number of masses to be chanted for the soul of his victim, and return home with the pleasing conviction of having more than expiated his cruelty to the body, by his solicitude for the soul of the slain. What could be more comfortable or satisfactory to both parties, than such a method of proceeding? The one was willing to pay for his pleasure, the other too happy to receive gold for words. Well may wealthy sinners regret the days when innocence was for sale in every convent, and admittance into Heaven purchased as readily as admittance into a play-house.

We, however, in our times, venture to doubt of the efficacy of this means of making one's peace with Heaven; yet, if we consider a moment, we shall find that many of us are travelling on the old path. We read of the all-importance which the apostles attribute to charity: we desire to practice this beautiful virtue. We hear a voice from the pulpit, crying Give! give! that is charity;' and we pour out our five dollar bills for Tract Societies, missions to Nova Zembla, or for any object which is urged upon us. We feel contented. We have at least done something to merit favor. Like Polycrates in Schiller's beautiful ballad, we have sacrificed what we held most dear, to propitiate the powers above. But be not self-deceived, my friends. The clear unequivocal words of the epistle must strike you with awe, when they so forcibly represent the futility of your actions. Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. No! Money, unless it be the widow's mite, is not charity.

Others, belonging to the class of men of good principles, so called, conclude that this mere giving is not sufficient. We must visit the sick and the afflicted, they say; we must go to them, and carry them relief. But they do it from principle, not from pity. The heart is not engaged. It is not charity. It reminds one of the tears which the marble statue shed. It savors of the hair-shirt and the discipline. When Sancho Panza had a penance of stripes imposed upon him for his master's sake, he scourged the nearest tree, making loud outcries the while. Ye marble men of principle, follow his example; hire a man to go about for you and save yourselves the trouble; so that at least the poor may not be the losers by it. One sigh for the wretched, a kind look, a soothing word to the sufferer, the gentle pressure of the hand, lay up more treasures for man than the cold-hearted gift of heaps of gold. Our hearts will be scanned at the judgment seat, and not our calculations. Man sees the deed, God sees the circumstance.' Giving to the poor, though doubtless a duty of the rich, does not constitute charity in itself. It is a very small part of it, even when the result of the most generous motives. There is a charity for us all, deeper and holier, which tinges with a soft rose-color the life of him who practises it. Charity toward our equals. Charity to the world. This we have hourly opportunities of exercising. What do the world think of it? What will the world think of it?' are, whether we know it or not, at the bottom of almost every thought, every plan for the regulation of our conduct. Living together as we do, the opinion of our fellows has an unrelaxing hold upon our minds. We cannot despise it if we would, unless we feel a consciousness within that they do not know us fully, and will one day admire what now

they neglect. Every man carries in his heart a standard of self-estimation, in which his opinion of himself vacillates like the mercury in the thermometer; so sensitive, that it is raised by the slightest favor, and depressed by the most indirect coldness. In a word, without the inward consciousness we have mentioned, the opinion of the world concerning us regulates our opinion of ourselves. Praise and distinction are so sweet, because we prize ourselves the more; neglect and insult so bitter, because they sink the mercury down to zero, and inflict upon us all the tortures of self-contempt. This private standard of worth is called the vanity. To flatter it, is Toadyism; to respect it, Charity.

Defraud a man, plunder him, cudgel him, stab him and leave him for dead, run away with his wife, (O anti-climax!) and he can easily be made to forgive and forget; but injure his vanity, however unwittingly, and the poisoned dart rankles for ever. He hates you he hates himself. He hates the beauty of nature, and the bright light of day he detests the whole human race.

Need I tell you how these tortures are inflicted? Need I admonish you to repress the sneer, that ill-natured offspring of a bad heart; the sarcasm, that unfeeling gratification of self at the expense of another? You will all answer, 'No.' And yet how many that go about among the sick and poor, allow the fierce glances of envy and malignity to dart through the veil of sanctity with which they have decked their faces! How many of those who cry 'Lord! Lord!' at every corner, will open like hounds on an unlucky friend whom Scandal has seized in her relentless claws. What is poverty, what is disease, what is hunger, compared to the pangs of wounded feelings; to the self-loathing of a humiliated soul, when it recalls with fearful exactitude the painful details of the never-to-be forgotten event, and feels the fire of hell raging within? These are wounds for which no hospitals are built, the depth of which no surgeon can probe; which even Time, the great physician of the soul, fails to cure.

Love to all, is the charity which the apostle delighted to praise. Nothing is more difficult to attain. Mere negative good-nature is far from sufficient. We should set a watch on the smallest details of our conduct toward our fellows. To glance carelessly at a deformed person, as we pass, instead of fixing a curious eye upon him, is charitable. A pitying and attentive look would painfully recall his misfortune to his mind. This is trivial, perhaps; but there are a thousand similar occasions constantly presenting themselves, in which this spirit may be exercised. A good heart will go far toward making a polite man, for politeness, worn though it often be as a mask by the false and the foul, is based on charity. Let us then labor strenuously to remove asperities from the path of our fellows, and to make the wheels of society move without any harsh grating or jolting. Choose your topics, to avoid giving the slightest twinge of pain to any listener: more than this, cast yourself before an envenomed shaft that you may see aimed at a sensitive breast. Rejoice with the prosperous, for Charity envieth not; weep with the afflicted, for she is kind. Does man's conduct admit of two interpretations, a good one and a bad, believe the good; for Charity thinketh no evil. Has he sinned against the right rules of the moralist; condemn him not unheard: consider

the circumstances under which he acted, and palliate if possible his offence; for Charity rejoiceth not in iniquity. And if an enemy who has injured you grievously, falls into your hands, pardon him freely, for Charity is not easily provoked. Sustain the weak. Encourage the timid. Defend the absent. Have a firm trust in the good and the fair which are in the heart of every man, and extend a helping hand to the erring mortal who seeks to retrace his wayward steps.

