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Before reaching the next Quaker station, the slave-hunters are upon them, but after a struggle, of which we have an exciting description, they escape, and ultimately make their way to the shores of Lake Erie, and well disguised, pass on board the steamer under the very eyes of their pursuers.

'But the boat swept on-hours fleeted, and, at last, clear and full rose the blessed English shore-shores charmed by a mighty spell-with one touch to dissolve every incantation of slavery, no matter in what language pronounced, or by what national power confirmed.

George and his wife stood arm in arm as the boat neared the small town of Amherstburg, in Canada. His breath grew thick and short; a mist gathered before his eyes; he silently pressed the little hand that lay trembling on his arm. The bell rang-the boat stopped. Scarcely seeing what he did, he looked out his baggage, and gathered his little party. The little company were landed on the shore. They stood still till the boat had cleared; and then, with tears and embracings, the husband and wife, with their wondering child in their arms, knelt down and lifted up their hearts to God!

"'Twas something like the burst from death to life;
From the grave's cerements to the robes of heaven;
From sin's dominion, and from passion's strife,

To the pure freedom of a soul forgiven;
Where all the bonds of death and hell are riven,
And mortal put on immortality,

When Mercy's hand hath turned the golden key,

And Mercy's voice hath said, 'Rejoice, thy soul is free."'

Leaving the noble pair, so worthy of each other, on the threshold of a new and more blessed life, let us now return to Uncle Tom. The time had come for him to be carried down south'-—a doom more dreaded by the negro than whipping or torture. Here is a portion only of the most touchingly described parting scene

Tom sat by, with his Testament open on his knee, and his head leaning upon his hand; but neither spoke. It was yet early, and the children lay all asleep together in their little rude trundle-bed. He got up and walked silently to look at his children."

"It's the last time," he said."

Aunt Chloe did not answer, only rubbed away over and over on the coarse shirt, already as smooth as hands could make it; and finally setting her iron suddenly down with a dispairing plunge, she sat down to the table, and "lifted up her voice and wept."

"S'pose we must be resigned; but, O Lord! how ken I? If I know'd anything whar you's goin', or how they'd sarve you! Missis says she'll try and 'deem ye, in a year or two; but Lor! nobody never comes up that goes down thar! They kills 'em! I've hearn 'em tell how dey works 'em up on dem ar plantations."

"There'll be the same God there, Chloe, that there is here."

"Well," said Aunt Chloe, "s'pose der will; but de Lord lets drefful things happen, sometimes. I don't seem to get no comfort dat way."

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I'am in the Lord's hands," said Tom; "nothin' can go no furder than he let's it; and thar's one thing I can thank him for. It's me that's sold and going down, and not you nur the chil'en. Here you're safe; what comes will come only on me; and the Lord, he'll help me-I know he will."

Ah, brave, manly heart, smothering thine own sorrow, to comfort thy beloved ones! Tom spoke with a thick utterance, and with a bitter choking in his throat-but he spoke brave and strong.

"Let's think on our marcies!" he added, tremulously, as if he was quite sure he needed to think on them very hard indeed.

"Marcies!" said Aunt Chloe, " don't see no marey in't! t'ant right! t'ant right it should be so! Mas'r never aught ter left it so that ye could be took for his debts. Them as sells heart's love and heart's blood, to get out thar scrapes, de Lord'll be up to 'em!"

"Chloe! now, if ye love me, ye won't talk so, when perhaps jest the last time we'll ever have together! And I'll tell ye, Chloe, it goes agin me to hear one word agin mas'r."

"Wal, any way, thar's wrong about it somewhar," said Aunt Chloe, in whom a stubborn sense of justice was a predominant trait; "I can't jest make out whar't is, but thar's wrong somewhar, I clar o' it."

"Yer ought ter look up to the Lord above; he's above all-thar don't a sparrow fall without him."

In going down the Mississippi, Haley sells Tom to Mr. St. Clare, whose daughter's life he had saved during the voyage, and we are introduced to new scenes and characters, upon which the authoress would seem to have expended her utmost skill, and into which she has infused the very soul of pathos.

St. Clare is a man of talent, education, and refinement, with a native sensitiveness only repressed by early disappointments and epicurean tastes, having nothing to say for slavery in the abstract, and a profound contempt for all defences of it on scriptural grounds. His wife is a beautiful, but a cold, heartless, selfish woman, and a valetudinarian on principle. Miss Ophelia, his sister, is a New England spinster, sharp, decided, and energetic, a peerless housekeeper-conscientious to the extent of being the bond-slave of the ought'-wellmeaning but narrow, and having a rooted prejudice against the coloured race. The daughter of St. Clare, Evangeline, is an exquisite conception of youthful beauty, grace, and child-piety-the idol of her father and the delight of all around her.

