and murdering rotges in the bright glare of our daymidnight. Like a complaining brute, I thought it cold then-I, who am blistered if I touch a brass button or a ramrod without a woollen mit.

"The cold came upon us gradually. The first thing that really struck me was the feezing up of our water-casks, the drip-candle appearance of the bung-holes, and our inability to lay the tin cup down for a five-minutes' pause without having its contents made solid. Next came the complete inability to obtain drink without manufacturing it. For a lorg time we had collected our water from the beautiful fresh pools of the icebergs and floes; now we had to quarry out the blocks in flinty, glassy lumps, and then melt it in tins for our daily drink. This was in Wellington Channel.

"By-and-by the sludge which we passed through as we travelled became pancakes and snow-balls. We were glued up. Yet, even as late as the 11th of September, I collected a flowering Potentilla from Barlow's Inlet. But now anything moist or wet began to strike me as something to be looked at-a curious, out-of-the-way production, like the bits of broken ice round a can of mint-julep. Cur decks became dry, and studded with botryoidal lumps of dirty foot-trodden ice. The rigging had nightly accumulations of rime, and we learned to be careful about coiled ropes and iron work. On the 4th of October we had a mean temperature below zero.

"By this time our little entering batchway had become so complete a mass of icicles, that we had to give it up, and resort to our winter door-way. The opening of a door was now the signal for a gush of smoke-like vapor: every stove-pipe sent out clouds of purple steam; and a man's breath looked like the firing of a pistol on a small scale.

"All our eatables became laughably consolidated, and after different fashions, requiring no small cx perience before we learned to manage the peculiarities of their changed condition. Thus, dried apples became one solid breccial mass of impacted angularities, a conglomerate of sliced chalcedony. Dried peaches the same. To get these out of the barrel, or the barrel out of them, was a matter impossible. We found, after many trials, that the shortest and best plan was to cut up both fruit and barrel by repeated blows with a heavy axe, taking the lumps below to thaw. Saur-kraut resembled mica, or rather talcose slate. A crow-bar with chiseled edge extracted the lamine badly; but it was perhaps the best thing we could resort to.

Sugar formed a very funny compound. Take q. s. of cork raspings, and incorporate therewith another q. s. of liquid gutta perchà caoutchouc, and allow to harden: this extemporaneous formula will give you the brown sugar of our winter cruise. Extract with the saw; nothing but the saw will suit. Butter and lard, less changed, require a heavy cold chisel and mallet. Their fracture is conchoida, with hematitic (iron-ore pimpled) surface. Flour undergoes little change, and molasses can at be half scooped, half cut by a stiff iron ladle.

-28°

"Pork and beef are rare specimens of Florentine mosaic, emulating the lost art of petrified visceral monstrosities seen at the medical schools of Bologna and Milan: crow-bar and handspike! for at --30° the axe can hardly chip it. A barrel sawed in half, and kept for two days in the caboose house at +76°, was still as refractory as flint a few inches below the surface. A similar bulk of lamp oil, denuded of the staves, stood like a yellow sandstone roller for a gravel walk.

Ices for the dessert come of course unbidden, in all imaginable and unimaginable variety. I have tried my inventive powers on some of them.

A

Roman punch, a good deal stronger than the noblest Roman ever tasted, forms readily at -20°. Some sugared cranberries, with a little butter and scalding water, and you have an impromptu strawberry ice. Many a time at those funny little jams, that we call in Philadelphia 'parties,' where the lady-hostess glides with such nicely-regulated indifference through the complex machinery she has brought together, I have thought I noticed her stolen glance of anxiety at the cooing doves, whose icy bosoms were melting into one upon the supper-table before their time. We order these things better in the Arctic. Such is the 'composition and fierce quality' of our ices, that they are brought in served on the shaft of a hickory broom; a transfixing rod, which we use as a stirrer first and a fork afterward. So hard is this terminating cylinder of ice, that it might serve as a truncheon to knock down an ox. The only difficulty is in the processes that follow. It is the work of time and energy to impress it with the carvingknife, and you must handle your spoon deftly, or it fastens to your tongue. One of our mess was tempted the other day by the crystal transparency of an icicle to break it in his mouth; one piece froze to his tongue, and two others to his lips, and each carried off the skin: the thermometer was at -28°."

