because we have made ourselves delicate and tender; we are on every side in danger of error and of guilt, which we are certain to avoid only by speedy forgiveness.

From this pacific and harmless temper, thus propitious to others and ourselves, to domestic tranquillity and to social happiness, no man is withheld but by pride, by the fear of being insulted by his adversary, or despised by the world.

It may be laid down as an unfailing and universal axiom, that "all pride is abject and mean.' It is always an ignorant, lazy, or cowardly acquiescence in a false appearance of excellence, and proceeds not from consciousness of our attainments, but insensibility of our wants.

Nothing can be great which is not right. Nothing which reason condemns can be suitable to the dignity of the human mind. To be driven by external motives from the path which our own heart approves,—to give way to anything but conviction, to suffer the opinion of others to rule our choice or overpower our resolves,-is to submit tamely to the lowest and most ignominious slavery, and to resign the right of directing our own lives.

The utmost excellence at which humanity can arrive, is a constant and determined pursuit of virtue, without regard to present dangers or advantages; a continual reference of every action to the divine will; an habitual appeal to everlasting justice; and an unvaried elevation of the intellectual eye to the reward which perseverance only can obtain. But that pride which many, who presume to boast of generous sentiments, allow to regulate their measures, has nothing nobler in view than the approbation of men; of beings whose superiority we are under no obligation to acknowledge, and who, when we have courted them with the utmost assiduity, can confer no valuable or permanent reward; of beings who ignorantly judge of what they do not understand, or partially determine what they never have examined; and whose sentence is, therefore, of no weight till it has received the ratification of our own conscience.

He that can descend to bribe suffrages like these at the price of his innocence; he that can suffer the delight of such acclamations to withhold his attention from the commands of the universal Sovereign, has little reason to con

gratulate himself upon the greatness of his mind: whenever he awakes to seriousness and reflection, he must become despicable in his own eyes, and shrink with shame from the remembrance of his cowardice and folly.

Of him that hopes to be forgiven, it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended; and to him that refuses to practise it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain.

VII.-MARSHAL BUGEAUD AND ARAB CHIEFTAIN.

(W. 8. LANDOR.)

Walter Savage Landor, poet and essayist, is a native of Warwickshire, and was born in 1775. He spends the sunset of his days in exile.

Bugeaud. Such is the chastisement the God of battles in his justice and indignation has inflicted on you. Of seven hundred refractory and rebellious, who took refuge in the cavern, thirty, and thirty only, are alive; and of these thirty there are four only who are capable of labour, or indeed of motion. Thy advanced age ought to have rendered thee wiser, even if my proclamation, dictated from above in the pure spirit of humanity and fraternity, had not been issued. Is thy tongue scorched, that thou listenest, and starest, and scowlest, without answering me? What mercy after this obstinacy can thy tribe expect?

Arab. None; even if it lived. Nothing is now wanting to complete the glory of France. Mothers and children, in her own land, hath she butchered on the scaffold; mothers and children in her own land hath she bound together and cast into the deep; mothers and children in her own land hath she stabbed in the streets, in the prisons, in the temples. Ferocity such as no tales record, no lover of the marvellous and of the horrible could listen to or endure! In every country she has repeated the same atrocities, unexampled by the most sanguinary of the Infidels. To consume the helpless with fire, for the crime of flying from pollution and persecution, was wanting to her glory: she has won it. We

are not, indeed, her children; we are not even her allies; this, and this alone, may, to her modesty, leave it incomplete. Bugeaud. Traitor! I never ordered the conflagration.

Arab. Certainly thou didst not forbid it: and, when I consider the falsehood of thy people, I disbelieve thy assertion, even though thou hast not sworn it.

Bugeaud. Miscreant! disbelieve, doubt a moment the word of a Frenchman!

Arab. Was it not the word of a Frenchman that no conquest should be made of this country? Was it not the word of a Frenchman that when chastisement had been inflicted on the Dey of Algiers, even the Algerines should be unmolested? Was it not the word of two kings, repeated by their ministers to every nation round? But we never were Algerines, and never fought for them. Was it not the word of a Frenchman which promised liberty and independence to every nation upon earth? Of all who believed in it, is there one with which it has not been broken? Perfidy and insolence brought down on your nation the vengeance of all others. Simultaneously a just indignation burst forth from every quarter of the earth against it, for there existed no people within its reach or influence who had not suffered by its deceptions.

