and theologians, not omitting the correspondence between literary men, the laws and regulations, civil and ecclesiastical, and whatever records the industry of antiquarians has brought to light in their provincial, municipal, and monastic histories :-tall tomes and huge! undegenerate sons of Anak, which look down from a dizzy height on the dwarfish progeny of contemporary wit, and can find no associates in size at a less distance than two centuries; and in arranging which the puzzled librarian must commit an anachronism in order to avoid an anatopism.

Such of these illustrations as most amused or impressed me, when I heard them (for alas! even his very title pages and contents my friend composes only in air!) I shall probably attempt to preserve in different parts of these Omniana. At present I shall cite one article only which I found wafered on a blank leaf of his memorandum book, superscribed:

66

Flattering news for Anno Domini 2000, whenever it shall institute a comparison between itself and the 17th and 18th centuries." It consists of an extract, say rather, an exsection from the Kingston Mercantile Advertiser, from Saturday, August the 15th, to Tuesday, August 18th, 1801. This paper which contained at least twenty more advertisements of the very same kind, was found by accident among the wrapping-papers in the trunk of an officer just returned from the West India

station. They stand here exactly as in the original, from which they are reprinted :—

Kingston, July 30, 1801.

Ran away, about three weeks ago, from a penn near Halfway Tree, a negro wench, named Nancy, of the Chamba country, strong made, an ulcer on her left leg, marked D. C. diamond between. She is supposed to be harboured by her husband, Dublin, who has the direction of a wherry working between this town and Port Royal, and is the property of Mr. Fishley, of that place; the said negro man having concealed a boy in his wherry before. Half a joe will be paid to any person apprehending the above described wench, and delivering to Mr. Archibald M' Lea, East end; and if found secreted by any person, the law will be put in force.

Kingston, August 13, 1801.

Strayed on Monday evening last, a negro boy of the Moco country, named Joe, the property of Mr. Thomas Williams, planter, in St. John's, who had sent him to town under the charge of a negro man, with a cart for provisions. The said boy is, perhaps, from 15 to 18 years of age, about twelve months in the country, no mark, speaks little English, but can tell his owner's name; had on a long Oznaburg frock. It is supposed he might have gone out to vend some pears and lemon-grass, and have lost himself in the street. One pistole will be paid to any person apprehending and bringing him to this office.

Strayed on Friday evening last, (and was seen going up West Street the following morning), a small bay

HORSE,

the left ear lapped, flat rump, much scored from the saddle on his back, and marked on the near side F. M. with a diamond between. Whoever will take up the said horse, and deliver him to W. Balantine, butcher, back of West Street, will receive the above reward.

Kingston, July 4, 1801. Strayed on Sunday morning last, from the subscriber's house, in East Street, a bright dun He-Mule, the mane lately

cropped, a large chafe slightly skinned over on the near buttock, and otherwise chafed from the action of the harness in his recent breaking. Half a joe will be paid to any person taking up and bringing this mule to the subscriber's house, or to the Store in Harbour Street. JOHN WALSH. Kingston, July 2, 1801.

Ten pounds Reward,

Ran away

About two years ago from the subscriber, a Negro woman named

DORAH,

purchased from Alexander M'Kean, Esq. She is about 20 years of age, and 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high; has a mark on one of her shoulders, about the size of a quarter dollar, occasioned, she says, by the yaws; of a coal black complexion, very artful, and most probably passes about the country with false papers and under another name; if that is not the case, it must be presumed she is harboured about Green pond, where she has a mother and other connexions.

What a history! horses and negros! negros and horses! It makes me tremble at my own nature. Surely, every religious and conscientious Briton is equally a debtor in gratitude to Thomas Clarkson and his fellow labourers with every African for on the soul of every individual among us did a portion of guilt rest, as long as the Slave Trade remained legal.

A few years back the public was satiated with accounts of the happy condition of the slaves in our colonies, and the great encouragements and facilities afforded to such of them, as by industry and foresight laboured to better their situation. With what truth this is stated as the general tone of feeling among our planters, and their agents, may be conjectured from

the following sentences, which made part of what in England we call the leading paragraph of the same newspaper :

Strange as it may appear, we are assured as a fact, that a number of slaves in this town have purchased lots of land, and are absolutely in possession of the fee simple of lands and tenements. Neither is it uncommon for the men slaves to purchase or manumize their wives, and vice versa, the wives their husbands. To account for this, we need only look to the depredations daily committed, and the impositions practised to the distress of the community and ruin of the fair trader. Negro yards too, under such direction, will necessarily prove the asylum of runaways from the country.

TEXT SPARRING.

WHEN I hear (as who now can travel twenty miles in a stage coach without the probability of hearing) an ignorant religionist quote an unconnected sentence of half a dozen words from any part of the Old or New Testament, and resting on the literal sense of these words the eternal misery of all who reject, nay, even of all those countless myriads, who have never had the opportunity of accepting this, and sundry other articles of faith conjured up by the same textual magic; I ask myself what idea these persons form of the Bible, that they should use it in a way in which they themselves use no other book? They deem the whole written by inspiration. Well! but is the very essence of rational discourse, that is, connec

tion and dependency done away, because the discourse is infallibly rational? The mysteries, which these spiritual lynxes detect in the simplest texts, remind me of the 500 nondescripts, each as large as his own black cat, which Dr. Katterfelto, by aid of his solar microscope, discovered in a drop of transparent water.

But to a contemporary who has not thrown his lot in the same helmet with them, these fanatics think it a crime to listen. Let them then, or far rather, let those who are in danger of infection from them, attend to the golden aphorisms of the old and orthodox divines. "Sentences in scripture (says Dr. Donne) like hairs in horses' tails, concur in one root of beauty and strength; but being plucked out, one by one, serve only for springes and snares."

The second I transcribe from the preface to Lightfoot's works. "Inspired writings are an inestimable treasure to mankind; for so many sentences, so many truths. But then the true sense of them must be known: otherwise, so many sentences, so many authorized falsehoods."

PELAGIANISM.

OUR modern latitudinarians will find it difficult to suppose, that any thing could have been said in the defence of Pelagianism equally absurd with the facts and arguments which