Now, it is not right that a traditional idea, or phrase, should be thus made available against a class of laborers who represent some of the greatest interests of our cause, and who drudge in our colleges, academies, &c., under tasks infinitely more exhausting to mind and body than those which would devolve upon them in the snug and comfortable parishes into which our pastoral work is so generally divided.

I speak an emphatic word for these laborers -I speak it, because I think such men as important as any other class among us; and because it is time that this egregious practical absurdity, however limited, were utterly routed, and put to shame.

The two objections which I have thus reviewed, do not, then, present very formidable obstacles to the success of the brethren referred to in this and one or two of my preceding articles. They ever will be more and more appreciated

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as

A NEW PROJECT.-The Legislature of this state have granted an act of incorporation to a society of gentlemen who have for their object the erection of a building to be called the United States Inebriate Asylum, with a capital of fifty thousand dollars, which may be increased to four times that amount if necessary. One-half of the net income is to be appropriated to the support of destitute drunkards, or "inebriates the society prefers to call them, and their families. The cardinal idea, namely, that drunkenness is a disease, was first made public by Dr. Reese, of this city, in a little volume, entitled, A Plea for the Intemperate, published some years ago. This association design to carry out that idea, and to endow, in the language of the directors, "an institution whose object will be to lift up the poor, fallen, destitute inebriate; to provide for him a retreat from the insidious spirit of temptation; to bring him under kind, skillful medical treatment; to throw around him the restraints of truth, and thus to free him from the servitude of appetite." Such an institution, if properly conducted, must be beneficial in its tendencies, and the project is at least worthy of a trial. We learn that already one-fourth of the amount deemed necessary to make a beginning has been subscribed.

by the Church. True worth and true talent can never be long unappreciated anywhere; the circumstances of our own denomination, as already described, give them preeminent opportunities among us.

THE EMPIRE STATE.-At a late meeting of the Geographical and Statistical Society the Hon. Horatio Seymour called attention, in an elaborate address, to the influence which the topography of the state of New-York exercises over the history and commerce of the country. In this connection he described the character of the influence of the Hudson, Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the Valley of the Mohawk. He showed that the waters which flow from the state of New-York, pass every commercial city of note in the Union except Boston. Twenty-one states, and three-quarters of the territory of the United States can be traversed

Let those, then, who struggle with want and wearisome tasks, to prepare themselves for these calls of usefulness, be of good courage; let them not be turned aside by any diversion from the world, or more lucrative, or more ease-giving positions. Let them consecrate themselves to whatever of self-denial and arduous duty Methodism may impose; it will place its hand of benediction yet on their heads; it will open to them effective careers, and bear them triumphantly along them. If faithful, devoted, and assiduous, they will be crowned with a present success which can be equaled nowhere else, and with the better" recompense of reward," which the great Master will one day award them. I am, &c., A. STEVENS.

without leaving the valleys that originate in this state. Twenty thousand miles of natural navigation can be traversed through the waters which take their origin in New-York; and twenty-five thousand miles of overland traffic by means of railroads. He then proceeded to describe the advantages and the influence, in the course of war, which the valleys of the Mohawk and Upper Hudson exercised, both as regards the Indians, and subsequently when France and England transferred their seat of war to this country. He described the various armies sent here by England under Montcalm, Abercrombie, and Lord Amherst, to subjugate the colonies of France, and followed the warpath of the Indians through those three great valleys, which exercise such powerful influence over our country and fortune. It is a remarkable coincidence, that not only have these valleys been remarkably prominent in a historical point of view, as the scenes of martial exploits, but also that the first weapon captured in the war of the Revolution was taken by Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga, and the first naval engagement was fought on Lake Champlain, under Arnold. All the wars of this country seem to have been carried on upon the principle, that the possession of these valleys would materially affect the whole country. At the present day, the provisions that sustain the armies of France and England in the East are borne over these valleys; the thousands of emigrants that weekly land upon our shores pass through them to reach their destination in the far West. He next showed how, from the earliest history of the state, the population has been cosmopolitan; how its geographical position invites the greatest commercial people in the world to take possession of New-York Bay. He spoke of the particular influence exercised by the Hollanders over the destinies of the state, having settled it at a time when their own country was the most conspicuous among the nations of the

