He has a favorite retreat in the neighboring grounds of a Mr. Mandeville, who is a member of parliament, and married to the daughter of the Duke of Lindvale, who is very young, very beauful, very accomplished, and the mother of an interesting child. This immaculate being-who is represented" as pure as an enthusiast's dream of heaven, yet bearing within the latent and powerful passion, and tenderness of earth; and mixing with all a simplicity and innocence, which the extreme earliness of her marriage, and the ascetic temper of her husband, had tended less to diminish than increase❞—has left for a season the gaieties of London, and retired for the benefit of her health, naturally delicate, to the country mansion of her hushand at EShe has heard of Mr. Falk

ductility of the fawning sycophants of power. | unforgotten-that he had "become a weary of the "He smiles at the kindness of the fathers, who, world," and had withdrawn forever from the glare hearing that he was talented, and knowing that he of its splendor, and the enticements of its follies, was rich, looked to his support in whatever po- all contributed to throw around him in his state, litical side they had espoused. He saw in the of what Rousseau would call loisir philosophique— notes of the mothers their anxiety for the estab-an air of romance, that called forth our exalted lishment of their daughters, and their respect for admiration, while it elicited our warmest sympahis acres." In short, the once gay, versatile and thy. But, alas! "paulo majora canamus. The still elegant and accomplished Mr. Falkland, (and, scene must now change. ah! over whose elegance and accomplishments how many married and unmarried female bosoms have not heaved the sigh of a would-be seduisé,) appears depicted to our imagination in the solemn bearing of a moralist, and the dignified garb of a philosopher. He presents to our view that most enviable picture which few painters have been enabled vividly to portray, from the extreme paucity of the numbers of the originals they are called upon to copy that of a man thoroughly disgusted with his kind, and enjoying perfect contentment in the becalming gloom of a romantic solitude. From a view of the brilliant career he has passed, we are naturally led to inquire, if, in all the gay and mercenary world, not one solitary being had for a moment arrested his triumphant course, and claimed of his heart the homage of a sigh. To this inquiry, we receive for answer, " that when he left Dr. -'s, he was sent to a private tutor in De. Here he continued for about two years. It was during that time that—but what then befell him is for no living ear! The characters of that history are engraven upon his heart in letters of fire; but it is a language that none but himself have the authority to read. It is enough for the events of that period, that they were connected with the first awakening of the most heart. With him, on a certain day, she takes a powerful of human passions, and that whatever their commencement, their end was despair! and she-the only object of that love-the only being in the world who ever possessed the secret and the spell of his nature-her life was the bitterness and the fever of a troubled heart-her rest is the grave." Here we find that he has been in love; but that the unhappy object of his passion, from some cause not revealed, had sunk to an early tomb. We are also reminded that that passion was connected with many sins and misfortunes in after life. This we regard as a modest allusion to the career of the roue, which he so long and so triumphantly led, and which has invested his character with such an absorbing and thrilling interest in the estimation of a majority of the female" She laid the book down, and caught a glimpse readers-God forbid we should say all-who have so often, and in such tremulous anxiety and tenderness, followed through the pages of this little volume, the incidents of his eventful life. That he had been highly educated, and was born of an ancient and honorable family-that he had led a successful career in fashionable life-that he loved one sacred object, which, although dead, was still

land from Lady Margaret and Mrs. Dalton. By
the one, she is told that when he wishes to please,
he is perfectly irresistible; and by the other, that
he is conceited, satirical, and, in short, very disa-
greeable. Yet is she very anxious to see him.
Her husband is absent, devoting his time to his
duties in parliament. Her little boy is her con-
stant companion, and upon him she seems to lavish
all the love and affection which pours fresh and
unobstructed from the perennial fountain of her

ramble to revisit her former and favorite haunts.
In the course of her rambles, she discovers a man
apparently asleep, with a volume of Shakspeare
by his side. The boy, as other little boys would
do, picks up the book. The mother, all anxiety,
takes the volume to replace it immediately, but
still takes time to peruse a passage upon which
the child had accidentally opened; and often in
after days recalled that passage as an omen.
was from Midsummer Night's Dream, and ran as
follows:

"Ah, me! for aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history-
The course of true love never did run smooth!"

