GENTLEMEN, My leisure has been so entirely occupied with the hitherto fruitless endeavour to decypher the Runick inscription whose fortunate discovery I mentioned in my last communication, that I have not found time to discuss, as I had intended, the great problem of what we are to do with slavery, -a topick on which the publick mind in this place is at present more than ever agitated. What my wishes and hopes are I need not say, but for safe conclusions I do not conceive that we are yet in possession of facts enough on which to bottom them with certainty. Acknowledging the hand of Providence, as I do, in all events, I am sometimes inclined to think that they are wiser

A rustic euphemism for the American variety of the Mephitis. H. W.

than we, and am willing to wait till we have made this continent once more a place where freemen can live in security and honour, before assuming any further responsibility. This is the view taken by my neighbour Habakkuk Sloansure, Esq., the president of our bank, whose opinion in the practical affairs of life has great weight with me, as I have generally found it to be justified by the event, and whose counsel, had I followed it, would have saved me from an unfortunate investment of a considerable part of the painful economies of half a century in the Northwest-Passage Tunnel. After a somewhat animated discussion with this gentleman, a few days since, I expanded, on the audi alteram partem principle, something which he happened to say by way of illustration, into the following fable.

FESTINA LENTE.

ONCE on a time there was a pool
Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool
And spotted with cow-lilies garish,
Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish.
Alders the creaking redwings sink on,
Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln
Hedged round the unassailed seclusion,
Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian;
And many a moss-embroidered log,
The watering-place of summer frog,
Slept and decayed with patient skill,
As watering-places sometimes will.

Now in this Abbey of Theleme,
Which realized the fairest dream
That ever dozing bull-frog had,
Sunned on a half-sunk lily-pad,
There rose a party with a mission
To mend the polliwogs' condition,
Who notified the sélectmen
To call a meeting there and then.
"Some kind of steps," they said, "are
needed;

They don't come on so fast as we did:
Let's dock their tails; if that don't make 'em
Frogs by brevet, the Old One take 'em!
That boy, that came the other day
To dig some flag-root down this way,
His jack-knife left, and 't is a sign
That Heaven approves of our design:
'T were wicked not to urge the step on,
When Providence has sent the weapon."

Old croakers, deacons of the mire,
That led the deep batrachian choir,
Uk Uk Caronk with bass that might

Have left Lablache's out of sight,
Shook nobby heads, and said, "No go!
You'd better let 'em try to grow:
Old Doctor Time is slow, but still
He does know how to make a pill."

But vain was all their hoarsest bass,
Their old experience out of place,
And spite of croaking and entreating,
The vote was carried in marsh-meeting.

"Lord knows," protest the polliwogs,
"We're anxious to be grown-up frogs;
But do not undertake the work
Of Nature till she prove a shirk;
"T is not by jumps that she advances,
But wins her way by circumstances:
Pray, wait awhile, until you know
We're so contrived as not to grow;
Let Nature take her own direction,
And she 'll absorb our imperfection;
You might n't like 'em to appear with,
But we must have the things to steer with."

"No," piped the party of reform,
"All great results are ta'en by storm;
Fate holds her best gifts till we show
We've strength to make her let them go;
The Providence that works in history,
And seems to some folks such a mystery,
Does not creep slowly on incog.,
But moves by jumps, a mighty frog;
No more reject the Age's chrism,
Your queues are an anachronism;
No more the Future's promise mock,
But lay your tails upon the block,
Thankful that we the means have voted
To have you thus to frogs promoted."

The thing was done, the tails were cropped,
And home each philotadpole hopped,
In faith rewarded to exult,

And wait the beautiful result.

Too soon it came; our pool, so long
The theme of patriot bull-frog's song,
Next day was reeking, fit to smother,
With heads and tails that missed each other,-
Here snoutless tails, there tailless snouts;
The only gainers were the pouts.

MORAL.

From lower to the higher next,
Not to the top, is Nature's text;
And embryo Good, to reach full stature,
Absorbs the Evil in its nature.

I think that nothing will ever give permanent peace and security to this continent but the extirpation of Slavery therefrom, and that the occasion is nigh; but I would do nothing hastily or vindictively, nor presume to jog the elbow of Providence. No desperate

measures for me till we are sure that all others are hopeless,flectere si nequeo SUPEROS, Acheronta movebo. To make Emancipation a reform instead of a revolution is worth a little patience, that we may have the Border States first, and then the non-slaveholders of the Cotton States, with us in principle, - a consummation that seems to be nearer than many imagine. Fiat justitia, ruat cælum, is not to be taken in a literal sense by statesmen, whose problem is to get justice done with as little jar as possible to existing order, which has at least so much of heaven in it that it is not chaos. Our first duty toward our enslaved brother is to educate him, whether he be white or black. first need of the free black is to elevate himself according to the standard of this material generation. So soon as the Ethiopian goes in his chariot, he will find not only Apostles, but Chief Priests and Scribes and Pharisees willing to ride with him.

Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se Quam quod ridiculos homines facit.

The

I rejoice in the President's late Message, which at last proclaims the Government on the side of freedom, justice, and sound policy.

As I write, comes the news of our disaster at Hampton Roads. I do not understand the supineness which, after fair warning, leaves wood to an unequal conflict with iron. It is not enough merely to have the right on our side, if we stick to the old flint-lock of tradition. I have observed in my parochial experience (haud ignarus mali) that the Devil is prompt to adopt the latest inventions of destructive warfare, and may thus take even such a three-decker as Bishop Butler at an advantage. It is curious, that, as gunpowder made armour useless on shore, so armour is having its revenge by baffling its old enemy at sea, and that, while gunpowder robbed land warfare of nearly all its picturesqueness to give even greater stateliness and sublimity to a sea-fight, armour bids fair to degrade the

The comfort an' wisdom o' goin' it blind,

To say thet I did n't abate not a hooter O' my faith in a happy an' glorious futur',

Ez rich in each soshle an' p❜litickle blessin'

Ez them thet we now hed the joy o' possessin'.

With a people united, an' longin' to die For wut we call their country, without askin' why,

An' all the gret things we concluded to slope for

Ez much within reach now ez everto hope for.

We've gut all the ellerments, this very hour,

Thet make up a fus'-class, self-governin' power:

We've a war, an' a debt, an' a flag; an' ef this

Ain't to be inderpendunt, why, wut on airth is?

An' nothin' now henders our takin' our station

By the low Yankee stan'ard o' dollars an' cents:

They seem to forgit, thet, sence last year revolved,

We 've succeeded in gittin' seceshed an' dissolved,

An' thet no one can't hope to git thru dissolootion

'Thout some kin' o' strain on the best Constitootion.

Who asks for a prospec' more flettrin' an' bright,

When from here clean to Texas it's all one free fight?

Hain't we rescued from Seward the gret leadin' featurs

Thet makes it wuth while to be reasonin' creaturs?

Coz 't would be our own bills we should git for th' insurance;

But cinders, no metter how sacred we think 'em,

Might n't strike furrin minds ez good sources of income,

Nor the people, perhaps, would n't like the eclaw

O' bein' all turned into paytriots by law.

Some want we should buy all the cotton an' burn it,

On a pledge, when we 've gut thru the war, to return it,

Then to take the proceeds an' hold them ez security

For an issue o' bonds to be met at maturity

With an issue o' notes to be paid in hard cash

On the fus' Monday follerin' the 'tarnal Allsmash :

This hez a safe air, an', once hold o' the gold,

'Ud leave our vile plunderers out in the cold,

An' might temp' John Bull, ef it warn't for the dip he

Once gut from the banks o' my own Massissippi.

Some think we could make, by arrangin' the figgers,

A hendy home-currency out of our niggers;

But it wun't du to lean much on ary sech staff,

For they're gittin' tu current a'ready, by half.

One gennleman says, ef we lef' our loan out

Where Floyd could git hold on 't, he'd take it, no doubt;

But 't ain't jes' the takin', though 't hez a good look,

We mus' git sunthin' out on it arter it's took,

An' we need now more 'n ever, with

An' onless we can mennage in some way to stop it,

Why, the thing's a gone coon, an' we might ez wal drop it.

Brag works wal at fust, but it ain't jes' the thing

For a stiddy inves'ment the shiners to bring,

An' votin' we 're prosp'rous a hundred times over

Wun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.

Manassas done sunthin' tow'rds drawin' the wool

O'er the green, antislavery eyes o' John Bull :

Oh, warn't it a godsend, jes' when sech tight fixes

Wuz crowdin' us mourners, to throw double-sixes!

I wuz tempted to think, an' it wuz n't no wonder,

Ther' wuz reelly a Providence, - over or under, When, all packed for Nashville, I fust ascertained

From the papers up North wut a victory we'd gained.

'T wuz the time for diffusin' correc' views abroad

Of our union an' strength an' relyin' on God;

An', fact, when I'd gut thru my fust big surprise,

I much ez half b'lieved in my own tallest lies,

An' conveyed the idee thet the whole Southun popperlace

Wuz Spartans all on the keen jump for Thermopperlies,

Thet set on the Lincolnites' bombs till they bust,

An' fight for the priv❜lege o' dyin' the fust;

But Roanoke, Bufort, Millspring, an' the rest

Of our recent starn-foremost successes out West,

Hain't left us a foot for our swellin' to