Don't you feei, gay young reader, for that | paragraph was published (in Fraser's Magfellow-creature, to whom a week has been a azine for June, 1860), there arrived by each success, if at its close she can put by a few morning's post little sums sent by all kinds halfpence towards meeting the term-day? of people, in distant parts of Britain, which Would you not like to enrich her, to give made the poor widow quite rich." her a light heart by sending her a halfsovereign? If you would, you may send it

to me.

This charming little charity sermon had, as the note shows, its reward in a collection, for, says the Country Parson,

"I cannot deny myself the pleasure of recording that for many days after the above

These "Recreations of a Country Parson" make a book that should be bought and added to home furniture rather than borrowed from a circulating library. It is full of the domestic spirit, of its ready sympathies and charities, its meditation, and its quiet mirth.

Physico-Prophetical Essays on the Locality of the Eternal Inheritance, its Nature and Character, the Resurrection Body, the Mutual Recognition of Glorified Saints. By the Rev. W. Lister, F.G.S. Longman and Co.

next endeavored to view the things predicted, when of a physical nature, in the light of legitimate science, and to explain them by examples drawn from actual nature, either past or present. For instance, he draws largely on geology and physical astronomy for illustrations of the nature and not in heaven, he fixes the eternal abode of of the transformed earth, without a sea, where, all the redeemed. He averts to the increase of habitable space, which will be obtained by the absence of the sea which now covers more than three-fifths of the surface of the globe, and the much greater gain in this respect which would ensue should the density of the earth become equal to that of some other planets-to that of Saturn, for instance, which is about eight times less than that of the earth-which latter he gives reason for believing to have been far less at one time than it is now, and to have been increased by the cooling and contraction of the crust. His reasonings of this kind, whatever be their force and conclusiveness, are generally based upon sound scientific data, but not invariably so, for he talks of an animating or vital principle of animal bodies, a thing which all biologists know to be a mere figment and not an entity.-Spectator.

INSCRIBED in capital letters at the head of this book is Newton's famous phrase, "Hypotheses non fingo," a motto which could not, without most ludicrous unfitness, be prefixed to any of the apocalyptic romances of the Cummings, McCauslands, Stanley Fabers, and the rest of that school. Truly does Mr. Lister say of these fantastic interpreters, that they have played such tricks with the subject of prophecy as have "rendered even its very name distasteful to soberminded men, who have, perhaps, only occasionally directed their attention to it, and who have therefore seen little more than the fanciful interpretations which have been given to many of the expressions of Scripture, and which have made them feel that the language of the Bible may, in this way, be made to mean almost any thing which a lively fancy can suggest, and that any thing like certainty with regard to its meaning is not to be expected." He himself adopts an entirely different method, and his work, he believes, may be said to be in some respects the first of its kind, having in it little or nothing that is imaginative or speculative, or merely hypothetical. Its topics have been drawn directly and solely from Scripture, and its conclusions have not been sought intentionally, otherwise than by the strict path of demonstration. Of THESE are the two Essays which have obthe two recognized methods of prophetical in-tained the prizes of fifteen and ten guineas, ofterpretation-the Figurative and the LiteralMr. Lister adopts the latter only in the present volume. Its use, he thinks, should be the rule, and that of the opposite method the exception, and he has specially chosen for discussion a range of subjects among which such exceptions do not present themselves. Having then determined the meaning of a given prophecy, he has

New Brunswick as a Home for Emigrants. First

and Second Prize Essays. By J. V. Ellis and James Edgar. St. John, N. B.: Barnes and Co.

fered for public competition in December last by the President and Directors of the St. John's Mechanics' Institute. Both of the successful competitors are, as might be expected, warm panegyrists of the colony to which they belong. We see no reason to doubt the justice of the committee's decision that Mr. Ellis' production is the better of the two.

