through the gates into the heavenly city, a crown of gold, and a seat at the right hand of the final Judge." To many this plan appears monstrous! nothing better than buying indulgences, by which papists strive to obtain the pardon of sin, or a licence to indulge their unhallowed passions. It appears to be in harmony with popery, and every other false religion; but our Bible teaches us that the crown of life is a gift, not to be gained as a reward of works; a gift of unmerited, infinite GRACE. NO JEW FARMERS.-The Friend, published at Honolulu, Sandwich Islands, contains the following curious statement: Passing along the very busiest street of Honolulu, in the very busiest part of the day, a shopkeeper called our attention to the statement, which he asserted as a fact upon the authority of the last census of the United States, that out of seven hundred thousand (700,000) Jews residing in the United States, only one was registered as a farmer. He desired us to account for the fact. Upon the ordinary principles governing the migration and settleinent of different nations resorting to the United States, this fact is un accountable. It has no parallel. It stands forth marked and isolated. Other nations emigrating to America gradually become absorbed, and mingled with the general population, but not so the Jews. Singular fact. Rare exception. How shall it be accounted for? Let us open the Bible and read the ninth verse of the ninth chapter of the prophet Amos: "For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth." Here is a pledge or promise of God that the Jewish people shall not be lost. They are scattered abroad, but not lost or forgotten. They have wandered among all nations, but do not find a home among the nations. DIVINITY STUDENTS.-The divinity students of the Catholic Institute, at Cleveland, are forbidden the reading of any newspapers. They must be an enlightened and intelligent set of fellows, and will make exceedingly useful members of society. A Mr. E. O. Callaghan, one of the students, writes to the Cleveland Herald something about its report of St. Patrick's dinner, and says: thinks that genuine titles involve theological intuitions, and that true aristocracy enjoys an instinct for the discernment of true faith. If the list had run on thus, three mathematicians, one physiologist, two chemists, four geologists, eight natural historians, ten physicians, two surgeons, eighty-five solicitors, and two hundred and seventy-two other persons engaged in intellectual professions, it would have been somewhat more to the purpose. CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT ALLIGATORS.-Lyell, the geologist, says that alligators' nests resemble hay-cocks. They are four feet high and five in diameter at their bases, being constructed of grass and herbage. First, they deposit one layer of eggs on a layer of mortar, and having secured this with a stratum of mud and herbage, eight inches thick, lay another set of eggs upon that, and so on to the top, there being commonly from one to two hundred eggs in a nest. With their tails they beat down round the nest the dense grass and reeds five feet high, to prevent the approach of unseen enemies. The female watches her eggs until they are all hatched by the heat of the sun, and then takes her brood under her own care, defending them and providing for their subsistence. Dr. Lutzemberg, of New-Orleans, told me that he once packed up one of these nests with eggs in a box for the Museum of St. Petersburgh, but was recommended before he closed it to see that there was no danger of the eggs being hatched on the voyage. On opening one, a young alligator walked out, and was soon followed by the rest, about a hundred in all, which he fed in his own house, where they went up and down stairs whining and barking like young puppies. SMALL CHANGE. Owing to the regulations of the seminary in which I am forbidding all newspaper reading, it was not STICKING TO THE TEXT.-Selden, in his amuspossible for me to see these papers, so that these criti-ing Table Talk, has the following story in ilcisms would have easily escaped my notice, had not the kindness of a friend apprised me of them, and not being able to procure the papers without permission, nor at an earlier date, I now reply, and hope my vindication will find a place in your paper. lustration of his remark that preachers will sometimes bring anything into the text: The young masters of arts preached against nonresidency in the university; whereupon the heads made an order that no man should meddle with anything but what was in the text. The next day one preached upon these words: "Abraham begat Isaac." When he had gone a good way, at last he observed, that Abraham was resident; for, if he had been nonresident, he could never have begot Isaac; and so he fell foul upon the non-residents. This is something like the anecdote of the minister who was almost possessed on the subject of the prelatical controversy, and could never refrain from introducing his opinion on it, no matter what the subject in hand. Once he was set to discourse upon the first verse in the Bible, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." His first remark was, 'Yes, my brethren; but it does not say that God created bishops." NOT QUALIFIED.