there are chords deep in the soul even of the most abandoned which the hardest incrustations of vice cannot petrify, nor its most searing influence totally annihilate, and which, if only touched by the kindly sympathies of a generous heart, may awake and vibrate to new emotions and to the production of a new life-that, therefore, there is no one too reckless, too depraved, or too ignorant for the moral reformer or the propagator of divine truth-that, in one word, while there is life there is hope, even for the most degraded of all the degraded, the vilest of the vile. Delightful and glorious results have already followed the earnest adoption of this belief by enlightened and devoted philanthropists, and we augur from it more splendid results still. It has already given birth to numerous appro-rife and rampant' in our densely-populated districts, it priate agencies for the enlightenment, reclamation, and moral elevation of the ignorant and erring amongst the young. If, then, there has been an increase of juvenile delinquency, this spirit and these agencies of which we speak may have been instrumental in counteracting it. That they have been successful to a large extent will not be questioned by any who are acquainted with the history of such movements. May these agencies speedily be multiplied a thousandfold! may the divine blessing give energy and efficacy to them all! may forward' be inscribed on all their banners, until at length they wave in triumph over a morally regenerated people! I We have thus, then, placed before our readers a variety of statistics and calculations in regard to the extent of depravity amongst the young. Perhaps some may be inclined to regard them merely as repulsive and unmeaning figures, and may think them fit only for the eye of the calculator, or the curious speculatist, but utterly valueless to the practical man. We humbly deem this a great mistake. | To the thoughtful mind these cold-looking figures speak a highly intelligible language. They constitute an index to the moral condition of the nation, so far as that condition can be known from the nature and extent of that criminality of which the law takes cognisance. Tell they not of degradation, misery, and wo-of neglected moral culture, maddened passion, wounded spirits, bleeding hearts, and withered prospects? Write they not a bitter cruel tale of hunger, cold, nakedness, maltreatment, desertion, and suffering? Utter they not heavy charges against parents, guardians, and the public at large? What more powerful stimulus, then, can be supplied than a knowledge of these facts in order to arouse to benevolent exertion the enlightened and the humane? Unless we have something like a proper idea of the full extent of juvenile depravity and crime, is it not to be feared that any effort that we make for its suppression will at best be but fitful and feeble? Unless we know the extent as well as the nature of the disease, how shall we be able to judge of the adequacy of a remedy to work its cure? Or what more powerful motive can be appealed to in awakening and arousing men to exertion than the frightful hold which this moral malady has taken on the youthful communities of our land? But these figures do not indicate the full extent to which juvenile depravity prevails. The greater part of them respect more particularly juvenile criminality. We must, however, distinguish between criminality and depravity. Generally speaking, criminality implies depravity. Criminality precedes not, but follows in the train of depravity. It is a manifestation of depravity-it is one of the painful consequences which result from its active existence. But depravity does not always imply criminality in the legal sense of that term. Viewed in a moral aspect, depravity always implies criminality; indeed, depravity itself is criminality. But criminality viewed legally involves such an outward manifestation of depravity as does violence to human law, and consequently incurs the penalty attached thereto. The calculations, then, which we have been making refer more particularly to the extent of juvenile depravity as exhibited in the violation of human law. But this is but one shade in the dark picture-but one depart ment in the moral charnel-house. Beneath and beyond it there are huge and frightful masses of corruption and wickedness. While this exists in violation of every law of God, yet, because it comes not into immediate contact with the laws of men, no cognisance is taken of it, no record brings it to light, and to the majority of men its existence is unknown. Yet, notwithstanding this, it exists. Nor is it altogether hid from the observant eye. Much of it may indeed be hidden from human scrutiny. Perpetrated under the thick cover of night, or in the dark and secret recesses of the abodes of iniquity, an impenetrable veil may conceal it from mortal gaze. And yet there is much but too apparent. It sometimes cbtrudes its hideous features where least expected, and even on the notice of those who are slow to observe such things. While it is by far most is not