It

of the countenance of the sleeper: never did she forget the expression which it wore-stern, proud, mournful, even in repose! She hurried home, and all that day she was silent and abstracted: the face haunted her like a dream. Strange as it may seem, she spoke neither to Lady Margaret nor to Mrs. Dalton of her adventure. And why?" emphatically asks our author. "Is there in our

hearts any prescience of their misfortunes?" Now | tender emotions which it was evident each felt for who, with the foregoing description before him, the other. "Falkland did not stay long after can deny that the pure and lovely being-whom dinner," says the narrative," but to Lady Marhe must now regard as the intended offering at the garet he promised all that she required of future altar of the guiltiest of passions-is already seduced? length and frequency in his visits. When he left Yea, even before the sound of the voice of the se- the room, Lady Emily went instinctively to the ducer has fallen upon her ears, she has prepared window to watch him depart; and all that night her heart to yield to its solicitations. The damning his low, soft voice, rung in her ear like the music propensity to commit that forbidden and most of an indistinct and half-remembered dream.” unhallowed deed, which it is possible for human Very delightful musings, indeed, to occupy the depravity to conceive, is already alive in that mind of a wife reposing on the couch of her absent bosom, which but a moment before was all purity, husband, and that too within hearing of the soft and glowing with all the consecrated ardor of ma- breathings of her innocent child! Surely a more ternal devotion. We profess to be totally stran- revolting picture of baseness and depravity can gers to the credulity which has duped the majority hardly be presented to the imagination than is of mankind. We may be in error; but when we here exhibited. All our thoughts of virtue, deliboldly and confidently assert, that there is no such cacy, and the sanctity of the matrimonial bond, thing as seduction in married life, we ask, we recoil in horror from this voluntary and miserable seek no more cogent authority to sustain our asser-prostitution of all that is most sacred in the several tion than the volume now before us. We have relations of life-all that is softening and elevating little of credence to yield to those fervid descants in character-all that is refined and separated from so often sung about the violence of passions, and the dross-the alloy of human existence-to the the weakness and helplessness of woman. That a gratification of worst than bestial sensuality and majority of them are weak, and helpless too, and lechery. And all this degradation too, is made to that they possess a violence and impetuosity of pas-spring from one, who a moment before, is depicted sion and feeling, equal in every respect to those of by our author "as having much that is termed men, few, I believe, who know much of the gene- genius-its warmth of emotion—its vividness of ral features of their characters, will consider at conception-its admiration for the grand—its afall problematical. But, that the possession of fection for the good-and a dangerous contempt these ignoble traits of character, should, despite the for what is mean and worthless, the very indulproper and resolute exercise of the redeeming and gence of which is an offence against the habits of counteracting qualities, which the God of nature the world. Her tastes were, however, too femihas implanted in our breasts for virtuous purposes, nine and chaste ever to render her eccentric." so far conquer the ennobling principles of the Verily, Mr. Bulwer, the ingenuity of your pen heart and soul, as to suffer them to succumb to the has failed in this instance, at least, in giving that promptings of depravity and crime, is a position consistency to the attributes of your heroine, which in ethical philosophy, from which I, for one, must renders at all necessary, those arts, the possesbeg leave most unequivocally to dissent. And let sion of which, in all time, has so much distinthose of the "fair creation," who may be even now guished that elegant personage (so often worshiplistening to the syren voice of seduction, cease now ped and sighed for by those delicate emanations and forever" to lay the flattering unction to their from the glory of heaven, "the lady's fair,”) comsouls," that because of their weakness they may monly called the ROUE! Your shades of characsin with impunity against the thundering injunc- ter are made to change with the shiftings of every tions of the divine law, or the still small voice of scene in the drama. To-day, she is little less than their guardian angel, forever invoking a devo- an angel-to-morrow, she is robed in the enticing tional adherence to the heavenly admonitions of garb of the would-be-adulteress, panting for the virtue. Let me ask them, too, if, even in those embraces of a paramour, ere he has aspired to bemoments, when they feel themselves least able to come one. cope with the arts of the seducer, they are not more the victims of the degrading and debasing feelings, which they themselves have rather nurtured, than attempted to conquer and discard, than the arguments and solicitations of the lurer to their ruin.

