ter, the friends to law and the Constitution, [proper subject of regret, and over which as administered, begin to lead in public the patriot would wish to drop a tear that councils. So it must be here and with you might blot out its memory for ever. Thus in a few years." the Jacobins affect now to treat his last political opinions." Could there possibly be a wider contrast than the above manly letter, and the sentimental effusion of his son, Robert Lee, the military leader of the slaveholders' rebellion, written to his sister on April 20, 1861, of which the following is a portion: "The whole South is in a state of revolution, into which Virginia after a long struggle has been drawn, and though I recognize no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for the redress of real or supposed grievances, yet in my own person I had to meet the question whether I should take arms against my native State. With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home." We return from this digression to the sentiments of the Fathers. The very year of Washington's death the Virginia malcontents loudly grumbled, and then marked out the pathway for Calhoun of the past, and Davis and his followers of the present gen eration. The eloquent jurist, Davie, an officer of the Revolution, then a framer of the Constitution, and later in life an ambassador to France, wrote on June 17, 1799: 66 Virginia is the only State of which I despair. My opinions, collected from some gentlemen who have been lately travelling in that State, and others who were at the Petersburg races, present a melancholy picture of that country. These gentlemen returned with a firm conviction that the leaders were determined upon the overthrow of the General Government, and if no other measure would affect it, they would risk it upon the chance of war. "I understand that some of them talk of seceding from the Union;' while others boldly asserted the policy and practicability of severing the Union,' alleging that Pennsylvania will join them; that Maryland will be compelled to change her politics with her situation; that the submission and assistance of North Carolina was counted on as a matter of course, and that the two Southern States would follow. * * "The death of Patrick Henry at this critical period is much to be lamented. Had he lived, I am persuaded he would have convinced the people of Virginia that it was the conduct of the Legislature, not any change in his opinions, that was the Why add more? Sufficient has been quoted to show that Washington, Henry Lee, John Marshall, and Patrick Henry believed that allegiance to the United States was supreme, and that incipient treason was prevalent. But some one may ask, while it may be true that they were in favor of strongly supporting the Government, would they have sympathized with the distinctive act of our late President, the emancipation of slaves in the rebellious States? We think that to this measure they would have given a cordial support. They knew full well that slavery was an incubus on their prosperity; that it made many improvident negroes and more poor whites, and a few pampered and bloated men, falsely styled aristocrats. They felt the more speedily the system was abrogated the better for all concerned. Hence, to put an end to the slave trade, and at the same time accommodate the prejudices of South Carolina and Georgia, it was provided in the Constitution that slave importations should cease after twenty years. Mason, the distinguished ancestor of the degenerate descendant, and notorious associate of Slidell in a late rebel embassy at Paris, in his objections to the Constitution of the United States, published in 1787, complained that "the general Legislature is restrained from prohibiting the further importation of slaves for twenty odd years, though such importations render the United States weaker, more vulnerable, and less capable of defence." Washington not only specially enjoined in his will that all of his slaves should be free, but while living was always ready to aid in effort for their emancipation. Coke, a graduate of Oxford, a doctor of civil law, a presbyter of the Church of England, the associate of Wesley, and first bishop in the United States, thus describes a visit to Mount Vernon in 1785: "He received us very politely and was very open to access. He is quite our plain country gentleman. After dinner we desired a private interview, and opened to him the grand business on which we came, presenting to him our petition for the emancipation of the negroes, and entreating his signature if the eminence of his situation did not render it inexpedient. "He informed us that he was of our senti ments, and had signified his thoughts on the subject to most of the great men of the State; that he did not see it proper to sign the petition, but if the Assembly took it into consideration would signify his sentiments to the Assembly by letter." With such opinions, who can doubt that our Fathers, who framed the Constitution, would have been willing not only to fight treason hand to hand, but also to kill slavery for the sake of preserving the Union? If the views of the early patriots of the South had not been carefully concealed, or artfully distorted by ambitious partisan leaders, the world would never have witnessed the terrible delusion which has brought sorrow and crying and penury into so many households. Believing that they erred from the good old ways of our Fathers, that they were suffering from political insanity, we wrestled with the insurgents as a man with a maniacal brother. The nation did not in Pharisaic pride gloat over their defeat. The words of one, formerly the wife of the owner of a South Carolina