altogether confined to these. It is far from being unknown in our quiet country villages and rural abodes. Poets have been wont to sing, and philosophers to dilate, on the innocence, simplicity, and beauty of rural life and cus toms; but either the golden age in this respect has gone past, and a fearful deteriorating change has swept over all, or poets have been misled by fancy and philosophers by fallacious data, for assuredly such descriptions greatly misrepresent the present state of things. Even amid retreats of Arcadian beauty the footsteps of juvenile depra vity are but too visible. They have left their polluted inprint on the fairest scenes of rural life. Like the widedestroying pestilence, this moral nuisance has swept across the whole land, leaving no nook or corner free from its scathing power. That the evil prevails to an appalling extent in the thickly-peopled localities, the large towns and the cities of our land, is but too apparent to every observer. No figures are needed to prove this. It confines not itself to the dens of iniquity,' but rears its head aloft, alike in outskirt, street, and dismal lane. By night it stalks abroad like a giant-fiend, scattering contagion at every step. Nor does it always hide its head for shame in open day. W a hardi hood and effrontery than which there can be ne thing baser or more loathsome, it braves all exposure, ou rages all decency, and glories in its very shame. And s it be borne in mind that it is but a small portion of tha that is ever taken cognisance of by law, and brought under the eye of the public in the character of criminality. How extensively prevalent, then, the juvenile depravity of the present day! What a wide field for the labours of the philanthropist! And how loud the call for earnest and laborious effort on the part of all who have at heart the well-being of humanity! EPISODES OF INSECT LIFE. THE observations of naturalists have for several years past been more especially directed to the insect world; a the results of their researches into the nature and habis of those tiny creatures have been wondrously pleasing The study of entomology has been lately fruitful of interes ing discoveries, and has tended to illustrate more more that beautiful chain of ordinate and intelligent des which exists throughout the created universe. Inde one could scarcely look upon the motions of insects witho being struck with an appearance of sense or purpose their actions, and an inquiring mind could hardly fal be led to trace the sources of their movements to something like a higher species of instinct. Perhaps analogies to human action and social habits are not to be so perfectif found in all the branches of zoology as in the insect tribes; and the author of the Episodes seems to have been fully imbued with this idea when he assumed the historical style in his description of the warlike habits of formicans or ants. 'Slave-making, as still sanctioned by the example of civilised and Christian nations, has been always practised by certain tribes of this pigmy people. In some respects however, our Lilliputian slave-owners are wofully behindhand, as compared with those of larger stature, especially with the dwellers in a certain transatlantic land of * London: Reeve & Co. freedom. They know not the meaning of Lynch law, the sound of a whip is never heard within their territories. The slaves live as well as their possessors; and, on some occasions, the common rule of such relationship being reversed, would seem to take the chief authority into their own hands. With all this indulgence, strange as it may appear, these little slaves are famous hands at labour. No Jack-of-all-trades, nor maid-of-all-work (for be it here observed that they are all females) can beat them for universal usefulness. The greater number of their owners are of the same sex with themselves, and, what may seem on this account the more remarkable is, that they are all without exception soldiers-Amazonian soldiers. As was once said by a certain corps of our own gentleman militaires, or said for them, these lady warriors are a class, who (fighting of course excepted) never do anything. It follows, consequently, that their slaves have everything to do. In a populous city they are at once the builders, the scavengers, the porters, and the nurses of the infant population. Nay, they are even the feeders of the grownup free community, which consists solely of the abovenamed lady soldiery, a few idle gentlemen, and some two or three queens or princesses of the blood. The slave population being thus absolutely necessary to the comfort, nay, very existence of their owners, it of course follows, that the keeping up of its numbers is a most important matter. This object is effected by predatory excursions, taken frequently into the territories of those harmless unoffending tribes which furnish the desired supply, and from which the female warriors usually return triumphant, each laden with the useful, if not glorious trophy of an infant captive.' her fate. She too springs upon the Rufian, but with