again." It is taught throughout the New Testament Scriptures that there must be a new nature in man, as new a nature as when vitality-whatever that is-comes to be connected with inorganic matter to produce that living, locomotive thing which we call an animal. This regeneration is absolutely necessary to spiritual life upon earth and everlasting life in Heaven.

The point in this doctrine which has made it foolishness to all Greeks and a stumbling-block to all Jews, is that the Scriptures teach that there can be no such thing as spontaneous regeneration Never, without the coming in of some element from without, does the human soul become regenerated. Never, by any changes occurring in itself, by itself, either involuntarily or voluntarily, that is, spontaneously in the highest sense, does a soul become regenerated. No soul can say to itself, "I will cultivate myself into goodness; I will change my whole nature; I will subject myself to all the most refining processes known amongst men; I will study and practice ethics; I will give to the esthetic part of my nature the most delicate culture by surrounding it with the highest objects of art, and indulging it in all the pleasures of the most refined taste; and I will sweeten my manners by commerce with the gentle and the avoidance of all the uncouth." A man may do all that and yet be thoroughly unregenerated.

Goethe, in our own day, did that, perhaps more largely than any other man, and under the most favorable circumstances; yet, at the Court of Weimar he lived, so far as we know lied, as thoroughly unregenerate a soul as any that inhabited the body of the most uncultivated boar in the Black Forest.

The fact is that there is no such thing as spontaneous regeneration. It is by the will and power of God that a man is regenerated. It is, as the apostle calls it, the regeneration of the Holy Ghost. A soul differs from inorganic matter in this, that it is possessed of will. It can keep out the spiritual life from itself, or it can admit the spiritual life, but it cannot create the spiritual life. It cannot superinduce upon itself the spiritual life. That is of God, and must be as direct an act of His as when He makes vitality enter into or seize upon and clothe itself with some inorganic matter.

The apostle likens the regeneration of the soul to the creation of the world, the light shining into the darkness; and just as that light shining into the darkness brought Cosmos from Chaos, so the Spirit of God shining into a human soul imparts to that soul the spiritual life.

The very scientific precision of the term is demonstrated by our science. Generation is the word used when life produces organism out of inorganic matter and regeneration when the Holy Ghost produces a new life in a life which already exists.

Why should men of physical science object to the results of science in another department, when, every day of our lives, the most accurate conclusions in biological science are confirming and illustrating the most accurate conclusions in theological science?

TRUSTING IN RICHES.

In the tenth chapter of Mark this record is made:

"And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter the kingdom of God! And the disciples were astonished at His words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

The words of Jesus, like the words of all other teachers, must be read in the light of common-sense; without that, they are always liable to be perverted. The passage which we have just copied is one that has been the subject of such perversion. It is quoted and re-quoted as if leveled against the possession of large amounts of material wealth. Now surely Jesus did not teach that it was wrong to possess wealth, for the life which He taught His disciples to lead is such a life as will naturally make them capitalists. The cultivation of the intellect and of the heart, the employment of the brains and the hands, useful and intelligent activity-these things are necessary to the Christian life, and these things ordinarily result in the accumulation of material wealth in larger or smaller amounts.

Nor is the absence of material wealth-capital, if you choose to call it so a thing to be denounced unless it be the product of idleness, wastefulness and bad habits. A man may lay up for himself vast amounts of wealth because he has deliberately come to the conviction that that money would better be put aside for some good object than be appropriated to his own personal uses. In such a case the man's object is heroic. The difficulty in entering

the kingdom is not in having great possessions, or in lacking them. It is, as the Great Teacher Himself explains, in trusting in riches. "How hard it is for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God." Having riches, or trusting in riches, are two very different things. There are a thousand poor men who trust in riches to one rich man who trusts in riches. Let no poor man think that he is free from this great disability just because he is poor. Does he not trust in riches? Then what mean those dreams with which his sleep is filled: dreams of caverns piled with gold, dreams of such wealth as no Aladdin's lamp ever was able to discover? What means that thought perpetually running through his waking hours?" If I only had ten thousand dollars"; or, "If I only had a hundred thousand dollars"; or "If I only had a million dollars." As if the possession of any one of these amounts would make him independent, supply the desires of his soul, and secure the destiny of his future. Is not a man who has thoughts like these a man who trusts in riches?