""

old world, for literature, liberty, and warfare. There was, he said, no country in Europe, no matter how renowned its deeds or inhabitants, to which we could not say, "We can claim kindred with you: your sons are among us. The progress of the state from the period of the Revolution was next reviewed. It was the first state where the revising of statutory law was carried into salutary effect. It was the first state where the first steam-boat was launched. It was the first state where the first canal was constructed. It was the first state where the first railroad of the twenty thousand miles of iron tracks that now traverse the country was built.

INTEMPERANCE IN EATING.-The late Sidney Smith made, he says, a calculation, by which he found that between the age of ten and seventy he had eaten and drunk forty-four horse-wagon loads of meat and drink more than would have preserved him in life and health! "The value of this mass of nourishment I considered," he says, "to be worth £7,000 sterling. It occurred to me that I must, by my voracity, have starved to death fully one hundred. This is a frightful calculation, but irresistibly true." On this text Mr. Alcott, the well-known writer on dietetics, discourses as follows:

"It is a generally conceded fact, among those who are best qualified to judge, that we of the United States, as a general rule, eat about twice as much as the best interests of our systems require. My own observations, which I think have not been behind those of other men, either as regards extent or accuracy, go not only to confirm this long-asserted fact, but somewhat further. I believe we eat, as a nation, more than twice as much as we ought; and hence, as there is a vast difference, and one large portion (the slaves) do not greatly exceed their real wants, it follows that some of us waste much more than one-half of what we really consume-perhaps more, nearly two-thirds. Further than even this I am compelled to go, and to say most unhesitatingly and unequivocally, that much less than half the money we actually expend for food, if expended as the best interests of health and economy clearly dictate, would, taking life together, greatly inerease our present aggregate of mere gustatory or animal enjoyment."

As to the bulk of this enormous waste he makes the following calculation:

"If the loaded wagons of food which the twenty-five millions of the United States would waste in sixty years, according to the above estimate, were placed along so many turnpikes around our globe, each horse and wagon occupying, for convenience' sake, a distance of two rods, they would form two hundred and eighty rows or circles, encompassing our globe! Our readers may calculate for themselves, and see whether the deductions, if not the data, as far as they are ours, are not, and must not be 'irresistibly true.""

then tell us if you did not feel that it was more truly the voice of your own spirit, and that it spoke more effectually to spirit than the florid inanities that you have for years been laboring to assimilate and reproduce. Sapere aude; give to Greek grammar and common sense the hours you now waste in reading the washy sermons of the day, and see if you do not gradually gain a hold upon the attention of your congregation and engage their interests in a way that you before scarcely dared to hope for.

STUDY THE ORIGINAL.-If your mission be to preach the Gospel, build your sermons upon the original. Instead of Benson or Burkitt, try Bengel. With his help endeavor to feel out the Greek. See if that compound verb does not give you a hint which is worth all the twaddle you get out of Scott and Henry; mark if that bold future does not awaken a thought that you will never find in Watson or Adam Clarke; if that inferential particle does not give you a clearer insight into the argument than the weak, diffuse "Practical Expositions" you so exult and indulge in. Preach only one sermon, after a plain, honest, hearty consideration of the text in the original, and

REPORTERS Sometimes make sad work in 66 taking down" public speakers. On one occasion Daniel Webster, who was fond of quoting Latin, introduced into a speech this well-known line from Virgil:

:

"Adsum qui feci; in me, me convertite ferrum." A reporter, supposing the latter part of the verse to be a translation of the former, and desiring to be exceedingly accurate, gave it to the public thus:

"Adsum qui feci; he or me (sic) must perish !"