slave plantation -a woman who had there learned that slavery was an accursed thing-expressed the feelings of the army and citizens of the United States: leaves; and we are ready in every fair, and regular, and constitutional method to admit them to the privileges purchased by the blood, toil, and treasure of our common ancestors. We hope the day is not far distant when the representatives of the South, recognizing the sentiment of the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are free and equal," shall be clothed in their right minds, and sit in Congress with those from the East, and West, and North; when they shall adopt the memorable language of the martyr for the Union, whom they have already learned to honor and will yet learn to love: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.” From the Spectator. WOMEN'S TACT. THE reappearance of Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures in an edition de luxe, with embossed binding, and tinted paper, and illustrations by Mr. Charles Keene, is a curious literary incident. Messrs. Bradbury and Evans seldom make mistakes in their estimate of popular taste, or we should have argued à priori that such a book was certain not to sell. Unmarried men would not buy it, as having small interest for them, and married men would feel a delicate hesitation lest its purchase should be taken as a gentle reproof to their wives. A priori arguments about literature, however, are of of very little value, and as a fact, the lectures are among the very few fugitive papers in Punch which have lived for many years. They were published so long ago that few people under thirty-five have seen them, but the tradition of their humour lingers, and will secure their success even in this luxurious form. Women will purchase them as well as men, and the fact that they will, that they can enjoy the humour without feeling in it a reproach, explains much of their popularity. Every woman thinks she has tact, and sees, what men often do not, that Mrs. Caudle's defect was not temper, or meanness, or jealousy, or any one of the bad qualities which Mr. Jerrold made so broadly comic, but simply want of tact. Mrs. Caudle is in the right nine times out of ten. It is a great deal better for a decent tradesman to avoid card clubs, and little extravagancies, and flirtations, and over much brandy and water, nor is it very unreasonable to warn him not to neglect wealthy relatives, or to ask him not to forget the children's need of a trip to the sea. That is all Mrs. Caudle does, and women who read it think they could do it all, and yet avoid making themselves as ludicrous as Mr. Jerrold's heroine. She nagged, and nagging is universally useful only with maids. She lost her temper occasionally, and the "suffering-angel dodge" is a very much more effective as well as Christian resource. She chose her time badly, and a very little watchfulness will always prevent that mistake, while she was oh! so vulgar. Her absurdity lay in her want of tact, and how easy, think her feminine readers, to display tact! Is it? That is precisely the point upon which we are not clear. Men, and particularly authors, are very fond of conceding tact to women, and almost all women claim it for themselves, till between the consensus and the assumption a very doubtful assertion has become almost an established fact. Half womankind are doubtful of their ability to govern, but no woman at heart disbelieves her ability to "manage," to rule husbands, and children, and servants, without recourse to authority or lapse into fretful bickering. Sometimes the belief is well founded. In the cases where an able woman marries an able husband it is almost always so, for they choose separate domains, and little frictions can be avoided by that self-restraint which is not strictly tact, but has all its value. In cases where the husband knows his inferiority, or thinks he knows it - a wonderfully common alternative, though repudiated by both sexes the conviction is also well founded. There is but one authority in the end, and the consciousness that there is but one gives the woman the calm which is the very essence of tact. But apart from those two cases, in each of which the woman is assumed to be able, we question whether the palm of tact belongs to the weaker sex. Average women are quicker to perceive than men, but the quickness is compensated by many disadvantages fatal to the development of tact. Few women, especially in England, are quite as good-tempered as men. They are constitutionally more irritable, lead unhealthier lives, and from a paucity of interests exaggerate more the importance of domestic topics. The loss of an umbrella, about which Mrs. Caudle in one lecture makes such a fuss, really seem ed to her something, whereas her husband had his ledger to think of, could even suggest the new purchase which his wife so indignantly repudiates as unheard-of extravagance. The little meannesses of women which men so dislike though without them every house would be an annexe to the Bankruptcy Court all spring from a want of perspective very injurious to tact. Women are not really mean, but the household allowance is to them the income, and they think on a false scale. The little thing is treated in such a large way, so often, and at such length, that the man is irritated by the visible disproportion. He will stand being told that he has acted “so like a man" in losing his umbrella, or playing whist a little too high, or taking a second tumbler, and will think the implied rebuke has its justification, but a whole lecture irritates. Men rarely make this mistake, their habitual blunder being to undertone everything, to make too light of Julia's new frock, and