resemblances to various objects; and holds them up for inspection. Meanwhile, the admiring group around see just what he sees: "this

is a fish," and "this is a fowl;" and so they help to delude one another. But, alas! though boyishly done, this business is no boy's play. The lead, whether molten by fervid excitement, or hardened again in fantastic shapes, is not silver; and, more than that, it is coated with a sweetness which lures the taste, and proves that the sugar of that lead" is deadly poison.

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We can only account for the popularity of a journal so replete with absurdities and demoralizing tendencies, by the help of Dr. Johnson. When some one asked him, how it was that a certain ridiculous preacher could draw such crowds after him, he answered: "Why, I suppose that his nonsense suits their nonsense." Let every father of a family, before he purchases the Chronotype, ask himself two questions: - Is it right for me to give my money to encourage such a publication? Is it right before God for me to put in peril the principles of my children by laying it before them?

THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. - We have read the January number of this able work. The writers in its pages seem to be terribly haunted by a certain goblin, which they call "Calvinism." It occupies the same place in their lively apprehensions that the foul fiend did in the intense imaginings of Luther, when he hurled his inkstand at the intruding demon. They use the reformer's weapon, though without his generous courage. To the common spectator, however, nothing of the conflict is visible, except the black splashes on the wall. We wonder how the terrified gentlemen of the Examiner can sleep of nights, seeing that they are utterly unable to cast this strong spirit out of the multitudes of whom he keeps such obstinate possession. One of them, though he cannot work that particular miracle to seal his prophetic character, yet undertakes to do something in the way of uttering predictions. In the last sentence of the more elaborate articles, he says: "We only add the prediction, that the time will come, when Calvinism, and Swedenborgianism, and Fourierism, and Mesmerism will be alike forgotten." It pains us cruelly to see Calvinism thrust into such bad company; and that, too, sorely against its will. We believe it will be the death of its three fellow-prisoners, who bitterly hate it; and who are, all of them, in some degree allied to Unitarianism, but are full-blooded foes to orthodoxy.

Another thing we took knowledge of in examining the "Examiner," is the manner in which the ever-blessed Trinity is spoken of. The writers who refer to it, will not allow that any who merely receive the plain, clearly defined, and matter-of-fact doctrine as to the existence of God, which is derived from the Bible, are Trinitarians. They insist that we shall take with it all the speculations, comparisons, metaphysical refinements, and philosophizings of all who have held it, from the Nicene fathers downward. The policy of this mode of treating the subject is highly commendable: the honesty of it is another thing. No truth can well be opposed, without first distorting and disguising it till it looks like folly and fallacy rather than like itself.

There is a review of several writers on the subject of Swedenborgianism. We advise such as would like to see the difference between the unitarian and the orthodox way of doing the same thing, to compare that feeble piece of non-committalism with the strong article on the same subject in the January number of this Observatory.

CYCLOPEDIA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. - This work, edited by Robert Chambers of Edinburgh, and republished in Boston in the serial way, by Gould, Kendall, and Lincoln, is one of the remarkables of the day. The preparation of it is one of the most enormous literary jobs ever undertaken. To go through one thousand authors, many of them very voluminous, to cull a sufficiency from each of them to serve as a “taster," and to arrange and bring out the whole mass in a form so cheap, appears to us like one of those giant efforts which make common scholars feel as if they had never done any thing. This work will answer a variety of useful ends. It is the very thing for persons who can afford only a small collection of books, and who wish that collection to contain the greatest possible amount and variety of reading. It will serve as an excellent biographical dictionary of English writers, to which its possessor can turn for information whenever any of their names come in his way. Moreover, it is in literature what a cabinet of minerals is in geology; containing samples from every period, and from every author in it, duly arranged and labelled for inspection. Here we may see all the changes through which our mother-tongue has passed; and may, at a glance, compare the intellectual lights of one age with those of another. Here, too,