EXPENSES OF A FASHIONABLE CHURCH.-▲ religious paper of this city thus figures up the annual expenditure of one meeting-house with the affairs of which the editor professes to be acquainted. He says there are not more than ten churches in the city so expensive, although there are three which exceed this calculation:

"The church, parsonage, library, &c., cost, in round numbers, $200,000; the annual interest of which sum, at seven per cent., is $14,000. The pastor's salary is $4,000; that of his assistant is $500. The presents annually given to the pastor, we believe, do not average less than $500; presents to his assistant, say five dollars. The singing, with the salary of the organist, repairs of the organ, and wages of the blower, costs very nearly $1,600. The cost of cleaning, including the salary of the sexton, will average about $900 a year. The annual depreciation in value of building and its contents, by use and time, may be computed at $1,000. The cost, therefore, of maintaining the church for one year is $22,505, which is equal to $482 78 per Sunday."

In moralizing upon the subject the editor says:

"Forty smart mechanics, working steadily all the year, earn about as much as it costs to support this church. For $22,505 a year two thousand children could be kept under instruction in good schools. It would maintain a college of five hundred students in the highest efficiency. It would support twenty-two country churches, or eight city churches, in a liberal

manner."

WHO CAN STAND BEFORE HIS COLD? is the unanswerable question of the Psalmist. In its unmitigated severity all life ceases, but the extent to which cold may be endured is greater than many imagine. Dr. Kane and his party, in their late expedition to the Arctic Ocean, reached a higher latitude than had been attained by any previous navigator, and established the fact that the extreme cold of the latitude of eighty degrees is not the limit of human existence. During their exploration the thermometer was seventy and eighty degrees below zero for months together. So intense was this cold that the alcoholic thermometers failed to indicate accurately the temperature, and even chloroform and the essential oils, which resist low temperatures, became thick and turbid. Is

was only by a careful observation and comparison of many instruments, that they were enabled to attain to any accuracy in regard to the extent of the cold. An opportunity has thus been given of testing the ability of the human body to resist a temperature of seventy degrees below zero, for several months together. The doctor and his party were enabled to do this by an immense consumption of animal food, the ordinary daily allowance to each man being six or eight ducks, or an equivalent in several pounds of the fat seal.

ENGLAND AND AMERICA CONTRASTED-There are two sides to every question; and while one portion of our uncles on the other side of the water delight to ridicule everything cis-Atlantic, there are those, and the number seems to be increasing, who sail upon the other tack: thus, at a public meeting of the Marsden Mechanics' Institution, Manchester, on the 14th of December, Mr. Bright, M. P., in the course of a speech, deprecating the war, said :

"Many of you have relatives or friends in America. That young nation has a population about equal to ours in these islands. It has a great internal and external commerce. It has more tonnage in shipping than we have. It has more railroads than we have. It has more newspapers than we have. It has institutions more free than we have-that horrid slavery of the south excepted-and which is no fruit of its institutions, but an unhappy legacy of the past. It has also a great manufacturing interest in different branches. That is the young giant whose shadow ever grows, and there is the true rival of this country. How do we stand or start in the race? The United States government, including all the governments of all the sovereign states, raises in taxes probably from £12,000,000 to £15,000,000 sterling in the year. England this year will raise in taxes and loans, and will expend nearly £100,000,000. This population must raise and will spend, probably, £80,000,000 within this year more than that population will raise and spend, and in America there is far less poverty and pauperism than in England. Can we run this race on these terms and against these odds? Can we hope to be as well off as America if the products of our industry are thus swept away by the tax-gatherer, and in the vain scheme of saving Europe from imaginary dangers? Can poverty be lessened among us? Can education spread? Can the brutality of so many of our population be uprooted? Can all or anything that good men look for come to us, while the fruits of our industry, the foundation of all social and moral good, are squandered in

this manner? Pursue the phantom of military glory

for ten years, and expend in that time a sum equal to all the visible property of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and then compare yourself with the United States of America, and where will you be? Pauperism, crime, and political anarchy are the legacies we are preparing for our children, and there is no escape for us unless we change our course, and resolve to disconnect ourselves from the policy which tends incessantly_to embroil us with the nations of the continent of Europe."