From The Spectator, 25 May. in the field. The slaves will starve, say the THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. Western States, without our wheat; but we MR. SEWARD'S letter to the American do not find that the rice crop is diminished, Minister in Paris, though telegraphed all and rice, though an inferior food to wheat, over the Union, adds little to our previous will keep men alive and in good working information. The policy enunciated by the trim. There is plenty of it, the last report Secretary of State on 4th May is precisely showing a cultivation of three hundred milthe policy defined by the President on the lions of pounds all grown within the South4th March. On the day of his inauguration ern States themselves. Add to this supply Mr. Lincoln took up a position from which the wheat and Indian corn grown within the he has never yet receded, and which is sim- South itself, and the great harvest of the ply the one any European monarch would Border States, and there will be little furassume. Secession, said the President from ther hope of starving the insurrection out. the steps of the Capitol, is impossible. To The reports of the armed strength of the that dogma he has steadfastly adhered, and South are contradictory to a degree, but Mr. that dogma implies all. The ruler of an un- Davis' official statement is now before the divided state can enter into no negotiation world. He estimates his soldiers, semiwith rebels, accept no mediation between regular troops fairly trained, and to all apthe nation and its provinces, listen to no pearance well armed, at thirty-five thousand terms not prefaced by the acknowledgment men. In addition to these, he calls for one of his authority. And therefore Mr. Lin- hundred thousand more, and as the eight coln refused even to see the "Commission- millions who obey him are military in tone, ers " from Montgomery, and treated with he may obtain them for a time. scorn Governor Hicks' request for the mediation of Lord Lyons. The last act was not acceptable in England, but a proposal from Smith O'Brien at the head of an armed force to refer Irish rights to the mediation of Count de Flahault would scarcely, we imagine, find much favor in our eyes. There may have been some momentary indecision as to the opinion of the North, for republican statesmen are trained in servility to the popular will; but the opinion of the President himself has never swerved. Even his reasoning for subjugating the South has a European sound. He does not go to punish-what ruler ever did ?-but simply to release the friends of the Union from their bondage; to relieve, as an emperor of the French would say, that excellent people which is deceived and tyrannized over by an execrable faction. And now the Secretary of State repeats to M. Thouvenel that the thought of a dissolution of the Union, peaceably or by force, has never entered the mind of any candid statesman in America. If the Union cannot be broken, the Southerners are rebels, and as rebels the Federal Government intends, and has always intended, to subdue them. The question at issue is not the will but the power of the Executive to carry out its plans.

Our information on that point is steadily enlarged by the mails which successively reach Europe. Of the resources of the South, it is true, exceedingly little is still known, for the facts which reach us are distorted on their transit through the North. According to New Yorkers the South is bankrupt, but the South has repudiated her debts owing to the North, and the sum thus saved will of itself suffice to keep an army

In the North every detail pleasant and unpleasant is instantly given to the world. There may be some exaggeration as to numbers, but we suspect less than is usually supposed, the precise muster of the regiment being usually published as it departs. The forces, then, at the disposal of Mr. Lincoln seem to consist already of a very indefinite number of regular troops-not eight thousand at the outside-thirty thousand volunteers in and round Washington, thirty thousand more on or ready for the march, and a reserve of a quarter of a million armed, organized, and partly drilled recruits. We give that figure as the nearest approach we can find to truth amidst a mass of contradictions. Besides these, he can rely for the time upon a population of nineteen millions, singularly apt to military life, burning with excitement, and soon to be provided with the European arms. force is ample in numbers, and the President has adopted the best means to make enthusiasm permanently available. A great standing army, one hundred thousand strong, is being enlisted for three and five years, and will be organized during the time which must elapse before the fall of the leaf renders the climate of the Southern States tolerable to Northern men. They will have ample occupation up to that time in reconquering Maryland and Virginia, and resisting the attack Mr. Davis on the 8th of May was preparing to make upon the capital. The Virginians are evidently prepared to fight, and a martial population of a million whites will not be defeated, even with the aid of the Western counties, in less than a campaign. If, then, the enthusiasm lasts, the President ought, by the beginning of

The

November, to find himself with an army of one hundred thousand men accustomed to service, his communications secured by the occupation of Maryland, and his front cleared by the defeat of the Virginians.

