land hold a shield of resistless protection over its friends, and crush its enemies in the dust as easily as one can set his foot on an offensive worm. Such a discipline we certainly do need, and must have, or become the vilest of nations. It will unspeakably bless us: it will make us far more united, homogeneous and capable of virtue at home; and far more loved and honored abroad. The children of an ungoverned family are always objects of dread and aversion to all their neighbors. Just so the people of an ungoverned or an ill-governed nation are always abhorred by the rest of mankind. It is to be hoped we may come out of this great national trial, chastened in spirit, subdued not to traitors or foes, but to authority and rightful government: a people able to live together in harmony and to render ourselves beloved and honored by all mankind.

4. There is yet one more vice of our national character, perhaps even more deep and dangerous than those hitherto spoken of, which we hope our present national crisis may tend to eradicate. We have been speaking of want of loyalty to the government under which we live: we now refer to want of loyalty to right, to changeless eternal justice. As a people, a nation, we have been unmindful of the great truth, that there are principles of right, which limit and sustain all human, all created, all existing power; principles which God himself never infringes, and will never suffer to be infringed by any combinations of created power. We have imagined that democratic majorities may do whatever they please, and especially that an ocean-girt republic, like ours, is strong enough to do all its pleasure; that the will of such a people is omnipotent. The public mind has been extensively pervaded with the idea, that to oppose moral convictions to the legal expressions of such a national will is fanaticism to be discountenanced by the people's contempt and scorn, if not to be punished by the judges. In our own times and before our own eyes men of the purest character and the highest standing have been made a hissing and a by-word for maintaining, that there are laws of justice and laws of God, which are above all human constitutions and enactments, and which as truly limit the power of popular majorities however numerous, as of crowned despots.

And yet there are such changeless laws of God, and neither individuals nor nations can ever for one moment escape from them. God has hedged about every creature he has made with rights, principles of justice, which he will never permit any earthly power great or small to trample on; and the individual or the nation that does trample on them will meet God as an avenger. And great and small are both alike to him; it is just as easy for him to punish the mightiest human power that ever existed, as the feeblest insect; he can crush a nation as easily as a man or a worm. If a nation, however mighty, adopts either laws or customs, by which unnecessary cruelty is inflicted on a tribe of brute animals, the displeasure of God is sure to follow. The cruelty of Rome to the wild beasts which she tortured in her amphitheater, for the amusement of her populace and her fashion, was not the least of the causes of her decay and her overthow. Still more will this law hold, if we perpetrate any injustice on a fellow-man, however low in the scale of humanity. The victim may be the red man of the wilderness, or the tawny African. He that cares for the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, will still more care for the humblest in human form. We may rest assured that great as we are, vast as is our national domain, the laws of our national prosperity, and of all national prosperity, are such that neither we, nor any other nation,can permanently prosper while systematic and legalized injustice is practiced towards any creature that bears the image of God. It is as much a law of nature and of nature's God, that such legalized injustice will result ere long in convulsion and revolution, as that a heavy body unsupported will fall.

In the earthquake which is now shaking this nation, God is teaching us, and we hope a great nation will learn the lesson, that the principles of eternal justice are stronger than popular majorities, however vast and terrific: that the Almighty is always on the side of those principles; and that he will never be at a loss for ways of making them respected and honored. We are finding that he is stronger than popular majorities, stronger than navies and armies, however numerous and brave and well appointed, stronger than the North, and stronger than the South. He is teaching us that on that

particular question out of which this convulsion has come, it is high time that all men of all parties, and all sections, should throw all questions of expediency and immediate advantage into the back-ground, and that reverentially, and in the fear of God's righteous judgments, we should adjust even that question on principles of everlasting justice,-justice to the white man, and justice to the black man, justice to the master, justice to the slave, justice to all men.

It can avail little now to ask what will the South demand, and what will the North concede. Any adjustment on such principles will be delusive and transient, and lead in the future to other and still more terrible convulsions. God made the African, and gave him his rights, whatever it may appear that they are, greater or less, and those rights the nation must respect and defend, or there is no future for us, but one of disruption, convulsion, anarchy and ruin.