more effective grasp, her powerful jaws enclosing, as in a vice, one limb of her athletic antagonist. The Rufian severs in twain the body of her assailant; its lower half falls and is trampled in the dust; but (horrible to see!) the upper portion still retains its hold, supported by the jaws which death has double-locked. The fixed eyes continue to look up angrily into the living face, the rigid arms to encircle the warm body of the wounded Rufian. Vainly she strives to shake off the hideous burthen: like the old Man of the Mountain, it will not be dislodged; and though the Amazon of Rufia left that battle-field, yet evermore the lady wore, carried, perforce, about her, the slaughtered Fuscan's head and shoulders, frightful trophy of her dearbought victory! But how goes the day ? How flows the tide of battle? Will Rufia or will Fusca, will might or right, prevail? Shall the infant Fuscan females grow up to be maids of all work at home, or slaves of all work in a foreign land? They run! they run! Who run? inquires the eager but dying gaze of a wounded Amazon, half raising her recumbent form and trying to sean the face of the field through the mist of her glazing eye. She saw them not; but too plainly to be seen were the vanquished Fuscans in full retreat towards the city which their efforts had proved ineffectual to defend. The remnant of their army, still numerous, though more than half destroyed, having reached the dome-like roof which covered in their subterranean capital, were seen to overspread its surface, then suddenly to disappear, defiling downwards through the descending streets. But the enemy was close at hand, and the dome just occupied by the scattered citizens, swarmed presently with the invading legions. The latter were soon in possession of the principal entrances; but even while these were being won, their sappers and miners opened breaches in the earthen masonry of the dome, so that the entire force of the invaders was speedily pouring from all quarters into the unhappy city. Thus were the free nurseries of Fusca stripped almost to extinction, that the slave-nurseries of Rufia might be replenished to overflowing.' Despite of the human aspect given to these proceedings, they are strictly entomological and correct, and pourtray the life that moves and suffers far down in the scale of being, and seem to share even the purpose of our rational nature. This preliminary description is followed by an account of a predatory excursion resolved on by a party of Amazonian Rufians, or chiefs of one of the slave making states of Formica, who proceed against Fusca, a city covered with a single dome, and the chief town of the busy, industrial, dusky Fuscans. When the industrious ants hear of the approach of the enemy, they leave their several employments, and proceed against the foe, leaving only some effeminate males within the ant-hill. The defenders are assembled in front of their city, fighting for their queen, their lives, and the liberty of their infant population. The assailants, their main body having now come up, are fighting for glory and for plunder, and above all, for the rape of Fuscan babies, to become the future slaves of their own One very pleasant chapter upon silk-worm moths leads rising generation. Oh! for a Homer's pen to describe the to a discussion upon the medicinal and edible properties universal ardour and the individual prowess of our pigmy of insects, and demonstrates that these have been and are Amazons. By far more numerous are the dusky Fuscans, in more extensive use than is generally supposed. See, though in discipline and personal strength they are much in the West Indies, the French planter gourmand (and inferior to the warlike Rufians. Of the latter we have sometimes the English, as his copyist), seated at his luxuspoken hitherto as Lilliputians, but now we have to treat rious table, oiling the hinges of his luxurious appetite with of them as opposed to a tribe of very inferior stature. The those lumps of insect fatness known as the grubs of the battle-field, an area of some four feet square, is strewed palm weevil; and then turn to the poor, degraded Hotwith dead and dying. Sulphureous fumes exhale around. tentot, squatted on the arid ground, swallowing, by handSingle combatants by thousands, each so eager in their fuls, white ants roasted, washed down by locust soup, or, respective contests as to seem unconscious of all besides, just as often, too hungry or too indolent to dress them, have spent their ammunition; but with rancour undi- devouring the uncooked insects. But, after all, none can minished, behold them now, limb to limb, head to head, pronounce these Acridophagi, or Locust-eaters, as monseized by each other and held in savage grip-now wrest-sters of singularity in their mode of diet. Was not the ling upright, now rolling in the dust. Long does the locust after its kind' expressly allowed for food by the dubious strife continue, till a third, Rufian or Fuscan, Mosaic law ? and, from the time of its institution even to comes to turn the balance and throw