In those wild years of strange adventure, many a dreary night of perilous exposure and of fearful watching, on ocean and land, was solaced by the sight of that beautiful starry cross, standing erect or bending at various angles over the south pole; and I well remember how in one stormy night of shipwreck, while struggling in darkness and fatigue, to steer a little boat through the roaring waves, against the howling tempest, I "strained my seeking eyes" to catch a glimpse of those same stars, to direct our course due south, away from the breakers of the rocks which threatened to dash us in pieces with the relics of our lost ship. Never was ray of light more welcome than the momentary sight of one of those stars through the driving clouds, as I wiped from my eyes the salt spray and pelting rain that half blinded them. Even now, as that perilous scene recurs, I renew the desperate excitement with which I strove to rouse and cheer our exhausted and despairing boat's crew, and exclaim again, "Pull away, good fellows! I see the cross. We shall soon be clear of all danger."

With such remembrances and associations, the intensity of the feelings I still express, in reviving my first impressions of that remarkable object, will not be thought extrava

gant; and the extract which I subjoin from the "Personal Narrative" of the philosophic Humboldt, will show that I but shared the emotions of far graver and less excitable observers, and that even my strongest expressions are not overwrought, when compared with others' descriptions.*

"From the time when we entered the

torrid zone, we were never wearied with admiring, every night, the beauty of the southern sky, which, as we advanced towards the south, opened new constella

tions to our view. We feel an indescribable sensation when on approaching the equator, and particularly on passing from one hemisphere to the other, we see those stars which we have contemplated from our infancy, progressively sink, and finally disappear. Nothing awakens in

the traveler a livelier remembrance of the immense distance by which he is separated from his country, than the aspect of an unknown firmament. The grouping of the stars of the first magnitude, some scattered nebula, rivaling in splendor the milky-way, and tracts of space remarkable for their extreme blackness, give a peculiar physiognomy to the southern sky."

*

*

"The lower regions of the air were loaded with vapors for some days. We saw distinctly, for the first time, the cross of the south only in the night of the 4th and 5th of July, in the sixteenth degree of latitude. It was strongly inclined, and appeared from time to time between the clouds, the center of which, furrowed by uncondensed lightnings, reflected a silver light. If a traveler may be permitted to speak of his personal emotions, I shall add that in this pight I saw one of

But even at this my first view of the starry cross, unconscious as I was of subsequent associations with the sight, I seemed to have an almost foreboding interest in it. As our brigantine bounded swiftly over the long swell of the Atlantic, the bowsprit was bowing to the cloud and cross, and the tall mast pointing to the starry crown, which hung above us-known to astronomers as the "Corona Australis"-a bright constellation, but less conspicuous than that which is familiar to us in our own skies, under the name of the "Northern Crown." A poetical idea, suggested by the descrip

the reveries of my earliest youth accomplished."

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*

"When I studied the heavens, to acquire a knowledge of the stars, impatient to rove in the equinoctial regions, I could not raise my eyes toward the starry vault, without recalling the sublime passage of Dante, which the most celebrated commentators have applied to this constellation:

Io mi volsi a man destra e posi mente
All' altro polo e vidi quattro stelle
Non viste mai fuor ch' alla prima gente.
Goder parca lo ciel di lor fiammelle;
O settentrional vedovo sito

Poi che privato se' di mirar quelle !

"The two great stars which mark the summit and foot of the cross, having nearly the same right ascension, it follows hence that the constellation is almost perpendicular at the moment when it passes the meridian. This circumstance is known to every nation that lives within the tropics or in the southern hemisphere. It has been observed at what hour of the night, in different seasons, the cross of the south is erect or inclined. It is a time-piece which advances very regularly four minutes a day; and no other group of stars exhibits to the naked eye, an observation of time so easily made. How often have we heard our guides exclaim in the savannas of Venezuela, or in the desert extending from Truxillo to Lima, Midnight is past;

tion given in the missionary voyage of Tyerman and Bennet, came vividly to my mind, and led me to attempt an expression of my feelings in such verse as was within the powers of one unused to this sort of composition. Unmusical and labored as it is, it has to me some interest in having been conceived andcomposed under the excitement of the actual sight of these objects, though never committed to writing till my return to America, when it was somewhat enlarged and corrected, yet remaining essentially the same as I bore it three years in my memory.

the Cross begins to bend! How often those words reminded us of that affecting scene, where Paul and Virginia, seated near the source of the river of Lantaniers, conversed together for the last time, and where the old man at the sight of the southern cross, warns them that it is time for them to separate."-Humboldt's "Journey to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent," chap. 3.

