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themselves. The Faerie Queen has this excellence, if we can style it such. And the Faerie Queen is equally interesting to men of every nation; that is, it is of no interest to any of them. But the Pilgrim, though he is no more a Scotchman than a Frenchman, excites the sympathy of the Scotch as truly as Bruce or Wallace; though no more a Frenchman than a Scotchman, he is as interesting to the French as Joan of Arc. This investment of a general character with so vivid a particular interest, is the peculiar glory of the TinkTo Bunyan we must look, and to Bunyan alone, for truth, universal, abstract, and exalted, interwoven with a narrative with which every school-boy is delighted.

er.

But his life has earned greater honor to his heart than his imperishable writings have acquired for his intellect. With his lot cast by Providence in perilous times, first, when the stern sanctimoniousness of the Puritans brought Religion into the market to be bought and sold, and every debauchee in England began with a demure countenance and a whining cant to beg the prayers of the Saints; and again, when his country had given herself up to be governed by strumpets and buffoons, and faithful men were few and feeble; not the least whisper of hypocrisy or cowardice do his bitterest enemies couple with his name. In whatever view we look upon him, he is ever the faithful and confiding follower of the Divine Friend, who had saved him from a fate more terrible than ever entered into even his imagination. Whether leading forth his little church to their asylum in the woods, and lifting their aspirations to their Common Father, till his relentless pursuers traced him to that last retreat, or sitting in the cold gloom of his dungeon, with his weeping family around him, and his eyes raised toward Heaven in prayer for their daily bread, he is still the same determined champion of the truth,

"Serenely treading on his way,

In hours of trial and dismay,"

awed by no terrors, discouraged by no obstacles.

As such, we delight to reflect upon his venerable countenance, as it is delineated in the only likeness which we have ever seen, at all answering to our conception,* mild and gentle, but firm and inflexible. Socrates, as Xenophon tells us, was in the habit of confidently assigning a fine intellect to a stranger of imposing personal appearance. We love to reverse the process; and from the noble productions of Bunyan's mind, our idea of his countenance may be readily imagined. Though the adventures of his Pilgrim, in many respects resemble his own, yet he was certainly endued with a faculty indispensable to all writers of fiction, that of abstracting the reader's attention from the writer and fixing it upon the characters represented. But not even the lively interest excited by every step of the Pilgrim, can shroud from our mental view the mild expression of that benevolent eye, the serene

* Prefixed to Appleton's reprint of the Life by Rev. Robert Philip,

meekness of those venerable features. All of Bunyan that was mortal has passed from among men. But his memory is with us and will be eternal. We do not exaggerate his virtues. We have no expectation of increasing his fame. Both are above dependence upon eulogy. But we believe that, when future generations shall recount the proud list of worthies which graced his era, the noble powers of his mind and the exalted qualities of his heart will secure for him an honorable place in that catalogue of immortal names. t

MOB LAW.

If there is any one distinguishing characteristic of a highly civilized people, it is a deep reverence for the authority of Law. In the earlier stages of society, laws were but the fiat of a despot, or the caprice of some petty chieftain-so many independent acts of volition, varying with the character of the lawgiver, rather than based upon the principles of eternal Justice. But, as civilization and Law proceed in parallel lines, and with equal velocity, when society began to acquire permanency and stability, laws partook of the same general improvement. Things began to be seen in their relations. As with the prophet in the valley of vision," the dry bones came together, each to his fellow, | the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, to bind them together," | and to clothe them in beauty, until the system of Law, no longer an aggregation of unconnected parts, was compacted into one harmonious whole, and there was breathed into it the vital energy of life and uniform action. Thus gifted with unity, it becomes at once the ruler and the slave of society, penetrating all its existence, regulating all its movements. It is the conservator of its advancing strength, the sovereign of its daily life. It sends its pulsation, like the blood in the animal economy, through all the arteries of the social system, and as society progresses toward the fully-developed stature of the perfect man, it deepens its channels, finds its way into those unknown before, and circulates still farther from the central heart. We find accordingly that in proportion to a nation's advances in civilization, the province of Law becomes more widely extended, and departments of Trade, Morals and Politics, are subjected to its sway, which it would have been impossible to bring under its control at an earlier period. The License, Seduction and Election laws are instances of this extension. Thus the burden is forever on the increase; and yet, like the atmosphere around us, it is so all-pervading, that, though it presses upon us with tremendous power, we scarcely feel its weight. In a barbarous age, however, the case is far different. At this period of a nation's history, though laws be few and simple, it requires the utmost exercise of arbitrary power to enforce a constrained obedience. The spirit of insubordination, or, as we are accustomed to call it, the Mob spirit, is then in full vigor, and all the machinery of despotism must be called in to repress it.

