asking why men should any longer carry fire it recently been uttered, that "a quarrel based on the mere ground of national animosity appears so revolting to the notions of good sense and charity prevalent in the civilised world, that the parties who feel such a passion the most strongly, and indulge it the most openly, are at great pains to class themselves under any denomination but those which would correctly designate their objects and feelings.+”

So far so well: but let us not, in common phrase, "halloo before we are out of the wood." A time is doubtless coming when there shall be "abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth;" and this hope warms the heart of the Christian and the philanthropist. But, though neither prophets nor prophets' sons, we may safely affirm that war has not yet finished its work on the earth. Christianity is yet far too unequally diffused; nations are far too unequally civilized, to forbid the fear that tremendous war may not again rage over the world. through a flood of war to a higher state of civilization; the eleWe may yet have to pass ments of society may yet have to be purified by a hurricane. In such a state of things, is it the duty of Britain to spike her guns and dismantle her ships, and to preach the great doctrine of an entire forbearance? Is it her duty to trust her interests and her wealth, and whatever civilization she may have gathered together, to the hope that her quiescence will teach other nations the grand lesson of Christian charity; and that, as she looks around with folded arms on the world at large, all nations will be so struck with the moral spectacle, as to see in her attitude a noble exemplification of the song which was sung, "Peace on earth and good

will towards men!"

In truth, War has such a villanous aspect, that even the good which he has done is beginning to be denied to him. But let us not be ungrateful. Cain was made a wanderer and a vagabond on the earth: nevertheless, a mark was set on his forehead, lest any finding him should kill him. War is Cain's eldest child, and is marked with his father's brand; but, though we should drive him out, and make him a fugitive on the earth, we must not forget that he has built for us a synagogue. We cannot tell why WAR has been suffered to exist among men, and to be their chief pastime for six thousand years, any more than we can tell why evil came to have its origin. But, seeing that War has existed, and probably will continue to exist for some time yet to come, we can at least extract good out of its mischief, and point out the benefits as well as the miseries that have resulted. Comparatively small as is man's advancement, but for WAR he would probably be far behind what he is now. The noblest geniuses, whose productions have in all ages tended to the advancement of the race, have expended their powers on war. Some of the loftiest minds that the world ever saw have

Travels through the United Kingdom, for promoting the Cause of Peace on Earth and Good Will towards Men. By George Pilkington, late Captain in the Corps of Royal Engineers. London, 1839.

† Lord Durham's Report on Canada.

had their energies roused and developed by war. War, in the production of shields, spears, armour of all sorts, projectile engines, building of castles, towers, and walls, has sharpened all the inventive faculties of men. What a glorious thing is an English ship of war, built by mathematics, navigated by the stars, defended by valour, and managed by skill! War has organised kingdoms, diffused science and the arts, extended commerce, and enlarged the mind of man; has broken the bonds of bigotry, has set the oppressed free, and developed new forms of government, to carry on the grand experiment of the gradual progress of the race. "Happy the nation whose annals are tiresome!" is a well-known quotation, and in some respects a true one: but blot out from the scroll of history—that is, history as it has been written,—all that relates to war, and we should have no annals at all! All might be summed up in a few sentences, as brief as those which occur in the Book of Judges, between the record of the actions of such champions as Samson and Barak, and Gideon and Jephthah, when we are quietly told—" And the land had rest fourscore years,"—"And the country was in quietness forty years."

We can easily conceive that a generous mind, glancing over the past history of the race, and looking only at the evils of war, might beled to consider man as a sort of wild beast, whose ferocity might be checked, but could not be tamed. But such a way of reading history is very unprofitable. Let us for a moment make the experiment. Was there war in the "World before the Flood?" We are not expressly told that there was; but, being told that "the earth was full of violence," we may conclude so: and accordingly James Montgomery, in his poem, assumes that such was the fact, and describes to us

"The hordes of Cain by giant chieftains led,"

who carry war to the gates of Paradise, and

"Full, in the spirit of their father, came

To waste their brethren's land with sword and flame."

mon occurrence.