Dr. Kane reached New York, on his return from his second Arctic voyage, as commander of "the Advance," October 11, 1855, nearly two years and five months after his departure from that port. His arrival excited great interest in the public mind, already stimulated by the record of his previous adventures; and when his journals and narrative appeared, they were received with unprecedented enthusiasm. This new work, to which he at once devoted himself with his accustomed energy, bore the title, Arctic Explorations: the Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, 54, 55. It appeared, like his previous work, illustrated by an extensive series of animated engravings from the author's own designs, in two volumes 8vo, at Philadelphia, in 1856, and in a short time reached a sale by subscription of no less than sixty-five thousand copies. The book, recounting a remarkable series of adventures and discoveries, pursued by the author in delicate health, under the extraordinary severities and trials of a hitherto untraversed Arctic region, was written in the same terse, forcible, yet unaffected style which marked his previous narrative. It relates the story of the voyage accomplished the first season through the waters of Baffin's Bay, along the coast of Greenland, to the ultimate station of the brig at a spot in latitude 78° 43′ N., named by Dr. Kane, Rensselaer Harbor. From September, 1853, to June, 1855, an interval of twenty-one months, including two rigorous winters, this ice-locked, secluded spot was the home of our author. Thence the expeditions of parties on sledges were made, which resulted in the examination of the far northern coast-line, and the probable discovery of an open Arctic sea surrounding the pole. The endurance of the hardships of privation, of cold and disease, in these two winters, called forth all the skill, experience, and heroism of Dr. Kane, who, feeble as he was, struggling with as confirmed heart disease, bore up himself and sustained the health and spirits of his men. When the party was

finally compelled to abandon the vessel, in the summer of 1855, their resources, physical and mental, were again severely tested in the journey by boats and sledges to the settled parts of Greenland. There they happily met the vessels sent out by the United States Government for their relief, and were brought in safety to New York.

The narrative of the expedition which established the author's high rank in the noble list of Arctic explorers, was barely finished when he was compelled to seek refuge from the exhaustion consequent upon its preparation in a voyage to Europe for his health. He embarked in the steamer Baltic, at New York, in October, 1856, and reached London with distressing symptoms of consumption. Hurrying away from the oppressive November atmosphere of the metropolis, and the scientific honors which awaited him, he sailed for a warmer climate in the West Indies. He reached Cuba by the way of St. Thomas on Christmas Day. There he joined by his mother and brother, who came from his home to soothe his parting hours. He died at Havana, having just completed his thirtyseventh year, February 16, 1857. His remains were brought with the most distinguished funeral honors to the place of his birth, by way of New Orleans, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, Baltimore, and were finally laid in the tomb of his family at the Laurel Hill Cemetery.

was

The firm, energetic, modest, truthful character of the man is shown in his writings, which will survive not only by the interest of the stirring incidents which they preserve, but by the style the impress of the man-by which they are chas racterized. Had the author lived he would doubtless have accomplished much in addition, in rigorous scientific investigation, to which his attention in his later years was steadily directed. As it is, he has left a noble monument of the conquest of mind and spiritual energy over extraordinary difficulties and discouragements of ill health and bodily suffering.

A biography of Dr. Kane was published by Dr. William Elder, of Philadelphia, in 1858.

THE RESCUE PARTY

FROM ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS.