Whatever it is on which we depend to make us independent of our fellow-men and of God, to supply our present wants and secure our future, that is the thing in which we trust. It is important that the poor should look at this. They hear ministers read this passage from the pulpit with great complacency and feel as though it could not have reference to them. A poor man wasting his energies and struggling with all his might to accumulate a little fortune, is a man who may more trust in riches than his neighbor worth a million sitting at a short distance from him, and sitting there in the sure conviction that millions upon millions cannot satisfy his soul, and cannot secure his future. In such a case as this the poor man trusts in riches and the rich man distrusts them. The rich man's chance of salvation may be better than the poor man's.

Nevertheless, while this is true, it behooves the rich man to consider carefully, while riches increase, that he does not set his heart upon them. No man can enter the kingdom of heaven who does not expect that that kingdom is to supply his present and secure his future. He is not to trust in riches; he is not to rely upon poverty.

The deceitfulness of riches is a Biblical proverb. Men are deceived while they are seeking wealth and they are deceived by wealth when they secure it. It brings many things that are necessary and many that are agreeable, but the things the soul most wants can neither come nor go with material wealth.

THE CHURCH AND THE THEATRE.

THE following question is submitted by a valued friend, and as our answer may be useful to others, we give that reply editorially:

"Suppose that you had been an occasional attendant on theatres, and you saw no evil in it, and yet your pastor did not believe that it was right for Christian people to attend theatrical exhibitions; would it not be your duty to withdraw from the Church ?**

Certainly not. Nor can it be yours. You have as much right to the Church as your pastor has. Your question is simply this: Shall I withdraw from the Church because my pastor and I differ in opinion? Now, perhaps no member of any Church agrees with his pastor thoroughly on all subjects. If one member withdraws because he fails to agree with the pastor on one ground, another may withdraw because he differs with the pastor on another ground, and there could be no Church association.

Moreover, your pastor is not to lord it over your conscience. He does not presume that he is infallible. He does not excommunícate you because you do not agree with him in opinion. But if you withdraw from associating with people whom you have chosen as your Christian brethren, it is your act, voluntarily performed, by which you break up your Church home. That is a very serious affair, and must not be done hurriedly, lest you harm yourself and others.

If the rule of the Church forbids your attendance on theatres, that is another thing. You knew that rule before you became a member, and, knowing it, you should not have offered yourself for membership. With your views you should have joined a Church which would not exclude you for being an attendant on theatres. But your question supposes that there is no such rule in your Church, and that every member is allowed to decide the question for himself.

In either case cling to your Church. It will be a sad day for you when you break that connection.

Is your pastor a man of intelligence, learning, piety, and tender regard for the members of his Church? If so, this is your duty:

let his carefully prepared and well-expressed opinion set you to serious and prayerful thought. Which is likely to be right, in general, on questions of Christian conduct-he or you? Why did you select that particular man as your pastor? Was it not because you had confidence in his intellectual and moral character? If so, and you find that he and you differ, is it not probable that he is right? If he be right, take his advice. If he be wrong, kindly and modestly try to show him his error. But do not leave the Church.

Step aside from the difference of opinion between you and your pastor into your closet; and there, between your Master and your own soul, settle this question which involves your conscience: Is it right for me, as a baptized Christian, who had covenanted to "renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same and all carnal desires of the flesh, so that I will not follow nor be led by them"-is it right for me to be an attendant on theatres ? Does it give me an innocent recreation, so as not to interfere with my spiritual growth and influence? Am I thereby a wiser, stronger, better man? Do I acquire greater power wherewith to lead men to their Saviour?

If you can honestly answer these questions in the affirmative, you will continue to attend theatres, and this difference between you and your pastor will remain a mere difference of opinion. But if you believe the whole influence of the theatre on public morals to be injurious, although you personally may not be hurt by seeing a particular play amid proper circumstances, your Christian principles may lead you to determine to set your whole influence against an institution which you believe to be in the main deleterious. Certainly, as between the Church and the theatre, you, as a Christian man, cannot hesitate. Any moment you would give up the theatre or any other pleasure for the Church. For no earthly consideration would you give up the Church. Your question has been discussed merely as involving a change from a Church whose pastor does not believe that theatre-going is a means of grace to that of one who does.

You know this—a proposition on which it is supposed all men will agree whose opinions are worth anything, including the writers of dramas and the actors of plays-that if every theatre in the land were turned into a church the country would be no worse for it, intellectually, morally, socially, or pecuniarily, but that the country would be damaged in every way, past all computation, if every church were turned into a theatre.

Would you surrender your part in the great body of people who are toiling for the redemption of the world simply that you might occasionally have the pleasure of witnessing a spectacular performance? That would not be very handsome or manly. Much more handsome and manly, not to say more in accordance with the teaching of the Apostle and the example of the Lord, to say, "If occasional attendance on the theatre be a source of the slightest discomfort to any true, faithful, high-minded Christian man, I will go to the theatre no more while the world stands."