-When John Brown, D.D., had settled in Haddington, the people of his parish gave him a warm and enthusiastic reception; only one of the members of that large church and congregation stood out in opposition to him. The reverend doctor tried all the means MANY years since a trader in Vermont lost some money. He kept his own counsel, and told no one of the event. Soon after a young man of the place went to the West. In a few years he returned. His first words on entering the store were: "Well, have you found who stole your money?" "Yes," was the answer; "I have just now found the man." That young man was tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for the theft. A FRIEND across the ocean, than whom none can better enjoy or crack a side-shaking joke, sends us the following copy of a hand-bill, which he assures us was lately distributed extensively in a town at which he was sojourning in the west of England: Roger Giles, surgonn, parish clark, and scoolmaster, reforms ladys and gentelmen that he draws teeth without waiting a moment-blisters on the lowest terms, and fysicks at a penny a peace. Sells Godfather's Cordel, cut corns, and undertakes to keep any bodies nails by the year, or so on. Yong ladees and gentelmen tort their grammer langwage in the neatest manneralso grate care taken of their morals and spellin. Also sarme singing and teeching the Ho! Boy. Cow Tillons. and other dances tort at home and abroad. Perfumery in all its branches. Sells all sorts of stashonary wares, blacking balls, red herrings and coles, scrubben brushes, treecle, mouse traps, and all other sorts of sweetmeats-likewise taters, sassages, and other garden stuffs also frute, hats, ballits, hoyl, tinware, and other eatables. Tumher sarve, corn sarves, and all hard wares. He also performs fleebottomy in a curious manner. Fathermore in particular, he has laid in a large sortment of tripe, china, dog's meet, lollipops, and other pickles, such as hoysters, &c. Old rags bought and sold here, and not any ware helse- and new laid eggs every day, by me Roger Giles. P. 8. I teeches joggrefy, and all them outlandish things. N. B. A bawl on Wednesdays. PARTICULARLY SHARP PRACTICE.-The amusing manner in which an Eastern man was sold, "away down in Cairo," develops a new wrinkle in the way of trade, which may be valuable to enterprising men who purpose investing in Cairo city lots. It is the sharpest practice we wot of! Outsiders find Cairo a very unhealthy place, financially speaking. Yankees are nowhere. One of em started a shaving mill to negotiate business paper, loan money, buy and sell exchange on all parts of the globe, etc. Mr. Tucker applied for a loan of six hundred dollars for ninety days, offering as security a cut-throat mortgage on a very fine frame house which he had erected on one of the several lots leased from Mat. L.. who owns two thirds of the city. Yank agreed to the loan, charging five per cent, commission and six per cent. a month interest. Tucker allowed that was a big figure to ax, but the money must be had, and accordingly a trust deed was made out and duly recorded, of "one frame house situate on lot 9, blockL. and G.'s addition to town of Cairo." Pay day came and the note laid over. Yank, in high glee, thinking to get possession of the house without further cost, caused the trustee to publish the usual ten days' notice of sale, at the expiration of which time he bid in the property, and on going to take possession, found that the darned Tucker had moved the house to the next lot, No. 8, and thus knocked the mortgage calling for a house on lot 9, etc.," higher 'n a kite. One of the Yankee's eye-teeth first saw the light through his tobacco-stained gums at that precise moment. A GOOD story is told of a "country gentleman," who, for the first time, heard an Episcopal clergyman preach. He had read much of the aristocracy and pride of the Church, and when he returned home he was asked if the people were stuck up." "Pshaw! no," replied he, "why, the minister actually preached in his shirt-sleeves." Lord Chancellor Northington suffered much from the gout; and once, after some painful waddling between the woolsack and the bar in the House of Lords, he was heard to mutter: "If I had known that these legs were one day to carry a chancellor, I'd have taken better care of them when I was a lad." MAGNIFICENT NAMES.