"March 31, Friday. I was within an ace today of losing my dogs, every one of them. When I reached the ice-foot, they balked: who would not? the tide was low, the ice rampant, and a jump of four feet necessary to reach the crest. The howling of the wind and the whirl of the snow-drift confused the poor creatures; but it was valuable training for them, and I strove to force them over. Of course I was on foot, and they had a light load behind them. • Now, Stumpy! Now, Whitey!' Good dogs! Tulee-ee-ee ! Tuh!' They went at it like good stanch brutes, and the next minute the whole team was rolling in a lump, some sixteen feet below me, in the chasm of the ice-foot. The drift was such that at first I could not see them. The roaring of the tide and the subdued wail of the dogs made me fear for the worst. I had to walk through the broken ice, which rose in toppling spires over my head, for nearly fifty yards, before I found an opening to the ice-face, by which I was able to climb down to them. A few cuts of a

sheath-knife released them, although the caresses of the dear brutes had like to have been fatal to for I had to straddle with one foot on the fast me, But I ice and the other on loose piled rubbish. got a line attached to the cross-pieces of the sledge-runners, flung it up on the ice-foot, and then piloted my dogs out of their slough. In about ten minutes we were sweating along at eight miles an hour."

Everything looked promising, and we were only waiting for intelligence that our advance party had deposited its provisions in safety to begin our transit of the bay. Except a few sledge-lashings and some trifling accoutrements to finish, all was ready.

We were at work cheerfully, sewing away at the skins of some moccasins by the blaze of our lamps, when, toward midnight, we heard the noise of steps above, and the next minute Sontag, Ohlsen, and Petersen came down into the cabin. Their manner startled me even more than their unexpected appearance on board. They were swollen and haggard, and hardly able to speak.

Their story was a fearful one. They had left their companions in the ice, risking their own lives to bring us the news: Brooks, Baker, Wilson, and Pierre were all lying frozen and disabled. Where? They could not tell: somewhere in among the hummocks to the north and east; it was drifting heavily round them when they parted. Irish Tom had stayed by to feed and care for the others; but the chances were sorely against them. It was in vain to question them further. They had evidently travelled a great distance, for they were sinking with fatigue and hunger, and could hardly be rallied enough to tell us the direction in which they had come.

My first impulse was to move on the instant with an unencumbered party: a rescue, to be effective or even hopeful, could not be too prompt. What pressed on my mind most was, where the sufferers were to be looked for among the drifts. Ohlsen seemed to have his faculties rather more at command than his associates, and I thought that he might assist us as a guide; but he was sinking with exhaustion, and if he went with us we must carry him.

There was not a moment to be lost. While some were still busy with the new-comers and getting ready a hasty meal, others were rigging out the "Little Willie" with a buffalo-cover, a small tent, and a package of pemmican; and, as soon as we could hurry through our arrangements, Ohlsen was strapped on in a fur bag, his legs wrapped in dog-skins and eider-down, and we were off upon the ice. Our party consisted of nine men and myself. We carried only the clothes on our backs. The thermometer stood at 46°, seventy-eight degrees below the freezing-point.

A well-known peculiar tower of ice, called by the men the "Pinnacly Berg," served as our first landmark: other icebergs of colossal size, which stretched in long beaded lines across the bay, helped to guide us afterward; and it was not until we had travelled for sixteen hours that we begun to lose our way.

We knew that our lost companions must be somewhere in the area before us, within a radius of forty miles. Mr. Ohlsen, who had been for fifty hours without rest, fell asleep as soon as we began to move, and awoke now with unequivocal signs of mental disturbance. It became evident that he had lost the bearing of the icebergs, which in form and color endlessly repeated themselves;

and the uniformity of the vast field of snow utterly forbade the hope of local landmarks.

Pushing ahead of the party, and clambering over some rugged ice-piles, I came to a long level floe, which I thought might probably have attracted the eyes of weary men in circumstances like our own. It was a light conjecture; but it was enough to turn the scale, for there was no other to balance it. I gave orders to abandon the sledge, and disperse in search of footmarks. We raised our tent, placed our pemmican in cache, except a small allowance for each man to carry on his person; and poor Ohlsen, now just able to keep his legs, was liberated from his bag. The thermometer had fallen by this time to 49°.3, and the wind was setting in sharply from the northwest. It was out of the question to halt; it required brisk exercise to keep us from freezing. I could not even melt ice for water; and, at these temperatures, any resort to snow for the purpose of allaying thirst was followed by bloody lips and tongue it burnt like caustic.