When did war commence after the Deluge? We do not know: perhaps soon after the "confusion of tongues;" for the first recorded act of warfare—that which ensued in the captivity of Lot, and his subsequent rescue by Abraham,—is introduced as a comThis was a mere predatory act of warfare, such as is carried on at the present day by the Toorkomans, when they attack a caravan or a village, and return encumbered with captives and spoil. Of the same character were the assaults by which Job lost his camels, his oxen, and his asses, and had his servants slain by "the edge of the sword."

But change the scene! Mark this tumultuary host, coming forth from the bosom of the old world of civilization, pursued by a regularly organised military force-" six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them." The terrified fugitives, whose spirit had been broken by their abject slavery, and encumbered by their baggage, and their wives and their little ones, cry out in despair; the waters permit them to pass over on dry land. Now they can hearken more calmly to the roll of the chariot wheels, and to the tramp of the advancing footmen: the disciplined body also ventures between the watery walls, and a shout of triumph is heard from the shorePharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his Chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea."

The same people who had fled in terror from Egypt, now make error to precede them as they advance upon Canaan. During heir wanderings in the wilderness, something of a warlike spirit had been infused into them: they encamped in regular order, they marched as an army, in battalions, with their banners; they were nimated by the sound of the trumpet; and they were accustomed

to hardship and fatigue. Yet it was hard to sustain this spirit; for every now and again would the old Egyptian bondage re-appear: the terror-stricken spies told their countrymen how they were but as grasshoppers in the sight of the gigantic Canaanites; and the cowardly congregation said one to another, "Let us make a captain, and return to Egypt." Yet the Canaanites, devoted to judicial punishment for their abominable vices, shrank before the Israelites; and we are told that whole nations emigrated, and that in Numidia pillars might be seen, bearing the inscription "We are the Canaanites who fled before the robber Joshua."

We might pursue this through all the great periods of history, from the supposed siege of Troy down to the battle of Waterloo. Nebuchadnezzar overthrowing Jerusalem; Cyrus taking Babylon; Cambyses destroying the monuments of Egypt; Xerxes lashing and chaining the waters, that his vast host might see the madness of their master; the great scenes of Grecian story,-Marathon, Thermopyla, and Salamis; the tremendous struggles between Carthage and Rome; Alexander the Great, foretold by the symbol of "the he-goat, who moved over the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground," and who died at the early age of thirtytwo, having been permitted for twelve years to thin the numbers of the human race; the wars of Julius Cæsar; the awful fall of Jerusalem; Attila, Flagellum Dei, “the scourge of God," making proud Rome to dread his wrath, and proclaiming that "the grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trod;" the disastrous scenes of our own early history, and the destructive descents of the " 'sea-kings;" the Saracenic conquests, and the Norman conquest; the wars of the Roses, and the wars of the Mongols ; Ghengis Khan laying waste in four years what five centuries have not repaired, and boasting that the exact account of the slain in his various expeditions was four millions, three hundred and fortyseven thousand persons; Timur sacrificing, in like manner, millions, and sacking cities, under the character of a reformer, and for the establishment of peace and order; the tremendous sacrifice of life in the Crusades, and in our own wars between France and England; and, last, the meteoric career of Napoleon, expiring in the blaze of Moscow and the smoke of Waterloo. What would the consideration of all these scenes teach us, if we looked upon them solely with a view to the horrors of war? We should turn away with a sickening feeling: man would appear to us one of the most pitiable of God's creatures, and history a roll written within and without, and full of mourning, and lamentation, and woe.

But it is extremely short-sighted to look upon war in such a light. He who framed us what we are, has overruled war, and made it like the schoolmaster's rod, the means of punishment and improvement. Like the dead carcass of Samson's lion, "out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." Why do our hearts throb as we read the war-song, or hear the war-trumpet? Why do we follow with breathless interest that bold imagination which carries war into heaven itself, and arms the celestial host? And why does Christianity borrow metaphors and similes from war, and exhort the Christian to take the shield of faith, and to clothe himself with the whole armour of God? The reason is plain. War is assumed to be a struggle between right and wrong—a contention between evil and good-the encroaching spirit of destruction met and resisted by the preserving and progressive spirit of improvement. All war whatever, the meanest, the cruellest, the most wanton, that ever outraged human nature, shelters itself under some plea of this naturesome plea of punishment for injury, some plea of deliverance from actual or protection from threatened suffering, or some delusive pretence of extending the power and glory, and consequently the supposed happiness, of individuals or nations. When