especially to such as were looking forward with ardor to a more active life. As a people, we desire to see every man engaged in some effective employment. A dreamer over books is not to our taste. The acquisition of knowledge beyond what may be obtained by passing through the common curriculum of studies prescribed in our colleges and in some professional school, is thought unprofitable. This course being completed, every one must at once engage in some avocation visibly and immediately beneficial to himself or to his generation. To repose longer in Academic bowers is not thought commendable, and the uprightness of him who attempts it is very likely to be called in question, and his motives impugned. There is no just idea among us of the value of large acquisitions of learning, or of its necessity to the production of able and well digested works, such as shall instruct, not only the present, but succeeding generations. We need a national Biblical literature; Biblical scholars of our own. Foreign Biblical works and scholars do not altogether meet our wants, and some of them have, we fear, spread mildew over the harvest fields of the church. We need sacred scholars grown on our own soil, breathing our own atmosphere, filled with the spirit of our own institutions, trained to think and speak as one of us. Religious instruction, modes of biblical interpretation, or theological philosophizing, adapted to the minds and habits of thought of another nation, may not be most profitable to American minds. In fact, we sometimes find that the foreign scion, grafted on New England stock, produces neither foreign nor native fruit, but a sort of "lusus naturæ," a marvel for men to stare at. It operates like putting new cloth unto an old garment. For our part we should rejoice to see a far greater number of the first class of intellects among us devoting themselves exclusively to sacred learning-candid and judicious men, who would thoroughly scrutinize the thousand phases of truth which come floating to us from other lands; and stripping them of their imported drapery, clothe them with the costume of home production. We know, with the present notions of the community, such purposes of life would be regarded as idle fancies or visions of ambition, unworthy of wise men, unbecoming Christians. But the day may not be far distant when the idea of a national biblical literature shall be appreciated, and those who devote themselves to its acquisition and production, admired. Then Mr. Taylor may be commended for what in life he was censured. However this may be, of the propriety and correctness of his course he alone was capable of deciding; for he alone was responsible; he alone could hear the voice of his own conscience. His

journal testifies that he entered upon it and continued it with much prayer, and with severe questioning of motives. This, together with the original works and translations, he was thereby enabled to produce, which have blessed, and are still blessing mankind, is enough to lead the generous and enlightened, if they still regard his course as censurable, to throw over it the mantle of charity; and not only so, but be thankful for the good he actually accomplished. We also indulge the hope that some of his unpublished writings may yet see the light.

We

We should be happy to trace farther the life of Mr. Taylor and point out other lessons it is fitted to inculcate. But we forbear. His record is on high; his character is with us. are glad it has been given to the world. It cannot fail to give encouragement to learning, to animate and cheer the struggling student, to edify the Christian, to impress upon all the importance of religious principle.

ART. III.-THE DISCONTENTED CLASSES.

Hints towards Reforms. By HORACE GREELEY. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1850.

MR. GREELEY has many generous and noble impulses. His heart readily sympathizes with the poor and the oppressed, and yearns for the lifting up of our race from the degradation of ignorance and sensuality to the high places of intelligence and purity. But it is obvious that men may be in full sympathy with our diseased and wretched humanity, and yet not rightly apprehend either the Cause or the Cure. They may desire to reclaim the bogs and marshes, which sin has made; but failing to ascertain and cut off the springs of all this mischief, they will be likely to labor in vain, and spend their strength for naught. When Wilberforce sent forth his "Practical View" amidst the formalisms of his time, it caused a ferment in the public mind, to which it had long been unused. And why? Because it told the truth, both as it respects the cause of the evil it described, and the remedy it suggested. Hence its affectiveness under God, was owing to its vivid, burning truthful

ness.

Now we do not say that Mr. Greeley's "Hints towards Reforms" very seriously fail in this particular. The failure seems to us rather in what he does not say, than in what he does. Still the book contains many valuable suggestions, to which the public will do well to give serious heed. We thank Mr. Greeley for every true and earnest word he has ever uttered in behalf of truth and righteousness, while at the same time we may express the hope, that his Philosophy of Reform, as he grows older, will catch more of the spirit of Him, who "came to seek and to save that which was lost."

We do not propose to give an analysis of the work, placed at the head of this article. We take it rather as the motto of some thoughts of our own, upon the general subject of which it treats.

