ers given us, to the utmost for good purposes; and how shall we exert powers which we are too humble minded to suppose we possess? In this particular, as in all others, we should constantly aim at discovering the truth. Though our faculties, both intellectual' and corporeal, be absolutely nothing compared with the Divinity, yet when compared with those of other mortals they rise to some relative value, and it should be our study to ascertain that value, in order that we may employ them to the best advantage; always remembering that it is better to fix it rather below than a bove the truth.

It is very surprising that praise should excite vanity; for if what is said of us be true, it is no more than we knew before, and cannot raise us in our own esteem; if it be false, it is surely a most humiliating reflection; that we are only admired because we are not known; and that a closer inspection would draw forth censure, instead of commendation. Praise can hurt, only those who have not formed a decided opinion of themselves, and who are willing on the testimony of others to rank themselves higher than their merits warrant, in the scale of excellency.

Pleasure is a rose near which there ever grows the thorn of evil. It is wisdom's work so carefully to cull the rose, as to avoid the thorn, and let its rich perfume exhale to heav en in grateful adoration of

Him who gave the rose to blow.

As the sun breaking forth in winter, so is joy in the season of affliction. As a shadow in the midst of summer, so are the salutary drops of sorrow mingled in our cup of pleasure.

A sum of happiness sufficient to supply our reasonable desires for a long time is sometimes condensed into a little space, as light is concentrated in the flash. Such moments are given us to guess at the joys of heaven.

In vain do we attempt to fix our thoughts on heaven; the vanities of this world rise like a cloud of dust before the eyes of the traveller, and obscure, if not totally conceal the beautiful and boundless prospect of the glorious country towards which we are tending.

If it were the business of man to make a religion for himself, the Deist, the Theophilanthropist, the Stoic, or even the Epicurean, might be approved; but this is not the case. We are to believe what God has taught us, and to do what he has commanded. All other systems are but the reveries of mortals and not religion.

The cause of all sin is a deficiency in our love of God. If we really loved Him above all things, we should not be too strongly attached to terrestrial objects, and should with pleasure relinquish them all to please Him. Unfortunately, while we continue on earth, our minds are so much

more strongly affected by the perceptions of the senses than by abstract ideas, that it requires a continual exertion to keep up even the remembrance of the invisible world. When I hear of a great and good character falling into some heinous crime, I cannot help crying. Lord, what am I, that I should be exempt? O preserve me from temptation, or how shall I stand, when so many, much my superiors, have fallen.

An hour well spent cons demns a life. When we re flect on the sum of improve ment and delight gained in that single hour, how do the multitude of hours already past, rise up and say, what good has marked us? Wouldst thou know the true worth of time employ one hour,

A woman must have uncommon sweetness of disposition and manners to be forgiven for possessing superior talents and acquirements.

Great actions are so often performed from little motives of vanity, self-complacency, and the like, that I am more apt to think highly of the person whom I observe checking a reply to a petulant speech,

or even submitting to the judgement of another in stirring the fire, than of one who gives away thousands.

Happiness is a very com mon plant, a native of every soil; yet is some skill requir ed in gathering it; for many poisonous weeds look like it, and deceive the unwary to their ruin.

A happy day is worth enjoying; it exercises the soul for heaven. The heart that never tastes of pleasure, shuts up, grows stiff, and incapable of enjoyment. How then shall it enter the mansion of bliss? A cold heart can receive no pleasure even there. Happiness is the support of virtue ; they should always travel together, and they generally do so; when the heart expands to receive the latter, her companion enters of course. In some situations, if I ever do right, it is mechanically er in compliance with the deductions of reason; in others, it is from an inward sentiment of goodness, from the love of God, and admiration of the beauty of virtue. I believe it is impossible to be wicked and happy at the same time.

Oration was delivered by John S. Tyson, which explains the objects of the Association, and unfolds a system of cruelty and inhumanity but little known or thought of in this region. Some extracts from

the Oration will be given in this work. Our readers will rejoice to find that the cause of the oppressed has so far excited the attention of good people in Maryland. They will admire the intrepidity and eloquence of the orator; but they will shudder at the scenes of barbarity which he has described, and blush for the depravity of man.

"THE Protection Society of Maryland, believing it ne cessary that the public should know the objects they had in view in the formation of their institution, have deemed it proper thus respectfully to solicit their humane attention. The call was made to their humanity, and as a citizen of Baltimore, I am proud in believing, and the present large assemblage confirms the belief that this call, when properly addressed to the people of this city, was never addressed in vain. Their ears are ever open to the cries of the hapless victim of oppression, and they are ever ready to frown with indignation on inhumanity, no matter in what shape it may meet their eyes, whether arrayed in the garb of hypocrisy, adorned in the vestments of the law, or clothed in that blood stained raiment which is the emblem of its nature. It will not there fore excite your wonder to be told, that in a city so justly renowned for its benevolence, a large number of individuals have united themselves into a body for the purpose of exerting their combined force a gainst tyranny, rapine and op

