property; and if any wrong has been done, it was done by others, not by him; so that he is clear. Finding, however, that the pres ence of the beautiful though stunned and bewildered child occasions some uneasiness in his own family, he sells her to a slave-driver, to make up a coffle for the still further South. On her way thither, she is rescued, or rather bought, by the son of a Planter, is received to his father's home, restored by affectionate treatment to the use of her memory and to recollections of her family, and finally becomes the noble-spirited wife of her deliverer.

embodies

Such is the tenor of a story, which, the author says, ideas and impressions received by the writer during a residence in the South." Of course, we have stripped it of all its interest, by thus giving it only in skeleton. We ought to say that it is well told, that it is rich in incidents, and that the scenes through which it leads us embrace almost every aspect of slave-life and Planter's life. The characters to which it introduces us are quite various. Among the blacks, we are made acquainted with nearly all grades between the stupid and the intelligent, the malicious and the affectionate, the stubbornly perverse and the religious. Among the whites the scale runs down the whole range from the secret friend of emancipation to the self-satisfied slave-holder, and thence to the bigoted advocate of "the peculiar institution," the jealous guardian of it, and finally to the slave-driver and breaker-in, along with his hounds. Some of these characters and scenes are, of course, such as to excite the most painful feelings. But even where the manner of describing them is a little stiff, or artificial, the scenes themselves are very naturally developed, and bear with them convincing evidence of their truthfulness. The author says that there may be brighter, and there certainly are darker, colors than any which she has here depicted; but that she has preferred to take the medium tones, and has been careful not to exaggerate, or "set down aught in malice." All candid readers, of good sense and of a tolerable degree of information, will accord to her the praise of having adhered to the line of moderation which she proposed to herself.

The most harrowing scene, after the kidnapping, is, we think, that in old Chloe's hut, where the yet uncrushed spirit of a free child is beaten out of Ida, and she paralyzed into a slave. The process, when once described, becomes perfectly intelligible; it is seen to be in perfect keeping with the laws of our nature. It is human nature in old Chloe to be fiendish, after an experience like hers; it is human nature in poor Ida to be transformed, under the circumstances, into a half-idiot, though her native powers are not irremediably extinguished by the temporary syncope. We hear people, even those who are otherwise sensible people, say, in excuse of our national abomination, that our blacks are an inferior race. We should like to be told when and where there ever was a race of chattel-slaves, black or white,

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who were not inferior. It is the law of their condition. Old H said, more than twenty-seven centuries ago, that the day a ma comes a slave, he loses half of his manhood; and the world has since regarded this as a striking instance of the poet's clear in into our nature. Inferiority is the law of the slave's conditio law of that ever-merciful, but ever-just, Providence, who has s dained, that the sensibilities of the victim should be partially rel by the stunning effects of the first blow, and who at the same holds the perpetrator to a double retribution, for the wrong done fellow-creature, and also for the stultification which enables the ferer to endure that wrong. We know nothing of more fearful than to hear people, with a wise look and a complacent air, plead greatest aggravation of their guilt as an excuse for the outrage commit or defend.

Another very suggestive scene is that of the Carolinian mob, w gathers to lynch Ida and her father, on suspicion of their being a tionists, or at least of their having occasionally let drop express that savored of freedom. It is a vivid picture of the brutality rage that characterize the poor rabble in a slave-holding commu while it still does liberal justice to the more orderly and pru counsels of many Planters.

But the scenes that we would select for special notice, mult before us as we recall the tenor of the story. We therefore part larize no further. Can it be that such transactions as are here scribed are passing from year to year, and from age to age, in own country, and in this nineteenth century of the Gospel of Chr It seems like a dream of Pandemonium. And yet, when we r ourselves, we know that the whole is but a faint presentation of reality, that our chattel-slavery, from the nature of the c involves all the atrocities here described, and others too that are yond the power of fiction to exaggerate. People who do not like have our national sore meddled with, may do in the case of " May," as they did in the case of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." They n loudly deny, before the tribunal of the world, that it is true; just my neighbor, who sells rum, pleads "Not Guilty" before our ju cial tribunals, and gets his hangers-on to swear him clear, when th is not a man in the town but knows that he does sell it, and that charge against him does not embrace a hundredth part of his offend In fact, we see by the papers, that the policy of swearing down charge has already been resorted to. It is denied that free wh children are kidnapped and made slaves. Free black children treated in this way,-that is a thing of little moment,-but not f white children. What good will it do to deny this? Is it the w of the advocates of slavery to call forth a Key" to "Ida Ma as they called forth a "Key" to "Uncle Tom's Cabin ?" For the is not a well-informed person, North or South, but knows that f

white children are sometimes kidnapped and made slaves, and that there are such things as the mobbing of men and women suspected of abolitionism. Would that these were the worst of the evils that inhere in the system of American slavery! No unbiassed person, of good sense, can doubt that both the general picture in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and that in "Ida May," are essentially true; for he is conscious to himself that they are fair and candid expositions of the workings of human nature under the given circumstances. Neither work needs a 66 Key;" each bears its own verification in itself. The one has spoken home to the conscience of the whole civilized world; and the other has uttered a voice that will carry conviction on both sides of the Atlantic. Each of them holds up before our face a system of wrong among us, that no man can look at without turning sick at heart, and that no man has impudence enough to defend, or excuse, or in any way countenance, but by first denying its character.