we obtain a wide view of the great world of books: of books, which were sublimely termed by Sir William Davenant of old, "those monuments of vanished minds." As our older English literature is notorious for having been replete with indelicacies and impurities, and as it even in our days produces some very unclean samples, we felt a degree of solicitude as to the character of the selections in this Cyclopædia. After examining them, so far as republished, with some care, we are satisfied that they are made by a man of pure mind, as well as good taste; and do not think that any extracts will occur to which the strictest moralist need object. Fastidious people, of course, will always have some fault to find, either in regard to what is admitted or what is excluded; but such persons will never give us any thing better than that at which they carp. We must add here one word of caution to any young gentleman or lady, who may purchase and peruse this work, not to suffer the conceit to take possession of them, that they have thereby mastered the whole subject. If they do, and if they should happen to betray that conceit in the presence of "one who knows," they may depend upon making a very ridiculous appearance. They will seem like some fresh-water sailor, boasting of his voyagings, in the company of an "old salt" who cannot remember how many times he has crossed the line.

SLAVERY. In spite and sight of all that has been done, for the last twenty years, to banish slavery from among us, it has been steadily consolidating its strength, and gaining in extent of territory and political influence. And now these States, with united strength, are

waging an execrable war, to extend its dominion into Mexico. Ought we not to be convinced, by these alarming facts, that the methods of opposing it, which have been in use, are worse than unavailing? Must not some other means be tried to arrest its giant strides? Immense efforts have been expended at the North; which is very much like trying to stop the distilling of rum in Massachusetts, by convulsing Florida or Arkansas on the subject. Far be it from us to discourage any agitation, having a practical tendency to abolish this great evil. But most of what has been attempted, has been like curing a gouty patient by applying eye-salve to his back, or a blister to his bed-post. Remedies have been abundantly used, but too remotely from the seat of the disease, which, meantime, rages with increased violence. May God yet raise up a deliverer in the midst of slavery itself,—a man like Wilberforce, with such an established character for Christian wisdom and moral worth, as shall enable him to withstand every onset, and to rally all the latent feeling against slavery, which is widely dispersed in the slave States, but is dormant, for want of courage, or an available opportunity to act. "There is no more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into those dark and infected recesses, in which no light has ever shone." But we are persuaded the hero will yet arise, who will "penetrate the noisome vapors, and brave the terrible explosion." We are persuaded, too, that his first endeavor will be such a spreading of the gospel among the slaves, as has proved in the West Indies, the chief instrument of preparing them for emancipation, and of securing it to them when prepared. The history of the white race, in Europe and in Southern America, teaches us that no people can pass at once from a state of vassalage to one of self-government, without a terrible succession of disorders and disasters. "A nation grown free in a single day," says Rev. Sydney Smith, "is a child, born with the limbs and vigor of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his play-thing, and set the house in a blaze, that he might chuckle over the splendor." This point is illustrated in a lively manner by Count Stolberg: "Political chimeras are innumerable, but the most chimerical of all is the imagining that a people deeply sunk in degeneracy is capable of instantly recovering the ancient grandeur of freedom. Who tosses the bird into the air after his wings are clipped? So far from restoring it to the power of flight, it will but disable it the more."

These principles commend themselves to common sense, and are as applicable to the colored race as to any other. It were absurd to say, that the prolonging of their bondage can render them fit for liberty. But what Christian does not believe, that the light and liberation which the gospel brings to the soul is the highest qualification for civil freedom? Can we hope that God will reward this nation with so great a gift as entire freedom to all classes of its population, till the grand and paramount duty of preaching the gospel to them is substantially performed? It is certain, that they who are endeavoring to emancipate the slaves by rooting up the institutions of the gospel at the North, would do infinitely more to accomplish their professed object by striving to plant those institutions at the South. The universal emancipation of our race is a wreath which infidel philanthropy

will never win. This garland is destined to grace the brow of Christian love alone.

"But there is yet a liberty, unsung

By poets, and by senators unpraised,

Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers

Of earth and hell confederate take away;

A liberty which persecution, fraud,

Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind;
Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more."