death into the ascend- the present, does not the law of nature, ever kind and ing scale. In another quarter, see perhaps a dozen com- provident, permit this insect scourge of humanity to be batants of either party, all firmly linked together in a converted into a medium of supporting human life, since, living chain, dashing, writhing like a wounded snake in in all countries a prey to their ravages, Syria, Arabia, serpentine convulsions, till snap goes a link beneath a Persia, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Barbary, locusts are still an mortal blow; but in an instant the dissevered portions re- article of provision, in more or less extensive use? And unite, and struggle on with double fury. Look now at from what but prejudice arises our disgust at insect-feedthat powerful long-limbed Rufian and the active little ing? Our King Jamie, of pedantic memory, was said to Fuscan, her opponent: the latter springs like a cat o'- have pronounced him ‘a vera valiant man who first admountain on the chest of her bulkier foe; but dearly does ventured on eating oysters; and truly we opine that he she pay for her temerity. Caught in the grasp of the must have been quite as much a hero in his way as the Amazonian Ajax, she is crushed, and falls strangled to the dweller in Surinam or the Mauritius who first engulphed earth. She falls-but let not her conqueror exult-a sister a fat palm weevil grub. Why should the Frenchman, heroine, no bigger than herself, and, like herself, carrying wiping his mouth after snail-soup, laugh at the Chinaman in a little body a mighty mind, beholds and vows to avenge smacking his lips after a dish of silk-worm chrysalides? Shrimp-eaters as we are, why should we stare at the locustfeeding Ethiop or Arab, and why should he who has supped off roasted crabs despise a New Caledonian for seasoning his breakfast with a relish of roasted spiders? Instead of thanking our stars for our own discriminating taste, let us, then, rather thank Providence for that omnivorous appetite common to our race. Herein let us recognise a distinguished provision by which our brother man, when located in barren lands or overtaken by accidental scarcity, is enabled to draw supplies from almost every department of nature. We only marvel that gastronomy (than whom even necessity herself can scarcely boast a more numerous progeny of inventions and resources) should not, in the demand of her votaries for new modes, have been led to seek more frequently for new materiel out of the insect kingdom. This, however, may be reserved for some future time. Cockchafers and chafer grubs may yet become articles for the London spring-market, and Patés de Sauterelles may yet have a place in second courses.' The Episodes of Insect Life' is a work which admirably combines the beautiful, the agreeable, and the instructive. It is just such a work as the young, inquiring mind would luxuriate over, being a serio-comic delineation of the habitudes of familiar and common insects, written in a rich, racy, and flowing style, and illustrated with spirited and lively engravings. Original Poetry. RETURN OF THE SUN TO THE ARCTIC REGIONS. Dark as the night of death Winter's dread reign Hill, plain, and river held Bound in his chain. Down in his frozen hut The Laplander lay, Dark, cheerless days and nights, Dreaming away: Hie to the mountain-tops, See yon faint streak Through the thick darkness First slowly break, Widening and redd'ning More and more bright! Joy to the frozen plains! Herald the light! Red as a bloody shield, Rising, he gleams; Soon o'er the snowy hills Glorious he streams; Now from the melting wreaths Fearful the crash. Hail to thee, god of day- Round thee thou fling'st! The earth from her sleep! Hail to thee, chasing The gloom of the night! Hail to thee, scattering 'NAPS.' I. CRAIG SOMETIMES, nay oft-times, our fancy becomes frolicsome, and will take us back to boyhood again, nolens volens. The appetite for marbles, and a love of those coins which we were wont to tear from our garments, and whose eyes we smashed to fit them for the process of pitch-and-toss, come often back upon us with all the vigour of a twelveyear-old; and our solemn black hat, our grave studential spectacles, our magnificent Tartarian whiskers, and all the incumbrances and appendages of a family-man, vanish in the light of our imagination, which reduces us to companionship with the young chip,' whom we sometimes catch trying on our Wellingtons, and promenading with our waistcoat. Ours were the right rollicking days of boyhood; everybody had not grown old then. Little men of nine years of age did not all at once become mechanicians in those days; and an apprentice of a week old did not take to the universal tobacco-pipe, and the wearing of the toga-virilis, together with a hat. Humanity was a graduative thing in our verdant childhood; and we had not then acquired the practice of winking our eyes at our grandsires, and telling the old chaps that they were jolly green.' We were little tiny elves that sported like linnets in a bush;' we were born