Again was our friend Tom fortunately circumstanced, but sorrow was about to find its way here also. Eva, Tom's young mistress, but his pupil in spiritual things, was marked for early death, and since the day when tears streamed down our cheeks, reading the unrivalled Little Henry and his Bearer,' we have met with nothing to equal in heart-moving tenderness, the story of her declining strength and peaceful death.

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Here is the last sad scene of all."

"Go for the doctor, Tom! lose not a moment," said Miss Ophelia; and, stepping across the room, she rapped at St. Clare's door.

"Cousin," she said, "I wish you would come."

Those words fell on his heart like clods upon a coffin. Why did they? He was up and in the room in an instant, and bending over Eva, who still slept.

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'Marie, roused by the entrance of the doctor, appeared hurriedly from the next

room.

"Augustine! Cousin !-Oh!-what?" she hurriedly began. "Hush!" said St. Claire hoarsely; "she is dying!"

'Mammy heard the words, and flew to awaken the servants. The house was soon roused-lights were seen, footsteps heard, anxions faces thronged the verandah, and looked tearfully through the glass doors; but St. Clare heard and said nothing he saw only that look on the face of the little sleeper.

"Oh, if she would only wake, and speak once more!" he said; and, stooping over her, he spoke in her ear-" Eva, darling!"

The large blue eyes unclosed-a smile passed over her face; she tried to raise her head, and to speak.

"Do you know me, Eva?"

""Dear papa," said the child with a last effort, throwing her arms about his neck. In a moment they dropped again; and, as St. Clare raised his head, he saw a spasm of mortal agony pass over the face-she struggled for breath, and threw up her little hands.

"Oh God, this is dreadful!" he said, turning away in agony, and wringing Tom's hand, scarce conscious what he was doing. "Oh Tom, my boy, it is killing me!"

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Tom had his master's hands between his own; and, with tears streaming down his dark cheeks, looked up for help where he had always been used to look. "Pray that this may be cut short!" said St. Clare; "this wrings my heart!' "Oh, bless the Lord! it's over-it's over, dear master!" said Tom; "look at her."

"The child lay panting on her pillows, as one exhausted-the large clear eyes rolled up and fixed. Ah, what said those eyes that spoke so much of heaven? Earth was passed, and earthly pain; but so solemn, so mysterious, was the triumphant brightness of that face, that it checked even the sobs of sorrow. They pressed around her, in breathless stillness.

"Eva!" said St. Clare gently.

'She did not hear.

"Oh Eva, tell us what you see!

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A bright, a glorious smile passed over her face, and she said, brokenly— "Oh! love-joy-peace! gave one sigh, and passed from death unto life!

"Farewell, beloved child! the bright, eternal doors have closed after thee; we shall see thy sweet face no more. Oh, woe for them who watched thy entrance into heaven, when they shall wake and find only the cold grey sky of daily life, and thou gone for ever!"

St. Clare, on whom the death of his daughter had made a salutary impression, had resolved to free his slaves; but, alas, ere the resolve was executed, he, too, was carried off, and his whole negro establishment was handed over to the auctioneer. Poor Tom, his hopes of freedom dashed to the ground, now fell into the hands of a brute, and -but we cannot even condense the harrowing recital of the cruelties he endured-of his unrepining submission-of his brave strugglings against atheistic doubts, suggested by God's apparent abandonment of him—and, finally, of his martyr-like preference of death to the betrayal of two of his escaped fellow-sufferers.

And the writer of these heart-rending narratives vouches herself as a true witness, the separate incidents being, to a great extent, authentic, and many of them coming under her own observation, or that of her friends, and the characters have their counterparts in real life. But she

'Has only given a faint shadow, a dim picture, of the anguish and despair that are at this very moment riving thousands of hearts, shattering thousands of families, and driving a helpless and sensitive race to frenzy and despair. There are those living who know the mothers whom this accursed traffic has driven to the murder of their children, and themselves to seek in death a shelter from woes more dreaded than death. Nothing of tragedy can be written, can be spoken, can be conceived, that equals the frightful reality of scenes daily and hourly acting on our shores, beneath the shadow of American law, and the shadow of the cross of Christ.'

