vail of our human flesh, but, in the person of the Father, taken upon him the vail of our human thoughts, and permitted us by his own spoken authority to conceive him simply and clearly as a loving father and friend, a being to be walked with and reasoned with, to be moved by our entreaties, angered by our rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, and glorified by our labor, and finally, to be beheld in immediate and active presence in all the powers and changes of creation. This conception of God, which is the child's, is evidently the only one that can be universal, and therefore the only one which, for us, can be true. The moment that, in our pride of heart, we refuse to accept the condescension of the Almighty, and desire him, instead of stooping to hold our hands, to rise up before us into his glory; we hoping that, by standing on a grain of dust or two of human knowledge higher than our fellows we may behold the Creator as he rises, God takes us at our word; he rises into his own inconceivable majesty, he goes forth upon the ways that are not our ways, and retires into the thoughts which are not our thoughts, and we are left alone. And presently we say in our vain thoughts, 'There is no God.'"-P. 83.

Let us close our liberal quotations with the sublime ending of the chapter on mountain glory, with which this volume concludes. He had been describing in great splendor of diction the deaths of Aaron and Moses as glorifying the mountains, and then turns to the transfiguration of Christ, upon which he pours a flood of reverent and radiant thought, closing thus:

"We shall not have unprofitably entered into the mind of the earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, as we watch the chains of snowy mountains rise on the horizon, we should sometimes admit the memory of the hour in which their Creator, among the solitudes, entered on his travail for the salvation of our race; and indulge the dream, that as the flaming and trembling mountains of the earth seem to be the monuments of the manifesting of his terror on Sinai, these pure and white hills, near to the heaven and sources of all good to the earth, are the appointed memorials of that light of his mercy that fell, snowlike, on the mount of transfiguration."-P. 375.

*

It ought not to be unnoticed, in connection with this frankness and fullness of Christian utterance, as a painful proof of the timidity and unbelief of others, that a work just issued from the American press describing the White Mountains, though written by a clergy

The last volume was published since this essay was prepared. We find in it no shrinking from the truths with which the others are adorned and supported. Its closing pages dwell exclusively on religious duty and its rewards. Thus plainly does he declare the whole counsel of God in his final sentence:

"High on the desert mountain, full descried, sits throned the tempter, with his old promise-the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them. He still calls you to your labor, as Christ to your rest: labor and sorrow, base desire and cruel hope. So far as you desire to possess, rather than to give; so far as you look forward to command, instead of to bless; so long as you seek to be greatest instead of least, first instead of last; so long you are serving the lord of all that is last and least, the last enemy that shall be destroyed-Death; and you shall have death's crown with the worm coiled in it, and death's wages with the worm feeding on them; kindred of the earth shall you yourself become, saying to the grave, Thou art my father,' and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister.'

"I leave you to judge and to choose between this labor and this bequeathed peace, this wages and the gift of the Morning Star, this obedience and the doing of the will which shall enable you to claim another kindred than of earth, and to hear another voice than that of the grave, saying, 'My brother and sister and mother.'"

man, and abounding in beautiful quotations and reflections, has no hint of the Christian lessons taught by the everlasting hills; and while it quotes freely from this volume, Ruskin's grand and scientific portraitures of mountain forms, carefully ignores those sublimer passages in which the whole work culminates, and which alone bring before us the true conception of their value as connected with Him who, ages before his incarnation, rejoiced in the creation of these highest parts of the dust of the world. If professed ministers of Jesus Christ are so afraid to give him his rightful seat in literature and nature, what must we expect of the unrobed worshipers?