It was indispensable then that we should move on, looking out for traces as we went. Yet when the men were ordered to spread themselves, so as to multiply the chances, though they all obeyed heartily, some painful impress of solitary danger, or perhaps it may have been the varying configuration of the ice-field, kept them closing up continually into a single group. The strange manner in which some of us were affected I now attribute as much to shattered nerves as to the direct influence of the cold. Men like McGary and Bonsall, who had stood out our severest marches, were seized with trembling-fits and short breath; and, in spite of all my efforts to keep up an example of sound bearing, I fainted twice on the

snow.

We had been nearly eighteen hours out without water or food, when a new hope cheered us. I think it was Hans, our Esquimaux hunter, who thought he saw a broad sledge-track. The drift had nearly effaced it, and we were some of us doubtful at first whether it was not one of those accidental rifts which the gales make in the surface-snow. But, as we traced it on to the deep snow among the hummocks, we were led to footsteps; and, following these with religious care, we at last came in sight of a small American flag fluttering from a hummock, and lower down a little Masonic banner hanging from a tent-pole hardly above the drift. It was the camp of our disabled comrades: we reached it after an unbroken march of twenty-one hours.

The little tent was nearly covered. I was not among the first to come up; but, when I reached the tent-curtain, the men were standing in silent file on each side of it. With more kindness and delicacy of feeling than is often supposed to belong to sailors, but which is almost characteristic, they intimated their wish that I should go in alone. As I crawled in, and coming upon the darkness, heard before me the burst of welcome gladness that came from the four poor fellows stretched on their backs, and then for the first time the cheer outside, my weakness and my gratitude together almost overcame me. "They had expected me: they were sure I would come!"

We were now fifteen souls; the thermometer seventy-five degrees below the freezing-point; and our sole accommodation a tent barely able to contain eight persons: more than half our party were obliged to keep from freezing by walking outside while the others slept. We could not halt long.

Each of us took a turn of two hours' sleep; and we prepared for our homeward march.

The

We took with us nothing but the tent, furs to protect the rescued party, and food for a journey of fifty hours. Everything else was abandoned. Two large buffalo-bags, each made of four skins, were doubled up, so as to form a sort of sack, lined on each side by fur, closed at the bottom but opened at the top. This was laid on the sledge; the tent, smoothly folded, serving as a floor. sick, with their limbs sewed up carefully in reindeer-skins, were placed upon the bed of buffalorobes, in a half-reclining posture; other skins and blanket-bags were thrown above them; and the whole litter was lashed together so as to allow but a single opening opposite the mouth for breathing. This necessary work cost us a great deal of time and effort; but it was essential to the lives of the sufferers. It took us no less than four hours to strip and refresh them, and then to embale them in the manner I have described. Few of us escaped without frost-bitten fingers: the thermometer was at 55°.6 below zero, and a slight wind added to the severity of the cold.

It was completed at last, however; all hands stood round; and, after repeating a short prayer, we set out on our retreat. It was fortunate indeed that we were not inexperienced in sledging over the ice. A great part of our track lay among a succession of hummocks; some of them extending in long lines, fifteen and twenty feet high, and so uniformly steep that we had to turn them by a considerable deviation from our direct course; others that we forced our way through, far above our heads in height, lying in parallel ridges, with the space between too narrow for the sledge to be lowered into it safely, and yet not wide enough for the runners to cross without the aid of ropes to stay them. These spaces too were generally choked with light snow, hiding the openings between the ice-fragments. They were fearful traps to disengage a limb from, for every man knew that a fracture or a sprain even would cost him his life. Besides all this, the sledge was topheavy with its load: the maimed men could not bear to be lashed down tight enough to secure them against falling off. Notwithstanding our caution in rejecting every superfluous burden, the weight, including bags and tent, was eleven hundred pounds.