CHURCH COURTESIES.

A WELL-KNOWN clergyman, in writing to us on other subjects, says:

It

"But I did not sit down to write these preliminaries. I sat down to tell you how much good it did me, as I came down from the pulpit during my vacation, to have a lady member of the 'Church of the Strangers' ask me if she had not heard Dr. Deems speak of me; and then kindly give me God-speed, on your account. was a sweet and cheering surprise. And I have thought that it was due you, as well as the lady in question, that I should communicate the fact to you. Perhaps it is the habit of all your members. I would that it might prevail in all our churches."

We thank our lady parishioner for her politeness to our gifted brother. We frequently have such kindnesses extended to us. It is very pleasing to have a stranger come up to the pulpit-steps and claim acquaintance because the far-off pastor of the stranger had said something good of the preacher to whom the stranger had Just listened. In this world of manifold naughtiness it is a mission of grace to go about telling every man you know all the good you have heard spoken of him, and by whom. It would lift many a man from his despondency. It would help to sweeten society generally. Do not be afraid of spoiling the person to whom you speak. More people are "spoiled " by want of praise than by any superabundant administration thereof. It is thunder and not music which turns milk sour.

OUR NOTE-BOOK.

WE do not think that we have been able to present to our readers a number of the SUNDAY MAGAZINE of more varied interest than the present.

As subsidiary to the more strictly religious portion of the Magazine we have from the outset had it in mind to furnish a series of illustrated papers upon Natural History and the Manners and Customs of the inhabitants of various parts of the world. These will all be specially prepared for our pages, and we trust that those of our subscribers who preserve the successive volumes will find in this series a rich field of instruction and entertainment.

Among the papers of this class in the present number, we need scarcely call attention to the pleasant account by Rev. Henry C. Potter, D.D., of a visit to the great Foundling Hospital in London, and the curious description of the old Baptist Monastery at Ephrata, Pa.

The paper on the "Broadway Tabernacle," by George F. Davenport, gives a graphic description of the history of an edifice which only a few years since played so distinguished a part in the religious and benevolent enterprises of the day It also, almost incidentally, gives a vivid picture of some aspects of the metropolis as they presented themselves some thirty years ago. It is only by the perusal of such a paper that we who walk its streets to-day can appreciate the rapid development of the city since that period.

Of peculiar value is the article on the "Nature and Treatment of Inebriety," by George M. Beard, M.D. And in connection with this, we call special attention to the thrilling sketch, "My Uncle John," by Henrietta M. Holdich. This, we are authorized to say, is no fictitious account, but is, with mere change of scene, a true narrative.

Those, and their number is great, who knew, personally or by reputation, the late most estimable Jonathan Sturges, will be pleased to have from the loving hand of a near kinswoman some account of one of the most noble of all the great merchant princes of New York. The record of such a life ought to dispel the tooprevalent idea that marked success in business life is somehow not to be looked for in connection with the highest development of Christian character.

Margaret J. Preston contributes to this numbe a thoroughly appreciative paper on Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

The semi-juvenile story, "In Mischief Again," which will be continued for several months, cannot fail to become a favorite with all children, whether of a smaller or larger growth.

The "Invalid's Portion," narrating the noble and cheerful work performed, and still performing, by one who is herself a confirmed invalid, will, we trust, give hope and comfort to not a few of those who are called upon to bear what, to all outward seeming, is a like heavy burden.

We look with no little satisfaction upon the original poems in which this number is especially rich. We doubt whether any other Magazine, here or in Europe, has so large a list of contributors in this department; and though we give to this class of papers more space than is usual, our great difficulty is, not to fill this space most acceptably, but to avoid doubling it. We think none of our readers will fail to agree with us in our high appreciation of the poems, "Written on the Sand," by William Williams; "Churn Slowly," by Sarah Keables Hunt; "Watches of the Night," by Nellie C. Hastings; Ministering Spirits," by Benj. G. Smith; "The Gate of Prayer," by Margaret G. Sangster; and "Denial," by Paul H. Hayne.

STANDING ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

All letters on the business of the Magazine must be addressed to "MR. FRANK LESLIE, 53 Park Place, New York," to whom all checks and postal orders must be made payable.

All MSS. for inspection must be addressed to the Editor, 53 Park Place; when accepted, the authors will be informed. The Editor cannot undertake to return MSS. Those who send UNSOLICITED Contributions should keep copies.