To return to the heroine. After her adventure in her walk, Mr. Falkland, at the suggestion of Lady Margaret, is invited to E- to dinner. Here the future lovers meet to speak for the first time. There was of course a mutual admiration, and both had promptly resolved to reciprocate the

We will not accompany the devoted couple through the various scenes of the conflicts of passion they are called upon to encounter, before the perpetration of the deed, at the bare recital of which, the sensibilities of the father and husband are tremblingly aroused to the appalling consciousness of the frail and miserable tenure by which matrimonial bliss is enjoyed in the fashionable and heartless world. The author has taxed to the uttermost his fruitful, fervid, and eloquent imagination, to elicit for the guilty pair the sympathies of the reader. We, at least, must assure him of

our total repugnance to award them ours. Indeed before him. He professes a too intimate knowwe feel, throughout his glowing descriptions of ledge of the female heart and of female curiosity, what he would have us regard as the struggles to presume for a moment, that his reasoning, howthey underwent, ere the sacred ties of mother and ever cogent, can have any other effect than to wife could be severed, such an inconsistency with enkindle an increased desire to become acquainted the estimate we had formed of the character of with its contents. His sole and engrossing object Lady Emily, before she is presented to Falkland, has been to warn them with the solemn voice of a as in our opinion, renders totally unnecessary such sybil, against those sophisms of the author, which high-wrought pictures of distress and suffering. a gorgeous imagination has gilded with the heaWe cannot feel that such suffering ever could venly radiance of truth. He has sought to hang a exist in the bosom of one, who, like the fair and veil over the luminary of vice, whose rays are accomplished adulteress, seems to have intended darting a baneful influence upon the dazzled vision the commission of the act. We would almost of incautious virtue, in order that that virtue itself vouch to the author, that in an action of criminal may behold and contemplate unawed the dark conversation, with no more cogent evidence than spots that appear on its disk when it is shorn of its he himself has furnished, to make out to the satis-beams. faction of an honest jury a clear and incontrovertible case of malice prepense.

To you who have found out that you have assumed rather too hastily the sacred and solemn responsibilities of the wife and the mother, and now pine in languid listlessness for the embraces of the elegant and accomplished roué, and ever court those embraces, with all the arts and smiles with which guilty ingenuity has arrayed you, I have now only to say, COME, and from this volume derive all the consolation you may need amid the awful thunderings of the Sinai of conscience. Here you will find a justification for the crime you may be burning to commit, and be cheered by the soul-inspiring thought, that, though your premature deaths may be clouded with a shade of melancholy, yet the sacrifice will be made on the altar of LOVE! and your graves will be bedewed with the tears of sympathetic sorrow.

