24 RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. It is asserted, and it is rational to believe, that, apart from "our great account," there is often manifested a sort of retributive justice to our deeds, good or bad, in the present life. And the code of ethics-{ in other words, God's providence-should more often exhibit this to us, if we could contemplate more than a point, as it were, at a glance. Another hinderance is, that singular and particular acts are so traversed and involved in all other incidents collateral with them, that we continually lose the direct clue. Like the veins in marble, the larger invariably attract the eye; so, in sentiments, the very multiplicity of our ideas may embarrass the attention; and at times we are completely diverted from the direct concatenation, by following out those subsidiaries which, apart from the subject, happen to be most interesting to ourself. In making judgment of the character of others, there is a great variety of causes why we should be deceived in our estimate, and balked in tracing causes, morally speaking, to their results. A grand one is the undue indulgence which society affords to many lapses of morality. There is much which, by the authority of custom, is looked upon as venial which is yet essentially wicked; such, for instance, is the vice of coquetry. And why is this so? It is because the aggression is never complained of-because the sufferer is pained, and oppressed, and humbled because it is felt to be a deep sentiment which is fain to shroud itself from the rough handling of the world in the retreat of silence. And now does the reader think I have degraded the dignity of my subject, and introduced a topic fit only for the drawing-room, and not for the closet? Nevertheless, every thing which militates against the order of life should be accounted of grave import. The gentlemen would fain impute coquetry to females alone; but, at a fair estimate, it is found to be pretty equally divided betwixt the weak and vain of both sexes. But I would speak of retributions; and in forming our deductions, our greatest mistake is in supposing that the consequence is direct from the deed, when it is only direct from the principle-lapsed in the deed. A gentleman in Pennsylvania was attached to a certain lady, a beautiful brunette, and carried on, for several years, that sort of intercourse of half courtship which is there, by custom, so injuriously permitted. The excuse held up to society for a more explicit proceeding, is, commonly, "the want of present means to marry"-the gentleman, in such case, leaving himself, by the non-engagement, a dishonorable outlet of escape, whenever it shall please his fancy, or convenience, to be off. Our hero, after having amused and absorbed the attention of the lady just visiting her as a friend-for some four or six years of her marriageable life, has decided that he can marry a lady in a distant town, who is immensely rich: this "will be best for all parties;" "being poor himself, he must not burden a poor lady with his poverty," &c. The lady he is to marry is named Brown. When the brunette again saw him, knowing his changed views, with maidenly pride she assumed a careless exterior, and presented him the following verses, quoted, with felicitous application, from an old epigram: "When I was young and debonnaire, The brownest nymph to me was fair; But now I'm old and wiser grown, The fairest nymph to me is 'Brown.'” The gentleman acknowledged the point with a blush and a sigh; but his engagement here was positive, though his feelings still vacillated between the throbbing of his heart and the associations of his fancy for wealth and preferment. The lady died young. He, as the husband of Miss Brown, survived her many years; yet this man was considered amiable. He was not devoid of good impulses; but what were they worth? There was no decision, no stability with him-at least none in opposition to a morbid craving after the world and its affectations after what he called "life." He wanted energy too; and he wanted principle; and so it worked in all his affairs. As for the one he wedded, she was his dupe"more sinned against than sinning." It was one of the conditions of her marriage that she, an only child, should remain in her paternal home. And of the rumor of her husband's former unfaithfulness, none was so impertinent as to inform her of particulars; besides, lessened by the distance, and divested of collateral sympathies, it failed to mark its order of sequence-from causes to results. But still there was an order. The gentleman, after some years of unsuccessful speculations and involvements, was brought to a stand by some commercial disaster; and, having neither energy enough to rally, nor fortitude enough to suffer his misfortune, shot himself. The retribution was not to his early delinquencynot to the manes of his beautiful brunette; yet was the reaction direct-it came home to his own bosom! for violated faith-for long habits of defalcationfor the lust of wealth, and the vitiated taste of worldly preferments, over the sentiments of nature, and truth, and duty to God. C. M. B. www CHRISTIAN FULLNESS. It is not in Christ as water in a vessel, which, though large as the brazen sea, would, by constant drawing, be soon dry, but as water in a spring, which, though always flowing, is always full as ever. It is not in him like a lamp which, however luminous, consumes while it shines, and will soon go out in darkness; but like light in the sun, which, after shining for so many ages, is undiminished, and is as able as ever to bless the earth with his beams. THE DEFORMED MANIAC. THE DEFORMED MANIAC. BY THE EDITOR. 