infants, and then we became children; and then we got along to juvenility; from that we stepped to adolescence, and then we rushed onward to manhood. But people are born men now. The rising generation rises from the maternal lap, and walks like winkin' through the world, laughing at guvners,' and all that sort of people. It is a wise, knowing, sententions, profound generation, the present. There are no boys but old-boys to be seen amongst its tremendous members. Well, then, reader, when we were in our sportive prime, there were 'naps' in the world. We do not speak anatomically nor gastronomically. We do not refer to portions of the femoral bone and muscle of a heifer, nor that part a calf sometimes graphically described as a "knuckle. We speak of living irrational creatures of a particular temperament and nature, which seem to have become extinct since boys went out of fashion. Naps were very irascible people-prompt to effervesce, and to be excited by the most puny agencies and unimaginable means. There was a spontaneous, instantaneous, fulminative combustibility about them that had no parallel then-no companion ma terial that we are aware of; but now they seem to have transferred their nature to lucifer-matches and bottledbrisk soda-water. If we thought that our prelections upon this exting genius of queer-fishes' were to fall into the hands of mis chievous urchins, who would construe them into an attempt to revive the obsolete race spoken of, we should at once refrain from presenting them to anybody; but reading boys are seldom idle boys, and idle boys will not therefore be admitted to share in our lighter retrospections. We condemn, with the strongest measure of reprehension, everything that could tend to weaken youth's respect for age, or could give age one single cause of pain. Naps' are gone, and we hope that there is no one who would seek to recall them to this sweating, bustling stage of life again. They are to us faint shadows on the brink of Lethe, which we smile at through our tears. In speaking of 'naps,' therefore, we must be particularly understood. We do not mean old and tottering men, trembling beneath the burden of years, and suffering the selves to be roused by the levities of youth. Age from o earliest days has been a holy thing to us. We could hat wept at its totterings; we could never laugh at its wearnesses. Age of itself never provokes the insults of the i young, or, if it does, the depravity of the juvenile heart must surpass all we ever knew of youth. Age was no cha racteristic of a nap, and neither was a single weakness or infirmity that could produce pity. The qualities of the 'nap's' nature were not apparent, they were only discover able by an alchemy which was very active in our juvenility. but which seems to have gone out now with all alchemy. The wink of an eye, the elevation of a finger, the utterance of a cabalistic syllable, were sufficient to exorcise the equanimity from any confirmed 'nap,' and send him off like the simoom in the vain but terrific pursuit of his young tormentors. We know of no physiological principles upon which to explain the natures of those lusi naturæ. They sprung into existence in a moment, and were familiar to hundreds of young students of nature, with the utmost rapidity. 'A nap-a nap,' was a rallying cry more potent than the loudest school-bell; and the pursuit and study of the object who excited it was so illusively powerful, that frowning teachers, angry fathers, and the rod of correction, vanished from the excited eyes of the young nap-hunter, as he pursued the delightful game. How manifold and multifarious are the purposes of humanity, when decomposed and analysed into individual elements. There are tens of thousands of persons who trip or stride along the course of life without any positive or negative quality in their dispositions; they come to do the world little or no good, and they do it as little harm. They have no heart to interrupt or disturb the regular routine of events, and their minds do not incline them to disturb even themselves. They create no tears, and they excite no smiles. These are the old corks of the world, that float in the smooth parts of the stream, and do not affect the heavier or more independent things that resist, or take the centre of the current. Naps' were not your human quiescents, however, they were the very volcanoes of the social world, blazing, roaring, rushing, overwhelming masses of excitement, that vomited forth the lava of their wrath and the scoria of their fury, as they tore along at fiery speed after the atoms which had ignited their combustible bumps. Persons who, like us, have seen the members of this extinct genius in their efflorescence, and who, also like us, in their more philosophical moods, have reflected upon the causes and effects of juvenile and 'nap' collision, must have been struck with the apparent unreasonableness of the declamations and furious activities of the race. We have seen a husband and parent converted into an animal of the bloodhound species, by the simple enunciation of