blessings of a pure Christianity. To this end, we incline to the opinion that every minister should bring this subject before his congregation in a suitable discourse, and that the office-bearers in every church should institute immediate inquiry whether their pastor is adequately supported; and could there be, throughout the churches, simultaneous discourses on the subject, and corresponding meetings of the people in relation to it, we have no doubt that the results would be most happy. How many minds, now burdened with corroding cares, might be relieved! How much precious time, now necessarily given to other pursuits, might be reclaimed to the appropriate work of the ministry! With what renewed energy and undivided attention might many a minister go forth to the great work of preaching the gospel, cheered by the sympathy and animated by the support of his people, and assured of their appreciation of his office as of God's appointment for the salvation of dying men!

At all events, we trust that it will be perceived, from the tenor of the foregoing remarks, that some action in relation to this subject must speedily be taken, both by our judicatories and by our churches. If ever there was a time when the ministry of the gospel should be relieved from all unnecessary burdens, and placed in circumstances of comfortable competency and unrestricted activity, it is the present,— when error is assailing, in innumerable forms, the truth of God, and secularism, with its pride of science, and love of self, and insensibility to wrong, and recklessness of the future, is invading all departments, and permeating all relations now, when in consequence of the extension of our territories, the increase of our population, the influx of foreign errors and superstitions, the insidiousness of popery, and the selfishness of demagogues, there is only the more urgent need for all the conservative and corrective influences of God's unadulterated word. The Christian ministry, be it ever remembered, is the great safeguard of our dear-bought liberties.

But whatever varying views may be entertained of the gospel ministry, or whatever enmity it may encounter from those who have their private ends to answer, and their selfish passions to gratify, this is certain, that in proportion to

the manner in which it is supported will be its respectability, its intelligence, its spirituality, its benevolence, its stability. And in proportion as the churches throughout the land sustain the preached gospel, will be their purity, their growth, and their appropriate influence for good on our country and on the world.

ART. VI. VOYAGES FROM HOLLAND TO AMERICA.

Voyages from Holland to America, A.D. 1632-1644. By David Peterson De Vries. Translated from the Dutch, by Henry C. Murphy. New York: 1853.

WE are indebted to James Lenox, Esq., for this volume, by whom the original was procured, at whose instance it was translated, and at whose expense it is now published. It is, accordingly, dedicated to him by the translator, and is in form, paper, and typography, in keeping with that of "Washington's Farewell Address," the autograph of which, it will be recollected, Mr. Lenox purchased at public sale, and an edition of which he caused to be printed some few years since as his own best tribute to the memory of "the Father of his country;" and alike with that volume, this also bears witness to his taste and munificence. Each volume is adorned with a noble portrait.

When we contemplate the weather-beaten countenance of the bold Dutchman, and recollect the perils and hardships recorded in his diary on this very spot, and then look at this "edition de luxe," in which the humble chronicle and its author are re-produced to us by the liberality of a gentleman of New York, with the highest elegance of modern art, we are struck with the wonderful advancement of this country in civilization and refinement since Wouter van Twiller governed the colony of New Netherland, and Fort Amsterdam defended it from the depredations of the red-man.

De Vries was the "first possessor and patroon of the South River at Swarendael, and at Staten Island in Mauritius on the North River of New Netherland-the first,' as he also states, "that had ever sailed out of Holland or Zealand;" and his journals embrace an account of his several voyages made to different countries. These from Holland to America embrace a period from 1632 to 1644. But his first voyage was undertaken at an earlier date, and when he could have been but twenty-five years old; for in 1618 he sailed to the Mediterranean, and the manner in which he accomplished this voyage, the courage he displayed in repulsing an attack on his vessel made by several Turkish galleys, the judgment and thrift he exercised, must have at once secured the confidence of his employers, and unfolded to them those traits in his character which were afterwards so conspicuous in his history. In 1620, he sailed from the Texel, bound to Newfoundland for fish; and his journal of this voyage is curious, as it serves, in a measure, to illustrate the nature of the Newfoundland fishery at so early a date. In 1627 he went, as captain, with a fleet of seven ships to the East Indies, and returned in June, 1630.