25 for him on her pillow, or stealing to an upper window in the building, fondly watches his movements, to cheat her heart with some delusive hope, or retires to the silent closet to relieve her heavy heart from long pent up agony, by a rush of tears, and a prayer to the God of mercy for his restoration. No sister sends him unexpected delicacies, to show that one to throw over him the shield of protection-to rescue him from the hand of neglect or unskillfulness, or to vary the methods of cure, or to change the gloomy and monotonous scenes which encompass him, and open to him as much of the loveliness of nature as he may, with safety, enjoy. It is said that the maniac hates the worst the objects whom, in his sane condition, he loved the most; and that any thing calculated to awaken ideas of home, is detrimental to his case; but, methinks, if any sound could disenchant the soul, that has long wandered stultified within the walls of an asylum, it would be the voice of that dearest earthly relative, whose attention no sickness can wear out-whose fondness no coldness can repel-whose affection no misfortune or poverty can diminish, no unkindness, or ingratitude, or folly, or even guilt, can alienate; that one who forgives when all others revenge, who extenuates when all others blame, and who remains when all others desert-whose love, like the ivy on the oak, flourishes in all its greenness after the wintry blasts have stripped off every leaf, and twines its tendrils around the branches in the bosom of the storm, nor releases its hold even when the roots are upturned: but this poor maniac had no wife. WHEN I first entered the alms-house at, after passing through the entrance-hall, I paused awhile on the platform, which commanded a full view of the court, whose coup d'œil was gloomy and repul-being upon earth cares for him. He has no brother sive, reminding me of descriptions of the feudal residences of middle ages. This court was surrounded on all sides by high, and dark, and dirty walls, affording a glimpse of the street only through the hall, from which I had emerged. A few blades of grass struggled here and there for a precarious subsistence: filth and gravel contended for the mastery all around the building; and a small mound, surmounted by an old sun-dial, looked in surly solitude upon the scene, telling the poor sufferers, who gazed upon it from the windows on all sides, that time was rapidly measuring out their days of sorrow. In this court were a few convalescent subjects and a number of harmless maniacs. One of the miserable group attracted my special notice. His countenance appeared a perfect blank, save when his attention was fixed by a sick man conveyed across to the clinical wards, or the groans and shrieks of some manacled lunatic, whose hideous countenance he saw through the iron grating of the cells that occupied the basement all around the court. Even then his gaze was but momentary. He had a violin, but its strings were broken: like his own mind, it could make no music. His spine was hideously curved. It would seem that the spiritual lightning which had riven his soul, had been unable to accomplish its errand without twisting his body into zigzag lines, to mark its course. Notwithstanding his repulsive appearance, there was an air about him which plainly told, that his manly features had once been fired by a noble soul. Sometimes I fancied I caught a glimpse of his returning reason, as he seated himself upon a stone, and looked up to the deep blue sky, and the glorious sun, which alone remained of all he saw, to remind him of former happiness. Sinful as I was, my rebel knees were ready to bend in thankfulness to God, that a like woful stroke had not fallen upon my own spirit, and my grateful heart earnestly besought Divine protection from the most dreadful of human maladies. Weeks passed by, and every time I crossed the court, in my way to the lecture-room, and the wards, the deformed maniac was before me. If I spoke to him, he turned aside with some incoherent expression, and a demeanor evidently importing his conviction that he was under some direful spell, which rendered him unfit for human intercourse. It was not long ere I learned that he was a lone being. No father calls at the office, or stops the physician in the street, to make kindly inquiries after him; no mother sighs for him at her fireside, or weeps VOL. VI.-4 In the course of a few months, the professor commences a course of lectures on mania and mental alienation, and sends for subjects, from the lunatic department, to illustrate, as he advances, the different forms of intellectual disease, interrogating each, until he has satisfied his class, and then dismissing him. In due time, the deformed one in the court was brought forward: urged into the area with difficulty, he moved from side to side, eagerly looking for a passage out. As he glanced upward around the amphitheatre, crowded with students taking notes, and heard the doctor speak of a particular case of insan{ity, which, he seemed to understand, was his own, he fired with indignation, and then rushed like a tiger to the passage; but two strong men pushed him back. He then looked intently, first at the lecturer, and next at the students, when the doctor paused and said, "Don't get your back up-it's high enough already." He could restrain his