the words, 'Three feet in a stocking.' What mystery lay in them we cannot tell; what talismanic influence resided in that sentence we would leave to Daviot Bonatus or Argol, those lights of astrology, to decide; but such was their effect, that, with the speed of wildfire, the hat which covered the 'nap's' parental head was converted into a magazine for projectile munitions. His teeth became compressed, his eyes as bright as the dog-star, and his feet as light and active as a winter storm. On he went through many devious ways called 'jinkin' entries,' hurling defiance and stones at the objects of his wrath; perspiring in the fullness of his ardour and the vehemence of his toil. Sometimes resting a moment between sensations of exhaustion and ideas of personal dignity, until the cabalistic words re-echoed once more from a dozen throats, to reanimate once more the life and metal of his heels.' 6 Spunge is to our minds a very simple expression per se, yet we have seen the most direful effects produced upon a human constitution, by the simple expression thereof. We recollect of a person of very powerful frame, and of very sedate semblance, who wore a metallic badge upon his breast, and over whose shoulders were suspended a few fathoms of rope. His countenance was of a bright transparent purple, which, being a royal colour, gave a right royal character to his visage. The majestic effect of his face was considerably enhanced by a grove of dense red whiskers; and his head was further dignified by the coronal attribute of a Kilmarnock blue-bonnet. He wore an apron--a custom which is canonised by bishops; but his was white, while the sacerdotal pinafore is of deepest black. He paced the plain-stones, which circumpedate the university of that city, anciently called Castrum Puellarum,' and he was a pluralist who was content to serve a thousand masters, and bear all their burdens for very small gratuities. Gravity was written on his circular limbs, and broad shoulders, and Brobdignagian feet. He was a man of weight, for he waited daily on the highways, that he might transport the weights of weary wights wheresoever they would. To have looked at him, you would have supposed him to be as difficult to be moved as an elephant or kraken, and as firm as a lamp-post in mental equipoise. But, oh, mistaken judges who lean upon the apparent, there were unseen sensibilities in that porter's brain, which were as delicate and tender as the chords of an Æolian harp. Spunge, breathed from the earnest lips of juvenile philologist, struck the fire-bearing flint of his sensitive bosom, and, in a moment, all his frame was moved.' Have you read Byron's Mazeppa,' reader? Oh, yes, for it was the rage in our younger days. 'Away, away,' is one of the most expressive apostrophes in the poem. Allan Cunningham adopts it in his song of A wet sheet,' &c. Do you recollect Scott's bounding cantos of Merrily, merrily goes the bark, as o'er the seas she bounds?' Possibly you don't; for the Lord of the Isles,' although perhaps the second best of Scott's lays, is least read. Do you remember anything that suggests something very swift?-something like Wilson's stag, 'that beautiful creature so stately and bright?' Then, imagine you sce our Ocnus, animated by the word spunge, and floundering with gleaming eyes and labouring breath, in pursuit of his juvenile contemporaries. It was a sine qua non in the nature of the wonderful beings who form the subject of our wandering prelection, that they should take. Sometimes the legerdemain of the youthful excitist made a mistake. Sometimes his expressive Here he is again, here he is again,' fell upon impassable ears; and his extended fingers failed to hit the mark. If the bait was not taken; if the chase failed to nibble at the fly, the game was up. Spontaneous combustibility, fulminative instantaniety, was the life and being of a nap,' these his ways. It might be imagined that'naps' became fierce and violent from a horror or detestation of the soubriquets applied to them; but, from a careful review of the phenomena we were privileged to behold in connection with them, such does not seem to have been the case. prominent member of the corps, who would have traversed miles of street and alley, making the most violent demonstrations of wrath, and subjecting himself to the most melting toil, at the simple expression of the sounds, 'Shoot him, too whoo,' used frequently to asseverate that, however ill-used people might consider him to be by his ostensible tormentors, he was worse without them. One It has been hinted to us by a gentleman of the most profound speculative genius, that the violent attrition of the late rising generation, with the rear-guard of the preceding, produced those wonderful demonstrations which we have vulgarly called 'naps.' 