Never send two articles at once. Even when we have accepted an article, before that has appeared we do not desire to inspect anything from the same pen.

Volunteer contributors should be patient, and not write in a few days to know whether their articles have been accepted. If you cannot wait three months, do not send. We have plenty.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

[Every book received before closing this Department each month will be acknowledged as below. Publishers will please inform us promptly if there be any omission. We shall make such other notice and use of the volumes as the interests of our readers may seem to demand.]

From D. Appleton & Co., New York:

NEW HANDY VOLUME SERIES: THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. BY CHARLES
LAMB. THE BIRD OF PASSAGE. By J. SHERIDAN LE FANU.
THE GOLDSMITH'S WIFE. BY MADAME CHARLES REYBAUD.
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. By R. W. DALE.

THE HOUSE OF THE TWO BARBELS. BY ANDRE THEURIET.
LIGHTS OF THE OLD ENGLISH STAGE.

OLD MARTIN BOSCAWEN'S JEST. BY MARIAN C. L. REEVES and EMILY
READ.

HOMER. By the RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, Honorary Student of
Christ Church. In the Series of Literature Primers. Edited by
J. R. GREEN.
SAFAR HADGI; Or, RUSS AND TURCOMAN. From the French of PRINCE
LUBOMIRSKI. No. IX. of Collection of Foreign Authors.

From Houghton, Osgood & Co., Boston:

FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC. Lecture delivered at the Old South Church, March 30th, 1878. By RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

From Harper & Brothers, New York:

COL. DUNWODDIE, MILLIONAIRE. A Story of To-day. Harper's Library of American Fiction.

From Lee & Shephard, Boston:

A YEAR WORTH LIVING. A Story of a Place and of a People one cannot
Afford not to Know. By W. M. BAKER, Author of "Inside,"
"The
New Timothy," "More Evans," "Carter Quarterman," etc.

Hammersmith: His Harvard Days.

COLLEGE life is something quite separate and apart from all other kinds of life. The man who has never had its culte can quite apprehend how a student absorbs a certain influence as well as receives certain training; and how often that influence has a more determining effect upon his life than that training or the learning he is supposed to acquire. Books describing college life have quite a charm for those outside. Men whose minds have been expanded by an education which college men consider extra-mural have a certain pleasure in studying the little world which lies inside the college. This accounts for the general popularity of "Tom Brown at Oxford" and Thackeray's earliest pages of "Pendennis." To these may now be added "Hammersmith." While the English authors let us into school and college life in England, this new book describes college life in America more graphically than any other production we have read. While it will recall to the reader passages in the books we have named above, we scarcely think that the author will be charged with any plagiarism. There was no possible way of avoiding some similarities in describing things so very similar as English and American college life. There is a kind of freemasonry among collegians the world over. But there is a special American flavor in this book which will make it interesting to readers in England.

To the thoughtful reader it will raise the question whether there is any studying done at Harvard. If this book be a representative of Harvard students, plainly study is not at all the object of matriculation at that venerable seat of learning. The book justifies the sarcasm intended to be conveyed by the joke which lately went the rounds of the papers, in which an anxious parent is represented as writing to the President of Harvard to know if there would be any extra charge if his son were taught a little Latin, Greek and mathematics, as well as boating; and that other joke which represents a learned Oriental gentleman as writing home that the American training of youth consisted mainly in teaching them how to row boats, and that costly colleges have been erected for that purpose.

Clever and interesting as this book is, it leaves space for another: for a book which shall describe the life of Harvard stu

dents who do not spend upon their crews all the time that can be spared in gallant devotion to the girls of Boston; students who take some interest in public affairs and the progress of their country; and students who take a natural and scholarly interest in religion and the religious questions of the day. We presume there must be a few such students at Harvard.

Hammersmith's Harvard Days are said to be chronicled by Mark S. Severance, and the record is published by Houghton, Osgood & Co., Boston.

Michael Angelo.

WHAT Suggestions of multiform genius are in the very name of the man who was military engineer, poet, architect, painter and sculptor! What grand works he completed! What vast beginnings he left unfinished! How his genius towers above all in his class and holds him at the head of the column of modern artists!

One of the most difficult lives to write is that of Michael Angelo. There were so many strong contradictions, so many violent antagonisms in his character, that much skill is needed in giving a fair portrayal. That skill Mr. M. F. Sweetser has, and he has givea us a strong yet graceful story of a sad, wonderful, great, long life. He tells us in his preface: "Twice the manuscript has been rewritten, in order that by successive compressions the fitting limit should be reached, without doing violence to integral parts of the biography." The success obtained justifies the pains taken. This is one of the "Artist Biographies" published by Messrs. Houghton, Osgood & Co.