and though Washington's force faded away as the harvest came round, it was always renewed, always as hostile to compromise with the foe. This generation, too, has been trained in hatred of the South, and an inThe delay will test the one point on which sulted American forgives about as readily as the friends of the North are still in anxious the Indian he expelled. The war, too, has doubt. Will the enthusiasm of the Free revealed the fact that the old Puritan spirit, States endure up to the point of providing dead in the newspapers, survives among the means for a long war? The enthusiasm, people. The Massachusetts men quote texts while it lasts, is of course irresistible, but about slaying which are not pleasant in adwill it last? It is one thing to march to versaries' ears, and company after company Washington for a month's bivouac, and quite gravely announces two prayer-meetings a another to invade the South on a three years' week during the campaign, and invites its campaign. Men who will encounter any dan- officers to join. Zerubbabel Peabody, yeoger are often afraid of hardship, and English man, deacon, and volunteer, is not the kind officers distinguished at the Alma shirked a of man whose hand turns back readily from diet of green coffee and raw pork. Already the plough, or hesitates because the Amalethe "pet regiment" of New York-the 7th kite is strong. Add to these facts that the -talks of returning when its thirty days are war itself will turn thousands into soldiers up, and thousands who would face cannon whose trade is war, that the men of the quail at the ruin a protracted absence from Border must fight or perish, and that every business would entail. Nor have the Amer- skirmish will open new and terrible soresicans, as yet, quite counted the money cost be, as it were, a new baptism of hatred-and of a long war. The papers talk of twenty-the fear of want of men will be speedily given three million dollars, as if that sum, magnif- up. The want of money is still less to be icent as a subscription, were adequate to a anticipated. The Americans trust in a decampaign. They will be fortunate if in an enemy's country it will keep their fleet and army for a month. As they themselves acknowledge, they must carry every thing from shells to rations, with them on their march, and an army of one hundred thousand men raises prices on a scale of which their experience in Mexico gave but a faint idea. We question if they have yet realized the most ordinary difficulties of the commissariat, whether the mere cost of carriage has entered into their calculations.

Nevertheless, admitting all this, and much more which will be patent to military men, allowing for that sickening reaction sure to follow a period of excitement, and estimating at their full value the party strifes, and party opposition which will supersede the present unanimity, the North is still, we maintain, strong enough to carry out the policy so determinately announced. The President, as we have said, is providing for the reaction. Granted a certain looseness of discipline, there will always be volunteers enough to keep an army of a hundred thousand men on foot. The West swarms with men to whom campaigning is enjoyment, the North with men whom every check will bring rapidly to the front. With regular pay and slack discipline there are enough of the fighting class without calling, except in emergencies, on the bone and muscle of the nation. The enthusiasm may die away, but there is no chance of Northern determination growing cold. The colonists maintained the fight for twelve years with Great Britain,

lusion as to the probable expense, but they are quite able to sustain the reality. A debt of a hundred millions sterling would still leave them less taxed than any European race, and the South must be impoverished before themselves. The hatred of taxation is very deep, but necessity modifies prejudices of that kind in a marvellously brief space, and the race which begins with subscriptions will soon resign itself to making those subscriptions regular and proportion

ate.

Indeed, willing or unwilling, the Americans may make up their minds that the cheapness of their administration is finally at an end. If they subdue the South, they must for years maintain an army to keep down the embers of the conflagration. If they make peace after war, they must watch their frontier like a European power. Democracy may survive the struggle, but economy will have finally disappeared.

From The Economist, 25 May. CIVIL WAR: THE PRICE AND THE PROFIT.