-What a people we think of it. Americans are for magnificent names! Just A little four-by-six apartment in borrowed from the most ample and gorgeous a steamboat is called a "state-room"-a name room in a royal palace! And the word "saloon," (from the French salon,) which indicates, properly, nothing less than the most spacious and splendid of drawing-rooms, we have painted over the door of a dirty shanty in a New England city, and often embellishing the front of a low grog shop in the western states. seen "DID you mean to settle the bill at all, sir, when you made it?" said a creditor, in a passionate manner. "Well, my dear sir, I assure you I meant to settle, and when I meant to settle, that was clearly a settle meant! Good morning, my friend; I will see you in the fall." MR. FUM." Sigma" furnishes the Boston Transcript with the following, as his opinion of Mr. Fum's (Ralph Waldo Emerson's) literary and "transcendental" performances: On leaving the lecture-room, leaning on the arm of an old friend, one of the pleasantest fellows by the way-"All this," said he, as we walked along, "is very "All what?" said I. delightful." "Fum's lectures," he replied; "very pleasant, indeed-very." Could you understand him?" I inquired. "God bless you," said he, not a bit of it. Could you?" "Not at all," said I. "Well," said he, "that's the beauty of it; to sit and be mystified, for an hour or more, in the immediate neighborhood of so many pretty women, is really delightful. The more unintelligible Mr. Fum became, the more delighted they evidently were. Upon two or three occasions, when Mr. Fum really surpassed himself, and poured forth a transcendental stream of highly polished nonsense, it was very interesting to listen to the cracking sound of crinoline, as the young ladies, and those of no particular age, turned round to look at one another. The sound was a fraction less than that of an opossum escaping from a cane brake in the West." "The feeling," said my friend, "greatly resembles that which one realizes in the midst of a London fog, or when dieting upon inexplicable conundrums." My old friend insisted upon my going home with him, and told me that he had long thought of going into the lecturing line himself; and after we had gotten into his library, he proceeded to read a portion of a lecture which he had already prepared, as follows: This evening, my friends, I shall treat on the subject of being-in the subjective. I shall not treat of being generally nor of being specially, nor of being to be, but, in a strictly paripbrastical sense, whether it is better for to be, or for not to be, or for not. Being is an emanation, peristaltically speaking, consisting of contaminations and contusions, whose prophylactic energies have their seat in the conarion, or pineal gland. Hence arises the organ of parturient combustiveness and sinuosity, whose attenuated and delicate fibers transcendentalize and lubricate the soul, producing that inexplicable sensation in the apex of the os corcygis, known to the ancients as the unequivocal evidence of genius. These simple truths are eminently transcendental, incidental, and fundamental to the whole. Therefore-in the subjective you will remember-to comprehend the binocular and infinitesimal concatenation of isolated effusiveness, you must first fix these simple elements in your minds." After having read thus far in the exordium of his lecture, my friend paused and inquired if I understood what I had heard. I told him I did not. "You see a strong resemblance, then," said he, "between this and Mr. Fum's." I told him I did. "Well, then," said he, "would you not advise me to try it upon a Boston audience?" I told him there would, probably, be no harm in the experiment. The old-fashioned relish, for common sense and plain English, seemed to be giving place to a taste for odd, conceity, far-fetched, and fantastical conceptions, and the highly wrought fancies of an imagination, teeming with a mixture of madness and metaphysics, as though the mind, not less than the body, were under the influence of the sancti viti chorea of the doctors. BAPTISM IN Hoops.-At Chicago, last month, a rather amusing scene took place during the baptism of a young lady by the pastor of the Tabernacle. The minister requested her to assume the dress peculiar to such an occasion, but she declined to take off her hooped skirt; the minister told her of the inconvenience that must result from her obstinacy, but she persisted. When she came to descend into the bath, the inflated skirt touched the water and rose up around her like a balloon. Her head was lost to the congregation, she was swallowed up in the swelling skirt; the minister tried to force her down into the bath, but she was kept above the surface by the floating properties of the crinoline, and was buoyed up so successfully that it was not until after much difficulty and many forcible attempts to submerge the lady, the minister succeeded in baptizing the fair one. Finally it was effected, to the relief of the minister and the seriously inclined audience, who could not keep from laughing in their pocket handkerchiefs. ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION.-Horace Walpole tells of a skeptical epicure, who, upon being urged to turn Roman Catholic, objected that it was a religion enjoining so many fasts and requiring such implicit faith, "You give us," he observed, "too little to eat, and too much to swallow." Recent Publications. seemed to us that the author had been led, by History of the Origin, Foundation, and Adop- | correspondence to the pen of Hamilton. It tion of the Constitution of the United States; with Notices of its Principal Framers. By GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS. Two volumes 8vo. (Harper Brothers.) The first volume of this standard American Classic, as it has been justly called, was published in 1854. The second, which completes the work, has just come from the press. The "history" is the result of the patient research and study of many years, and is thoroughly exhaustive of the subject, leaving nothing to be desired and no room for emendation. In his "notices" of the principal men who were engaged in framing the Constitution Mr. Curtis is brief and impartial. His aim has evidently been to do justice to all parties. His volumes will, of course, find a place in every collection of books upon American history and political literature. We noticed briefly at the time of its publication, the first volume of the History of the Republic of the United States, as Traced in the Writings of Alexander Hamilton, and took occasion to question the author's truthfulness in attributing a large portion of Washington's epistolary The first volume of this work has been criticised with some severity, as making claims for Hamiltor. which are derogatory to the character of Washington. My course has been stigmatized as sacrilegious and tive toward others. When it can be shown that the vindictive-sacrilegious toward Washington, vindicexhibition of the truth as to others is irrelevant to the history of this country, or not demanded by justice, good government, and the interests of the American people, then the latter charge may be deemed to have some color. Sacrilege, detraction, defamation, are the terms that have been used to criminate my claim of authorship to Hamilton, of letters subscribed by Washington, in the course of his military command. I confine this notice to so much as regards Washington. As there may be more of this sort of sacrilege in the present volume-and, it may be, in the succeeding volumes-I think it not amiss to say, that as it was not within the physical power of Washington, time and his public employments alone considered, to compose or dictate the innumerable letters signed by him, it conforms with what is natural and common in such cases, to suppose that other persons must have been frequently deputed to relieve him from a portion of the labor of his correspondence. There is no sacrilege in the supposition. And since existing records show, irrefragably, that a vast number of letters in the handwriting of Hamilton, and with the signature of WashIngton, bear those characters of style which identify authorship, as much as the features and expression of the face, and the play and movement of the body identify the individual man, and that in this manner these letters identify the authorship of Hamilton beyond reasonable doubt, there can be no sacrilege, nor the least shade of defamation or disrespect in ascribing them to Hamilton as their real author in point of composition. The letters so ascribed may have just so much merit, in this respect, as the reader may think fit to allow them; but the authorship has in this way become incontestable; and this fact, in a biography of Hamilton, connecting him with the progress of the Revolution and the foundation of this Republic, I have deemed it a duty, both personal and historical, to state, whenever I have referred to them. A series of sermons was delivered in Boston during the last winter, by ministers of various denominations, each presenting and advocating the peculiarities in doctrine and Church government of his own sect. These discourses have been published, and the reader may gather from the volume what the different champions claim to be the peculiar excellences of their several church organizations. The Rev. W. R. Clark answers the question, Why am I a Methodist ? T. B. Thayer follows, and gives reasons for preferring Universalism. The Baptist superiority is advocated by James N. Sykes. The Trinitarian Congregationalists are represented by Dr. N. Adams. Why I am a Churchman? is answered by G. M. Randall, and Dr. Dewey advocates the claims of Unitarianism. The lectures are, in the main, eloquently written, and in neither of them do we note any tinge of Sectarian bitterness. Dr. Adams is specially catholic in his views, at least so far as may be gathered from his lecture. He says: Some in all denominations, the Congregational not excepted, hold and urge extreme views, both as to doctrine and to order. We may be as bigoted in insisting upon "no forms" as others are who insist upon their forms and order as essential to a standing in the Christian Church and in the Christian ministry... If there be in us one thing more than another which is offensive to our common Lord and Master, it must be a pretentious and lofty carriage toward other denominations of Christians whom, notwithstanding the signal manner in which God has owned and blessed them, we