flush into Britannia’s cheek by bullying her stalwart captains, and seeking with ruffian hand to tear to shreds the

“Flag that's braved a thousand years,

The battle and the breeze.” But we taught the lesson to the insolent that British ships, like British soil, are the asylum for the world; and a million golden pounds drained from our coffers was the price we paid to hold our own against those who threatened us with “ the grievousness of war.”

When the year had grown a little older, when the day had worn to its meridian, though, alas! not to a more meridian light, the passenger along the city streets, the lounger in the market-place, and the trader upon 'Change, stopped short in walk, and lounge, and bargain, as the large type on handbill and on telegram told that a favourite's life was in danger, and that the Patriot of the age had fallen. Crafty diplomacy had shuffled the power from the hands of the natural successor of the great Cavour, and given it to a trickster, the tool of emperors, the sycophant of thrones; and the noble, unsuspicious soul of the Liberator, and the donor of crowns, was entrapped into a momentary treason against men to whom it seemed almost merit to be traitor; and just at an hour when his shield was spread to keep back the flow of Italy's brave blood, the unnatural bolt sped from the parricidal trigger of one of the children of the liberty he had begotten,

" And Freedom shrieked as Garibaldi fell!” The plains of Aspromonte, where his blood was shed, and the lazarettos of Spezzia and Pisa, where he has suffered, stand forth as the most memorable of the year's many mementoes of “the grievousness of war."

But here and there a patch of light was visible, which showed that the eclipse was not a total one. And the frightened dove, scared from its transatlantic haunts, sunned her white wings in these congenial spots, and tried to coo forgetfully of darker scenes. The brightest and the warmest of these daylight glimpses shone upon our land, for even in the year of War, Peace built her temple upon A bion's soil. The nations of the earth poured in their tributes rich and costly. The sculptor's noblest handiwork there stood confessed. The painter's speaking canvas told the tale of history, and rehearsed the burden of mythology, and fable, and tradition, in a thousand forms; the pastoral landscape, with the growing corn, the busy mill, the basking flock; the toiling peasantry, and the coy rustic lovers ; the mountain heath wrapped in the misty cloud, where sportsmen ranged amidst the timid deer, or anglers lashed the leaping torrent with the baited line; the rolling ocean tossing the bark upon its surge, or poising it evenly upon its placid breast; green glades of spring, rich meadow lands of summer, red fruits and yellow sheaves of autumn, and white boughs of winter; rough cottage buts and stately palaces, fair cities and colossal temples ; coronations, nuptials, burials; ten thousand phases of art, and nature, and society, were proffered by the cunning limner for the teaching and the admiration of mankind. There, too, the implements of Peace and War ranged side by side—the sword and the pruning-hook, the spear and the ploughshare, the cannon and the spade. There shone the huge engine and the clever loom, contrivances in which the head has shown its mastery over the hand the potent muscles of the mind of man. There smiled the pretty fancies of the Continent, the chaste bijouterie of France, and Austria, and Hungary, and the delicate embroidery which the Switzer maid had spun amongst the valleys of Geneva and Lucerne. Quaint pictured china from the lands beneath the sun, flashing and precious gems from diadems plucked from the brows of Moslem and Sultana, jewellery and gold from the caskets of imperial houses, vessels of graven glass and twinkling crystal, light fabrics from the East and South, hot furs from the Arctic north ; all these were there in dazzling and bewildering profusion. And what from the West P The emperor and the king, the sultan, and the mufti, and the czar; Caffre chiefs and uncouth Hottentots ; black, and red, and white; tutored and savage potentates, had ransacked their dominions to send out an offering to represent the industry or ingenuity of their subjects in this temple of Peace. But we looked almost in vain for a specimen of art or a tribute of goodwill from the West. Was it because the children of the young Republic could not vie with the cunning workmen of the Old World in handicraft! They must have fallen off these last ten years since Hiram Powers adorned our first great temple with the speaking beauty of the Greek slave. No, it was not that which checked the votive offering from our nearest blood relations, and made America give grudgingly or not at all. Her sons can ply the tool as deftly now as ever ; but, alas ! their fingers hold the match, the firebrand, or the trigger, and clutch the sword-hilt with the grasp of wrath. Columbia has no time to trouble herself with the fancies and the dreams of peace; she is too much immersed amidst the gloom and “grievousness of war."