We have gone through this volume, we confess, with no little interest. We have hung with lively anxiety over many of the scenes, which all will admit, are portrayed by the hand of a master. But we have looked in vain for one prominent redeeming principle to save the work, as a whole, from that sentence of condemnation which we do not hesitate to pass upon it in the most unqualified terms. As a tale of seduction, it contains no lesson from which the young and unpractised heart can take such warning as to prompt it to avoid the rock upon which many a frail bark, freighted with domestic hope and happiness, has been unhappily wrecked. It purports, indeed, to contain the punishment which the crime deserves. But the moral, which that punishment would otherwise afford, is To the victorious roue, whose brilliant career entirely destroyed by the eloquent and pathetic has been marked by a thousand conquests, the appeals so often made to the sympathies of the burning wheels of whose triumphal car have long reader. The death and burial of the adulteress, heedlessly swept over the ruins of domestic peace (we cannot call her the heroine,) which are de- and happiness, and the desolated hopes of silently scribed in the richest and most touching style, imploring innocence-who is even now arming will, we venture to assert, elicit from the fair again for the conflict, and the terror of whose perusers of this tale, in one hundred instances to name is an unerring harbinger of additional glory— one opposing, the tears of compassion for the guilty to him, I say, pause not in your radiant course. being who has outraged all decency, and wilfully Your crimes have found an eloquent defender in violated the most sacred pledges of moral respon- the matchless pen of the author of Falkland, sibility. The horror and indignation which such and with him you may indulge in the magnificent crimes should excite in the bosom of exalted vir- contemplation, that though your lives may be tue, is here aimed to be supplanted by emotions of blackened with infamy, that infamy itself will be pity and sorrow for the perpetrators of a deed, eclipsed by the effulgence of fame; and the gloom which, more than all others, is calculated to under- of the final close of your glorious career, will be mine the foundations of the beautiful temple in cheered by the consolations of an infidel philosowhich that virtue is enshrined. The author, how-phy, more enticing far than the enraptured visions ever, may console himself with the reflection, that of Chaldean astrologers, and before whose enchantit is not the first instance in the annals of crime, wherein the prerogative of eloquence has been exercised, to gain for the criminal those tears of sympathy which are due only to the martyr.

A few general remarks, and we take leave of Falkland. The writer, by the foregoing strictures, expects not to deter his female readers from a perusal—nay, frequent perusals of the volume

ing splendor, the little stars that glitter in the firmament of the lowly follower of Jesus, will shrink away and hide their dimished heads. It will prove to you the only GOLDEN BRANCH, whose magic power will guide you triumphantly through the shades of gloomy torment and despair, to the regions of elysian peace and repose.

OSCAR.

CINCINNATI ADDRESS,

By Henry Ruffner, President of Washington College; delivered in the chapel of the College on commencement day, June 28th,

1838-published by "request of the Students and auditory."

FELLOW CITIZENS: It is known to you all, I presume, that the Cincinnati Society of Virginia long since resolved to bestow their funds on this college, for the establishment of a school in which certain branches of military science should be taught. If any one should inquire for the motive of this donation, he needs only to be told that the military associates of Washington would readily follow his example, and locate their patronage and their name where the illustrious President of their society had located his; so that the same literary institution might serve as a monument of all the revolutionary patriots of Virginia, who had "fought and bled in freedom's cause."

The faculty thought it expedient that the first address, on a subject so new and important, should be delivered by some gentleman of experience in such exercises, and whose attention had heretofore been turned to the history of the society, and the circumstances and design of their valuable donation to the college. When we failed to procure the services of a distinguished alumnus of the institution, who is now a member of the corporation, I was induced by the solicitation of my colleagues to undertake a duty, in itself, quite agreeable to my feelings, but perhaps better done, had it been done by another.

I shall not attempt to exhaust the noble theme. The present address is designed to be merely an introduction to the future series of Cincinnati orations. A brief historical statement, respecting the origin and constitution of the society, with some vindicatory comments on the charges formerly made against them, will suffice for the present occasion.