Whenever there is any wide-spread, but concealed uneasiness in the public mind, it is curious to observe how soon, and in what forms, it is developed, after the key note of reform is fairly struck. An example to our purpose, and very suggestive in other respects, occurred in the early public life of David. Declared an outlaw by the despotism of Saul, and simply because being the better man, he was gaining the hearts of the people, he sought to hide himself in the cave of Adullam from the rage of his persecutor. When this fact came abroad, we are told, that "every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him, and he became a Captain over them"-just as all the bad humors in the body rush to the part most inflamed. It may be doubted, however, whether this discontented bandthese men in distress and debt-would all have enlisted under the standard of such a leader, if they had known beforehand his character, and especially his stern purpose to permit nothing to be done contrary to the laws and institutions of his country; for it is not under the standard of principle, that such men are wont to rally. With nothing to lose, and much to hope for, from change, they naturally attach themselves to the side advocating the repudiation of debts, and the extension of the area of the widest, or rather, the wildest, liberty. Turning the world upside down is very pleasant to those who dislike to have it the right side up. One thing is certain, to wit, that free institutions have most to fear from men of broken fortunes, and of unsettled, discontented minds.

To examine the character and influence of this class of men, and to suggest the remedy adapted to the evils they originate, is the leading design of this article.

The three classes from whom special evil to the country is

to be apprehended, may be named after the pattern given us at the cave of Adullam-those in distress, those in debt, and all the discontented.

Distress is often caused by the maladministration of the civil government-more frequently by the folly or inconsideration of the sufferers themselves. In despotic countries, there are forms of distress, of which we have had no experience. To have property and person and life itself placed at the absolute control of one man, and he cruel, jealous and capricious, is to have a state of things, in which the real manhood of our nature will have little opportunity to develop itself,-and in which the iron must go into the very soul. But though by the mercy of God, and the wisdom of our fathers, we are personally strangers to this form of wretchedness; yet we have seen multitudes of greater sufferers in this land of the free, than can be found in Austrian dungeons. Intemperance and licentiousness can forge worse chains than the most cruel of this world's despotschains which bind the soul, torturing it to desperation, and yet are destined to become stronger to all eternity! Such suffering is all the harder to be borne, because it is the fruit of our own ill regulated desires. For such sufferers, conscience is armed with a whip of scorpions; while to those, like Paul and Silas, who go into prisons, and are scourged for the truth's sake, there comes such refreshment as to make the voice of praise, rather than the sighs of despondency, the fittest expression of their feelings. Turn out now into the public view all who are made wretched and desperate by drunkenness, and gluttony, and licentiousness; and will you not have an exceeding great army? What if they never draw the sword; yet such a mass of festering corruption in the republic may well fill us with apprehension for the result.

But where distress springs from the want of necessary food, and prevails widely among the people, there will of course sooner or later be a revolution. It was the cry for bread, that once overturned the French government. And it was this cry, coming up from the mining districts and manufacturing towns of Great Britain, that led to a change of the Corn laws. Rosseau never uttered a truer sentiment than this: "when the poor have nothing to eat, they will eat the rich;" nor Carlyle, saying, "when the thoughts of a people in the great mass have grown mad, the combined issue of that people's workings will be madness and ruin." It must be so. With the first consciousness of power, they cry out, as they run over the long catalogue of their sufferings "plunder shall be paid with plunder, violence with violence, and blood with blood." But distress

of this sort, pervading large masses of the people, is unfelt in this country; and may the mercy of God prevent the arrival of such a day. True, there is want in many a dark, damp cellar in our cities, and many a family pining for the bare necessities of life; and the wonder is, that so many are willing to remain in such unfriendly positions, while a large and unoccupied country invites them abroad, where at least pure air and water are free to all, and where constant industry will ensure food and clothing. Still this form of distress is too limited to make its influence widely felt. Yet it will doubtless grow with the growth of the population; and well will it be for the stability of our institutions, if the proper remedy is seasonably applied.

Another mischievous class of men are those in debt. To contract debts is easy; to pay them is a task too hard for the shiftless. Without endorsing the sentiment of a late distinguished statesman, that "men trading on borrowed capital ought to break," we may safely adopt the proverb of Solomon, and say," the borrower is servant to the lender." The debtor cannot act with the freedom and independence of one who owes no man anything but love. Yet the difference is great with different persons. Some, by the perspicacity of their calculations, and the steadiness of their industry, are sure at length of getting out of the deep waters upon dry land before the sharks of the law can swallow them up. Others, without forethought or the abili ty to fit means to ends, plunge into the sea of debt, and become at last the sport of its waves and the victims of its whirlpools. Deeply and more deeply they become involved, till, losing all hope of relief, they are ready to enlist under the standard of any Cataline that may offer himself; and in utter despair of bettering their condition, are "fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils." The former class of debtors are safe and honorable citizens; and with the ordinary blessings of Providence, may expect to gain the foothold of independence. But the latter class, if numerous, will be like leprosy on the body politic, ever sighing for some change, though it be from bad to worse, and ready, like the Anti-renters of New York, to overturn all order and law.

But the Discontented form by far the largest class of troublesome men; a class, uneasy with their present condition, or rebellious against the allotments of Providence; not uneasy in the sense of using their faculties, in an earnest, honest way to improve their condition by an improvement of character, but because possessed with the restlessness and fretfulness from which spring greeneyed envy and unprincipled ambition. It is the wish for consideration beyond desert-a desire for the re