His mother was an Amsterdam woman, and he was born in 1593 at Rochelle, whither his parents had gone from Hoorn after the murder of William of Orange in 1584. We have no means of knowing the precise influences that were brought to bear on his youth; nor how, nor when, the scene of his labors closed. He must have been trained to navigation, and he probably lived to a good old age. He was sixty-two, living at home, and in the enjoyment of an office under the government of the States of West Friesland and the North Quarter, when his book was published, and this was in 1655, at Hoorn. It was dedicated to the "Noble, Mighty Lords-the Committed Council;" and the preface, by itself, is sufficient to enlist our interest in the author, showing, as it does, that De Vries was far from being a stranger to the great end and to the only true safety of the State; that in his view laws should be made only for the welfare of the people, and that the prosperity of a people depended on their enjoyment of God's favor and blessing; and further, that the object of his writings,

"though they were not embellished with ornaments of words, as was not to be expected of one who had passed the most of his life upon the wild ocean waste," was "to make known to traders and seafaring men what trade and profit were to be had there (in New Netherland), and to point out to them the good havens and roadsteads for securing their ships and goods, and to warn seamen of the rocks, shoals, and dangerous bars, and what course they must take, and how they must govern themselves by the wind, sun, moon, and stars." And though his journal is now of no use to traders and seamen, it is full of matters of curious interest in relation to the period and the places to which it refers, and is, indeed, a valuable historical relic of the olden time.

It is probably more valuable and more reliable than a formal history would have been-written, as it is, in the simplest manner, and in the form of a minute diary; giving an account of people, and places, and occurrences, as in familiar and unrestrained intercourse with a friend. It is this circumstantiality-this natural grouping of details even to sights, sounds, and sensations experienced in the course of life on shipboard, in the colonies, and in the forest, that invests the journal of De Vries with an air of truthfulness not to be questioned. It is characterized by the remarkable absence of imagination from the mental conformation of the writer. There could have been no disposition to romance in such a mind; it was a matter of fact, right practical mind, possessed of "good, large, sound, round-about sense."

De Vries visited the colony at Jamestown, as well as New Netherland, and his journal furnishes not a few interesting particulars respecting some of the localities which are now so familiar to us; but it is not our design to follow him in the narration of his voyages and visits. His journal is all interesting, and in some things suggestive; though, in others, it is, of course, unimportant at the present day.

We have noticed with pleasure that De Vries, though himself a trader, did not countenance the "tricks of trade," nor follow the practice which had been so early introduced of first intoxicating the Indian before striking a bargain

with him; and that though he was so much occupied in commercial and agricultural objects, he did not lose sight of the cause of religion, but was the first to suggest the importance of a church at New Netherland; and that the first hundred guilders towards the church (which was built within the lines of the fort that it might be "guarded against any surprise by the Indians") was given by him.

From the course which he uniformly pursued towards the Indians, he engaged their confidence, and avoided all personal difficulty; and had his advice to Director Kieft been taken, the annals of the Dutch settlement had not been stained with blood. On the night of the 25th of February, 1643, the Dutch soldiers murdered eighty Indians in their sleep, and at Corler's Hook on the same night, " forty Indians were in the same manner attacked in their sleep and massacred there, in the same manner as the Duke of Alva did in the Netherlands, but more cruelly." "This " adds De Vries, "is indeed a disgrace to our nation, who have so generous a governor in our fatherland as the Prince of Orange, who has always endeavored in his wars to spill as little blood as possible."

We have noted, moreover, that he was not partial to the English, because "they were so proud by nature, and thought that everything belonged to them;" and hence when the Dutch Governor allowed an Englishman to go up the North river, because he said the land belonged to the English as Hudson was an Englishman, De Vries said that Hudson had been fitted out at the expense of the East India Company at Amsterdam, that the river was then called Mauritius river, after the Prince of Orange, and that if he had been governor, "he would have helped the Englishmen away from the fort with beans from the eight-pounders, and not permitted him to sail up the river-that he would rather have held him back by the tail, as he said he was an Englishman!" Notwithstanding such prejudices, however, he was forward to rescue fifty English refugees from death, though his crew remonstrated with him for taking so many on board of his ship, as they might run the ship away, “not thinking," said De Vries," in what misery these people were who had no food, and who durst not go ashore to hunt for