And yet our march for the first six hours was very cheering. We made by vigorous pulls and lifts nearly a mile an hour, and reached the new floes before we were absolutely weary. Our sledge sustained the trial admirably. Ohlsen, restored by hope, walked steadily at the leading belt of the sledge-lines; and I began to feel certain of reaching our halfway station of the day before, where we had left our tent. But we were still nine miles from it, when, almost without premonition, we all became aware of an alarming failure of our energies.

I was of course familiar with the benumbed and almost lethargic sensation of extreme cold; and once, when exposed for some hours in the midwinter of Baffin's Bay, I had experienced symptoms which I compared to the diffused paralysis of the electro-galvanic shock. But I had treated the sleepy comfort of freezing as something like the embellishment of romance. I had evidence now to the contrary.

Bonsall and Morton, two of our stoutest men, came to me, begging permission to sleep: "they were not cold: the wind did not enter them now:

a little sleep was all they wanted." Presently Hans was found nearly stiff under a drift; and Thomas, bolt upright, had his eyes closed, and could hardly articulate. At last, John Blake threw himself on the snow, and refused to rise. They did not complain of feeling cold; but it was in vain that I wrestled, boxed, ran, argued, jeered, or reprimanded: an immediate halt could not be avoided.

We pitched our tent with much difficulty. Our hands were too powerless to strike a fire: we were obliged to do without water or food. Even the spirits (whisky) had frozen at the men's feet. under all the coverings. We put Bonsall, Ohlsen, Thomas, and Hans, with the other sick men, well inside the tent, and crowded in as many others as we could. Then, leaving the party in charge of Mr. McGary, with orders to come on after four hours' rest, I pushed ahead with William Godfrey, who volunteered to be my companion. My aim was to reach the halfway tent, and thaw some ice and pemmican before the others arrived.

We

The floe was of level ice, and the walking excellent. I cannot tell how long it took us to make the nine miles; for we were in a strange sort of stupor, and had little apprehension of time. It was probably about four hours. We kept ourselves awake by imposing on each other a continued articulation of words; they must have been incoherent enough. I recall these hours as among the most wretched I have ever gone through: we were neither of us in our right senses, and retained a very confused recollection of what preceded our arrival at the tent. both of us, however, remember a bear, who walked leisurely before us and tore up as he went a jumper that Mr. McGary had improvidently thrown off the day before, He tore it into shreds and rolled it into a ball, but never offered to interfere with our progress. I remember this, and with it a confused sentiment that our tent and buffalo-robes might probably share the same fate. Godfrey, with whom the memory of this day's work may atone for many faults of a later time, had a better eye than myself; and, looking some miles ahead, he could see that our tent was undergoing the same unceremonious treatment. thought I saw it too, but we were so drunken with cold that we strode on steadily, and, for aught I know, without quickening our pace.

I

Probably our approach saved the contents of the tent; for when we reached it the tent was uninjured, though the bear had overturned it, tossing the buffalo-robes and pemmican into the snow; we missed only a couple of blanket-bags. What we recollect, however, and perhaps all we recollect, is, that we had great difficulty in raising it. We crawled into our reindeer sleepingbags, without speaking, and for the next three hours slept on in a dreamy but intense slumber. When I awoke, my long beard was a mass of ice, frozen fast to the buffalo-skin: Godfrey had to cut me out with his jack-knife. Four days after our escape, I found my woollen comfortable with a goodly share of my beard still adhering to it.

We were able to melt water and get some soup cooked before the rest of our party arrived: it took them but five hours to walk the nine miles. They were doing well, and, considering the circumstances, in wonderful spirits. The day was most providentially windless, with a clear sun. All enjoyed the refreshment we had got ready: the crippled were repacked in their robes; and we

sped briskly toward the hummock-ridges which lay between us and the Pinnacly Berg.