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Destitute of the lubricating influences of a deep-seated reverence for Law and Order, the whole machine of government drags heavily, and, from the friction of its parts, soon wears out, which gives rise to innumerable dynasties and interminable changes. In such a state, too, there is no security for the exercise of individual opinion; but the Mob spirit binds down all to a slavish conformity to popular ignorance and prejudice. Nay, more to the class of independent minds, property and even life itself are left in fearful jeopardy. Thus we flatter ourselves that we have succeeded in establishing the seemingly paradoxical proposition, that, in proportion as Law is more universal in its action, more all-penetrating in its effects, its ycke becomes easier—its friction less severe in other words, as the weight is increased, the burden is diminished; as it circulates farther from the central heart, it flows with more strength and freedom through its arteries.

Law is indeed God's vicegerent upon earth. Deriving its authority from Him, and faintly shadowing forth the glories of His more perfect Law, it does for the external man what the Gospel rule accomplishes for the inner man of the heart. If it cannot compel him to love his neighbor as himself, it at least restrains his natural selfishness within such limits as are consistent with the safety of society. While it affords him his only security in the enjoyment of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it compels him to accord the same privileges to his fellow-man. It protects the Non-conformist in his religious faith, the Reformer in his warfare with popular prejudice, nay, even the Jew and the Infidel in the enjoyment of religious freedom. Like Atlas supporting a world upon his shoulders, it sustains the whole tissue of our institutions, it bears up the whole fabric of human government. It is the rock on which rests the whole social system, and if its strength be impaired, the whole system tumbles into fragments.

If such be Law, how fiendish is the act of him who violates it, who boldly advocates the doctrines of Mob rule, and raises a demon spirit which it is beyond his power to lay at rest? The Mob spirit is in violation of Divinely-sanctioned Law-of the express command of Heaven, to "obey the powers that be, as ordained of God." Because the Law is sometimes slow in the punishment of crime,-because, like all else of human invention, it partakes somewhat in the imperfections of humanity, and thereby suffers the guilty to escape,-because it refuses to deny its protection to the alien, the outcast, the down-trodden, because it extends its broad shield over the Catholic, the Jew, the Mormon,-because it protects the African in his attempts to rise from the mire of his degradation to the level of our common humanity, men have been found ready to violate its most sacred provisions, to tear the criminal from under the Ægis of its protection, to trample on the rights of their fellow-citizens, and to kindle the flames of the Mob spirit, though they may burn with the unquenchable fury of the Greek fire. And can such an act ever be justifiable ? What can be more absurd than to break the Law, that we may mend it? What can ever justify an act which tears from us those rights stated in the Declaration of Independence to be inalienable-rights, some of

which, as that of "trial by one's peers," date back as far as Magna Charta, which overturns the whole fabric of our institutions, and sets at defiance the laws of God and man? We can conceive of no circumstance which can make it right for the fiat of a lawless mob to reverse or to anticipate the decisions of Justice. "Tis better that the criminal should remain unpunished, that the murderer go unhanged, that the seducer escape unwhipped of justice, than to commit an act which involves a whole community in a common guilt. "Tis better to let your bigotry feed upon its own vitals, than to do a deed which shall lower your country in the eyes of the world, and imprint upon her national escutcheon a dark and eternal stain.