"Never," we are told, "was an 'illustrated work' so replete with feeble and ludicrous caricature. Napoleon Bonaparte had some personal dignity; but in this ponderous book he comes before us in coarse patches of black and white, like a fraudulent butler or a superannuated beadle. With the exception of two or three portraits and sketches, badly copied from well-known originals, there are few among the woodcuts that are not ridiculous. Those at the end, representing the tomb of Napoleon, have appeared in other works. We suspect, indeed, that the narrative has been written to accompany a mass of poor second-hand

.

impressions, from 'blocks' that have been transported from Paris to London, and, after illustrating different publications in each of those cities, have been shipped to America, where this History' was written and printed. Some have certainly undergone this process. "The narrative itself is an amusing example of weakness and perversity. It resembles some of those florid little books full of Napoleonienne fables, which are written by authority for the French peasantry to spell. How far it may be worth while to engage Mr. Abbott for such a purpose is questionable. He 'reveres and loves the first emperor,' 'because he abhorred war, because he was regardless of luxury,' had a high sense of honor,' 'revered religion,' 'respected the rights of conscience,' and 'nobly advocated equality of privileges and the universal brotherhood of man."

*

"Of course, it must be possible for writers such as Mr. Abbott to defend every action, however vile. Otherwise, some historical characters, now concealed under a motley of eulogium, would have had no advocates to apologize for blots and stains. Thus, Mr. Abbott, with a pleasant scorn of logic, dwells on the execrable details of the Egyptian massacre, and justifles the indiscriminate carnage perpetrated under the direct orders of Napoleon. 'Bombshells cannot be thrown affectionately, charges of cavalry cannot be made in a meek and lowly spirit, red-hot shot will not turn from the cradle of the infant or the couch of the dying maiden.' The murder of about a thousand or twelve hundred manacled Turkish prisoners' is next excused on the same plea: Bombshells are thrown into cities to explode in the chambers of maidens and in the cradles of infants, and the incidental destruction But of innocence and helplessness is disregarded.' what analogy on earth exists between incidental destruction' in a town under the fire of batteries, and the slaughter of a helpless multitude firmly fettered," divided into small squares, and mown down by successive discharges of musketry? After this, we are not astonished to be told that Napoleon's desire to poison seven of his sick warriors, to be rid of them, arose from mistaken views of Christian duty."

"In the same spirit, the emperor's treatment of Josephine is not only palliated, but extolled, as well as the execution of the Duc d'Enghien. The little episode of Cantillon, with its dénouement in our own time, is conveniently forgotten.

"As the substance, so is the style. Whirlwinds, thunderbolts, torrents, tides, and hurricanes, rush from page to page, scattering the English language in unimaginable confusion, round and through the wild mazes of the author's invention. It is scarcely to be supposed that in America, where the common school should teach the difference between good and bad writing, productions of this character can attain to popularity."

men.

SAMUEL ROGERS, the well-known poet, has at He died length been gathered to his fathers. on the 18th of December, having reached the ripe age of ninety-six. His first volume of poems was published in 1787, in the days of the great grandfathers of the present generation. He not only outlived two or three generations of men, but two or three literary styles. His own verse has the merit of being chaste and correct, but cold,-the beauty of frost-work. Possessed of an ample fortune, he was noted for his friendship and kindness toward literary It is to be regretted, however, that there was one unpleasing trait in his character so prominent that it cannot be passed over in a notice of his life. "He was," says the London News, "plainly speaking, at once a flatterer and a cynic. It was impossible for those who knew him best to say, at any moment, whether he was in earnest or covert jest. Whether he ever was in earnest, there is no sort of evidence but his acts, and the consequence was, that his flattery went for nothing, except with novices, while his causticity bit as deep as he intended." But at the same time, and while this vile habit was growing on him with his years, he con