I knew that I could spend months, only source whence it could be oband perhaps years, contentedly tained; and while perusing with aviamong my books; so I abandoned dity many volumes, the falsehood of myself to a dreamy and studious whose assertions I could easily deidleness which was consonant to my tect, I neglected the only one which natural disposition. A walk in the is unpolluted by the slightest tincture country became the amusement, and of error. And without the knowreading the business of the day. ledge which this book alone can Peacefully and rapidly fled the afford, the researches of the wise hours: but as I pursued no fixed are worse than useless. How often course of study, I gained no practi- have we seen the child of genius cal proficiency in any branch of overtaken by madness or death in knowledge. I followed just where the very height of his fame, like an the promptings of my fancy led: now eagle struck down in his proudest I was feeding on poetry, and now flight! How often have the spoils threading the labyrinth of metaphy- of learning been swept away, just as sics. At one time my table was their possessor was about adding to covered with mathematical diagrams, them the fragment which he fondly and at another with fragments of conceived was alone wanting to comGreek or Latin verse. At one time plete the heap! From the Bible I was deep in Homer or Plato, and we may satisfy our desire for wisdom at another in the novels of Fielding or Smollett. One hour I was intent on the cold abstractions of Locke, and the next I was absorbed in the amorous reveries of Jean-Jaques. From History and Politics I passed to the Divina Comedia of Dante and the Essais of Montaigne. I dipped into some of the Fathers of the Church, and I hurried through the volumes of Bayle and Voltaire. I This life of unproductive toil could devoured the works of several philo- not last long: my capital rapidly sophical writers, but cared not to declined, and as I had as yet never compare their systems or balance studied economy, I found it very their merits. I felt satisfied if they difficult to restrain my usual habits amused me for a time, and they of expense. Scarcely two years had were generally forgotten as soon as elapsed from the time of my quitting read. I was led to make some at- my uncle when I discovered that tempts at original composition. I all my money was gone. I had commenced disquisitions, poems, made several feeble efforts to obtain and tales; but they were never a situation, but they had proved usecompleted, and the unfinished essay less, and I gave up all endeavours was usually given to the flames. in despair. It was now absolutely There was one book, (I blush to necessary to raise money, for I was acknowledge it,) which I seldom getting in debt. My books I could opened, which I suffered to gather not bear the idea of parting with, dust on my shelves-that book was but I had a valuable watch which I the Bible. Though professing to be determined to render available for seeking for truth, I neglected the my purpose.

with safety and success: he who reads that Book in a proper spirit runs no risk of growing arrogant and conceited; it is a volume which is best studied on the knees; and the more learned the student becomes in its sacred lore, the deeper will be his humility. "To philosophize," says Petrarch, "is to love wisdom: and true wisdom is Jesus Christ."

I shall never forget the horror tion by extravagance. He soon I felt on entering for the first time found me out: and all the mean ina pawnbroker's shop. It was rather solence of his nature was vented upon late in the evening of a rainy day me. While with my uncle my supethat I set out on my hateful errand. rior station and command of money I went to a street at a considerable had compelled him to treat me with distance from my home in order respect; but now Iwas, if possible, that I might not be recognized. I reduced lower than himself, and he found the shop filled with persons appeared to think he could not too who had come there with intentions openly and grossly manifest his consimilar to mine; they were very poor tempt for me. He even accused me and dirty, and mostly females; and of being the cause of his ruin-me, the whole place was strongly redo- whom his pernicious counsels and lent of tobacco and gin. The pain- example had made familiar with sins ful recollections that wrung my heart which I had shuddered at before. rendered me insensible of these It is impossible to tell what I suffered lesser annoyances. There was a from this man during my imprisonchild brought by one of the women ment. My heart was already crushed that kept up an incessant screaming and lacerated by remorse and disapof which the others bitterly com- pointment, and he distilled into its plained: but it did not disturb me ever open wounds the venom of his in the least, and I was even sorry malignity. I now discovered by when it was taken away, for it served painful experience how cruel are the to distract my attention from the tender mercies of the wicked, and tumult raging in my own bosom. I how absurd it is to expect true stood at the counter with my watch friendship from any but the virtuous. in my hands, stupified and silent: The person who had thrown me when my turn to be served came I into prison soon found out, I suppose, was roused from my reverie by the that he could gain nothing by taking shopman, and received a very inade- further proceedings against me: for quate loan on my watch. The sum he declined to prosecute his suit, thus obtained was soon spent and and, having become supersedeable now nothing remained but my books: I was discharged. On regaining my these I parted with, one by one, liberty, I engaged a small room in though the giving up of each volume the neighbourhood of the Prison, was like losing a drop of blood from and abandoned myself to the most my heart. As a crowning point to melancholy forebodings. my misfortunes I found myself arrested for a debt, arising out of some transactions with Saunders, which I was neither morally nor legally bound to pay, and lodged in the King's Bench Prison.