His

We have endeavored to present some of the more salient excellences of this famous writer. A multitude of lesser thoughts flash beneath his feet as he rushes on in his vehement course to his lofty goal, thoughts full of suggestion to every class of writers. style, like that of all the masters of speech, is his own, and is admirably fitted to the peculiarities of his thought. It is picturesque and glowing as the most brilliant landscape. Like the mighty river of the west, with its spring floods in its channels, its spring flowers on its banks, its proud fleet on its bosom, winding, swift, long, graceful, odorous, magnificent, so flows the river of his speech. Not the short, sharp musketry of Macaulay, always the same, whether fired in single shots or in deadly platoons; not the tangled torrid forests of Carlyle, full of wondrous life but impassible to human steps; not "the gulfs of sweetness without bound" in which Tennyson swims, nor the cold, curt crystalline of Emerson, glittering with the frozen beauty of Arctic ice; but like that nature whom he, the most intelligently and piously, loves of all her worshipers. It is now gorgeous as a sunset, now simple as a daisy; now flashing in annihilating lightning, and drowning with overwhelming deluge the doomed subjects of its wrath, and now gathering up its thick folds and burning arrows, it glides away into the June morning full of music, fragrance, and calm.

Like nature, too, it has characteristics not so pleasing. Its cloudiness is not always transparent or golden. It is sometimes either incomprehensible for want of clearness in himself, or, what is full as likely, for want of comprehensibility in the reader. It is also like nature in its apparent versatility of opinion. The winds blow with great rapidity of change from all points of the compass. He has been condemned for this trait more than for any other. But it arises naturally from the different aspects in which every great man can be viewed, and he is as severe in denouncing that which they lack as he is in praising that in which they abound. For instance, Titian is commended as a colorist, but denounced as sketcher of forms of vege

tation. Hence in the chapter of truths of color he might be lauded, in that of truths of vegetation scourged. He also declares it to be necessary thus to seemingly deny yourself if you would be true to truth. In his lecture before the Cambridge school of art he playfully says:

"Perhaps some of my hearers may have heard that I am rather apt to contradict myself. I hope I am exceedingly apt to do so. I never met with a question yet of any importance that did not need for the right solution of it at least one positive and one negative answer, like an equation of the second degree. Most matters of any importance are three-sided or four-sided or polygonal, and the trotting round a polygon is severe work for people any way stiff in their opinions. For myself, I am never satisfied that I have handled a subject properly till I have contradicted myself three times."

In spite of these defects, if defects they be, that inhere in all human things, his works are a still lesson if not a law to artists. To him more than to any other man do they owe the lesson of humble faithful obedience of nature. Before he arose they esteemed their genius as greater than that which poured through her. He taught them that all art was the feeblest shadowing forth of her supernal grandeur; that a little pigment, ranging from black paint to white, and a bit of canvas, would fall infinitely short of reproducing those spectacles that have the scope of heaven for their canvas, and the colors of heaven, from the sun shining in his strength to midnight clad in thunder robes, on their palette, with infinite genius to mingle and arrange them. He taught them more than this: that nature is animate with Deity, even with the Deity of Christ. Him he beholds not only coming, but dwelling in the clouds of heaven. He yet walks the waves not only of Galilee but of all seas. He cleaves the skies that glow forever under his burning. feet. He transfigures the mountains with the perpetual overflowing of his uncreated glory. Thus art becomes the handmaid of religion, and may be permitted to serve her in the adorning of the temple where God in Christ is seen and worshiped.

She has felt his influence. A new school acknowledges him as its founder. Architecture is feeling it. The Church cannot "grow as grows the grass" unless its architects have "visitations from the living God," who alone can give them types of those perfections which flashed before the eyes of Moses in the mount.