CHARITY, LOVE, is the mystic word, stamped on the soul, before which the gates of St. Peter fly open. Money or aught else will prove as useless as the cries of the unlucky Cassim.

THE Rev. Democritus paused a moment to take breath, and observing that two of his friends were fast asleep, and the third eagerly looking over the garden fence at a pretty milk-maid, who was tripping home behind her cows, prudently resolved not to continue; and to console himself for the inattention of his hearers, by incorporating these remarks in his next discourse from the pulpit.

THE JEALOUSY OF LIBERTY.

A REVOLUTIONARY INCIDENT.

WHEN General SCHUYLER arrived at Albany in July, 1775, to take charge of the military command in the department of New-York, under his recent appointment from the Continental Congress, a public reception was given him, under the direction of the Committee of Safety. The processional display on this occasion was probably not distinguished for its regularity or magnificence; and it gave rise to the following anonymous publication:

THE MODE OF A LATE VERY EXTRAORDINARY AND VERY GRAND PROCESSION. I. The Congressional General.

IL The Deputy chairman, and who is only chairman pro tempore.

III. Mr. Ten Broeck - through a mistake.

IV. The Chairman.

V. The Committee.

VI. The troop of horse, most beautiful and grand. Some horses long-tailed, some bob-tailed, and some without any tails, and attended with the melodious sound of an incomparably fine trumpet. VII. The Association.

A SPECTATOR.

It will not for a moment be supposed that such an audacious attack upon the American cause' as that thus made by the occult author of the scandalum magnatum contained in this paper, would escape the vigilance of the 'Sons of Liberty,' or that it would be suffered to pass with impunity by the Committee of Safety, Protection, and Correspondence' for the ancient county of Albany, and who had also in charge the dignity of the city, in carrying out the arrangements for the reception of the Congressional General. True, the high-souled patriots of '75 regarded the freedom of the press as the palladium of their liberties, and they were ever ready to shed their best blood in its defence. But they were equally prepared to punish its abuse; and if need be, to bear off its sinning types and forms, at mid-day, and regardless of chartered limits, in equestrian triumph from NewYork to Connecticut. Even their more matured wisdom declared that the liberty of the press should not 'excuse acts of licentiousness;' and was it not such an act, thus to traduce a patriotic procession, arranged by the honorable committee, embodying the sovereignty of the people, in honor of the gallant republican General, who held his high commission from the pro libertate Congress? And, what though the description of the Spectator' may have been true in point of fact; there had as yet been no disavowal of all subjection to the mother country; and was not the binding force of her all-wise common law style recognized, by which it was provided, that 'the greater the truth the greater the libel?'

Most fortunately for posterity, and for the cause of enlightened truth and burning patriotism, in our day and generation, the course of the committee in this regard has not been left to the uncertain workings of doubt and conjecture. Their records show, that they entered with spirit and zeal upon the investigation of this momentous matter. A meeting of that body was forthwith summoned, at which it was gravely resolved that the anonymous paper 'contained scanda

lous reflections upon the proceedings of last Sunday.' A system of espionage was adopted, to discover the supposed tory wight, who, 'without the fear of God before his eyes, and being moved and instigated by the devil, and King George the Third,' had evinced the temerity to pen and publish such an atrocious paper. The public was called upon to lodge all such intelligence as might lead to the discovery of the author.' The committee adjourned from time to time, in the prosecution of their singularly important labors. Public meetings were called and held, at which the subject was discussed. For several days, the agitations of the city were like the heavings of the earthquake, and it yet remained in doubt where the portended desolation would be stayed, or who would be overwhelmed by the threatened catastrophe.

But the reproaches of a guilty conscience left no peace to the concealed author of all this commotion. The important secret was at length revealed, and public indignation at last found an object for its hitherto undirected shafts.

PETER W. YATES, Esq., a member of the redoubtable committee, desirous to restore quiet to an agitated city, made known to his associates that He was the writer of the obnoxious paper, at the same time making a very full apology for his indiscretion, and most solemnly disclaiming any intention to injure the cause of Liberty!'

The committee resolved, 'that the concession and acknowledgment were satisfactory to the Board.' This, however, did not appease the ' resentment of the public,' which was well nigh inexorable. The whole city was in an uproar on the occasion, and several public meetings were held, by which Mr. Yates' expulsion from the Board was demanded. In deference to public sentiment, Mr. Yates resigned his office of committee-man.

But the insulted Goddess of Liberty would not be thus pacified, nor would her offended dignity be appeased by the self-imposed immolations of backing-out, by a culprit whom she had marked as a fit object to be turned out from her agency and employ. The flagrancy of the offence called for the direct and positive exercise of her punitive power. In those pure days of jealous liberty, and unsophisticated political action, there was no indirect or back-door mode of escape from retributive justice, or public accountability. And, notwithstanding the resignation, the committee, as appears by their records, in order to satisfy the minds of the people, and for the sake of preserving harmony in the city,' proceeded to the severe and solemn task of a formal expulsion. Luckily, however, for the culprit, a total annihilation was averted, by a saving clause in the expulsive mandate, by which it was provided that 'the proceedings of the committee upon the said paper should not be published, provided the said Peter W. Yates, Esq., make a public confession in person to the people here assembled. A committee was then appointed to wait upon Mr. Yates, and to give him assurances of safety, if he should be inclined to make the said concession.' Mr. Yates accordingly appeared before his assembled fellow-citizens, and made the required acknowledgment; the cause of Liberty' was vindicated, and her indignant but now appeased 'Sons' repaired to their homes, without committing any violence. Although this public acknowledgment saved his expulsion,