It is high time that all party feeling and petty prejudice and jealousies be done away, and that men of intelligence in all nations set an example of striving for the things that make for peace and things whereby they may improve and edify each other. And may God graciously vouchsafe to the nations of the earth such wisdom that they may see it to be their own best interest to prefer the solid advantages of peaceful enterprise to the ambitious projects of territorial dominion! "Hush down the sound of quarrel, let party names alone, In battle with the mammon host, join peasant, clerk, and lord, "The time is not come for me yet," says the Earl of Carlisle, "if ever it should come, to make me feel myself warranted in forming speculations upon far results, upon guarantees for future endurance and stability. All that I can now do is to look and to marvel at what is before my eyes. I do not think I am deficient in relish for antiquity and association. I know that I am English, not in a pig-headed adhesion to everything there, but in heart to its last throb. Yet I cannot be unmoved or callous to the soarings of young America-in such legitimate and laudable directions too; and I feel that it is already not the least bright, and may be the most enduring title of my country to the homage of mankind, that she has produced such a people. May God employ both for his own high glory!" To conclude: while men of commerce look at the mercantile worth of the spices of the United States, its jewels, grain, sugar, cotton, indigo, tobacco, woods, drugs, and perfumes; while the naturalist pores enamoured over its Fauna, its Flora, and its mineralogy, the philosophic christian traces with delight tional glut of the labour market this year in the sea-board cities, consequent on commercial depression, have all given food for this new agitation. The principle asserted in this society is that of nationality. The manifesto after-1st., disavowing all religious intolerance, is as follows:-2nd. Each member must be a Protestant, born of Protestant parents, reared under Protestant influence; and if he is united to a Roman Catholic wife he is not eligible to any office. The 3rd Article defines the objects of the Church of Rome and other foreign influence, and protects the institutions of the country by placing all offices in the gift of the people, or by their appointment, none but native-born Protestant citizens. The oaths are most solemn; every "know nothing" thereby binds himself to exclude a large number of bis fellow-citizens from all share in the administration,-exclusion from all share in the Government, &c.,—and the deprivation of the franchise will be a natural consequence.-Westminster Review, July, 1855, p.p. 196, &c. CHRISTIAN ASPIRATIONS. 395 the power it has benignly swayed over the social state of a great portion of mankind; the ways innumerable in which that power is now pervading all civilised life; and the certainty every day growing clearer that hence will spring changes, social and religious, which, for the magnitude of the spheres affected, the value of the benefits conferred, and the splendour of the subsequent career ensured, will cause the United States to shine without a parallel in the galaxy of nations. CUBA AND THE CUBANS. CHAPTER XXVIII. Geographical POSITION.-Extent. History. Description of Havanna. Religion. Morals. General character of inhabitants. Origin. Slavery. Piracy. Government. Present equivocal destiny of the island. Army and navy. Revenue. "How enchanting to the senses, at least," says the Earl of Carlisle, were the three weeks I spent in Cuba! How my memory turns to its picturesque forms and balmy skies!" and he thus poetically apostrophises the beautiful scenery of the island: "Ye tropic forests of unfading green, Where the palm tapers and the orange glows, Where the light bamboo weaves her feathery screen, "Ye cloudless ethers of unchanging blue, "Yet tell me not my native skies are bleak, That, flushed with liquid wealth, no cane fields wave; And nature's glories brighten round the slave." CUBA, styled the "Queen of the Antilles," and the "Gem of the American Seas," or "La Siempre Fiel Isla de Cuba," as it is grandiloquently styled in all Spanish documents, was discovered by Columbus, October 28th, 1492, in his first voyage to the west after discovering St. Salvador, one of the Lucayos or Bahama Isles. Its figure is long and narrow, approaching that of a crescent, with its convex side looking towards the Arctic Pole; its west portion lying between Florida and the peninsula of Yucatan-the north-east promontory of South America. It is supposed to have been united to this part of the continent of South America by an isthmus, but now two entrances into the Gulf of Mexico are presented, formed by the action of the waters of the Caribbean Sea;-the one to the south between Cape Catoche and Cape St. Antonio; and the other to the north, between Bahia Honda and Florida. Cuba is about ninety-five miles from the nearest point of Jamaica; from Haiti fifty miles; about one hundred and twenty miles from the coast of Tobasco and Yucatan in Mexico; and one hundred and fifty miles from Florida. Like Jamaica, and most of the other islands of the Archipelago generally, it is intersected by a chain of mountains passing east and west; which chain (called Montanus del Cobre, or Snake Mountains), partaking of the curvature of the island, and sloping on each side towards the coast, raises itself up in its highest elevation about seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea. It is situated in 23.9 north latitude, and 82.2 west longitude; and is seven hundred and eighty miles in length, by about fiftytwo miles in medial breadth; containing a superficial area of fortythree thousand five hundred square miles, being nearly equal in extent to all the other islands united. The largest and most important island attached to Cuba is the Isle of Pines, called by Columbus, who discovered it in 1494, Evangelista, situated on the south. side of the island, about half the size of Long Island in the United States. Cuba was originally, and is at the present time, though now almost the only one, the most flourishing of the Spanish settlements in the New World, and is the largest of those that constitute the Columbian Archipelago. The earliest period at which anything was heard respecting this island that particularly attracted the attention of Europe was in 1518, when Cortez sailed from it with six hundred and twenty men for his expedition to Mexico, under the direction of Velasquez. The latter was one of the companions of Columbus, and the first Deputy-Governor of Cuba, under Don Diego Columbus; and it was by the authority of the latter that Velasquez effected its conquest from the natives, who for a time bravely defended their lovely isle under their celebrated cazique or chief, Hatuay. The circumstances attending this invasion were of great atrocity, especially in relation to this celebrated Indian. Being taken prisoner, he was ordered by Velasquez to |