"In the Wilderness."

MR. CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER has that delicious kind of genius which diffuses a soft, gentle, attractive light over every subject he touches. This new book, "In the Wilderness," published by Houghton, Osgood & Co., contains some of his charming short papers, most of which, we believe, have already appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. It is a delicious little book for Summer reading.

Johonnot on Teaching.

FEW subjects have more interest for thinkers at the present day than that of teaching. The work of the teacher has come to be considered one of the learned professions, and it must keep up with the changing conditions of society or become an impediment instead of a help to our modern civilization. The more a man is fitted to the work and office of a teacher, the more difficult is he to be satisfied with the results of his own efforts, and the more carefully does he strive to discover what it is that lies between the actual results and his high ideal. To ascertain those difficulties and to suggest not temporary but permanent, and therefore radi cal, remedies, is the object of the recent book on the "Principles and Practice of Teaching," by James Johonnot. He believes that the changes required are fundamental and include three things, namely: (1) the Matter which shall be the basis of instruction; (2) the Order of presenting the several subjects; and (3) the Methods to be pursued.

He makes a concise statement of well-settled principles of psychology, and gives a connected view of the interdependence of the sciences, and analyzes the system of several of the great educational reformers to ascertain what they have contributed to the science of Teaching.

This work will, we think, be regarded as a valuable contribution to the literature of Teaching.

Colonel Dunwoddie, Millionaire.

SOME five-and-thirty years ago the Harpers commenced the issue of their "Library of Select Novels," the design being to furnish in cheap form the best works of the popular novelists of the day. The series now comprises more than six hundred volumes. Of these, as we count, less than a score are by American authors. The very existence of American novelists is thus praetically ignored in this "Library of Select Novels."

The enterprising publishers have recently taken a new departure in this direction by undertaking the issue, under the title of the "Library of American Fiction," of a series of novels exclu. sively by American authors. They promise that "only works of a very high order of literary merit, and none which the most fastidious taste would exclude from the family circle, will be placed on

!

the list"; and express the hope, in which we fully share, that "this new enterprise may open a wide field for the encouragement and development of American genius in the literature of fiction."

-

not

This promise has been fairly met in "Colonel Dunwoddie," which forms the fifth number of the series. The story is eminently readable. We imagine that few will begin its perusal without finishing it. It is, moreover, thoroughly American merely by authorship, but in plot, incident and characters. It is a story of to-day, commencing at the close of the civil war, and coming down through several succeeding years. While the plot is by no means lacking in cleverness, the main value of the story consists in its presentation of certain types of character and phases of thought and feeling which are in no small degree rife in the section where the scene is laid.

Clairsville, Clair County, lies in the sandy "post-oak region" of a State not specially designated, but which we may assume to be either Georgia or one of the Carolinas. The town is thus sketched as it appeared to a stranger looking at it from the third-story win

dow of his hotel:

"It was a dull prospect. The public square of the town lay beneath him, the red court-house in the centre.

There were China-trees lining the streets, a row of them inclosing the towering and square-roofed structure in question; but they drooped their leaves under the coming heat of noon, coated with dust. During court-week the well-gnawed horse-racks would be crowded with horses-the younger ones biting and kicking each other, with many a whinny; the older ones speculating as to why they had been created, their heads drooping, and disgusted with life. But it was not court-week, and not a horse was to be seen. It was so sultry that Mr. Middleton languidly wondered, as he brushed his hair at a glass in the window, to see a boy running through the square. Had he noticed, he would have seen that it was a white boy, whose bare feet could not otherwise stand the heat of the sandy street, even at that hour. Immediately under his window was an old negro splitting kindling, as blissfully unconscious of the hot sand upon his naked feet as he was of the sun itself shining full upon his bald head. Mr. Middleton saw the patriarch pause to wipe his face and head with his dingy sleeve. Had he been nearer he would have heard him say, with a warmth as genuine as that of the sun, 'Bress de Lord for dis pleasant wedder!' It was his element; had it been hotter, he would have enjoyed it more."

Charles Dunwoddie, in whom and in whose family the main interest of the story centres, had not always been a colonel. In the days before the war between the North and South he was simply a tall and talented young lawyer, who was known to write for the papers. Everybody said that it was his poetry which won him his wife. The lady, Miss Eliza Allen, the only daughter of General Allen, was acknowledged to be not the most beautiful so much as "the nicest and best young lady in all Clair County." The General died, leaving his plantation and a few dozen negroes to his two children, Eliza, and her lazy, fat brother, Alexander.