God grant that her impassioned appeal to the sons and daughters of

America, with which she fitly closes, may not be made in vain! And may our own countrymen and country women feel their spirits stirred within them, to exert whatever influence they may be able to bring to bear on public opinion across the Atlantic. To them, also, may be applied the language in which she has addressed the Christian men and women of the North.

You have another power, you can pray! Do you believe in prayer? or has it become an indistinct apostolic tradition? You pray for the heathen abroad, pray also for those distressed Christians whose whole chance of religious improvement is an accident of trade and sale-from whom any adherence to the morals of Christianity is, in many cases, an impossibility, unless they have given them from above the courage and grace of martyrdom.'

Jubilee of the Sunday School Aniou.

WE regret to have omitted in our last number a notice of a meeting of the committee and friends of the Sunday-school Union, held at Surrey Chapel, on the 14th of July. At the meeting in question, after a statement by the secretary, that the succeeding would be the jubilee year of the institution, it was resolved to celebrate this important anniversary of the Society's operations by the erection of a new and commodious hall, in which to carry on the future business of the Union. We trust that this event may inaugurate a new era in the Society's operations, and that it may stimulate the friends of Sundayschools everywhere to increased exertions in behalf of this great modern institution.

The responsibility of Christians in relation to the religious training of the youth of our country, is evidently becoming increasingly felt, and the way in which the recognition of duty in this respect has been manifesting itself of late years, we regard as one of the most hopeful signs of the times. Patriotism and piety together require that this should be so. The love of God, and the lesser love of country, both demand, that the possessors of the gospel of Christ should hasten to rescue the rising race from the evils which their fathers have suffered through ignorance and sin. Christians alone have it in their power to present adequately antidoting motives. On them it is incumbent more than on others, that they should 'teach.' Not in secular (however important) but in sacred knowledge-that knowledge which maketh wise unto salvation-lies the true power of antagonism to moral evil. Many of the faithful '-though feebly as yet-are wielding that power. There are now scattered in groups over the length and breadth of the land, nearly two hundred thousand Christian young men and women, engaged in dropping the seeds of eternal truth into the minds of two millions of children. We will not by a word exag

gerate this fact. The unprejudiced contemplation of it will produce all the effect we desire. It should, however, be borne in mind in connexion with it-that these two hundred thousand teachers are all voluntary agents-that is, they are unpaid and self-devoted. They employ a considerable part of fifty-two days in the year, to their actual work of teaching, and very many of them appropriate a large additional portion of time to necessary preparation, and to visiting the abodes of the children. Without referring further to the details of these labours, we venture the statement, which we could amply vindicate, that they present an aggregate amount of self-denial and self-sacrifice, scarcely equalled by any other class. Making every necessary deduction for the short-comings of Sunday-school teachers, it must be admitted that they are our largest and most important body of Home Missionaries. Their efforts have already told with effect upon a considerable portion of the community, and from their ranks have been drawn some of the most devoted and successful of the missionaries to foreign lands. Within little more than fifty years has this army of volunteers sprung up to do battle with ignorance and sin. Its numbers are constantly augmenting, and experience, forethought, and union, will gradually increase its efficiency. The spirit which in the main animates it assures us of this, and that it will more and more adapt its method and means to the attainment of its great ends. We believe it may, nay, that it must, become the chief of all the agencies for extending the Redeemer's kingdom. Meanwhile, the teachers will do well occasionally to forget their isolation, and think of themselves as a body, and their work as a power in the world. By doing so they will the better apprehend the vast importance of their position, the better see the need of greater personal qualifications, and of adopting such plans as will facilitate the most natural exercise of their individual and collective influence upon the minds and hearts of those they instruct. Hitherto the Sunday-school system has exhibited more mechanism than life-more of form than of spirit. It is too great a reflection of our mode of action by other religious appliances. It runs too much in the old rut. Hence its success is not commensurate with the expenditure of means, nor ever will be until great improvements are effected. It is not, however, like some things, hoary and heavy with age, and now is the time to raise its character.

The Hall which it is proposed to erect will include lecture, class, library, and reading-rooms, and publishing offices. A considerable sum -probably twenty-five thousand pounds-must be subscribed for this purpose. We believe the amount will be easily obtained, and a large proportion of it (as it ought to be) in the metropolis. Schools in the country derive great advantage from the operations of the Union, and will, no doubt, furnish their due share of contributions, but the schools in London will primarily benefit by the erection of the proposed building, and the thirteen thousand teachers at work in this great centre of influence and activity must, by appeals to the friends of religious education, obtain the largest amount of subscriptions, if they cannot raise the entire sum. Of the general scheme we heartily approve, and hope to share

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