THE ONLY THREE COURSES POSSIBLE TO THE SURVIVOR.

First Course.-Distressed, distracted spirit! there are but three courses open to thee, one or other of which you must pursue.

Thou must harden thyself in obdurate impenitency, and in sceptical, atheistic impiety, and in the Godless course of this world-close your eyes, lest they should see-shut your ears, lest they should hear-sear your conscience, lest it should feel -and rush into every excess of riot with greediness.

Second Course.-Ör thou must be crushed under the insuperable weight of your own unbearable remembrances, regrets and remorseful self-condemnings. So it has been with many. Near to Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, stand the trunks of two trees, which mark the spot of a fatal duel, and remain as sad memorials and awful emblems of the guilty parties. The one is blasted, dead, withered, staring with bare and ghastly arms at the other tree, whose few unwithered leaves at top indicate the condition of the survivor, who is now an inmate of a Lunatic Asylum.

Another duel was fought near the City of Washington, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. A distinguished individual challenged his relative, who was once his friend. The challenged party having the choice of weapons, named muskets, to be loaded with buckshot and slugs, and the distance ten paces; avowing, at the same time, his intention and desire that both parties should be destroyed. They fought. The challenger was killed on the spot; the murderer escaped unhurt. Years afterwards, a gentleman was spending the winter in Charleston, South Carolina, and lodged at the same house with this unhappy man. He was requested by the duellist one evening to sleep in the same room with him, but he declined, as he was very well accommodated in his own. On his persisting in declining, the duellist confessed to him, that HE WAS AFRAID TO SLEEP ALONE; and as a friend who usually occupied the room was absent, he would esteem it a great favor, if the gentleman would pass the night with him. His kindness being thus excited, he consented, and retired to rest in the room with this man of fashion and honor, who some years before had stained his hands in the blood of a kinsman. After long tossing on his unquiet pillow, and repeating half-stifled groans, that revealed the inward pangs of the murderer, he sank into slumber, and as he rolled from side to side, the name of his victim was often uttered, with broken words that discovered the keen remorse that preyed like fire on his conscience. Suddenly he would start up in his bed with the terrible impression, that the avenger of blood was pursuing him; or hide himself under the covering, as if he would

escape the burning eye of an angry God, that gleamed in the darkness over him, like lightning from a thunder cloud. For him, there was "no rest, day nor night." Conscience, armed

with terrors, lashed him unceasingly, and who could sleep? And this was not the restlessness of disease, the raving of a disordered intellect, nor the anguish of a maniac, struggling in chains! It was a man of intelligence, education, health and affluence, given up to himself-not delivered over to the avenger of blood to be tormented before his time, but left to the power of his own CONSCIENCE, suffering only what every one may suffer, who is abandoned of God!

We were acquainted with a gentleman, who in early life was, as he thought, compelled to fight with an experienced duellist, and after four or five shots, killed him. And though not mortally wounded in the duel, he was himself killed by it. It killed all peace of mind, all self-respect, all honorabe aspirations. Conscience made him a coward, and fear drove him to the intoxicating bowl, as the opiate for his alarm. He declared that he never could be happy, and he did not, alas! find peace and pardon from an Almighty Saviour. He lived, therefore, a life of shame, and died a drunkard's death, and fills a drunkard's grave.

We have, also, heard of a gentleman, who, with brilliant talents for public life, universal popularity and the most flattering prospect of elevation and glory, was hurried into a duel, by which he rendered a noble patriot miserable for life, and after years of torture, and loss even of mental vigor, brought him to a premature grave. But to himself, the calamitous event was not less disastrous. It drove him from all public life. It destroyed his usefulness. It deprived the country of his invaluable services. It made him a misanthrope. It exiled him from society. It banished him even from the sanctuary of God, and that Society of which he was the proud ornament. He was dead while he lived; and he lived in secluded privacy, though capable of any position and duty, lest he might, by any possibility, be again compelled, by his deference to an infamous code, to destroy the life or usefulness of another patriot, or sacrifice himself upon its bloody and God-denounced altar of blood.