THE Americans are just now standing in one of those critical positions and at one of those perilous moments of a nation's life which determine its fate and its character during many future years and, possibly, many unborn generations. The ground is very narrow, and even as we write is being washed from beneath our feet: the moment is very short, and perhaps has already passed

away. On what may now be decided-nay, too probably on what has been already done -will depend vast good, or almost incalculable evil. The peaceful disruption of the Union we should welcome most hopefully, as an almost unalloyed advantage. A civil war we cannot but regard as an almost unmitigated mischief. A breach cannot be healed by internecine hostilities; but it may easily be widened into an impassable gulf. Even if a rejunction were possible, and as desirable as the Northern Federalists appear to deem it, who can hope for it through the medium of war? The South can never again expect to dominate the North. The North cannot seriously expect to subjugate the South; nor, as we have often urged, would it be worth their while to do so. To lure the seceders back into the Union would be a grand, and might be a beneficent achievement: to force them back neither is feasible nor would be profitable.

forts, and in the growth of which they employ their slaves. The Southerners may live undoubtedly under such a blockade, for they can grow their own sugar, cattle, tobacco, rice, and Indian corn. But conceive the state of mind of some millions of men, who have hitherto been dependent on foreign commerce for nearly all articles of consumption, when deprived of wine, of tea, of clothing, and with wheat driven up almost to a famine price; and at the same time, in order to maintain the conflict, taxed to an extent that only the most prosperous condition of trade could make endurable. Conceive the feelings of thousands of the population, thrown out of all their usual avocations, and driven by idleness and privation into habits of marauding, plundering, and piracy.

Then turn to the other side of the blotted and disfigured picture,-the rich commerce of the North preyed upon by Southern privateers; the merchants of Boston and New York deranged in their transactions, struck at in their credit; their debtors and customers turned into enemies and repudiators; their wealth deeply eaten into in order to support a war of which they perceive more clearly day by day the hopeless

Neither party, therefore, can subdue or re-embrace the other-probably by no means, certainly not by fighting. But each may inflict upon its antagonist such fearful injury and suffering as will leave a legacy of undying hatred to their children and their children's children. The material mischief wrought by civil strife between the two sec-ness and the waste, while day by day their tions of the Union will be as nothing to the fe- passions and their pride become more inrocious passions which it will engender. The veterately interested in bringing it to a trihavoc it will make in their prosperity will be umphant issue-even though that triumph trifling in comparison with the havoc it will must be inevitably barren. They will not make in their morality, and their civiliza- be able to bear its continuance; they will tion. For, observe, it will not be like a duel not be able to swallow the humiliation of between two courteous foes, who exchange confessing themselves discomfited and bafshots with unruffled tempers and no conse- fled: may they not at last, in their perplexquences. It will not even be like a pugil-ity and exasperation, be tempted into the istic contest between two angry English yeo- supreme desperation of endeavoring to exmen, who shake hands before the mill and cite a servile war, and, in their frenzied and share a pot of porter after it. It will be overheated brains, elevate the crime of slave deadly, it will be vindictive, it will be bitter. insurrection, as the Southerners have alIt will partake both of the barbarism and ready elevated the crime of slavery, into a the relentlessness which have shocked us so solemn duty and a sacred right? Which much in the narratives of personal encoun- party would conquer in the strife, if it ever. ters among individual Americans. It is reached so horrible a development as this, impossible to foresee what extremes bellig- we do not care even to speculate: but that erents may not permit themselves, when such a development should be among its not reciprocal inflictions are every day inflam- impossible and perhaps not very remote ing tempers which combine Anglo-Saxon contingencies, is enough of itself to make stubbornness witn Indian ferocity. Let us the most infuriated opponents pause before look forward for a moment to the possible they strike the first blow. We will not endevelopments which such a conflict may as- ter, even for a passing moment, into any sume the frightful extremities to which, strategic estimate of probabilities. It would step by step in the progress of exasperation, be rash, and almost irrelevant, to ask with it may ultimately lead. The navies of the which party lie the best chances of mastery. North blockade the Southern ports; close, We content ourselves with the positionif they can, all their issues to European mar- which eveh excited passion must, we think, kets; shut in, and by so doing render worth- admit to be irrefragable-that, to whichever less, because unsalable, all those teeming side the balance may incline, the mutual products of tropical plantations by which mischief inflicted must be literally incalcuplanters purchase their luxuries and com-lable; and that the completest victory which