He who enkindles the Mob spirit, can never anticipate the consequences of his act. He uncovers the crater of a slumbering volcano, whose streams of burning lava may in a single day overwhelm all he holds most dear on earth,-Constitution, Law, Government, Religion, Home. How fearful an example of this was afforded in the horrible excesses of the French revolution, when Religion and Government were guillotined together in an hour by a frantic Mob! A spectacle scarcely less appalling has been recently presented in the Canton of the Pays de Vaud, in Switzerland. By a mobocrat rebellion of the true Dorrite genus, a free and happy people have been in one short month converted into a raging democracy, a Protestant into an Infidel community, and now the ministers of Christ are prohibited from preaching to their flocks within sight of the home of Calvin.

But the origin of Mobs is as ignoble as their end is terrible. They almost invariably spring from the passions and prejudices of the populace, being excited against a small class in the community, who refuse to surrender all freedom of mind and heart to the dictation of the majority. Indeed, we feel assured that a careful analysis of the motives which lead men to engage in them, could not fail to exhibit a craving desire to put down freedom of opinion as their efficient cause, as the mainspring of the whole movement. Whether it be displayed in the Anti-Catholic riots which for three days converted London into a battle-field, in the assaults upon abolitionists, which continually disgrace our country, in the attack on Mr. Clay's office at Lexington, or in the Lynch Law of the South, the spirit is ever one and the same, under whatever phase it presents itself. It is perhaps the highest end of Law to protect the minority in the enjoyment of their rights. But this foul spirit, bidding defiance to the Law, gives the death-blow to all freedom of mind and of thought, to the free expression of individual opinion, and compels all to a slavish conformity, or to suffer the destruction of their property, nay, even the loss of life. It makes public opinion popular despotism, the public will the slavery of the individual, the public good the destruction of the citizen. It is ever made the instrument of religious and political intolerance, and kindles between different classes of the same community an inextinguishable hate. Those feuds between the Orange and the Green which have so long distracted unhappy Ireland, are our witnesses. The Catholic riots of London and the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, tell but

too fearfully their tale of horrors. Surely, if Vox Populi be ever Vox Dei, as some men suppose, it bears little resemblance to "the still small voice of God," when expressed in the loud-mouthed uproars of a raging Mob.

But while Mobs are thus terrible for evil, they are powerless for good. Being merely ebullitions of intense passion, without concert of action, without any definite and specific object in view, even when instituted for the express purpose of resistance to oppression, they seldom result in any good, almost never in a permanent revolution. 'I But when this does take place, and the fabric of government is once laid prostrate, then "Let him that is in Judea flee to the mountains," for his country is on the eve of a revolution, whose convulsive throes shall dislocate every joint in the social system. The superlative horrors of the revolution in France are to be attributed, we think, not so much even to their previous oppression, as to the fact, that it was achieved almost solely by an infuriated Mob. That alone can be productive of lasting benefit, which involves least of the Mob spirit, which proceeds most on the basis of the Law and the Constitution, and which in fact is commenced, like the English revolution and our own, to defend Law from usurpation, not to overthrow it.

Mob Law, then, when employed for the punishment of crime, involves in itself a deeper, because more widely-extended, guilt. It subverts the right of trial by Jury, and wrests from the citizen his dearest and most valued privileges. When employed against any particular class of the community, it tears from us that most precious fruit of the Reformation, Freedom of Thought, and denies to the citizen the great end and aim of Law, protection to the rights of the minority. When exercised in resistance to oppression, it breaks up the fountains of the great deep of society, and sets all we hold most dear afloat on a raging sea of passion. At all times, then, and under all circumstances, it is UNJUSTIFIABLE, DANGEROUS, DESTRUCTIVE.

THE WISH OF THE MAN OF CARE.

WHEN duty presses all the day,

From its breaking to its close,
And the busy mind is still at work,
Though the body takes repose;
And the sleepless brain is full of thoughts,
And the thoughts are full of pain,
I think of childhood's careless hours,
And wish them back again.

For then, when evening had come on
And sealed the eye of day,

And the working-man his labor left,

And the idle boy his play;

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