'Humanity, in its ages or generations,' he says, 'is like soldiers on a campaign. Army after army bursts from the social fabric, and rushes forward, impelled by an idea, until it sinks down by its own violent exertions, or is trampled down by its successor.' Those persons whom we have half stigmatised with a very derisive epithet, he believes to have been the last loitering remnants of a proud age, upon which the present generation was trenching with colossal strides. All decaying eras are violently jealous of their honour, and tenacious of their privileges, so that the 'naps,' like certain other obstructionists, were only obeying a law of moral inertia, when they violently reclaimed juvenile presumption. We believed it to be 'all for fun,' when we lent our revolutionary cry of 'A nap-a nap;' but we have lived long enough to acquire some experience, and we have seen enough upon which to exercise that experience, and our conviction is, that many things that have serious names and very serious powers, are but, after all, in essence little else than 'naps.' MRS JUDSON. IN the merchants' windows, at the corners of streets, and amongst the other multifarious announcements of our busy days, people may from time to time perceive little hand-bill intimations anent meetings, at which some devoted one is to be set apart to labour amongst the far off heathens. These notices produce little or no effect upon the world generally; but to the Christian churches they are usually of the most lively interest. They illustrate the chivalry of the church, if we may so speak; they exhibit the Christian heroism of our age, and present a lovely moral and religious contrast to the destructive heroism of the world. It is easy to become a warrior; the poor neglected immortals, whose ferocity has alone been trained, have gained the reputation of dauntless heroism. The applause of the world is of itself sufficient to incite any man to rush into the deadly rift of battle, but the courage requisite for a missionary appears to us to be of the most sublime and noble kind. No world's applause could sustain a man or woman, full of heart-affection for friends and home, amidst the dreary desolate wastes of heathen lands during a life time. Nothing but the religious sense of duty, and the applause of a pure conscience, could so elevate and sustain the soul amongst weary labours and pestilential airs. When we look at courage through the true medium, how immeasurably superior to the ferocious passions of a Cæsar or a Napoleon do the faithful souls of a Williams, Roberts, and Waddel, appear. The book of history is full of the fame of the former, and their monuments are on almost every chimney-piece; the latter are only known to the Christian world of Great Britain and America, the angels, and the heathen; but their place of remembrance shall be heaven. The missionary field, however, is not exclusively reserved for the strong and faithful and froward man. As Christianity is woman's bond of equality with man, so is the vineyard of Christ equally her place of labour, and she also goes forth in the faith that maketh strong, to do the will of Him who sends her. Perhaps it might appear invidious to sketch the life of any one of those amiable heroines of the cross, when the lives of all are so full of true courage and faith; but as, on the other hand, the life of one, save in its incidents, may be looked upon as a parallel to that of all others, it is both necessary aud profitable to particularise. One beautiful attribute of genuine Christianity is its power of moulding the universal human mind into one grand religious thought. Nationalities, political institutions, and local prejudices, melt in the fusive beauty and glory of its beams. All tribes and tongues are taught by it to worship the almighty unity of beauty, and goodness, and truth, and all hearts are inspired by its spirit to be courageous in the cause of God. America, where the state makes no provision for the pecuniary support of any religious body, has, perhaps, stood forward first and most liberally in the work of missions. It is to America that we are indebted for the temperance and peace movements, and to her, it is also said, does the first idea of a Protestant mission to the heathens belong. It is certain that she has nobly sustained her part in this field of Christian labour, and that many of her noblest sons and daughters have devoted themselves to this arduous and trying life, and amongst them is the subject of our sketch. Sarah Boardman Judson was born in 1803, at Alstead, in the state of New Hampshire, and subsequently removed with her parents, Ralph and Abiah Hall, to Danvers, and then to Salem, in the state of Massachussetts. Sarah was the eldest of five children; and, as her parents were of the industrious class, she was constrained, like the majority of poor men's eldest daughters, to devote herself more to the care of her younger brothers and sisters than to the regular cultivation of her own mind. There are some minds that would never grow strong unless they had something to struggle against. The latent courage of the noblest souls is only aroused and developed by those opposing forces that seem anything but blessings. Mysterious are the ways of Providence, however, and finite and partial the judgments of men. We know not how the circumstances