And this system of iniquity, in some respects unparalleled for atrocity by any other policy on the face of the globe, except in Cuba -alas, we know that this is the very system which the upshot of our Congressional legislation, for half a century now, has gone to strengthen and to spread abroad, and never with so high a hand as in the year just closed. We ask every lover of his country, whether in the North or in the South, to look steadily at this fact; for he knows it to be a fact. It is so terrible, that the larger part of well-meaning people turn away from the sight that troubles them, and desperately try to solace themselves by refusing to see it. But such a disposal of the matter is to the last degree foolish. It is criminal. Let them look steadily at it. Let them think seriously what chattel-slavery is -what it always must be, when held over a vast region, at the discretion of all kinds of masters; and then let them consider that all which our National Legislature has done for the last fifty years, with respect to it, has been to cherish and to extend it. Are they aware that its advances instead of abating have, for the whole of that period, been growing more and more rapid, and now more daring than ever; that in the last ten years its area has been nearly doubled; and that arrangements are now in contemplation, both at the North and at the South, to stretch its line down to the Isthmus of Panama, and around the West Indies. We do not affect to have any special foresight; but surely it is no presumption, it is only stating a selfevident case, to say, that these arrangements will be carried into effect, unless there be a radical change in the temper of our people, and this very soon. If our influential families refuse to take a stand against the encroaching power; if it continue to be the tone of good society" to cry down all agitation of the subject, and to sneer politely at all earnestness in the matter; if our merchants and commercial men continue to plead for compromises with slavery, and to palliate its evils; if our older newspapers continue, some of them to

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pander in the most desperate way to the slaveocracy, and other tolerate it, except in some moment of exasperating insult; if the gymen of city congregations continue to keep silence, or now and come out in public excuse of the abomination; if our leading po cians are still allowed to whip-in, keeper-like, every straggler f the pack they hold in leash-if all this continue as hitherto, ther not a man of common sense but can calculate the horoscope of country with moral certainty. The power that has been advan with increasing strides for half a century, will make still gre headway. There may be flurries of indignation against her f time to time, but all ineffectual and temporary, as hitherto. people may now and then rise en masse against her encroachme but their keepers will whip them down once more. She will h her way, as she ever has had; for she is determined. In a few y quarrels will be successively picked with Mexico, Central Amer and all the West India Islands; they will be "annexed," cove with slavery, formed into States, admitted to the Union, and, the help of northern recreants, hold irresistible sway from the Lawrence and the British dominions, to the coast of South Amer -the greatest and most terrible slave empire that the sun ever sh upon. The Northern States will be obliged to legalize slavery, the principle, already begun to be acted on, that the master ha right to carry his chattels wherever he pleases to go; the prohibit once removed, there will not be wanting, among our own citize those who would like to have a few "servants" in permanent poss sion; the slave-trade will be opened anew, in spite of all compromis the value of which we have now learned. The great Republic v be revolutionized into an Oligarchy of the haughtiest kind, presid over by men who have been educated from their infancy in the pr ciples and habits of irresponsible Despotism. Here is the first sta in the coming career of our country, unless there speedily be, in spirit of our people, a change, a radical change, of which we see determinate signs at present.

2. Kanzas and Nebraska: the History, Geographical and Physic Characteristics, and Political Position of those Territories; an accou of the Emigrant Aid Companies, and Directions to Emigrants. By E ward E. Hale. With an original Map from the latest authoriti Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company. 1854. 12mo. pp. 256.

The preparation of this work was occasioned by the movement form Emigrant Aid Companies for the immediate settlement of Ka zas with a free population. It was hoped, by this movement, secure that territory on the side of freedom, notwithstanding th Congress had opened it for a slave-country. To diffuse as comple a knowledge of the territory, and of its prospects, as can be gather at present, is the object of Mr. Hale. We think he has done his tas

well. The field which he surveys embraces almost every topic on which either an emigrant, or a general reader, would be likely to inquire with respect to that region; and the information that is given appears to have been collected with a carefulness, and to be stated with an impartiality, that render it worthy of confidence. Mr. Hale begins with the history of early discovery in the Mississippi valley, particularly in Kanzas; then proceeds to a review of the numerous Indian tribes that are found in the latter territory, giving an account of their present condition and of their prospects for the future; describes the face of the country, its capabilities, its rivers, navigable and innavigable, its valleys, soil, &c., its military posts, trading and missionary stations, the sites of projected cities, the routes of travel, both the existing and the contemplated ones. He relates the history of legislation, respecting the territory, from the debate on the Missouri Bill in 1820, to the passage of the Nebraska Bill last winter. Finally, he describes the Emigration Aid Companies that are formed in several states of our Union, gives many valuable suggestions to emigrants, and all the information he could gather for their wants.

"It must be," says he, "that the settlement of the new territories by the best population that can be given them shall command the active efforts of all true lovers of their country. This effort ought not to be spoken of as a little affair, or as incidental or subsidiary to other enterprizes, but as the greatest duty now before American patriots and Christians. It is a way of work more hopeful than any which has been opened for years. It gives room for the exertion of every one, in whatever position, and holds out rewards such as satisfy the most eager. In the long, painful, irritating, and perplexing discussion which has sought to check and hem in the institution of slavery, the great difficulty has been the want of a field of action, where working men should not feel that they were wasting life in mere talk, or wordy protest, or prophecy. That field is found in Kanzas. To send men to Kanzas, or to go to Kanzas, resolved that free labor shall be honored in Kanzas, and shall make itself honorable, is an effort which can enlist the energies of every man.”

3. Life of Rev. Hosea Ballou ; with Accounts of his Writings, and Biographical Sketches of his Seniors and Contemporaries in the Universalist Ministry. By Thomas Whittemore, &c. Vol. II. Boston: James M. Usher. 1854. 12mo. pp. 408.

This second volume covers the period from Mr. Ballou's removal to Boston, in 1817, to the end of his editorial engagement with the Universalist Magazine, in 1828. Its method is, in general, the same as that of the first volume-of which we gave a notice in a former Number of the Quarterly. It consists of large extracts from Mr. Ballou's publications, interspersed with comments, and connected together by a running narrative. In the course of the narrative