At the close of the revolutionary war, when the army was to be disbanded, the officers found their approaching separation more bitter, than had been even the toils and dangers of their long warfare. Their sorrow at the idea of parting was natural. During seven long years, they had been joined together in the service of their

the rights of man. Devoted to a cause so sacred, for which they daily risked their lives, with one wish, one hope, one determination of soul in the enterprise, all their motives, and all their sympathies, would operate towards a warm and brotherly affection for one another. Many circumstances tended to strengthen their mutual attachment. Long separated from old friends and relations in the walks of civil life, they associated almost

They annexed to their donation the request, that in due time an oration should be delivered here, for the purpose of explaining the character and views of their association, and of vindicating their memory from certain charges that were made against them shortly after the institution of their society. Thus when they conferred upon the college an honor and a benefit, which entitle them to our everlasting gratitude, they asked in return that we should stand up in defence of their reputation, when they who had so valiantly defended their country, should have laid their venerable heads in the dust, and have left nothing but their glorious names for calumny to fix her envious tooth upon. Most cheer-country, contending with united zeal and patriotism for fully do the authorities of the college undertake the office with which the society has honored them-and that not for once only; but, if our successors follow our example, (as I trust they will,) to all generations. One declared object of the Cincinnati Society, was "to preserve the memory of the American Revolution," and "to maintain the rights of man," for which they had toiled and suffered so much. With this view they desired to make their society, a permanent one by trans-exclusively together. They were together during the mitting it to their posterity. Having been compelled by popular clamor to give up this part of their plan, they have left it to our college to fulfil, in some degree, their patriotic intention. They are nearly all gone; and soon the last of our revolutionary heroes will have vanished from the scene of their achievements; but the College of Washington and the Cincinnati will remain charged with the noble duty of preserving, in their name, the memory of the American Revolution, and of promoting the inestimable rights of man, which this flourishing republic enjoys through their instrumentality.

weary march; they stood side by side amidst the uproar and the havoc of battle--all struck at the same foe-the triumph of success, and the mortification of defeat came alike to all. When rest and refreshment checkered the scene of their warfare, they were still boon companions at the festive board, and on the couch of repose. This customary familiarity and intimate companionship, for so long a time, and under such circumstances, would grow into a habitual and confirmed attachment, and even into the warm feeling of inseparable brotherhood.

Thus it is, that every army long engaged in the same service and the same field, becomes united by discipline, and by sympathy, into a compact and almost indivisi

It is therefore our purpose to make "The Cincinnati Oration" one of the standing exercises at the college commencements, and the delivery of it one of the hono-ble body, animated by one spirit, and moving by one rary distinctions of our best scholars. The orator will not deem it necessary, on every occasion, to detail the history of the society in whose honor he shall speak; but he will be instructed to choose some patriotic theme, adapted to inspire the youth of our country with the love of civil liberty, and to draw his illustrations from the American Revolution, and from the examples of the departed members of the Cincinnati Society, who bought the liberty of these United States, at the expense of seven years' toil and bloodshed.

impulse. The army of the revolution had, in the cause for which they contended, the protracted sufferings which they endured, and the glorious success which finally crowned their efforts, a peculiar bond of union. They fought not for conquest, nor even for glory, but for the salvation of their country. They had, in the fullest sense, "staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" upon the issue. When at last, by

* James McDowell, esquire, who had prior engagements that prevented him from undertaking it.

their joint exertions, they had won the prize of peace and independence for thirteen states; the sublime joy that swelled their bosoms, at a result so happily and so gloriously achieved, made them feel more united than ever. Together they had struggled in the by-gone days of adversity and gloom-together they had at length wrung the plume of victory from a mighty foe; and now together would their names be indeliby inscribed upon the roll of their country's benefactors, and at the head of the list, not only in time but in merit: for what could any future patriot do, more than preserve unimpaired the blessings of freedom, which their scarred breasts and toil-worn hands had won? Such thoughts coming on at the conclusion of peace, and kindling into a brighter glow a friendship already warmed by a seven years' fraternity in war, how naturally would the sad idea of their approaching separation, cast its dark shade over their patriotic joy!

was instituted with the design of perpetuating their own friendship-of preserving the memory of the American Revolution-and of promoting those rights of man for which they had contended. To make their institution more effectual for these noble ends, they determined to make it perpetual, by transmitting it to their posterity; each member to be succeeded by his oldest son; or in failure of male offspring by any of his collateral kindred who might be deemed worthy. They might well presume that their descendants would imbibe their own principles, and long retain the spirit of the American Revolution; and the more especially, when they should inherit membership in an association, founded by their patriotic sires, for the express purpose of keeping fresh and vigorous the spirit and the principles of political freedom.