The hummocks we had now to meet came properly under the designation of squeezed ice. A great chain of bergs stretching from northwest to southeast, moving with the tides, had compressed the surface-floes; and, rearing them up on their edges, produced an area more like the volcanic pedragal of the basin of Mexico than any thing else I can compare it to.

It required desperate efforts to work our way over it, literally desperate, for our strength failed us anew, and we began to lose our selfcontrol. We could not abstain any longer from eating snow: our mouths swelled, and some of us became speechless. Happily the day was warmed by a clear sunshine, and the thermometer rose to -4° in the shade: otherwise we must have frozen.

Our halts multiplied, and we fell half-sleeping on the snow. I could not prevent it. Strange to say, it refreshed us. I ventured upon the experiment myself, making Riley wake me at the end of three minutes; and I felt so much benefited by it that I timed the men in the same way. They sat on the runners of the sledge, fell asleep instantly, and were forced to wakefulness when their three minutes were out.

By eight in the evening we emerged from the floes. The sight of the Pinnacly Berg revived us. Brandy, an invaluable resource in emergency, had already been served out in tablespoonful doses. We now took a longer rest, and a last but stouter dram, and reached the brig at 1 P. M., we believe without a halt.

We

I say we believe; and here perhaps is the most decided proof of our sufferings: we were quite delirious, and had ceased to entertain a sane apprehension of the circumstances about us. moved on like men in a dream. Our footmarks seen afterward showed that we had steered a beeline for the brig. It must have been by a sort of instinct, for it left no impress on the memory. Bonsall was sent staggering ahead, and reached the brig, God knows how, for he had fallen repeatedly at the track-lines; but he delivered with punctilious accuracy the messages I had sent by him to Dr. Hayes. I thought myself the soundest of all, for I went through all the formula of sanity, and can recall the muttering delirium of my comrades when we got back into the cabin of our brig. Yet I have been told since of some speeches and some orders too of mine, which I should have remembered for their absurdity if my mind had retained its balance.

Petersen and Whipple came out to meet us about two miles from the brig. They brought my dogteam, with the restoratives I had sent for hy Bonsall. I do not remember their coming. Dr. Hayes entered with judicious energy upon the treatment our condition called for, administering morphine freely, after the usual frictions. He reported none of our brain-symptoms as serious, referring them properly to the class of those indications of exhausted power which yield to generous diet and rest. Mr. Ohlsen suffered some time from strabismus and blindness; two others underwent amputation of parts of the foot, without unpleasant consequences; and two died in spite of all our efforts. This rescue party had been out for seventy-two hours. We had halted in all eight hours, half of our number sleeping at a time. We travelled between eighty and ninety miles, most of the way dragging a heavy sledge.

The mean temperature of the whole time, including the warmest hours of three days, was at minus 41°.2. We had no water except at our two halts, and were at no time able to intermit vigorous exercise without freezing.

"April 4, Tuesday. Four days have passed, and I am again at my record of failures, sound but aching still in every joint The rescued men are not out of danger, but their gratitude is very touching. Pray God that they may live."

SAMUEL ELIOT,

THE author of a History of Liberty, was born at Boston, the son of William H. Eliot, December 22, 1821. He was educated in Boston and at Harvard, where he was graduated in 1839. He continued his studies in Europe. He formed the idea of writing a History of Liberty in Rome, where he spent the winter of 1844-5, and has since been engaged upon the work.

In 1847, he published in Boston, Passages from the History of Liberty, in which he traced the career of the early Italian reformers, Arnaldo da Brescia, Giovanni di Vicenza, and others; of Savonarola; of Wycliffe in England, and the War of the Communities in Castile.

