above all lands for moral and religious principle; then shall our danghters le as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace, beautiful as Tirzah and comely as Jerusalem. Then shall our sons consecrate the best of their days to the service of God and their country. Then shall they, in the pulpit, be like Apollos; in the church, like Aaron and Hur to Moses; in the forum, like Tully and Demosthenes; in the battle field, (if battle field there be,) like Washington and Lafayette; and in the vineyard, or at the plough, like Abdolonymus, the Roman, or Elisha, the son of Shaphat.

Our ancestors signed the declaration of American independence. We rejoice that they did it.

In conclusion, my respected hearers, I have only to ask, Will you sign the declaration of American independence from all intoxicating liquor? Let this be done, and we shall be free indeed. As you wish to be free from the oppressor, I press you to sign this declaration. Suppose all felt on this subject as one of the soldiers of the revolution did, when the constitution of a temperance society was presented to him. As he was about to sign it, some kind friends attempted to dissuade him from it, by telling him that he would injure himself; that he was aged and infirm, and had need of the stimulus, and that he would soon die without it. The veteran of seventy-six replied, "It is true I am aged and infirm, and I have long used a little spirit, supposing that I needed it. But when my country was in danger from foreign oppression, I was sick; yet I arose from my bed, shouldered my musket, and marched to the aid of my friends, to rescue my country from oppression. My country is now in danger; a mightier oppressor than Great Britain has his grasp upon her; and the temperance society is the only remedy. I'll sign the pledge, I'll sign it." If every lover of humanity, and every friend of his country, felt like him, we should indeed be a saved people; saved from a far greater oppression than could be laid upon us by any nation on earth. I ask, then, Who of you will sign the declaration? Or, rather, Who of you will not sign it?

But the temperance reform, in its moral tendency, far out-shines the effects of any thing performed by the patriots of seventy-six. One man, liberated from a moral thraldom, is a vast conquest. "He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city." But, in a religious point of view,

the temperance reformation has done wonders. It has often prepared the way of the Lord, like John the Baptist. It has been the harbinger of many a revival of religion. It has raised hundreds and thousands from the lowest state of degradation, and introduced them to the sanctuary, and thence to the kingdom of heaven. Let us go on, then, my friends, in this blessed enterprise.

LUXURY AND EXTRAVAGANCE.

The following article has been furnished for us by Rev. T. T. Waterman, of Providence, R. I. It is exactly to our purpose, and speaks forth the "words of truth and soberness" on the self-indulgence, luxury and extravagance of the age.-ED.

The tendency of the age to self-indulgence and consequent effeminacy, is proverbial. Wealth increases, and with it the means of pampering a vitiated and vulgar appetite. The intellectual is thus overcome by the animal, and civilized man-he who is endowed with the impress of an angel, in not a few cases, sinks beneath the level of the savage and the brute. The highest compliment now passed from man to man, seems to be in affording each an opportunity of luxurious and enormous eating and drinking,— and, in cases not unfrequent, the greatness of the patriot and the scholar is made to depend more upon the size of the stomach, than of the heart and the head-more upon the capability of appreciating beef, fish and fowl-brandy, gin and wine, puddings, sweetmeats and pies-than upon thought communicated, reason exercised, or truth made briliant and attractive. Hence we hear of literary, scientific, historical, agricultural, commercial, mechanical, political, ecclesiastical and all other possible kinds of suppers, dinners and feasts! The great ruling passion seems to be what shall we eat, and what shall we drink! The mania spreads from high to low and from rich to poor-from the judge to the criminal-the professor to the student-the teacher to the pupil-the wise man to the fool—all appear to regard eating and drinking, in some of their forms, the chief if not only end of man! They eat at home and

abroad—in the parlor and the study-the counting-room and the office on the exchange and in the court-house-in the stage and in the car-on the wharf and in the steamboatin the hotel and the reading-room-the lyceum and the school-room-the athenæum and the house of God! By day and by night—from morning to evening, the words pass around from one here and another there, by the motion of the masticating organs, acting on some delicious dainty of herb or root-sugar, flour and spice-fig, almond or raisin— nut, apple or TOBACCO- "I eat, you eat, he eats—we eat, ye or you eat, they eat!" And in social parties, club-rooms, refectories and hotels, as glass succeeds glass, the brilliant nectar flowing, in continuous echo, is heard-"I drink, you drink, he drinks—we drink, ye or you drink, they drink!” Thus intemperance in eating and drinking abounds, and the proverb so long appropriated to luxurious France, is being Americanized:-They dig their graves with their teeththe kitchen is their shrine, the cook their priest, the table their altar, and meat and wine their God! The serpent thus comes forth from the blessings where it lies in ambush, as once in Eden, and gives the fatal sting. The bounties of creation thus abused by debased, sensual man, become his deepest curse!