Not only should the student of art make him his companion, but the student of nature will also find him a guide both in the insight which he seeks, and in keeping himself from the perils of irreverence and unbelief to which his studies will tempt him. Above all, the minister at the altar should read him, for he who enters the holy of holies ought to be conversant with the forms and meanings of lesser ceremonies. He who offers the life of God to the soul of man, should

know that life in its weaker yet divine force that flows through the inferior creation. He will find the other book of God of which he is the appointed interpreter is in closest sympathy with this earlier but lesser revelation. That begins with a description of nature as it emerged from nothing by the voice of God, and as it assumed form and comeliness in the heavens and on the earth under his creative guidance. It closes with a description of the same nature as it shall re-emerge from a new chaos of fire under the decree of the same Son of God, and shall be fashioned into new heavens and new earth. It is full of descriptions of her loveliest aspects-the primeval perfect garden, the garden of Canaan, and "the statelier Eden come again." The highest notes of the Psalmist's harp ring with praises of nature; the grandest visions of the prophets are painted with its scenery; the sweetest sayings of the Saviour are full of its fragrance.

Thus discerning the unity of the kingdoms of nature and grace, and "the fullness of Him that filleth all in all" pervading both systems with his ineffable infinitude, he will be able to say with far more profound and spiritual significance than he felt who first uttered it: "Be mute who will, who can,

Yet I will praise Thee with impassioned voice;
Me did'st thou consecrate a priest of thine,

In such a temple as surrounds my soul,

Reared for thy presence; therefore, am I bound
To worship here and everywhere, as one,
From unreflecting ignorance preserved,
And from debasement rescued."

ART. II.-THE FLORIDA MAROONS.

The Exiles of Florida; or, The Crimes committed by our Government against the Maroons, who fled from South Carolina and other Slave States, seeking Protection under Spanish Laws. By JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster, & Co. 1858.

MR. GIDDINGS's book has had a large sale, and its well-authenticated narrative has made a strong impression on the public mind. Its simple story makes it abundantly evident that slavery is not only a stupendous wrong in itself, but that it clouds the sense of justice in the state, corrupts the judiciary, paralyzes the arm of the executive officer, and retards the development of the nation. It may be true that the story is marred by the idiosyncrasies of its venerable author: but, on the other hand, his habits of research,

his long familiarity, as a member of Congress, with the documentary history of the nation, and his liberal quotations from official letters, reports, and state papers, have enabled him so to fortify his statements as to put them beyond reasonable question.

It will be remembered that Florida, down to 1819, was under the dominion of Spain. The settlements were small, and on the coast or the larger rivers; while the interior was a vast wilderness, known only to the Indians. Slavery was then the universal usage of the emigrants, and many attempts were made to enslave the Indians as well as the negroes. But, accustomed as they were to a wild, roving life, these efforts were attended with indifferent success, as they could easily fly from their masters to the forest, where they were always at home and where they found a secure refuge.

In the Carolinas the attempts to enslave the Indians were not only a failure, but rendered more insecure the bondage of the negroes. The ease with which they escaped to the shelter of the Georgia forests encouraged the negroes to undertake similar enterprises; and as the Indian country, as Georgia was then called, presented only a partial protection against the slave hunter, they pursued their way south into Florida, where they were cordially welcomed, permitted to occupy lands on the same condition as other citizens, and soon became a free and flourishing community.

As early as 1738 these refugees had become so numerous that the authorities of South Carolina sent a messenger to the Governor of St. Augustine, with a demand that they should be surrendered to their former owners. The refusal of this demand was the cause of much complaint; and Florida thenceforward became an asylum for the more enterprising sons of bondage in the border states,

In 1750 a quarrel occurred among the Creek Indians, inhabiting the Indian country in Georgia, and a large body, under a distinguished chief, left the tribe and went south into Florida, where they were well received, and had lands assigned them in the vicinity of the negroes. Here they had an organization entirely distinct from the Creeks, elected their own chiefs, and bore the name of Seminoles, which is the Indian word for runaways.

The Indians and negroes fraternized, and lived together in peace on the rich bottoms of the Appalachicola and Sewanee rivers, where they grew in numbers and wealth, and had large flocks and herds. The negroes increased, not only by natural production, but by accessions from the border states, and nothing occurred to disturb them in the "even tenor" of their security till subsequent to the revolutionary war.

Georgia had now become a state, and her people were large slave