of life may operate towards the soul-God knows. Deprived of the power of attending school, Sarah Hall was thrown upon herself. She had no teacher save experience, no guide in her lessons save her books, and to these she applied herself with heroic diligence. Care produced thus early in Sarah Hall that thoughtfulness and patience which, when matured, so beautifully adorn the Christian character, and her self-education was just the path to riper self-reliance. She early began to observe and think, and to write down her thoughts in a little daybook; and then in the form of poetry, when her ideas became more expanded and matured. At seventeen years of age, Sarah Hall had devoted herself to the business of instructing others, in order that she might obtain the means of educating herself. During the day she taught, and at night she devoted her mind to the acquisi tion of logic, geometry, and Latin, &c.—a course of severe procedure that none but those who have pursued it can properly estimate. The baptism of Sarah Hall seems to have awakened in her the whole force of her inward life; and her meditations and aspirations seem, shortly after this event, to have been towards the path of a missionary. I am privileged to worship the true God,' she would say, 'but, alas! for the poor perishing heathen who has never known him.' There is something so admi. rable in the spirit of these musings and expressions that, apart from their religious character, they are sufficient to claim the respect of every generous heart. A sense of blessings and privileges, and a strong desire to impart them to others, despite of toil, and uncertainty, and distance, and disease, are the glorious principles which animate those who bear the cross to distant lands. How unlike the vainglorious spirit of those who go forth to slay! As time wore onward Sarah Hall's name began to be heard in the literary world, and many looked upon her as a rising poetess, when she married the Rev. George Dana Boardman on the 4th of July, 1825, and the same month proceeded with him to join the American missionaries recently settled at Burmah, in the East Indies. It was here that the most interesting and eventful part of Sarah's life began. It was here that all her self-reliance and courage were called into requisition. Mr Boardman and his wife settled at a station called Amherst, in order to become acquainted with the key to the heart of the heathen, which is his language. Dr Judson and his family resided here and assisted in the studies of the new comers, as well as in encouraging them in their labours. Burmah was at this time in a most unfavourable condi tion for receiving from white men the religion of peace, for war and force were the first instruments which the whites had exercised towards the Burmese in visiting their country, and they had little confidence in any peaceful attempt that was made for their good. After studying for some time at Amherst, Mr and Mrs Boardman re moved to Maulmain, to a lonely and dangerous mission house. The spot where it stood was a mile beyond the cantonments, close beside the thick jungle, where, during the night, the wild beasts made dismal howlings. Behind the station rose a fine range of hills, whose solitary aspect was relieved by the gilded masonry of handsome pagodas, and before rolled the broad deep river, where rode an English sloop of war, and where danced the boats of the natives. Just across the river was the Burman province of Martaban, whose terrible freebooters issued from their fastnesses during the night, armed with knives, spears, and sometimes muskets, driving away or slaying the peaceful inhabitants, while they seized upon the produce of their toil. The English general suggested to Mr Boardman the necessity of having an armed guard, but this would have totally deprived the missionary of gaining the confidence of the people, and it was declined. It was to study the language, habits, and character of the natives that he had gone thither, and not as a conqueror. About a month after her settlement at Maulmain, M Boardman wrote to a friend, We are in excellent health, and as happy as it is possible for human beings to be upon earth. It is our earnest desire to live, and labour, and die, among this people.' The life of a missionary is not one of ease and safety, as the following thrilling incident in the life of young Sarah Boardman will show. About the middle of June, as the meridian sun came down from its altitude, men in loose garments of gaily plaided cloth, and with their long black hair wound about their heads, and confined by folds of muslin, looked curiously in at the door of the strange foreigner; and then, encouraged by some kind word or glance, or the spreading of a mat, seated themselves in their own fashion, talked a little while with their host, though often, from misapprehension of each other's meaning, at cross-purposes, and went away, leaving him to his books and teacher. Women and children gathered more timidly, but with curiosity even less disguised, about the Kalahma-pyoo (white foreigners), |