indignation no longer; but, turning to the pupils, exclaimed in a strong voice, "This doctor struts about the wards of this house, lecturing on mania and mental alienation. Gentlemen, it's a humbug-he can't analyze the sentiments of a flea." A loud laugh reverberated through the skylight as we completed his argument a fortiori. The doctor having ordered him out, by way of recovering himself, or atoning for the inhumanity of the remark which called for the maniac's assault, gave us a sketch of the unfortunate man's history. I dropt my pencil, and resigned myself to the story, of which I can now only give an imperfect outline. He was the son of a wealthy merchant, who had but two children, the maniac and an elder brother. The latter was a prodigal, and had, by ingratitude, extravagance, and intemperance, alienated the feelings of his father, his only surviving parent, who, at his decease, left his large estate entirely to the younger son, whose prudence, affection, and virtue, were above all praise. Shortly after the decease of the father, the favored son sends for his elder brother, and, after an affectionate embrace, explains to him the nature of the will, and assuring him that he knew nothing of its contents, until informed by the executor, says, "I have a proposition to make to you: If you will reform, I will relinquish to you one-half of the estate." I will not venture to describe the mutual embrace, and the tears of gratitude which coursed the cheeks of the one, or the tears of joy which flowed from the eyes of the other. Weeks rolled round, and the drunkard was a sober man. You have seen the unsightly worm weave its chrysalis, and lie motionless, apparently lost for ever: presently it emerges a beautiful butterfly; instinct with life and radiant with beauty, it skips from flower to flower, and is the brightest and happiest thing of a joyous and beautiful universe. Thus with the prodigal, "when the dead is alive and the lost is found." The estate is divided. The younger brother having no business-trained only to the enjoyment of fortune-concludes to visit foreign shores. Taking leave of his native land, and expecting to be gone for years, he places a power of attorney in the hands of his reformed and grateful brother, with directions concerning his part of the estate. He is soon borne upon the billow. I cannot follow him. Let the reader gaze with him, if she will, at the pavilions and gardens of the Tuilleries; stand with him upon the Alps, or the Appenines; look up by his side at the Pantheon, the column of Trajan, the pillar of Pompey, or the arch of Constantine; let her sail with him up the Nile, or listen to his flute on the summit of Sinai, or see him musing upon the walls of Jerusalem, or searching upon the banks of the Tigris for the remains of ancient Nineveh. Years revolve, while he pursues his wanderings, fondly dreaming of the pleasure which he is laying up for himself in distant years, when Providence shall give him a happy fireside, shared by her whom neither towering Alps, nor ruined cities, nor smitten Horeb, nor solemn Sinai, nor even the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, can induce him to forget, though he has never uttered his love. Month after month he hears pleasing accounts from his brother, by whom all his drafts are cashed. At length he returns, with bounding heart, to his native city. Walking up the street, he meets a bloated sot-his brother! The tale may be finished by the reader's fancy. The reformed drunkard had relapsed; and in drunkenness, gambling, and debauchery, had spent not only his own living but the estate of his brother, whom he had all along deceived, by writing false accounts and paying drafts. What can the generous youth do? His fortune gone, his brother ruined and disgraced, his loved one the wife of another, his parents in the grave, and the friends of his better days frowning upon him lest he should appeal to them for help. He has no trade or profession; he cannot dig-to beg he is ashamed. From an enemy we can bear almost any thing; but to be betrayed by a familiar, a brother, one with whom we have taken sweet counsel, and in whose company we have walked to the house of God-one who had grown rich on our bounty, and honorable on our influence to be betrayed, too, with a kiss-0, Father of mercies, save the reader from such a fate! What became of the generous youth? Did he not sink? Nay, his manly spirit girded itself for the hour. He resolved upon the law for a profession, and, entering an office, studied so intently, that sickness invaded his feeble frame. One disease followed another, as he lay upon his cheerless and forsaken pallet, and was no longer permitted to divert his mind, by books, from the painful past, or the dreaded future; at length his noble frame became deformed. At this point his mind gave way. O, that, like Job, he could have said, from the depths of his afflictions, "Now I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." THE SUN. THE sun, of all the works of the creation, is the most lively image of the Creator himself; and nations, unacquainted with the light of Revelation-with the Sun of Righteousness-have been led, by their fallible reasoning, to worship it. The sun warms, cheers, invigorates, enlivens, and beautifies all terrestrial objects. It shines upon an angular mirror, and creates innumerable reflections of suns; it falls upon the waters, and converts them into a mass of spangles-a flood of molten silver-while from the stagnant pool, or