The first series of his more elaborate history in two volumes, appeared in 1849 with the title, The Liberty of Rome. In 1853, this work was reprinted in a revised form as The History of Liberty: Part I. The Ancient Romans, and in the same year appeared two similar volumes relating to The Early Christians. These constituted two parts of an extensive work, of which three others are projected, devoted successively to the Papal Ages, the Monarchical Ages, and the American Nation. In 1856 appeared Manual of United States History, 1492-1850. This was afterwards extended to 1872.

The speciality of Mr. Eliot's historic labors is fully indicated in their title. It is to read the past, not for the purpose of curiosity, entertainment, or controversy, for the chronicle of kings and emperors, or the story of war and conquest, unless for their subordination to the progress of Liberty. His work is therefore a critical analysis rather than a narrative. It bears evidences of a diligent study of the original and later authorities. The conception of the work is a noble one, and it may without vanity be said to be appropriately undertaken by an American.

In 1860, Dr. Eliot accepted the presidency of Trinity College, Hartford, which he held four years. In 1873, he was Head Master of the Public High School for Girls in Boston.

As a specimen of the author's manner, we present a passage at the close of the history of Roman liberty with the establishment of the Emperors, and at the dawn of the new divine dispensation for all true freedom and progress of humanity in Christianity.

do. Their powers were exhausted. Their liberty, in other words, their ability to exercise their powers, was itself overthrown.

From the outset there had been no union amongst men. The opposite system of centralization, by which the many were bound to the few, had prevailed at the beginning. Weakened, indeed, but more than ever developed, it prevailed also at the end. To renew and to extend this system had been the appointed work of the ancient Romans. Not to unite, not to liberate the human race, had they been intrusted with dominion. It was to reduce mankind, themselves included, to dissension and to submission, that the Romans were allowed their liberty.

To such an end their liberty, like that of the elder nations, was providentially adapted. As a possession, it was in the hands not of the best, but of the strongest. As a right, it was not the right to improve one's self, but that to restrain others. It was the claim to be served by others. It was not the privilege of serving God. Struggling amidst the privilege of serving others. Much less was it the laws of man, instead of resting upon those of God, it was the liberty of men destined to contention until they fell in servitude.

There were exceptions. Not every one lost himself in the dust and the agony of strife. Not every generation spent itself in conflicts. The physical powers were not always the only ones in exercise. At times the intellectual powers obtained develop ment. At rarer seasons, the spiritual powers evinced themselves. A generation might thus attain to a liberty far wider than that of its predecessors. An individual might thus rise to a liberty far higher than that of his contemporaries. Yet these were but exceptions. The rule, confirmed by them, was the tendency of men to a lower, rather than a higher state. Indirectly, they were led towards the higher state, for which the lower was the necessary preparation. But the passage was to be made through the lower. Every bad work that succeeded, every good work that failed, brought mankind nearer to the end of the prevailing evil. The advent of the approaching good was hastened by every downward step towards prostration.

From the masses of the clouds the light first fades away. It presently vanishes from the patches in the skies originally undimmed. Then darkness overspreads the heavens. Men fall supine upon the earth. The night of universal humiliation sets in. But the gloom is not unbroken. Overshadowed as is the scene, it is not overwhelmed. There still remain the vales where truth has descended. There still exist the peaks to which love in its longing has climbed. Desires too earnest to have been wasted, principles too honest to have been unproductive, still linger in promise of the coming day. Men were to be humbled. They needed to feel the insecurity of their liberty, of the powers which made it their right, of the laws which made it their possession. But they did not need to be bereft of the good which their laws and their powers, however imperfect, comprehended.

The day of redemption followed. It was not too late. It was not too soon. The human race had been tried. It had not been annihilated. Then the angels sang their song of glory to God and peace amongst His creatures. We may believe that when the morning came, the oppression and the servitude of old had left their darkest forms amidst the midnight clouds. Before the death of Augustus, the Business of THE FATHER had already been begun in the Temple at Jerusalem; and near by, THE SON was increasing in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

The sea, as it were, whereon wave has pursued