How affecting is the relation of the interview and reconciliation which took place between Col. Cumming, of Georgia, and Mr. McDuffie, whose wound received from the shot of the former, left him in a wretched state of infirmity, which kept him a lingering invalid for the rest of his days. "This reconciliation," says a recent writer, "happened in Augusta, and was brought about by the friendly offices of Mr. John Bones, a gentleman who is well known to do the honors of that hospitable city with

a grace and courtesy, good will, liberality and kindness of heart, which have won for him friendly mention whenever his name is spoken. Mr. McDuffie happened to be in Augusta, and in a state of exhaustion, for he was approaching his closing period; when Mr. Bones persuaded him to his sofa and left him to a temporary repose. In a little while after, Mr. Bones encountered Col. Cumming passing his house. He told him of McDuffie's presence within it, and of his situation, and frankly said to him, 'Go up by yourself, and be reconciled. I know that you harbor no malice, and that he has no single feeling of hostility towards you in his bosom.' The suggestion was as frankly adopted, and acted upon. The parties met as if they never had been enemies. Cummings sat an hour with his prostrate rival, left him with the most amiable feeling, and the tear was in his eye, as he said to Bones, on his departure, 'What would I not do or give to relieve him from this cruel suffering! It was one which his own hand had inflicted, and he bitterly regretted the shot. I do not know that I give you the actual words which were used in the quoted portion of my statement, but the substance, as it reached my ears, is truly stated. Such a reconciliation is one which every biographer will delight to record. It was honorable to all the parties.'

Take another illustration. "Some years since," says Dr. Beecher, "I visited the Philadelphia Asylum. In returning from the apartments, I saw a man standing-fixed-immovable-like a pillar. I asked who it was. I asked who it was. It was the son of Dr. Rush, who killed a man in a duel. There he stood like a pillar. Sometimes he would wake up to recollection; he would pace off the distance, and give the word, Fire! Then cry out, He is dead! he is dead! This was the power of conscience. It had unsettled reason."

His brain is wrecked

Forever in the pauses of his speech,

His lip doth work with inward mutterings,
And his fixed eye is rivetted fearfully

On some thing that no other sight can spy.

Ah! well may such be the sad result of every fatal duel, to every sensitive, and generous, and noble nature. When he thinks of the lonely grave, the mouldering corpse, the untimely death of the murdered victim of his vengeful pride; when he thinks of the wife, or the betrothed, and the parents and children, who may live broken-hearted, or have sunk a prey to unendurable grief; when he thinks that he may have murdered souls as well as bodies, and for eternity as well as time; when he thinks that he may have become the murderer, not of one, but of many—not of others, but also of his own kindred, and of parents as well as children, and of himself, also; when he feels that, like Cain, he carries the mark of the murderer about

him, wander as he will over the earth; when he tries every remedy, and finds that it cannot raze out the written memories of the brain, or heal a broken spirit; when he bathes in every water of human cleansing, and finds that he is as foul and leprous as before; then indeed, would madness be a relief.

I am not mad; I would to Heaven I were!
For then, 'tis like I should forget myself;
O! if I could, what grief should I forget!

The Third and Better Course.-But were I to address such an one, I would say, "Behold I show unto you a more excellent way." It is the way of the Cross; it is the way of penitence and prayer; it is the way of salvation, through an Almighty and an all-sufficient Saviour, a living, loving, merciful Redeemer, whose blood cleanseth from all sin, and who is able to save even the chief of sinners. Come, then, to Him, and find in Him peace and pardon; and power, and grace, sufficient for you, and let your future life testify to your sincerity of repentance, by your earnest efforts to relieve the community of this awful custom, and to repair, in any way in your power, the injury you have done to others.

It is related of Lieutenant Colonel John Blackader, formerly Deputy Governor of Stirling Castle, that though in early life he had been unhappily engaged in a duel, and had killed his antagonist, yet being convinced of its sinfulness, he observed the anniversary of the day with penitence and prayer.

Go, thou, and do likewise. "And what thou doest do quickly, and do with all thy might." Remember Claudius.

Oh! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal curse upon it,

A brother's murder! Pray I cannot,
Though inclination be as sharp as will;
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens,
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy,
But to confront the visage of offence?

And what's in prayer, but this two-fold force

To be forestalled, ere we come to fall,

Or pardon'd, being down? Then I'll look up;

My fault is past. But, O! what form of prayer

Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder?

That cannot be; since I am still possessed

Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon'd, and retain the offences.
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice;
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But 'tis not so above:
There is no shuffling, there the action lies

In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? What rest?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?
O, wretched state! O, bosom black as death!
O, limed soul' that, struggling to be free,

Art more engaged. Help, angels make assay!

Bow, stubborn knees! and, heart, with strings of steel, Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe;

All may be well.