"At night, (the sky being clear after much cloudy weather,) for the first time we descried the constellation crux or the cross. The four stars composing this glo

of the southern hemisphere, are of ry large but varying magnitudes, and so placed as readily to associate with the image of the true cross, the lowest being the brightest. Another beautiful constellation attracted our notice, nearly in the zenith. This was the northern crown, in which seven stars brilliantly encircle two thirds of an oval figure. We were reminded-and though the idea may seem fanciful, yet it was pleasing to ourselves amidst the still night, and on the far seathat while we kept in constant view the cross, that cross on which our Savior died for our redemption, we might venture to hope that the crown, the crown of life, which the Lord the righteous judge' hath promised to give to all them that love his appearing, might be bestowed upon us in that day.'"-Tyerman and Bennet; "Journal of Voyages and Travels," chap. 1.

THAT the Christian ministry, especially in such a country and such an age as ours, ought to be a body of liberally educated men, is with us an axiom. We write not for that reader who needs an argument to make him know that the minister of the Gospel of Christ, among a free and a free-thinking people, ought to be an educated man-educated not only in those departments of knowledge which are immediately and especially related to his employment as an expounder of the Scriptures, but also in all that various discipline which invigorates the mental powers, which enlarges the scope of thought, and which gives to him who has profited by it a rank and standing in society such as does not belong to the man of merely technical or professional culture.

How shall such a ministry be obtained, in sufficient numbers, to overtake and supply the growing wants of our country? Some tell us to leave the whole question to take care of itself, under that law of political economy, by which the de

mand creates the supply. But what sciolism is this! What a blundering application of a simple principle!

What is demand, in the sense of political economy? The mere absence of a given article, does not constitute a demand for that article. There are neither warming-pans nor snow-shoes, nor yet Olmsted stoves, in all the bazaars of Calcutta ; there are no Cashmire shawls in the wigwams of Labrador; there are no spelling-books in Jeddo, no biographies of Henry Clay in Pekin, no schoolmasters in Patagonia; yet who, in such cases, mistakes destitution for demand? Nor does mere want-though it be a want of something acknowledged and felt to be essential to comfort or even to existence-constitute a demand, in the sense in which demand tends to produce a supply. A people may be dying for want of bread, while yet in all its ports there is no demand, in the commercial sense, for the staff of life. Demand, in the only sense in which demand for any article can create a supply, is the ability and willingness to pay,

for the article demanded, such a price as shall remunerate the cost of production. The only way in which the demand causes the supply, is by offering such a price as induces a sufficient number of men to withdraw their skill, their capital, and their labor, from other forms of industry, and to engage in the production of the article demanded. The notion, then, that the demand for an educated Christian ministry, may be safely relied on to work out its own supply, assumes-in the face of notorious and stubborn facts to the contrary-that the people of this country, and of every part of it, are both able and willing to pay for the services of Christian pastors, such a compensation as is necessary to induce a sufficient number of able and educated men to withdraw from secular employments and devote themselves to the preaching of the Gospel. Without this assumption, so utterly at variance with known facts, the notion of demand producing a supply, is no better logic than if, from the naked state ment that ten or twenty years ago a given district was in a condition bordering on heathenism, some economist should undoubtingly infer that now it is well supplied with a Christian ministry; for surely, if it is an unfailing law, that demand, in the sense of mere destitution, produces a supply, that law must manifest it self in the phenomena of the present and of the past, as well as in the phenomena of the future.

Some arrangements then ought to be made, to secure the education of a suitable number of such men, properly qualified in other respects, as are willing to devote themselves to the work of the Christian minis. try. What arrangements and ef forts for such a purpose are the wisest ? What system of measures for such a purpose, is likely to bring forward the best men, at the least expense to the Christian pub. lic, and in the requisite numbers?

Before attempting any answer to this inquiry, we need to form some just idea of the number of men whom it is desirable to introduce into the Christian ministry, or at least of the principle by which the requisite number is to be determined. It has been common to say that in such a country as ours, there ought to be at least one well educated minister of the Gospel for every thousand souls; and it has been taken for granted, that till the educated evangelical clergy in the United States number as many thousands, as there are millions of population in the census, there is no danger that the ministry will be come too numerous. In one sense, this is right. If the people of the United States were all members of Protestant Christian congregations, and if every congregation were to be supplied with an educated pastor, there would be needed at this moment, not less than eighteen thou sand such ministers; and in less than fifty years from this time, if the same state of things be supposed to exist then, there would be needed fifty thousand. Christian patriotism, planning for the religious welfare of the country, has for its ultimate aim, nothing less than to place every family and every soul under the care of an able and faithful pastor; and of course when we calculate how to provide an adequate supply of such pastors, we ought to desire nothing less than one for every thousand souls. Yet it is true that there may be more ministers in the country than can find employment-and therefore, in an important sense, more than are needed-while yet the num ber falls far short of such a ratio. Ministers of the Gospel must not only be educated and licensed to preach; they must be put to work in their vocation, and they must be supported in their work. Ministers who for any reason cannot find em ployment, and cannot live in their