now winged with the instrumentation of Beethoven, passes on, leaving men on earth to be the language of archangels.

But still is silence Alpha and Omega-its kingdom was first and shall be last! Action will speak louder than the word, and the best in each not seek to flow out at the lips, but remain within to transform all and radiate in the unconscious presence and life! This eager searching into our words and languages is the sign of their transition; we are seeing through this illusion of rhetoric; "when we dream that we dream, we are near to waking." It has already startled certain living writers, that their writing out their thought is a lame apology for not living it; and there is a sad tone under the best writing of the day.

Who that has heard the Messiah of Handel, does not remember that finest chorus of the sublime work, For unto us a child is born? When in that chorus the words of Isaiah seem nearest the threshold of the Infinite, and the spirit of Handel is in its highest rapture, and we feel flooded with the too much glory, as the thousand voices rise to their climax in THE MIGHTY GOD-there is a sudden silence! In that silence the music of all music is heard, and the reverent soul knows that should the morning stars sing together for joy, and the angels unite in the choir, they could in their highest note only uplift the spirit to the threshold of the more godlike silence.

WALDEN WOODS.

Leaves are heaped upon leaves on the rustling walks of the woodland —

There they fall and decay, wearisome year upon year;

So are the men and women who find not the fugitive moment
Rich in work and results, dull and poor as it seems.
Never afar, believe me, lurks the goddess Occasion,

Bearing before her the task, hiding the glorious prize:

Hast thou eyes to behold her, and quick ears to catch the music

Of her delicate wings hovering over thy way?

Then shall thy days be blithe, thy memory fresh and fragrant.
Be the unresting wind, not the withering leaf !

WALDEN WATER.

SEE Walden shining in the sun,
And creeping up to kiss the feet
Of oak and pine and drooping birch,

Whose tremulous forms his waves repeat.

This green abyss, this lucid well,

Gives glimpses into endless peace:
Come rest with me beside the brink,
And let thine idle labor cease.

From whispering tree and billow bright,
From silent sky and wandering cloud,
A sweet persuasion steals o'er all,

And soothes the sad and tames the proud.

As softly lies the brooding light,
And fair the flitting shadow falls,

So gently in these better hours

The sacred voice of Nature calls.

THE NATURE OF MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY.

By the late JAMES P. ESPY, author of "Philosophy of Storms," etc.

SCIENCE has demonstrated that this earth was once fluid, from heat, to the surface; it follows that man has not existed on this earth from eternity, and it is manifest that the first man had not a man for his father, nor the first woman a woman for her mother; and as there is no known cause now in existence to produce man, but that of ordinary generation, and as it is plainly impossible for him to have originated from any fortuitous concourse of atoms, we are constrained to believe that the first man and first woman were contrived and brought into existence by a being of superior wisdom, power and goodness. And as this same reason applies to all the animals and vegetables on the face of the earth, we may safely infer that the power, wisdom and goodness of this being are indefinitely great. This inference is greatly confirmed, when we dis

cover innumerable contrivances, both in the moral and physical world, all tending to the well-being of man.

Now all these contrivances imply a contriver, and unless this contriver was himself contrived, he must have been eternal. For

it is certain, that the first cause or contriver always existed, for if there was even a time when nothing existed, nothing could ever have been brought into existence, ex nihilo nihil fit. This first self-existent and eternal cause or contriver is called God, whether the immediate contriver of the universe was the self-existent eternal first cause or not. But as nothing is gained by supposing that the contriver of the universe, and the former of man, was himself or itself contrived, it is unphilosophical to make the supposition.

When we examine the nature of man, we discover that he is so constituted or contrived, that the fundamental law of his nature is to be fond of pleasure and averse to pain. Indeed, as a sensitive being, it would seem he could not be formed otherwise. We find, also, that he is so contrived as to be able to discover by degrees more and more the causes which produce pleasure, and the causes which produce pain. The sum of human happiness is much increased by the contrivance God has made, that one of the principal sources of man's enjoyment is doing good to others, or endeavoring to increase their happiness. We find, also, that doing evil to others, or even designing to do evil, is always attended with pain, and no doubt more suffering is felt by the evil-doer than by the one to whom the evil is done.