"Then came Secession. The young husband did not believe in such a remedy for acknowledged wrongs at all. He made powerful speeches against it; one in the brick court-house at Clairsville, wherein he reached a pitch of eloquence which inspired him with the first hope he ever had that he really possessed genius. As to poetry, you cannot open any decent collection of the best authors which does not have at least one or two of his most stirring lyrics written at that date, he had so put his very soul into them.

"But they did not prevent the war. With many others, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, he had abhorred the impending epidemic of civil strife; yet when it did come, with all others from the Gulf to the St. Lawrence, he also took the terrible fever. Precisely two months after his great speech he made, and in the same court-house, another speech, the reverse of the former, and far more vehement; and on the strength of it, a company was raised, of which he was unanimously elected captain. The end of the war saw him back again in Clairsville. He was a colonel indeed, but of a regiment which he had so led that, with some scars himself, he was almost the sole survivor."

At this point the story properly begins. Colonel Dunwoddie attempted to take up his old life. His slaves had vanished like a flock of blackbirds; and to save his life he could not have got five dollars an acre for his lands." He opened his law office anew, but with scanty success; for "the whole State was too poor, as well as too sick of strife, for awhile, for any one to go to law with anybody as to anything whatever."

His wife, who had always been, so to speak, s good sense, suggested that he should establish a paper. He did so, and the Clair County Clarion was acknowledged to be the ablest journal in the State; but this brought in little or nothing; and although his wife had a wonderful genius for economy, and was greatly aided by their oldest son, Horace, now a young man of twenty, and employed as clerk at the railway station, it seemed that the Colonel and his family were fast approaching the utmost edge and

end of the world. "hevere poor, very noor, and growing poorer every day.

"The supreme trouble with Colonel Dunwoddie was that he was so poor-so 'dead poor,' as the current phrase ran in that section. The richest of men, with generations behind him of the wealthiest of ancestors, could not have missed his money, had he been suddenly stripped of it, more than did this gentleman who had never really had any. He was one of those talented men who, free from bad habits, can no more make money than an untalented man can make poems.

"There are myriads of the race who take their being poor as a matter of course. But not so was Colonel Dunwoddie; he never consented to it for an instant. He had never been rich, there was not the smallest probability that he ever would be; none the less did his poverty strike into his blood and bone, into his marrow and his soul. It poisoned the whole man. If ever a husband had a wife who was the living and loving antidote to the miasmatic despondency produced in him by being poor, the Colonel was that man. That was one reason why he gave way to it.

"What made it worse for the Colonel was that being orator, poet, author, lawyer, editor, he was in the unceasing habit of uttering what he thought and felt. Of course he never opened his lips in regard to his private affairs to any one else; but he certainly did, and that much the more, to his wife. She was so silent herself, as well as sympathizing, and the sound of his own voice in talking to her excited him to say more than he intended. Her husband was so eloquent as well as pathetic, that it was impossible that she should not have listened. In everything else the manliest of men, Colonel Dunwoddie had poured into her ears whole Iliads of his woes."

We have quoted somewhat freely for the purpose of giving some idea of the verve with which the author writes. The events which transformed this poor lawyer into a “millionaire," may be briefly indicated: Alec Allen, his lazy, fat, seemingly stupid brother-inlaw, had always been an incubus upon the scanty resources of Colonel Dunwoddie. Soon after the close of the war, the Colonel had fitted Alec out for an expedition to "the West," as the author styles it, meaning thereby, the golden region of the Pacific. For some years nothing was heard of him; but one evening he made his appearance, as fat, good-humored, and apparently as impoverished as ever. But when he learns how poor the Colonel is, and how poor all his neighbors are, especially the widow and daughter of Judge Anderson, who had been the great man, not merely of the county, but of all the neighboring counties, he burst into a lazy chuckle, repeating the word " poor" as though it implied something exceedingly ludicrous. He evidently had something upon his mind, which he meant to unfold; but he was too tired and sleepy to do it then. Next day he was attacked by a brain fever, which deprived him of reason, and in a few days put an end to his life; his secret being unrevealed. Not long after his death, a letter came for him, which the Colonel opened, and found that it referred to immense wealth which the lazy fellow had stumbled upon in Nevada, and which he had been too lazy to lose. Mrs. Dunwoddie being his only living relative, she of course became sole heir. There is in the sequel a complication growing out of this fortune, upon which hangs the plot of the story; this we shall not here disclose. Sufficient to say that, through the energy and sagacity of his son, the Colonel gains undisputed possession of the immense fortune left by Alec Allen. The Colonel thus relates some of the annoyances to which this sudden accession of wealth exposed him:

"I thought we would be harassed, but I fear it will be worse than I had supposed. The news is all over the country that I have inherited a fortune of many millions in gold; I am beginning to receive begging letters. People want to sell me blooded horses, claims against Congress, Confederate bonds, shares in undeveloped oil-lands, and I don't know what; everybody tries to be first at me. This morning, when I went down to my office, I found a man waiting to borrow money to meet a mortgage due at noon. I scarcely knew him by sight, and he said he had got up at daybreak to be sure and catch me. Poor fellow, if he had not been in the army he would have gone down on his knees to me, he was so desperate. Three men called this afternoon. One wanted me to allow him to use my name as candidate for Governor in the convention; another was anxious to nominate me at some Railway Board as president; the last man had discovered a yellow root which was a sure cure for snake-bites, and he was eager to sell the secret. What amuses me is the cordiality with which I am congratulated by people who scarcely knew me before, and who seem glad to do so, although I am sure they do not expect to be benefited by me in the remotest way. If I am in a crowd at the postoffice, in a store, at the corner of the streets, the moment I begin to say anything a dead silence falls on the rest. As if I were any better worth hearing than before! If I had made a great speech, or written a famous book, there would be some sense in it."

"And yet I do not think," said his wife, smiling at him, "that the Southern people worship money. I am sure that there are many things which we rate much higher."

Of course, of course," Colonel Dunwoddie replied; "but we have all been poor here in Clair County-terribly poor; and poor Alec's money has been so exaggerated that I do not wonder at the excitement. You have no idea what a power it seems-far greater

here than in the North or East. Not that the people worship money, but that they are so dreadfully pressed. I believe that I could buy half the State."

Colonel Dunwoddie in a measure, and his son fully, comprehend that the old order of things has gone, never to be recalled, and are prepared to live in the new order which is to arise out of the seeming chaos. Still even they have not unlearned the idea, held by some, that the real glory of the nation lay almost exclusively in the South. But there are others of the Clairsville people who, in thought and feeling, are just what they were of yore. There, for example, is old Major Clarke, who had lost all his negroes, and had nothing left but his wild land, and his still wilder son; and whose favorite occupation was to sit in the tavern and denounce the Yankees as embodying all that was mean and knavish, and to swear that "any Southern man who married & Northern woman ought to be tarred and feathered, and I would help do it." And there is Tom Terrell, Esq., the chief rival of Colonel Dunwoddie at the bar, "who was the more intense in his hatred to everything not Southern because the other was disposed to be tolerant. Full of oaths, habitually under the influence of bad whisky, he gloried in the large amount of his indebtedness. In some complicated fashion he had never been in battle during the war, but ugly things were said of him in regard to killing negroes since. No one who heard him in the Legislature, on the stump, along the streets, I could doubt what he would do if the war should begin again, 'which,' he added, with terrible adjurations, 'I hope it may.'"

of quite a different type is Emmeline Anderson, the heroine of the love-part of the novel :

"Through all her childhood she had lived on the plantation, surrounded by slaves, and she had taken the fact that her father was highly honored of men, and her family a leading one in the State, as she took the landscape and the climate. During the war, although but a young girl, she grew up as in the atmosphere of a universal belief that henceforth the South, throwing off the North as a burdensome section of the continent, which had hitherto cramped as well as oppressed it, would rise to a glorious prosperity and supremacy, in which her father and her family would be more prominent than heretofore. No one born outside such a belief can imagine to what a degree all this was an absolute certainty to them. Who can imagine, then, the stunning effect of the overthrow of the Confederacy? It was a merciful thing that the death of her brothers, the last of whom fell at the battle of Five Forks, the failure of the South, the emancipation of the slaves, the funeral of her father, all came together nearly as one blow. The force of the stroke made the stunning more complete. Mrs. Anderson never rallied; her world had been too grand a world, and its destruction had been too sudden and wholly unexpected, for that. Besides, she was too old, and she consented to

live, when all else was dead, merely by the force of the materna instinct. How could she die with no one to protect her daughte who would be left alone in a howling wilderness of free negroa and insolent poor whites ?"

In the Dunwoddies and the Andersons are delineated the highest and best types of that phase of human character which bas been developed by the closing events of the old and the opening events of the new. There can, we suppose, be no doubt that the anonymous author is a Southron to the very core of his heart: and that he looks upon the dead past with fondness, if not with regret that it passed away, while he looks forward with much hope and cheer to the coming future of the South.