War! and against whom? Sad story! It is not a foreign nation she has made her foe; it is not an intrusive invader she repels from off her coasts ; she bears her stars and stripes into no distant land. The artillery rattles at her own doors; the smoke-wreath floats over her own wide prairies; the red tide mingles with the ripple of her own bright rivers ; and the blood spurts from the veins of her own sons, gashed by his neighbour's blade. It is the battle of the brotherhood! O shade of Washington ! and these are thy United States ! Alas! it is verily a Red Republic ! And what is the quarrel ? What hideous hallucination, what brutish blunder, what monstrous mistake, has changed these brethren all at once into a race of fratricidal Cains? Is it slavery? Nothing of the kind. I know our agitators here would have us almost smile upon this conflict as a blow to cleave the fetters of the slave. It is not so. When did we hear a breath about liberation from the North, where the black man is more contemptuously despised than in the South, until it could be used as the last shift of a murderous and oppressive policy? How can we connect liberty with the embruted ferocity of this unnatural strife, when protocols are issued promising emancipation in one line and re-enthralment in the next? It is a profanation of the holy name of Freedom to whisper it amidst the charnel jargon of this miserable war, Brother may flesh his sword in brother's heart; but though the bristling blades of North and South be hacked and clashed together till the little children sball grow old enough to snatch the passive sword from a dead father's hand, and carry down the legacy of death into another generation, not one of all ihose swords shall fall upon the captive's chain, not one of all those battle yells shall sound the faintest note of freedom to the prisoner in bonds. They may tantalize the slave with disenchainment, but it is but the hue and cry of hollow statecraft, and bodes no true gospel to bis soul. Sympathy with the North! Away with it! Sympathy with the South! Away with it! Infatuate maniacs fighting for a phantasy-18 it not time these weltering blades were sheathed? Have ye not feasted full enough of butchery ? Are ye not drunk enough with blood ? Are ye not hoarse enough with howls of hatred ? Have ye not strangled Commerce, crippled Industry, and patronized Poverty, long enough? Can ye not hear the widow curse ye through her cries! Can ye not see the little orphans strive to hiss their maledictions through their scarce cut teeth ? Can ye not catch the savage murmur from the English artisan as it comes from a million cheerless cottages across the Atlantic wave? A statesman and an orator has lately cast the horc. scope of America, and declared that he sees in the future of that land “ the refuge for the downtrodden of every complexion and of every clime.” God grant it may be so! Would that we could descry the feeblest portent of such a

day! But it needs a stronger than prophetic guess-work to discern it through the smoke, and wrath, and anarchy, which now hang over that land. Strange indeed must be the metamorphosis which shall change the country which has nursed oppression to its most gigantic maturity into an asylum whither the oppressed may fly. Mighty indeed must be the necromancy which shall soften that hard and braggart nature, and make the arm which scourges the arm which shall embrace the slave. Could we but assemble all the swarthy sons of Ham together on one spot, and ask them which of all the countries of the world they would choose last for a refuge and a home, it is not hard to guess the choral answer they would give. Point them to America! Better direct them to some Dead Sea swamp, all feculent with the direst fever which ever scorched the lifetide from the veins; they would fly to it with joy rather than to that grim Gomorrah which fumes with the holocaust of their grandsires' rights. No; let America first concede to others the freedom which she arrogates to herself. Let her grant the independence which she coarsely boasts, yet currishly abuses, before we dream of her as the refuge of the stricken or the sorrowful. And even then it will need the Lethe of centuries to efface the memory of the cursed slavery at which North and South alike connive, and whose crimson stain is thick upon the hands of all their States. America the refuge of the slave! Alas, the day is very distant! When Ethiopia reaches forth her gunburnt arms to God, it will be that she may lift the prayer to be delivered from the thraldom of her stripes, and turn her back for ever on her blood-red stars ! Is memory so weak, that years of bondage, years of chattelage, years of lashings, and of barter, and of ruffian lust, shall die out in a day? Would you or I select the spot where our forefathers groaned under the despot's yoke, as the realm where we would celebrate our freedom? Would not our grandsires' graves cry out for vengeance? Would not each valley find a voice, each mountain raise a moan, each streamlet storm indignant speech? "'Twas here a father felt the lash upon his flesh ; 'twas here the prattling child, who might have been thy companion now, was knocked down for a roll of dollars by a flippant auctioneer; 'twas here a mother in her fairest promise-time, was wrenched out of a husband's clasp, and bartered for a price to feed the avarice and the lust of fiendish traffickers in human flesh.” Would not these sounds be ever rising up from sod and stream, and braying on the breeze which puffed in forest and in field? Oh, if I could but see one ray of hopefulness for the negro, in the cause of either North or South, how fondly would I pray, “ O God, defend the right!” But it is because I see in this vile warfare nothing but dead drunk passion-nothing but one crimson orgie of butchery and blood-because I see alike, in Federal and Confederate, the hater of the slave, the champion of chains, that I can find no solace in the dreary spectacle, no hope for humanity in the issues of this unholy strife.