In this spirit must we learn to treat every question affecting the rights either of individuals or classes. It is to a free nation, and a free nation only that God has given North America in possession. And a free nation is not one in which the majority rules and may do what it pleases, and all it pleases, but one in which justice is done to every man, and if possible to every brute and every insect. If our nation is ever again to be peaceful and prosperous, if it is to go on and fulfil its great destiny, if every spot on which the soles of our feet tread from ocean to ocean is to be ours, we must become such a free nation. Our freedom must rest on the everlasting foundations of justice-justice to men of all colors and conditions, justice to the rich and justice to the poor, justice to the weak and justice to the strong. We seem to hear the awful voice of the great Jehovah speaking out of the tempest which is hanging over us and saying: "What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God?" Then, and then only shall we have peace-peace as permanent as our mountains and as abundant as our rivers.

In concluding this Article it is proper to remark, that in the foregoing remarks it has been our design to suggest, to the thoughtful, truths which our want of space forbids us fully to

discuss and develop. Those vices of our national character upon which we have commented are real, and their prevalence is alarming, and unless arrested must be fatal. The question of our national future is hinged upon our ability so to profit by the providential discipline to which we are subjected, as effectually to reform and cure these cardinal vices of our national character. We earnestly commend this subject to the religious consideration of all thoughtful and patriotic men, especially of our rulers and legislators, the teachers of our youth and the ministers of our religion. The direct object at which we aim in the present conflict, is to restore the authority of the nation where it has been disowned and discarded, and thus preserve and perpetuate our national existence. But we have need to achieve much more than this. We must effect deep and permanent improvements in our national character, and eradicate the vices out of which disloyalty and rebellion have sprung. We have need to lay per manent foundations in the American character for universal loyalty, harmony and fraternity.

As, from the position in which Divine Providence has placed us, we cast our eyes down the stream of our national future, what is it which we behold. A victorious and domineering North, holding in forced and unwilling submis sion a conquered and subjugated South?

Nay, down with fitted to the past

that hideous and shocking vision—a vision ages of the world's darkness and barbarism, but not to the bright millennial future. It is a vision of beauty, and glory, and blessedness which rises before us, the blessed spirit of loyalty enthroned, as never before, in the hearts of this great continental people; the relation of the white man, the heaven appointed lord of our soil, to the African, hewer of our wood and drawer of our water, adjusted on principles of equity and mercy to both; the people of States now alienated, embittered, and in rebellion, beholding the flag of our American Union with all its glorious associations of freedom again waving over them with a joy too deep and heartfelt for any other utterance than that of tears; and a regenerated nation moving on in sublime majesty to take possession of a continent in the name of freedom, of justice, and of God.

ARTICLE VIII.-SOULE AND WHEELER'S MANUAL OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING.

A Manual of English Pronunciation and Spelling: containing a full alphabetical vocabulary of the language, with a preliminary exposition of English orthoepy and orthography; and designed as a work of reference for general use, and as a text-book in schools. By RICHARD SOULE, Jr., Boston: Soule

A. M., and WILLIAM A. WHEELER, A. M. and Williams. 1861. 12mo. pp. 467.

THIS is a work on a somewhat new plan. It is a complete alphabetical spelling-book, or a dictionary with the definitions and etymologies omitted. Its object, as explained in the authors' preface, is two-fold: it is intended, on the one hand, as a book from which exercises in spelling and writing English, of a somewhat higher character than have heretofore been provided for, shall be constructed; and, on the other hand, it is meant to serve as a convenient hand-book for reference in cases of doubtful spelling and pronunciation. In this latter sphere, especially, we conceive it calculated to fill a felt want, prove a grateful auxiliary to the writer and reader, and meet with favor and acceptance. Probably twice out of three times that one consults a dictionary, it is in order to determine how a word shall be spelt, or how pronounced; and the compact duodecimo before us takes hardly a tithe of the room of a full dictionary, and is vastly more easily handled. Nor is it, in its own department, less complete than the largest dictionary; for, although it omits great numbers of the simplest derivatives, as those ending in er, ly, ish, ness, and the like, and an unnumbered multitude of the obvious compounds with which our dictionaries are wont to be encumbered, rather than enriched, it still contains of words and forms, according to our rough calculation, between fifty and sixty thousand. The conscientious and laborious care evidently expended upon the