Johnnie's symptoms of measles, and the way they waste things down stairs. That is aggravating enough, and shows want of tact on their part also, But it is easier to bear than household exaggeration. For the same reason, too, they seldom lose temper so quickly, the thing not seeming important enough to be out of temper about. Women, again, watch more closely than men, and watching can speak better, hit the sore places when they want to hit them much harder, and they place less restraint on their power. There are men with this dangerous faculty in perfection, nervous men, sympathetic men, who know exactly what each word will do, but then they are seldom cruel, still seldomer forget the unwritten code which among men, but not among women, saves repartee from degenerating into insult, and the majority cannot hit at all. They laugh at their wives' ignorance, who at heart are a little proud to be ignorant compared with them, or accuse them of jealousy, which unless very bitterly done is but a rough caress, or say they are mean, which good women who never think themselves mean enough receive almost as praise. Then men never by any chance try to play suffering angels, the one device which strikes almost all women as so clever, and the use of which of itself proves their deficiency in tact. It yields victory sometimes, but then every such victory is a victory of injustice, and makes the husband think of Mrs. Caudle and nerves him to ultimate rebellion. Somebody, we suppose Mr. Shirley Brooks, has shown that very well in Punch, in the more refined series of never comprehend why her husband does this or that, why he wants cards, why he likes that oppressive friend, what is his inducement to occasional whimsies, why he cannot, as Mrs. Caudle puts it, be content Caudle lectures called the "Naggletons." | indeed do not comprehend average men. Mrs. Naggleton hits very hard with her You will see a couple live together for thirtongue, but Mr. Naggleton, who oddly ty years, and the wife during all that time enough is made, by an unconscious exercise of dramatic power, a real rather than a typical" character" -can hit back, and does not mind, and only gets into a rage when his wife resigns herself to her fate. All men get into rages when their womenkind resign" with his comfortable fireside," why, above themselves, and the fact that women nevertheless continue to resign themselves seems to us to suggest at least a doubt of their superior tact. all, he things the little Evangelicalisms or Puseyisms which seem to her almost divine so very mean and petty. Why is he, for example, so impatient under that sweet vicar, The main doubt, however, is this. Almost who seems to her to be uttering such meall women think it indispensable, nay more, lodious truth? It is not one woman in a even morally right, nay more, an absolute hundred who can comprehend a theological Christian duty, to " manage" the men proposition — just ask a knot of she-curates about them. Sometimes, though very rare- what they mean by baptismal regeneration ly, husband and wife arrive at a real com- or prevenient grace-but in the English prehension of each other, which makes all middle class there is scarcely a woman who efforts at "management" superfluous, and does not accuse her husband, who has proboccasionally, though much more rarely, a ably worked out his theology as thoroughly mother contrives by aid of her mysterious as his politics, of thoughtlessness or inconinstinct the necessary rapport with her son siderateness as to religious observance. No on most of the relations of life. Not all, for woman, for example, has the faintest notion no mother on earth ever escaped the delu- of Scriptural teaching about oaths, or can sion that her son needed "management" comprehend why her husband pshaws when about his love affairs and his relations to she tells him it is a crime to damn some stupid womenkind generally. Left to himself, with- blunderer. Thousands of married women out gentle pulls at the curb, and touches really think that the club is a device for getof the reins and chirrupings, he would, the ting away from them. Thousands more, partimother thinks, be sure to do something silly. cularly of women brought up without fathers But with these exceptions, there is probably or brothers, fail all their lives to catch the in the United Kingdom no woman who in special points in the idiosyncrasy of the some capacity or other, as wife, or daugh- men they love, on which if they want happiter, or betrothed, or housekeeper, or friend, ness they must be tolerant, rage against or servant, is not trying consciously to man- petty habits such as smoking, fret at small age some one man. Sometimes the manage- lawlessnesses such as late hours, and think in ment is very slight and addressed to trivial- their hearts that safety for both depends on ities, but more fequently it is elaborate, and their own shrewd tact and gentle manage touches every affair of every day. Many ment. They think it by some strange faculty women have a definite theory that in small peculiar to themselves, even while they think things men are fools, that to yield or even the victim all the while first of his sex, defer to compromise on such a point as the to him, and love him hard. The woman who arrangement of a party or the distribu- will implicitly trust her husband in a tion of new furniture is simply to al- bold stroke for fortune or ruin will watch, low the male person to do something silly, and plan, and wheedle, and pout to avoid or extravagant, or in bad taste. There his giving a guinea too much for a toy she never was a great female artist, but there deems a caprice. When she is a lady, she also was never a wife who did not believe