Politically, no doubt, the weal of nations would be best promoted by the triumph of the Southern arms, and the division of a territory grown unwieldy in its breadth, and ungovernable through the diverse tastes of a population so differently born and trained.

Apart from that, however, Europe meanwhile bewails the spectacle of America in the cauldron of civil war. Looking back through the perspective of dark months, each tells its tale of death. The tide of the western sea has ever dashed dolefully upon our coasts all through the year, like the waves which rung the bell upon the Inchcape Rock as the brave ship went down. And the very last of the Atlantic surges which was flung upon the English cliffs before the year was dead, was the reddest of them all, so that we dare not even try to look onward into the coming time, but can only fold our hands before our eyes, and lift the shuddering cry—“How long, O Lord, how long !” Such is our melapcholy mood through "the grievousness of war.”

Nor is it only at the sight of others' wrongs and feuds we mourn. We weep “for ourselves and for our children." The wicked warfare of the West has paralysed our industry and numbed our commerce here at home. Upon our own rich county hangs the sackcloth of privation. The honest hand whose strong and tireless diligence has earned the bread for wife and child through many years, hangs helpless ; not for want of willinghood, but for want of work. The past year had not grown old before the first paralysis was felt amongst our iron engines; and the fires burned slack, and the great lungs of labour seemed to gasp for breath. Five days a week-four days a week-three days a week : ob, it grows bard to live, to feed that crying child—to keep back ihe hungry wolf. But still the same sad jargon about pitched battles, sieges, and advances—" strategic movements” (which is American for cowardly retreat) —and lists of captured, wounded, and destroyed, come moaning over from the other side the sea. Two days a week—and squalor and emaciation brand their mark upon the people's faces, and pluck the roses from the children's cheeks. One day a week-and body and soul can scarcely hold together, while the last curl of smoke hangs on the chimney of the silent mill, and Holy Charity steps in with outspread hand to interpose the shield between the poor, and gaunt starvation. You know the tale. You have seen and felt its awful meaning. You have hoped against hope, till hope grew sick within you. You have heard the whir of the machinery die gradually away. You have seen the workman and the mill-girl slink home disconsolate from the factory door. You have heard, if you have not seen (and you know its truth), how the mother trembles as the morning steals apace, and gently glides out of her tattered bed to screen the light from her child's cot, lest it should wake and ask for food-how daylight brings a deeper gloom than night, because it brings an appetite for a meal which cannot be procured ;--you know all this and more: and wailing Lancashire is writhing with the smart inflicted by the scourge and “the grievousness of war."

But at least the bygone year stands out in one comely and enticing attitude, and that is as the builder of ten thousand monuments of Christian love and charity. Amidst the crimson rivers of blood which have meandered through the weeks and months, a stream of milk and honey has forced itself a channel, and the blessed tide of sympathy has swollen high and deep. Not merely unavailing tears, but generous gifts of mercy and of brotherly love, have signalised the spirit in which British hearts have met the crisis of the time. May He who stirs these springs of nobler impulse and of purer thought, sustain the liberal flow of help, and aid the rich to build a mighty breakwater to hold off the swelling floods of misery within, and to check the angry dashing of the tide without, which is lashed into fury by “the grievousness of war.”