God has so formed the human race, that one man's true interest or well-being never clashes with another's; or, in other words, one man is never under the necessity of diminishing the well-being of another, to promote his own happiness.

If man was so constituted that he could promote his own happiness by diminishing that of others, the very constitution of man would then be a species of bribery in God, offering happiness as a reward for doing evil to others. If God is perfectly wise and perfectly good, he has not so constituted man. Indeed, if we allow that the great First Cause is without intelligence and incapable of design, and that man was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, which is infinitely improbable, still by examining his constitution as it is we will be obliged to acknowledge that doing good to others is a source of pleasure, and doing evil to others is

a source of pain. If man is never under the necessity of doing evil to others, or of diminishing their happiness to increase his own, a fortiori, God is never under the necessity of diminishing the happiness of one man for the good of another.

Pain of every kind which does not result in the ultimate good or well-being of the individual suffering it, is an evil to him, and, of course, it can not promote the well-being of others; and if inflicted by others, it will diminish their happiness, probably, more than it does that of the individual on whom it is inflicted. All punishment, therefore, ought to be inflicted with the intention of benefiting the individual punished; for if it results in diminishing the well-being of the individual punished, it certainly will diminish the well-being of those who inflicted it more especially if the punishment is inflicted without regard to the well-being of the sufferer.

Punishment, therefore, to be just and useful (and it can not be just without being useful), should be prospective, and not retrospective; and it contains a false and dangerous doctrine to say a man ought to be punished for his transgressions, if this form of speech is understood literally. The truth is, he ought to be punished only for the sake of reformation or discipline,- and this is the only mode in which God ever punishes, as will appear more fully hereafter.

This doctrine, when once admitted, will remove all vengeance from the mind; for every one will see, that to punish with the feelings of vengeance is to punish oneself. Thus the criminal code of all nations will be freed from its foulest blot, the open avowal and practice of the principle that it is just to punish for the good of the community-in some cases, at least without any regard than can possibly be incul-cated and embraced; for it teaches men to the good of the criminal. This is the most pernicious doctrine to believe, from their infancy to manhood, that they may (at least, sometimes) benefit themselves by diminishing the well-being of others and it never occurs to them that it is false; for it is a doctrine embraced by the State, and lies at the very foundation of their criminal code.

The extreme perniciousness of this principle will clearly appear, when we perceive, as we may by a little consideration, that from this one error all our wicked conduct to others arises. Remove the belief that we can benefit ourselves by doing evil to others, and

implant in its place the belief that we shall be the principal sufferers by such conduct, then all motive to do evil to others is at once cut off, and with the absence of motive the action will, of course, not be performed. If this doctrine is true, the evil done to a community by one legalized murder (the execution of a criminal) is infinitely greater than the most atrocious murder ever committed by an individual, because it teaches, in the most effectual manner, the principle from which all murders and other crimes arise; and, besides, the moral feeling of the community, by the practice of capital punishments, is rendered callous, to a degree beyond calculation.

Men are so constructed by the Creator that they perform every day thousands of good actions, without considering for a moment whether happiness or misery will be the result; but they seldom, if ever, commit a crime without calculating the consequences. Their moral arithmetic, however, deriving its rules of calculation. from the criminal code of nations, is false, and they determine to do evil to their fellow-creature from the expectation of increasing their own well-being. In this expectation they must fail, as certainly as a just God stands at the head of the universe; for it would be in the highest degree wicked to bribe his creatures with happiness as a reward or consequence of doing evil one to another. As it is manifestly not good for an individual to be punished for any crime, when it is impossible for that punishment to work reformation, or benefit to the individual in any other way, so it is manifestly unjust to inflict such punishment, and it would be infinitely cruel to continue such punishment to all eternity.

God being perfectly wise and perfectly good, he must, from his very nature, intend to do some good in every thing which he does; whenever he punishes any of his creatures, therefore, or, which is the same thing, causes pain to be the necessary consequence of crime, he must intend to do that creature good by the pain, more especially as this is the only way to improve the individual, and thus also to benefit others.

As God certainly does punish-that is, cause pain to be the inevitable consequence of certain actions, which we therefore call evil actions-we are sure he will succeed in doing the good which he intends by that punishment; for he is all-wise to lay his plan, and all-powerful to execute it. Now the only good conceivable to result from punishment is the reformation of the individual, or