M. N.

AMERICAN SLAVERY.

THE statistical matter connected with this question is as follows:On taking up my quarters in that Making allowance for the probable place, I discovered that Saunders increase since 1830, the date of the was also a prisoner there. I ascer- last enumeration, there are, in the tained that he had been dismissed whole Union, about 14,000,000 of from my uncle's house in conse- people, of whom about a seventh quence of some irregularity and had (2,090,000) are slaves, and near a been brought to his present condi- fortieth (345,000) free people of

colour. The greatest proportion of may well taunt us, and ask how near slaves to whites is that of South we should be to the Emancipation, Carolina, where it is about 16 to 13; perhaps even to the Abolition acts, and the greatest proportion of free people of colour to whites is in Louisiana, where there are nearly five of the former to one of the latter.

Let us now, the facts being stated, recur to the two propositions deduced by the Americans from their representation of the case.

if half the population of Middlesex were negro slaves, and the Parliament had been giving laws to Ireland and not to Jamaica? All this we may safely grant, and it all proves exactly nothing in the question; except which is really very immaterial, that a different tone might As to the right which the peo- have been more becoming than the ple of this country have to inveigh one sometimes taken in discussing against them, we own this appears it. Nay, these topics, if more closely to us a matter of very subordinate examined, prove even less; for they importance. We will admit that are in the nature of the argumentum England has no such right; and we ad hominem; and they assume that will go further, and grant that our the same parties who now complain right is barred, not so much by the of American slave holders and slaalleged fact of the slave system very, defended the traffic and the having been forced upon our Trans- servitude of the British colonies. atlantic brethren, as by our own But the very reverse is the fact. conduct in reference to other parts Whoever now condemns the conof the same great question. We duct of the American Congress, or of ourselves never abolished even the the Southern States, would have condetestable Slave Trade for almost a demned as strongly the legislature quarter of a century after it had of own own country for maintaining, been denounced by the pious and throughout so many years of crime enlightened labours of Clarkson, and suffering, what the special faand twenty years after it had been vourite of that legislature, Mr. Pitt, dragged before the legislature, and termed the 'greatest practical evil thoroughly exposed to the view of that ever afflicted humanity.' Whomankind by the fervent eloquence, ever is now impatient to see the fetand the indomitable zeal of Wilber-ters of the Virginian slave loosened, force. Nay, another quarter of a that they may finally be struck off, century elapsed, after the abolition was agitated with tenfold disquiet of the traffic, before we passed the every hour that the stain rested upon law for extinguishing, and but slowly the British name. To him it is no extinguishing, slavery itself. This answer, that in this country the sorlaw, too, was passed, like the Aboli- did interests of some, the groundless tion acts, not by those who lived in fears of others, the shameful apathy the midst of slaves, like the Ameri- of the rest, maintained a system for cans, but by lawgivers whom the so many years, which the wise and the Atlantic separated from their nearest good had always condemned; and servile colony. The Americans although he may not have had the have, we may admit, some right to good fortune to be placed in circumderide the pharisaical strains of stances which enabled him to shew those among us who look down upon the sincerity and the purity of his them, thankful that we are not as principles, by assenting to the sacrithe men of the Carolinas are. They fice of his interests, and encounter

NATIONS OF ANTIQUITY. After mankind have emerged from the savage state, in which they are almost entirely the creatures of instinct, the education of the young becomes an object of primary concern; hence we find that their interests engaged the attention of the most celebrated governments of antiquity.