it is possible for the North to achieve would freemen, with their wonderful energy, their bring no success worth achieving. As we elastic genius, and their rapid multiplicahave said over and over again, stripping the tion, must always ensure to the Northern question at issue naked, it resolves itself Federation a proud and powerful position into this: "Why should the Federal Gov- among the great nations of the world; and ernment fight to prevent the Slave States if, as we hinted last week, they can-now or doing that which they will do just as cer- ultimately, by deliberate arrangement, by tainly after defeat or after victory, as before direct purchase, or by gradual absorptionthe battle?-nay, which is already done, and draw the boundary line so as to include free which not the most sanguine Abolitionist Virginia, free Maryland, and free Kentucky believes can be undone?" Mr. C. Clay, in- and Missouri, they will be the possessors of deed-in that strange letter which he has a territory which, for extent and variety and addressed to the Times, and which is a very richness of resources, will leave them withmodel of feeble reasoning and questionable out excuse for coveting any other lands. taste-would fain persuade us that his constituents know clearly what they are about to fight for, and that they really propose to themselves to subjugate the seceding States, and believe they shall easily succeed in doing So. We can only say in reply that we have never met any sober countryman of his bold enough to avow the same project, or to en--or they may profit by past experience and tertain the same expectation.

But while we look with such grief and deprecation on the prospect of a sanguinary and unnatural conflict between brethren for an undefined purpose and a barren triumph, we are optimists enough to contemplate the prospect of a peaceful separation and an amicable partition of joint possessions with much hope and even with positive satisfaction. We do not see why both parties, why Europe, why humanity at large, may not then be gainers by the catastrophe. The two Republics will be free, each in its own sense and according to the dictates of its own experience, to amend that constitution which the one Republic had so long felt, and sometimes avowed, to be full of perils and defects. They may become friendly rivals and competitors in the art of democratic statesmanship. They may strive with each other as to which shall first bring to perfection a system of genuine self-government. They may profit by each other's errors, may grow rich by each other's prosperity, may grow strong by each other's progress. The North, when it has shaken off the fetter, the complication, and the disgrace of its former connection with slave institutions, may become single-minded, honest, humane, and just, in its internal as in its foreign policy. It need no longer have its best and truest feelings lacerated by the scandals of a Fugitive Slave Law, nor have its reputation as a lover of consistent freedom stained by the restrictions on liberty of speech and writing which deference to Southern interests and prejudices has hitherto compelled it to impose or to connive at. There will be nothing now to prevent it becoming as civilized in manners and as stainless in conscience as any European State. Its twenty millions of

How will it be with the South? The Slave States also will be left with a noble empire and an almost boundless field. What they will do with their grand opportunities and their heavy responsibilities we will neither affect to prophesy nor stop to conjecture. They may no doubt misuse them grievously,

by newly acquired security and independence, to face their own great domestic difficulty as wise and good men should. We are even much inclined to hope that the institution of slavery may be mitigated, and that the negro population may be better off than of late, both as to actual condition and remote prospects. Certainly, the change can scarcely be for the worse. Under the influence of irritation from the ceaseless reproaches of Northern Abolitionists-as to the sting of which there can be no question; and under the influence of fear as to unconstitutional interferences-for which we are bound to say we believe there was no ground,

the planters and slave-owners of the South have gradually goaded themselves into a state almost of frenzy on all matters relating to THE critical question, which has at once perverted all their natural good sense and poisoned all their natural good feeling. It is not unreasonable to hope that, when once they become a homogeneous republic-a congeries of states in all of which slavery is a recognized and undisputed system-controversy on the subject may cease and consideration of the subject may begin. When the minds of their more far-seeing and sagacious statesmen are no longer maddened and blinded by a position of daily self-defence, they will surely be compelled by the undisguised greatness and peril of the question, to turn all their powers to its study and its solution; and the ingenuity and hardihood which is now devoted to defending the indefensible and canonizing the atrocious, may then be concentrated on the more reputable and more profitable task of facing and conjuring without delay a danger and a puzzle which, sooner or later, must be met and overcome. The continuance of the old Union had done