BIRDS OF A FEATHER.-There is in this city a small paper called the "Prisoner's Friend," which goes for all sorts of moral reform, and especially for placing the whole community at the mercy of thieves and cut-throats, to whom it virtually proposes to abandon the conduct of affairs, by taking off the long-established restraints on crime. This poor concern lives on galvanism more than on food; that is to say, it is supported by contribution and begging, rather than by its subscription list. The editors sometimes acknowledge gratuities in the form of boots, and the like. Its conductors seem to be bewitched by a sort of weak "goodyship," as it is called in Hudibras. They have a sickly sympathy with crime in all its shapes, and pollution in all its varieties. They ascribe these things to a badly constructed state of society, which has created the circumstances whereby poor and unfortunate culprits are fated and necessitated to behave as they do. Hence all pity is reserved for these culprits, alias prisoners. As for society, whose existence is struck at by their crimes, no matter; it only suffers what it deserves. These revolutionizers will never be satisfied, till they can make heads and heels exchange uses; while they who bear them must live in houses so built as to stand on the chimney-tops, in the midst of orchards where the trees grow with their roots in the air; and what were formerly their tops, in the earth. Their maxim seems to be borrowed from Wordsworth's radicals :

"Of old things, all are over old;

Of new things, none are new enough:
We'll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff."

As we have said, this little gasping paper goes for every kind of reform, no matter what. It contains a curious exemplification of the gregarious nature of these movements, in a standing advertisement of books to be sold at its publishing-office. Here is a singular assortment of literature, comprising not only all that has been printed against capital punishment, and other legal preventives of crime; but also books on clairvoyance; books on certain vices which ought to be nameless, teaching ten to practise them for one who may be persuaded to abandon them; Theodore Parker's prolific sermons; water-cure for debilitated young men; slave-holders' religion; phonography; new systems of penmanship; non-resistance; transcendental theology; hydropathy; animal magnetism; the Fowlers' writings on temperance, matrimony, and tight-lacing; infidel phrenology; prurient books for lovers and for the married; engravings of Garrison and O'Connell;

squibs against the Sabbath; Graham on chastity; Professor Upham's works; and Professor Arthur on "sweethearts and wives!" Here is a precious gallimaufry, though it be but a small part of the mess. In conning over the list, we were struck by one reflection which it suggested; and it is this: Let these ultra-men start with whatever pet reform they will, they are quite sure, by some irresistible gravitation, to "bring up" on matters which come under the cognizance of the seventh commandment. This seems to be a law of fanaticism, as exemplified in the ancient Gnostics, the old monks, the German anabaptists in the sixteenth century, Emanuel Swedenborg, and the swarms which are now buzzing all abroad, communitists, vegetable-diet men, nogovernment men, no-punishment men, and all the rest of the corrupt unbelievers of our day. If such infecters cannot, by the power of correct and virtuous public sentiment, be put into some sort of spiritual quarantine, then every good man must quarantine himself and his own dwelling; and not suffer one rag or potsherd, which has been tainted with such plagues, to enter his doors till it has been thoroughly fumigated, or purged by the fire.

THE VIENNEse Children. The votaries of the theatre among us are in raptures at the performances of forty-eight dancing children, from four to twelve years of age, who have been recently imported for the entertainment of the public.

Like the good old Puritan, Bolton, we have had no good opinion of dancing, since the daughter of Herodias danced John Baptist's head off. But, in this case, we feel a touch of sorrow for these poor children. In our younger days, we were not quite so ignorant as Dominie Sampson of the nature of the "saltatory motion;" and we are sure that these young things could never have been trained to the skill they are said to manifest, but by a rigid and laborious discipline. To the beholders it may look like pleasure; but when pleasure becomes a toil, there is no weariness like it.

Whence did these children come? Did German mothers sell their babes into this slavery? Or are they orphans, whose unfriended lot has subjected them, through public guardians of the poor, to such servitude as this? The captive hero, enforced to make sport for the Philistines, is not so much to be pitied as one of these little ones.

Who can look upon this lovely group of homeless children, hurried about over land and sea, for the lucre of gain, without compassion? Here is a flock of lambs, as it were, fattened for the slaughter, and loaded with rosy garlands and streaming fillets, and led up as victims to the shrines of folly and fashionable vice. They are bred in a "school of morals" which has ever been notorious for the impurity of its teachings and examples; and where the instructors, with rare exceptions, have been noted for dissipated and profligate manners. As a sample of the moral influences under which this numerous infant-class is placed, we may refer to the hiring of an extra Long Island Railroad train, to transport them on the Sabbath of the Lord from one scene of dissoluteness to another. Alas! poor children, may the Providence of God rescue you from the breach of the rest of the decalogue, and from all your enslavement to compulsory mirth, and the temptations of youthful depravity!