ing peril in his person, he has the same right to express his opinion of those who cling to the crimes of the slave system, that all of us assume, in judging of other men's conduct, under temptations to which we have not been ourselves exposed. While, then, we grant that the example of the British legislature ought not to be cited in disparagement of the American; and while and while we freely The learning for which the most allow that the great diversity of ancient nations are celebrated, betheir circumstances, and our own, speaks their regard to general eduought to restrain all violent and cation, although not only the mecontemptuous expressions on our thods of their procedure, but the part, we cannot for an instant admit monuments of Babylonian and Egypthat the body of the argument is tian literature have perished. The affected by a reference to the con- attainments of the latter people are duct of this country; or the differ- referred to repeatedly in the Scripent position in which the lawgivers tures, and Moses is said to have of the Old and New World are been instructed "in all the learning placed, with respect to the subject of the Egyptians." This corrobomatter of the controversy. It must rates the general testimony to their always be recollected, that there knowledge, and shews the regard was to the full as much indignation they paid to the instruction of young felt and expressed in England, men. The first libraries were in against the legislatures of the West Egypt, and they were denominated Indian colonies, as that of which offices for the diseases of the soul, the Americans now complain; and because there the soul was cured yet the situation of those bodies was of the disease of ignorance. Acfar more critical, in regard to this cording to the statements of Xenoquestion, than that even of the phon, in the beginning of his CyroAssemblies of Louisiana and South pædia, the Persians divided their Carolina. The disproportion of citizens into four orders; the boys, blacks to whites, in some of our the youth, the full-grown men, and islands, exceeded twenty-five and those who were advanced beyond even thirty to one; in hardly any the period of military service. For was it less than six or seven to one. each of these, particular halls were Yet the people of this country were appropriated, and each order were all but unanimous in requiring those placed under the inspection of colonies to provide for the gradual twelve rulers. While adults and liberation of their slaves; and the the aged were required to employ voice of the whole civilized world has sanctioned the call.-Edinburgh Review, April, 1836.

OPINIONS AND PRACTICES OF PAGAN

NATIONS.

Ir is worth while to glance at the opinions and practices of the PAGAN

themselves in duties adapted to their season of life, the boys and young men were initiated into a course of instruction which was deemed suitable to render them worthy and useful citizens. The Persians, being ignorant of literature, caused their youth to be taught virtue and bodily

exercises, such as shooting the bow teemed models of excellence; and and launching the javalin. At six- their writings in every branch of teen or seventeen, boys were re- composition have in all ages, to this garded as youth; when they were very day, been looked up to as the frequently led forth to the chace, standard of literary perfection. In and headed by the king as in time sublimity of thought and accuracy of war. By this means they were of reasoning, their philosophers attrained for ten years to the use of tract our admiration; and their weapons, to the endurance of fatigue, poets and orators, if ever they have and to the practice of temperance. been equalled, have never been exThey were then admitted to the celled by any, either in ancient or class of adults, and supposed to be modern times. In the time of Alexqualified for public offices. Though ander, or rather of his father Philip, these people had not very enlight- and the age immediately preceding, ened views on the subject of edu- Greece exhibited a most interesting cation, and though it was their chief spectacle of the highly cultivated object to fit their youth for state state of the human intellect. purposes, without much regard to education of youth was one of the real mental cultivation, still the principal objects attended to by perpoint in view is illustrated, their con- sons of opulence, as without it no cern for the rising generation. one could hope for advancement to civil or military offices, which, by reason of the many different states into which Greece was divided, were very numerous. These considerations were powerful excitements to industry and emulation."

The Cretans, the wisdom of whose laws is so much celebrated, had a public establishment for the education of their youth, of which Minos was the founder. The divisions of their citizens, resembled those of the Persians. They were distinguished for the invention of the Pyrrhic dance, by which their youth were trained to dexterity in military evolutions.

The

The laws of Sparta provided with extreme care for the education of the young; ordaining that it should be public, and common to the rich and to the poor. Lycurgus regarded "The rudiments of philosophy children as belonging more properly and civil polity," observes Mr. Big- to the state than to their parents; land, "and of almost every art and and hence the barbarity of destroyscience which Greece had received ing those who, from any defects, from Egypt, were so well cultivated were judged unfit for the service of and improved by the active and the republic; while only those were penetrating genius of her people, spared by the elders of their tribe that in the space of less than three who could endure a rigourous excenturies from their first application amination. At the age of seven, to the arts and embellishments of domestic education terminated, and civilized society, the Greeks had the state adopted, and committed made so extraordinary progress in them to masters of its own appointarchitecture, painting, statuary, and ment. The strongest attachments other ornamental arts, as well as in to each other, or rather between every kind of literary composition, one and a friend, were encouraged, that they have never yet been sur- which often led to the grossest vices: passed. Their performances in all but these sanctioned intimacies were these kinds have always been es- the least impure in Lacedemon.