Only two Northern men appear in this story. One of these s Hiddekel Queasy, "a stoop-shouldered, thin-visaged, lank, les specimen of the Yankee, when, North as well as South, the name is used as a curse; his outer man corresponding closely to the typical Brother Jonathan as it is portrayed in caricatures and the wooden images in front of cigar-shops, except that he w homelier, meaner and more cowering in appearance." Yet man had come to be the most influential man in that regio "He had been in the employment of the Federal Goverment in mediately after the war; had gone from that, by negro votes, a the Legislature; had been made Speaker of the House, and wa known to be aspiring still higher."

The other Northern man is Gamaliel Middleton, in whom the author has endeavored to delineate a shrewd, plausible and a complished villain, with, as we think, indifferent success. H had been, in turns, a negro minstrel, a school-teacher, a lawyer, a clergyman, an actor, a solicitor for insurance companies, a breeder and runner of race-horses, a spiritual medium, a detect ive, and a hotel-keeper-all before he had reached the period ci middle life. He had been the bosom friend of Alec Allen in Sevada and California, and he alone was in possession of the secret of the disposition which the lazy adventurer had made of his wealth. The use which he proposed to make of this secret is the pivot upon which the story turns.

The colored element, of course, could not be wholly wanting in a novel of Southern life and character. We cannot congratulate the author upon his success in his delineation of this. To as it seems by far the weakest part of the work. But upon the whole we accord to this novel a high meed of praise; and we are glad to be told that if this work is favorably received, the writer "hopes to portray more fully a region the varied interest of whose past and present is exceeded only by the abundant promise of the future."

DR. BELL relates that a blind girl, residing in France, had for many years perused an embossed Bible with her fingers, but becoming partially paralyzed, the sense of touch in her fingers was lost. Her agony of mind at the deprivation was great, and in a moment of despair she took up her Bible, bent down her head and kissed the open leaf, by way, as she supposed, of a last farewell. In the act, to her great surprise and sudden joy, she felt the letters distinctly with her lips, "and from that day," he adds, "this poor child has thus been reading the book which is her one great comfort."

THE Dean of Chichester, England, was select preacher at Oxford recently, and after his usual brilliant fashion demolished the Darwinian theory with an apostrophe. "Ye men of science," said he, "leave me my ancestors in Paradise, and I do not grudge you yours in the Zoological Gardens !"

"WHEN a religious paper ceases its visits to a Christian home, it marks a backward step in that household." So says the Richmond Christian Advocate, and adds further: "Even the postmaster, finding no paper now in his office for an old subscriber, begins to think there is a religious decline in that family." So there is.

THE best way to stifle Communism in America, says the Christian Leader, is to increase the number of churches and free schools. Your average Communist is either an ignoramus or a ruffian; sometimes he is both. Make an intelligent Christian of him and you make him a thoughtful, law-abiding citizen.

"WHAT is the meaning of a backbiter ?" asked a gentleman at a Sunday-school examination. This was a puzzle. It went down the class till it came to a simple urchin, who said, "Perhaps it is a flea."

YOUNG ladies cannot be too careful of their companions, and the steps they consent to take with acquaintances. The Boston papers give an account of a young woman of New Hampshire, who yielded to the urgent invitation of another young lady to visit her in the city. She found herself in a showily furnished den, and could not escape, nor even communicate her situation to her friends. A young gentleman knowing that she had come to the city, and learning where she had gone, had his suspicions aroused, and got an officer to search the house. She was found in a closet in the attic. She had fought against fate, and was saved at the last as by a special Providence. Such cases as this, which are far more numerous than people know of, show the perils of a great city, and should warn girls never to leave home without protection, and without knowing at the start that they are going where they will be treated with respect.

THE late President Wayland evidently did not sympathize with the modern taste for gorgeous and expensive churches. Not long before his death he expressed to the editor of the Congregationalst his wish to live to the time when a Baptist meeting-house could be at once recognized for its simplicity and cheapness, adding, "If it were only a barn, built according to the people's means, and held sacred to spiritual worship, it would be a glory to our de nomination."

WHAT a touch of unregenerate nature there was in Shake speare's description of the scene at Falstaff's end. The mammoth scoundrel lay dying-all the signs assuring Dame Quickly that "there was but one way "-when he cried out," God! God! God!" three or four times. "Now I, to comfort him," she says, "hid him a' should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts, yel!”