They provided also in their constitution for the admission of honorary members, whose personal merit and political principles might make them worthy associates in the cause of freedom and of patriotism. But lest this provision might change the original character of the society, by introducing large numbers who had no connexion with the officers of the revolutionary

one-fourth of their original number, and elected them for life without inheritance in their descendants.

But their country could no longer retain them in her service. They must needs part, and go each to his several abode, probably never more to partake in the companionship of the tented field, the excitement of the sounding march, and the tug of the thundering battle; they must retire to the almost forgotten scenes of peace-army, they limited the number of honorary members to ful obscurity, where the noise of glorious warfare might never reach them more, and they might never again even see one another's loved and long-familiar faces. How naturally, then, did they cast about for some means of alleviating the sorrows of separation, and of renewing, occasionally, the communion and fellowship, so delightful and so dear to their hearts! When General Knox proposed that they should form themselves into a society, as the best means of maintaining the feelings and the intercourse of friendship, all embraced the proposal; for it struck them as appropriate and unobjectionable, and as furnishing the simplest way and the surest guarantee, that they would, once in a while, have the pleasure of communing together and mingling reminiscences of the days, when they wrought their perilous way through stormy scenes of the revolution.

As their first object was a fraternal association among themselves, they made it a condition that each officer should contribute a month's pay to constitute a fund for contingent expenses, and especially for the relief of any of their members who might fall into distress. The fund so raised, is that which, after it answered its original purpose, was bestowed upon our college.

Finally, in the selection of a name, they thought of a resemblance between their case and that of the ancient Roman patriot, Cincinnatus, who was called from the plough to deliver his country in a dangerous crisis; and who, after accomplishing the deliverance, threw off his military habiliments, and returned to the plough again. Therefore they called themselves the Society of Cincin

nati.

But the emotions which stirred within them de- No sooner was the society organized, and its constimanded something more than the maintenance of their tution published, than it began to be regarded with personal friendship. They felt that they and their com-jealousy, if not with envy, by some who professed to patriots had just achieved the most important political work of modern times. They had successfully vindicated the rights of man. They had established a system of free republican government over half a continent. They believed, and they had reason to believe, that they had founded a new era in the political history of mankind; and had set an example of resistance to oppression and of the exercise of popular government, which would sound through ages, and through nations, and would be felt by all the thrones, dominions, and principalities of the world. But to make this example effective in the promotion of human rights, it was necessary that the principles of the American Revolution should be sacredly maintained in the United States: and, that the experiment of free government, now to be made, should be carried to a successful issue.

With these views, they introduced some provisions into the constitution of their society, which would, they believed, make it stand as a perpetual memorial and bulwark of the principles for which they had fought and bled. They solemnly declared that their society

consider it as aristocratical in its tendency, if not in its design. A Mr. Burke of Charleston published a pamphlet to rouse the fears of his countrymen, and in a short time no little dissatisfaction and clamor were excited against the society from one end of the country to the other. That upon which the objectors laid the chief stress, was the hereditary membership; which was thought to be dangerous to political equality among our citizens, and to squint ominously at the introduction of an order of nobility. The provision to admit a small proportion of honorary members, added to the perpetuation of the society by hereditary succession, was thought to make the institution the more dangerous, inasmuch as it might draw into its connexion the most influential men of the country, and thus acquire by election a weight of talents and influence, which it might fail to maintain by the operation of the hereditary principle.

So great and so general became the popular dissatisfaction, that General Washington, president of the society, recommended that they should relinquish those

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