Bugeaud. At least you Arabs have not been deceived by us. I promised you the vengeance of heaven; and it has befallen you.

Arab. The storm hath swept our country, and still sweeps it. But wait. The course of pestilence is from south to north. The chastisement that overtook you thirty years ago, turns back again to consummate its imperfect and needful work. Impossible that the rulers of Europe, whoever or whatever they are, should be so torpid to honour, so deaf to humanity, as to suffer in the midst of them a people so full of lies and treachery, so sportive in cruelty, so insensible to shame. If they are, God's armory contains heavier, and sharper, and surer instruments. A brave and just man, inflexible, unconquerable, Abdel Kader, will never abandon our cause. Every child of Islam, near and far, roused by the conflagration in the cavern, will rush forward to exterminate the heartless murderers.

Bugeaud. A Frenchman hears no threat without resent ing it his honour forbids him.

Arab. That honour which never has forbidden him to break an engagement or an oath: that honour which binds him to remain and to devastate the country he swore before all nations he would leave in peace: that honour which impels him to burn our harvests, to seize our cattle, to murder our youths, to violate our women. Europe has long experienced this honour: we Arabs have learned it perfectly in much less time.

Bugeaud. Guards! seize this mad chatterer.

Go, thief! assassin! traitor! blind grey-beard! lame beggar!

Arab. Cease there. Thou canst never make me beg for bread, for water, or for life. My grey beard is from God: my blindness and lameness are from thee.

Bugeaud. Begone, reptile! Expect full justice; no mercy. The president of my military tribunal will read to thee what is written.

Arab. Go; enter, and sing and whistle in the cavern, where the bones of brave men are never to bleach, are never to decay. Go, where the mother and infant are inseparable for ever, one mass of charcoal; the breasts that gave life, the lips that received it; all, all; save only where two arms, in colour and hardness like corroded iron, cling round a brittle stem, shrunken, warped, and where two heads are calcined. Go; strike now; strike bravely: let thy sword in its playfulness ring against them. What are they but white stones, under an arch of black; the work of thy creation!

Bugeaud. Singed porcupine! thy quills are blunted, and stick only into thyself.

Arab. Is it not in the memory of our elders, and will it not remain in the memory of all generations, that, when four thousand of those who spoke our language and obeyed our prophet, were promised peace and freedom on laying down their arms, in the land of Syria, all, to a man, were slain under the eyes of your leader? Is it not notorious that this perfidious and sanguinary wretch is the very man whom, above all others, the best of you glory in imitating,

and whom you rejected only when fortune had forsaken him? Is it then only that atrocious crimes are visible or looked for in your country? Even this last massacre, no doubt, will find defenders and admirers there; but neither in Africa, nor in Asia, nor in Europe, one. Many of you will palliate it, many of you will deny it; for it is the custom of your country to cover blood with lies, and lies with blood.

Bugeaud. And, here and there, a sprinkling of ashes over both, it seems.

Arab. Ending in merriment, as befits ye. But is it ended?

Bugeaud. Yes, yes, at least for thee, vile prowler, traitor, fugitive, incendiary !—And thou, too, singed porcupine, canst laugh!

Arab. At thy threats, and stamps, and screams. Verily our prophet did well and with far-sightedness, in forbidding the human form and features to be graven or depicted,-if such be human. Henceforward will monkeys and hyænas abhor the resemblance and disclaim the relationship.

VIII. THE DELUGE.

(THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D.)

Thomas Guthrie, D.D., senior minister of St. John's Free Church, Edinburgh, was born in Brechin, Forfarshire, in 1803.

Look, for example, on the catastrophe of the Deluge. And let not our attention be so engrossed by its dread and awful character, as to overlook all that preceded it, and see nothing but the flood and its devouring waters.

The waters rise till rivers swell into lakes, and lakes become seas, and the sea stretches out her arms along fertile plains to seize their flying population. Still the waters rise; and now, mingled with beasts that terror has tamed, men climb to the mountain tops, with the flood roaring at their heels. Still the waters rise; and now each summit stands above them like a separate and sea-girt isle. Still the waters rise; and, crowding closer on the narrow spaces of lessening