putrid body, its rays exhale the gaseous fluids, and, lifting them to their appropriate sphere, enable them there to shine with richness and with glory. What his image is to the mirror, the ocean, and the stagnant waters, the Original himself is to all existencies, spiritual and material. Being, animation, and happiness flow from his presence. The firmament, decorated with systems of worlds, and the earth clothed with variety and beauty, show his power, his goodness, and his glory. N. tion; but chide him not. Without this spur-this spirit which led to bold adventure-philosophy might still have in her cradle slept. But man had now become conscious of himself, and of his powers, and see him wend his way from darkness up to day. First Thales, one of the seven called wise, evolves his world out of a simple substance, to it attributing the power of passing spon it fits itself for the ondwelling of man. And thus whatever is, became. Still all was vague and undefined, and none could tell the how of these mutations, but were content to speak of matter's expansions and contractions, without defining the cause or cer PROGRESS. PROGRESS is a law--not a circumstance. It has its origin in the nature and constitution of all that is. God, the author of law, gave this character and this law to created being. We see its impress upon every thing; and its results are as the sands. To history turn for a moment. Do you see that company, of a few scores or hundreds, turning away from the land of their fathers, to seek a home intaneously through all the intermediate stages, until some far-off country? Few, indeed, are they, and feeble; and a breath of opposition or discord might brush them from the world. But hope lights up each countenance-the hope of a country too fresh from nature's hand for oppression-where the soul may feast, in freedom's atmosphere, on liberty's pro-tainty of the fact. But next came Diogenes, prevision. But a few years have past, and that little {pared to take another step. He regards the universe colony has found a home, and is assuming the name and character of a nation. Its influence goes forth as its boundaries are extended, and the powers around, with eye askance, look jealousy. Instead of bands, it now sends forth its legions, to join in battle in the dun war cloud. In its councils is found man's highest wisdom. His eloquence and his patriotism hold breathless a senate, and kindle into glowing life the fire of country's love. His words, the fatal talisman, point out the doom of nations, and it is fixed. His country, which but yesterday was not, placed high its star of hope in glory's firmament; and then, by rapid climax, claimed its home by valor and by virtue. From nothing up to universal power-how brief-how bold the conquest! as issuing from an intelligent principle, from which it at once received vitality and order, and is itself a soul. He gives it reason as well as sensibility, yet makes no distinction between mind and matter. After this, a hundred years, the theory sprung into life, that above all, and ruling all, and independent of all, a soul existed, Supreme and Eternal. Thus was the idea of a God evolved and embraced in Greece, the proud old home of philosophy. Mind, thus struggling into life, grappled with the mighty fact of the universe, and with the effort felt its powers expanded, and fitted for higher action. The schools of philosophy opened the way to its advance, and the world felt that it had passed from the Zembla of doubt and darkness, to the bland Mark, too, the mind's progression. When time bowers of Eden gales, under the bright beams of was young, and man had just begun to live, all, all the sun of science. But let not the infidel boast of was dark, and all unknown. The bright sun kin- the proud advance of science, unattended by religdled his early splendors as now-the moon "walked ion; for until they united, walked hand in hand, in in beauty, as the queen of cloudless climes," and the illumination of mind, all science was but a fable, the stars "did wander forth," bright and beautiful- its bases conjecture, and its results the food of superthe earth careered away in her trackless course, stition. Christianity dawned upon the world, and bearing, in her strength, old Ocean's wide domain, where it was received all was light. But again, as and mountains, with their clouded peaks, and for- she declined, and yielded to the imperious force of ests wild, and deserts unexplored, but by the eye of circumstances, the ages of darkness, of a thousand Heaven. But man untaught, with powers inherent, years, wrote in characters of blood and tyranny, and inferior but to those of the sons of light, looked that religion is the only vital, conservative principle on with doubtful eye, or, quite uncomprehending, by which light and truth can exist in the world. gave no thought to this display of grandeur and of Then came the Reformation, and with it science put glory. His body clothed, and nature's cravings forth her branches, fresh in emerald greenness, and gratified, he closed his eyes and slept, unconscious mind again drank from the pure, perennial stream of the powers which, by development, should open of life. Science had her Plato and her Cæsar; renature's sunlight to the soul. But nature's self be- ligion and science had their Newton and their Washgan the work of mind's expansion. She placed her ington. What a eulogy upon religion! But let us vasty store-house before his dusky vision, and, by pause, and, for a moment, contemplate