Of the ultimate effects of this luxury in meats and drinks, of pampered appetites in fashionable circles, and social, civil and literary festivals and genteel bacchanalian revels, Rome, in her fall, is an expressive illustration.

The intemperance of the Roman table began, it is said, about the time of the battle of Actium, and continued in great excess till the reign of Galba. At first a streamlet moving sluggishly on-then a Rio de la Plata in size and force. Peacocks, cranes of Malta, nightingales, venison, wild and tame fowl, with costly wines, were considered as delicious. Whole wild boars, it is affirmed, were often served up, being filled with various small animals and birds. Fowls and game of all sort, were served in whole pyramids, piled in dishes as large as moderate tables. Lucullus, a celebrated Roman General, born 115 years B. C., had a name for each apartment in his house, and whatever room he ordered his servants to prepare his entertainment in, designated the expense they were to incur. When he supped in the Apollo, the expense was fixed at 50,000 drachmæ or more than 6,000 dollars! Mark Anthony provided eight

boars for twelve guests. Vitellius had a large silver platter which cost a million of sesterces; in this he blended together the livers of gilt heads, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, the tongues of phenicopters, a kind of bird, and the milts of lampreys. Apicius laid out 90 millions of sesterces, for no other purpose than to be appropriated to luxury. Finding himself in debt, he looked over his accounts, and though he had 10,000,000 of sesterces left, hanged himself for fear he should starve to death. He was the author of a treatise on the incitements and pleasures of eating!

No wonder that we read of Lex Orchia, and Licinia Cornelia, &c. &c.-laws to restrain luxury! All this gluttony, combined with the free use of WINE, cast Rome, the Empress of the world, from her glory. Her strength, and of course her sceptre, departed. None so poor as to do her reverence-she ate and drank herself to death. There she stands, great only in her ruins; a beacon to warn other nations and empires and generations of men to beware lest, by the same indulgences, they come to the same end!

We can discern the face of the sky-and tell the signs of a hurricane in the heavens ;—and can we not see the forerunners of individual and collective ruin, as they murmur on the current of animal gratification in meats and drinks, as it bears on its surface the refined and the vulgar-the learned and the ignorant-the moral and the profane-the votaries of pleasure and worshippers of God! This current, strengthening with our strength, and growing with our growth, and soon will it be said of us, as a nation, as of the Persians—In the space of one generation an entire new set of people arose, whose habits and manners and principles were directly opposed to those of their fathers—a people of all others the most abandoned to splendor, to frivolous amusements, to ruinous feasting, drunkenness and mirth. Then shall we have a country-lost to virtue, to freedom and to God! Then, too, should a modern Diogenes arise, he will go forth in the streets of our cities and towns with a lighted lantern at mid-day, as the one of Athens did, looking for a man and finding none!

No people ever have survived, or ever will survive the abandonment of themselves to luxury and show! The tide waters of a popular and gorgeous dissipation constitute the great gulf stream of individual and collective ruin. may try it-the result will give us the truth.

We

In these days of new discoveries and wonderful inventions, we have all kinds of Almanacs, and we are inclined to think Dr. Shew's "WaterCure and Health Almanac" is about as valuable as any of them. We find the following in it, selected from Pratt's Gleanings, 1796.—Ed. HABITS OF HOWARD, THE PHILANTHROPIST.

HOWARD was a singular being in many of the common habits of life. He bathed daily in cold water; and, both on rising and going to bed, swathed himself in coarse towels, wet with the coldest water. In that state he re

mained half an hour or more, and then threw them off, refreshed and invigorated, as he said, beyond measure. He never put on a great-coat in the coldest countries; nor was ever a minute under or over the time of an appointment for 26 years. He never continued at a place, or with a person, a single day beyond the period prefixed for going, in his life; and he had not, for the last ten years of his existence, ate any fish, flesh, or fowl; nor sat down to his simple fare of tea, milk and rusks, all that time. His journeys were continued from prison to prison, from one group of wretched beings to another, night and day; and when he could not go in a carriage, he would walk. Such a thing, as an obstruction was out of the question. Some days after his first return from an attempt to mitigate the plague at Constantinople, he favored me with a morning visit to London. The weather was so very terrific, that I had forget his inveterate exactness, and yielded up the hope of expecting him. Twelve at noon was the hour, and exactly as the clock struck he entered my room; the wet-for it rained in torrents-dripping from every part of his dress, like water from a sheep just landed from its washing. He would not have attended to his situation, having sat himself down with the utmost composure, and begun conversation, had I not made an offer of dry clothes, "Yes," said he, smiling, "I had my fears, as I knocked at your door, that we should go over the old business of apprehension about a little rain water, which, though it does not run off my back as it does from that of a duck, does me as little injury, and, after a long drought, is scarcely less refreshing. The coat that I have on has been as often wetted through as any duck's in the world, and, indeed, gets no other cleaning. I assure you, a good soaking shower is the best brush for broadcloth. You, like the