With such a past, with such a present, how can we look onward? We cannot see up to the battlement, but still the sentry sitteth there amidst the gloom. Ask him, ye trembling expectants by the drawbridge and the moat, “ Watchman, what of the night?” It is an incoherent murmur which replies ; but you can tell it is all darkness, and that no grey earnest of the morning has yet touched the sky. Ask him again. No-down first upon your knees, O Christian Church, and pray for daylight. Now-speak again : “ Watchman, what of the night?” Is it dark still ? What!-no relief! Again betake thyself to that trusty refuge of all-prayer ; pray earnestly, cry mightily, strive sturdily, pray without ceasing. Now gather breath before you say, Amen; and without straightening the suppliant knee, cry—" Watchman, what of the night?” The answer comes—I see the silver lining on yon eastern cloud, bright portent of the rising of the sun, Pray on. O God, thy kingdom come! “Watchman! what now—what of the night?" Night! nay, look up. Can you not see the watcher's blood-shot eye, and his pale face flushed with the reddening glow ? The sun climbs higher. It bursts on England, and displays her cottages all filled with plenty; her commerce active through the world ; her hungry ones all fed with fair abundance; and her laden garners promising enough and to spare. It shines on distant India and China, and shows the idols falling, the Dagons breaking, and the Gospel of Christ's love emancipating every soul. It breaks upon the savage lands afar, and shows their peoples softening into Christian men. It blazes on the mosques and crescents of the Moslem; and, behold, the false prophet dies in the excess of uncongenial light. It flings its ray on Rome, and the scales fall from the eyes of her long-benighted sons. Its light creeps further west, and glitters on Atlantic waves no longer red. It blushes on America; and, behold, the stripes are cut from her escutcheon, and only the stars remain--for she

" Hangs the helmet in the hall,

And studies war no more.” The prisoner darts forth out of his cell into the blessed day; the driver in the rice-swamp flings aside the whip ; and the last sable bondsman breaks his chain : and while heaven and the firmament declare the glory of God, the dilatory globe finds voice to speak his praise; while the sound is heard singing “Glory to God in the highest," the dumbness ceases from a tongue-tied world, as the echo answers, “ Peace on earth, and good-will to man.” “For the kingdoms of this world SHALL become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ!”

me.”

IMITATION AND ADORATION.

BY THE REV. J. cox.* " Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation : Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”--Heb. xiii. 7, 8.

THESE words are certainly suitable to an individual saint of old are the heritage the solemn occasion on which we meet, of every believer in all ages. “So that we and I trust also they will be found adapted may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, to all our feelings. They are calculated to and I will not fear what man shall do unto cheer us under our recent bereavement, to teach us how to improve the solemn In our text he calls on this favoured event, and to exalt our minds above all the flock to lie down and chew the oud of triumphs of death to Him who is “the first truth, bearing in grateful remembrance and the last, and the living one who became those who ministered it to them, cherishing dead; who is alive to the ages of ages, and high resolves to cling to the truth they has the keys of Hades and of the grave," taught, and to follow them in all that was even “ Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, “lovely and of good report;" but, above all, and to-day, and for ever.”

and in connection with all, he would have The apostle in this connection, like a

them look up adoringly to Him who is the wise shepherd, is leading his flock into theme of all Heaven-taught teachers, the green pastures. He is calling them away unchanging and perfectly excellent One. from wandering in the wilderness of anxious We think that the first verse of our text care to a simple resting in God's promises. refers to those godly pastors and teachers “Let your conversation be without covet who had finished their course and entered ousness; and be content with such things on their rest. Many critics, with Dr. as ye have: for he hath said, I will never Doddridge, thus view the text, and render it leave thee, nor forsake thee.” He thus as follows: "Remember them who have pre. teaches us that promises specially made to | sided, or had the rule over you, who have