disfranchise, and then, with a due amount of admonition and warning, notify that our doors stand open to receive them. In addition to these six denominational expositions, the volume contains a lecture, one of the course, by T. Starr King, on what he calls "Spiritual Christianity." He finds something good and something bad in all the prevailing sects. Augustine and Swedenborg, Jonathar. Edwards, Miss Martineau, and Theodore Parker have, according to Mr. King, their own peculiar merits; and even Dickens, the novelist, is aided by the Holy Spirit, who " discharges immeasurably more of its (His) essence through such a novel as Little Dorrit, than through such volumes as Dr. Breckenridge's Knowledge of God, objectively considered." On this point, not having read the whole of Little Dorrit, we are not competent to form an opinion. It strikes us, however, as an "immeasurably " mean compliment to the Presbyterian divine. Life Thoughts, gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher, by one of his Congregation. (Boston, Phillips, Sampson, & Co.) Taken from the speaker's lips as uttered in sermons, lectures, and occasional addresses, we have here glowing thoughts, striking figures, and aphoristic sentences that burn as well as blaze. They are not, indeed, all original, nor yet all in strict accordance with the canons of sober rhetoric or straight-laced orthodoxy. But having passed through the alembic of the author's own mind, the result of extensive reading as well as of patient thought, they are well calculated to make the reader think, and will do something more and better than contribute to his amusement. The New American Cyclopædia. The second volume of this great national work has just reached us. It fully equals the expectations held out by the first volume, noticed in our April number. One decided peculiarity is the prominence given to articles strictly American, (biographical, historical, and geographical,) in which similar works originating in Europe have been meagre and defective. The editors, Messrs. RIPLEY & DANA, have been fortunate in availing themselves of the services of competent writers in the preparation of articles, for which each has his own peculiar adaptation; and the publishers, Appleton & Co., have performed their part of the work in a manner alike creditable to themselves, and to the great enterprise in which they are engaged. Wyoming, its History, Stirring Incidents, and Romantic Adventures. By GEORGE PECK, D.D. Wyoming is classic ground. Poets and painters, novelists and historians, have united in giving celebrity to its beautiful landscapes, and the memorable incidents connected with its history. Campbell, with poetic daring, described what he never saw, and Halleck and Whittier have sung the beauties of the worldrenowned valley in graceful strains. With an evident love for his subject, and intimately familiar with the localities he describes, Dr. Peck, in the volume before us, corrects errors into which preceding writers have fallen, and relates many incidents hitherto unchronicled. His truthfulness and accuracy may be relied upon, and nowhere else can be found so complete an account of Wyoming, or so many of the stirring incidents connected with its history. (Harpers.) An exceedingly gratifying result of the present extensive revival is the increasing demand for religious publications. Men now find time for the perusal of awakening and heart-stirring books, and there is an increasing demand for tracts, religious periodicals, and small volumes on practical religious duties. It is gratifying, too, that to meet this demand some of the best heads and hearts are engaged in the preparation of volumes of entreaty, instruction, and encouragement for the careless, the thoughtful, and the penitent. A little volume from the pen of J. T. PECK, D.D., entitled, What must I do to be saved? has just been issued from the press of Carlton & Porter. The title indicates its object, which is admirably carried out, and the book may be placed in the hands of all who sincerely ask that most momentous question that ever agitated the human soul, in the full assurance that, with God's blessing, it will lead them to the Saviour. Kirwan is the well-known nom de plume of an author who has written and published on a great variety of subjects. His caustic and truthful "Letters to Bishop Hughes" have had a wide circulation, and his "Romanism at Home" presented an array of startling facts relative to the designs and doings of the papacy. A little volume entitled The Happy Home is in an entirely different vein, didactic, and practical, treating of the family relation in its varied aspects of the physical, moral, and religious training of the young, and the relative duties of the several members of the family circle. It is written in a lively style, full of facts and incidents, and worthy of a wide circulation. (Harpers.) Scripture Lessons, designed for Sunday schools and Families. By CAROLINE R. DEUEL. The estimable author of this little volume is well known as one of the