"Our object is to annihilate some of the enormous evils, which hang like mountains of iniquity on the back of slavery. Our object is to mitigate as far as possible the calamities which one portion of our fellow men suffer by the despotic cruelty of another. Our object is to save them, if we cannot from unhappiness, at least from absolute torture. If they are slaves, the law has granted them certain rights, and we stand forth the defenders of those rights. If any African, having obtained his freedom, is sought to be again enslaved by some ferocious monster, we step between the monster and the man, and save the one from the grasp of the, other. We pursue the midnight manstealer to his den, and drag him to the bar of retributive justice. We use all the means which the laws of God and man place at our disposal, to do away that horrid legalized traffic in human flesh, carried on between this and the southern States, and which has stamped so deep a disgrace upon our moral character.

And we use all the exertions of which we are capable, to discourage the slave trade to the coast of Africa"

"The actors in this traffic are a set of men, who have long since bid adieu to every principle of virtue and of houour; who forsaking the respectable employments in which their youth was engaged, have descended to the disgraceful business of speculating in human liberty It is some consolation to the people of Maryland to be told, that most of these are inhabitants of other States. They are chiefly adventurers from the south, who having become hardened to scenes of iniquity in their own neighborhoods, insult the hos pitality which cherishes them, by practising their cruelties here, in the face of day, before our very doors. But I am sorry to say that these are linked with, and assisted by many individuals, who are, styled, and who disgrace the name of Citizens of Maryland. Both classes. I include under the appellation of southern slave traders. Many of them are connected together in lines, extending from the northern extremities of Delaware and Maryland to the southern and western extreme ities of Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky.Thus linked together, they practice their infamous designs.

less men, burst asunder with ferocious violence. Destitute of sensibility themselves, strangers to those sympathetic feelings which prompt the tear of humanity for the woes of oth ers, they act as if they believ ed, that such is the callous condition of the victims of their avarice; mistaken wretches have they been so long divested of human nature as to have forgotton, that tears, and sighs, and groans, indicate the anguish of the soul, and that when these are extorted from the husband and wife, the par ents and children whom their rapacity has torn from the arms of each other, nature, then bears witness, that their heart strings are sundered in twain, and that all that is within them bursts with grief.”

"These unfortunate creatures are not only ravished from the arms of their relatives-they are not only goaded with cruel stripes-they are thrust into iron barred dungeons, dark and dreadful; their hands are manacled-their feet are fettered to each other, they are bolted to the floor, though they never committed a crime. What? (some are ready to exclaim) can it be possible that in a country which boasts of its intelligence, its liberty, its humanity, prisons should be erected, and chains should be forged for the special purpose of oppressing unoffending men? Alas! it. is too true-this state, nay the very city in which we live, is crowded with dungeons, and rings with the clanking of fet

ters, fabricated for the direful purpose of torturing inno cence !

"France had her Bastile. It excited the horror of the world! And when it was rased to its foundation, it fell beneath the joyous acclamations of millions of Frenchmen. But the government of France was despotic-The avowed if not the real motive of the erection of the Bastile, was the punishment of delin quents; and throughout that large kingdom, there was but one edifice of such a description. Spain has her Inquisitions the Spanish people detest them, the world abhor them. But Spain is a tyrannical government, and her inquisitions, (though many a harmless man may have perished within their walls) are the avengers of guilt through out the nation. America also, has her dungeons. But unlike France and Spain, she has no excuse to plead for their erection. She has no palliating circumstance to mitigate the horror that reigns around them. They are not like the Bastile and the Inquisition, erected with the view of punishing human delinquency; on the contrary, with the base intention of sacrificing defenceless innocence to a greedy and avaricious rapacity they are not reared by the hands of kingly despots, but by the hands of men who claim and who profane the proud title of Free American citizens. They are not erected in a land of tyranny, or in a country destitute of the smiles of hear

en-but they are erected in a country proverbially the freest that ever arose on the face of the earth-a country superabundant in the choicest blessings that a benign Providence ever showered down upon unthankful man the paradise of the world, and to crown all, the pride of Christianity.

"In this country,no man dare touch the head of the vilest white malefactor-the most perfidious miscreant that ever wielded the dagger of assassination, before his guilt has been solemnly and legally established, before an awful judicial tribunal composed of his fellow-citizens; and then none but the officers of justice can' execute the sentence of the law. Yet in this same coun try, any malignant, furious desperado, may, when it suits his avarice, or caprice, fetter and incarcerate in dark and impenetrable dungeons without trial, without hearing, without even the suspicion of guilt, an unfortunate unoffending African?” "His fate is worse than that of the midnight robber; nay, it is worse than that of the murdererfor death is preferable to perpetual torture." "Many an unfortunate African has, by his conduct, fatally proved that mine is no wild assertion. Many of them preferring death to the calamitous condition in which they were placed, having been the instruments of their own destruction. One example out of many, to the validity of which I can set my seal, will be sufficient :

"A woman, forty years of