cautions, and plans, and hints, when a Mrs. she had a better eye for colour than her Caudle, she lectures, and in either cause husband. Out of the studio Rubens' wife shows deplorable want of tact. For men, would have laughed to herself at his choice in all else thicker-witted than women, are of hangings for her dais. Many more really in this keener of appreciation, and perceive desire, very reasonably, to have in the lit- and resent "management" as they do not tle things of life the "way" which is refus-resent counsel. Let any woman who doubts ed in greater things, and think "manage- it mark how her husband receives an unment" the easiest way to obtain it. But the main cause of all this waste of power is a want of comprehension, leading to a deficiency of tact. Average women very often pleasing remark from a friend and from herself, and then cogitate whether his reasonableness in one case and unreasonableness in the other might not be due to tact. Suppose Mr. Prettyman had wished to advise Caudle not to bail a friend, he would have done it in five "chaffy" words; Mrs. Caudle does it in a lecture; but which is the more effective, the more full of tact? From Macmillan's Magazine. NATURE, AND PRAYER. BY THE REV. J. LLEWLYN DAVIES. THE prayer appointed for use in our churches with reference to the cattle plague and the cholera, appears to have fallen upon a susceptible state of the public mind like a spark upon tinder. It is evident that many thoughtful persons have been much exercised in mind by questions relating to prayer. Not unwilling to pray, they have shrunk from praying blindly. They have wished to feel assured that they could pray reasonably, and without stultifying convictions upon which a main part of their life is built up. Old difficulties and perplexities about prayer have revived, and have assumed what has appeared for the time a more formidable aspect. And whilst these anxieties have been stirring in the minds of the thoughtful, that portion of the religious world which is not troubled by doubts has been disposed to push the use of prayer with a certain importunity, and in a spirit of latent, if not professed, antagonism. There are always people ready to seize with eagerness what they regard as an opportunity "to rebuke the infidel notions of the day." Most likely a strong and early pressure was brought to bear upon the Archbishop and the Ministry to induce them to appoint a public prayer against the cattle plague. "What are the clergy and the authorities doing," I was asked, "that we have no prayer issued for deliverance from the cattle plague?" I expressed a doubt whether the calamity had reached a magnitude which called for so special an act. "Oh, but," the answer was, "it is so important to take these things in time!" The appointment of a prayer which was to be looked to as a kind of a mechanical prophylactic did not seem to me a thing much to be desired; and probably a similar distaste was similarly excited in others. When the prayer came, it certainly was not peculiarly felicitous, but it was not unlike other prayers of the same kind. It was welcome, I fully believe, to a large number of pious persons, who had been very much alarmed by the reports of the disease, and who thought it right that we should publicly deprecate the terrible visitation which had begun to afflict us. But, on the other hand, it excited an almost angry outburst of protest and criticism. Fault was found with details of the prayer, in a tone which shewed plainly that those who found it disliked the whole before they quarrelled with the parts. Then followed reflection and questioning. "If this prayer is wrong, what kind of prayer is right?' Objections have been gravely and even reverently raised; attempts have been made to meet those objections. Laymen have come forward to say that, while they felt that some ordinary kinds of prayer could not be defended in the face of science, and must be abandoned, they yet could not consent to give up prayer altogether. Reasons have been given for discriminating between one kind of prayer and another; and it has also been seen, as is common in similar cases, that those who have given up certain beliefs in deference to argument, think they have thereby purchased right to live unmolested by argument in what they retain. Every one is aware of the ground upon which prayer is commonly objected to at the present time. The uniformity of nature, it is said, makes it impossible that any prayers having for their object a variation in the course of nature should be effectual. The laws of nature, according to all true observation, are constant. There is no greater or less in the matter. To ask that a single drop of rain may fall, is as contradictory to science as to ask that the law of gravitation may be suspended. Prayer, therefore, having reference to anything which comes within the domain of natural laws, is forbidden by modern science. It would be the rashness of mere ignorance and folly to enter the lists against science, or against that principle of the uniformity of nature which is at once the foundation and the crowning discovery of science. Science has been so victorious of late years, and has been adding so constantly to the strengh of its main positions, that it is scarcely safe to doubt anything which is affirmed by cautious and scientific men as a fact within their own domain. But when, from the proper and recognised conclusions of science, inferences are drawn which affect the spiritual life, and threaten destruction to what we have been accustomed to regard as most precious, it cannot be complained of if we scrutinize those inferences carefully. If there is a region of genuine mystery, into which the science of |