the hope and degrees, led on by that inherent principle which ever destiny of mind. If it, while in the body, thus can loves the novel and sublime, he sees new beauties rise to a conception of the great, the grand, and rising fast from what his clouded sight before es- beautiful, what then shall be its range, when from teemed a chaos. Onward he rushed in passionate its earthy shell released, to revel in its home of the expectancy at that which almost seemed a fairy fan- universe? Perhaps the spirit, which now feebly guides ey's picture. True, he passed the bounds, by long my pen, may, in its future being, solve the wonexperience subsequently fixed, of prudent thought, drous problem of creation. Perhaps it may learn and dashed away into the field of wildest specula-how our material, planetary system, in one vast 28 DEATH IN CHILDHOOD. whole attenuated, was moved by hand Divine-how its rotation first began, and how to it were given forces centripetal and centrifugal-how Herschell, and how Mercury, and all between, received their form first from Omnipotence, and taking up their course sublime, moved on in silent majesty. This done, shall then the spirit rest? Shall it retire within itself, from having nothing more to learn of God and universal being? Shall not the myriad of systems, great and wonderful as ours, be opened to its swift research. And in its ample round, perhaps, a music of the spheres-not of Platonic fancy-may swell the exulting soul; and O! may it not strike some humble note responsive to a universe of harmony. DELTA. DEATH IN CHILDHOOD. "It must be sweet, in childhood, to give back the spirit to its Maker." So says an eloquent writer. And is it not true? To give it back ere sin has stained the bright gem's purity, or pleasure woven her garland round the heart, and bound it to earth with strong ties; before grief has laid her blighting hand upon the affections, and bowed the form; and ere Death has touched with his icy finger the loved ones of earth, and borne them for ever from our sight: ere all this has transpired, why should it not be sweet, to the infant mind, thus to yield up its spirit to its Maker and God? "They die in Jesus and are blest." her young loveliness; the bright curls falling in rich tresses over her marble brow and colorless cheek, imparting a still lifelike expression to her fixed features. The gentle eyelids were closed, and the heavy lashes lay, like penciling, on her transparent cheek. Her soft lips, from which the coral had yet scarcely fled, were just ready to part with a smile, so calm and peacefully did she sleep in death. A couple of rosebuds and a sprig of evergreen were inserted between the closed fingers as they lay folded upon the breast. The rosebuds were drooping-withered. Sweet emblems they of her who lay before me-faded-dead. But her spirit, like the evergreen, lives on in undecaying freshness and beauty. I saw the anguish of the mother, as she came to take the last farewell of her little one. She seemed bowed down by the weight of sorrow laid upon her; for this was not the first link of the family chain that had been severed. Two others, sisters, of that household band, "had gone to God!" The brothers bowed in silent grief to touch those lips that were now closed for ever; and the strong men wept! for memory brought back her gentle welcome at the close of day, and her smile which ever greeted their return home. And a voice whispered in their cars, which thrilled through every fibre of the heart, "Those loved tones-that silver laugh-that tender smile, will return no more for ever." But her endeared form was not to remain, even where it was, long. O, it is heart-rending to see the last remains of all that was once lovely and dear, far removed from our sight, and covered with the green sods of the valley! And yet it must be so. Is it not well that such sweet buds should be taken from this bleak world, and transplanted to that genial clime, where no cold winds, or beating storms, will mar their bright hues; but where they will ever bloom in freshness and beauty? And yet it is hard to give up the youngest and fairest-the sweetest blossoms on the parent stem-and see them slowly sinking into the cold embrace of Death. It is try-keeping of the grave. Solemn and mournful was ing "to watch the pangs that distort their features, and the ghastly white settling around the lip," that has breathed forth such love for us; and to feel it is the last time we shall see the play of those features, so soon to be fixed in the icy stillness of death. It is agony, bitter agony for a mother to stand by the couch of her dying child, and view life's taper burning more and more dimly, till it is quenched in the darkness of death; to see the cold dews gathering on the brow-to watch the labored respiration becoming fainter and fainter until the heaving breast at last becomes still, the pulse ceases to beat, and the heart, with all the wealth of its affections and sympathies, no longer throbs at the once well-known, and wellloved sound of a mother's voice. I once stood by the coffin of one of earth's sweetest beings. She was too frail, too delicate for this rude world. Its first rough blast had withered and faded her glow of health and beauty, and, in mercy, God had taken her spirit home. There she lay in No Jesus of Nazareth was there to raise the prostrate body, and reanimate the pulseless form. And all that a mother's love or a father's fondness could do, was to commit that precious treasure to the safe |