devoted band who have been so long laboring for God at the Five Points, a locality of world-wide notoriety, and at one time the most unpromising field for usefulness that could by any possibility be selected. Yet has it already produced buds, and blossoms, and ripe fruit. Little children have been there gathered into the Sunday school, the depraved and the dissolute of both sexes, and of all ages, have been led to the Saviour, and a moral revolution has been effected through the entire region. A good service has been done for the Church and the world by the publication of these Scripture Lessons. Answers are furnished to the several questions, and we know not where is to be found so much Scriptural knowledge compressed in so small a compass. Adults as well as children may study them profitably, and they will prove a valuable aid in the family circle as well as in the Sunday school. (Carlton & Porter.) every-day occurrences. It is only about thirty years since, in the language of the biographer, pamphlets were written and newspapers were hired to revile the railway. It was declared that its formation would prevent cows grazing and hens laying. The poisoned air from the locomotives would kill birds as they flew over them, and render the preservation of pheasants. and foxes no longer possible. Householders adjoining the projected line were told that their houses would be burned up by the fire thrown from the engine chimneys, while the air around would be polluted by clouds of smoke. There would no longer be any use for horses, and if railways extended, the species would become extinguished, and oats and hay unsalable commodities. Traveling by road would be rendered highly dangerous, and country inns would be ruined. Boilers would burst and blow passengers to atoms. But there was always this consolation to wind up with; that the weight of the locomotive would completely prevent its moving, and that railways, even if made, could never be worked by steam-power. The London Quarterly Review for March, 1825, has this oracular declaration; the man who wrote it is probably still living: What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stage coaches. We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate. We will back old Father Thames against the Woolwich Railway for any sum. We trust that Parliament will in all railways it may sanction, limit the speed to eight or nine miles an hour, which, we entirely agree with Mr. Sylvester, is as great as can be ventured on with safety. In opposing the project before a Parliamentary committee ridicule was used, and the language of vituperation was freely indulged in; one of the learned gentleman remarked: When we set out with the original prospectus, we were to gallop, I know not at what rate; I believe it was at the rate of twelve miles an hour. My learned Ireland, that some of the Irish members would arrive friend, Mr. Adam, contemplated, possibly alluding to in the wagons to a division. My learned friend says that they would go at the rate of twelve miles an hour with the aid of the devil in the form of a locomotive, sitting as a postilion on the fore horse, and an honorable member sitting behind him to stir up the fire, and keep it at full speed. But the speed at which these locomotive engines are to go has slackened; Mr. Adam does not go faster now than five miles an hour. The learned serjeant (Spankie) says he should like to have seven, but he would be content to go six. I will show he cannot go six, and probably, for any practical purposes, I may be able to show that I can keep up with him by the canal. Locomotive engines are liable to be operated upon by the weather. You are told they are affected by rain, and an attempt has been made to cover them, but the wind will affect them; and any gale of wind which would affect the traffic on the Mersey would render it impossible to set off a locomotive engine, either by poking of the fire, or keeping up the pressure of steam till the boiler is ready to burst. IN THE NATIONAL for last November we gave an exceedingly well-written sketch of the early struggles and successful career of George Stephenson, the great railroad engineer. Lately But, in the language of the biographer, Stephhis biography by SAMUEL SMILES has been pub-enson's "pluck never failed him," and in 1830 lished in London, and reprinted in this coun- that which was declared to be absolutely impostry. It is a volume of great interest, not only sible was done; his engine, the Rocket, attained as the delineation of a life of untiring indus- a velocity of twenty-nine miles an hour, or try crowned with triumphant and complete suc- about three times the maximum of speed cess, but as carrying us back to the days when deemed by one of the friends of the project the learned men, philosophers, and mathematicians limit of possibility. It was a proud day for declared and proved the absolute impossibility Stephenson, a great day for the world, the beof what is now one of the most ordinary of ginning of a new era. Incalculable are the |