spontaneous, and free; but the overpowering sense of compulsion that drove men to God, and kept them there, is too much wanting. We are æsthetic religionists; we admire our religion, and obey it because we approve of it. If, indeed, we could believe that this freedom from "the dread of Him and the fear of Him" was the result, in every case, of a more enlarged and evangelical spirit,— that it was but a manifestation of the liberty with which Christ hath made us free, then it were no armour of light, there will always be occasions and calls, whatever be his employment, to add to his faith a heroic virtue. The conflict of life, in our modern days, is assuming a wonderful complication and intensity, and there is certainly no necessity that it should be reinforced, in those who understand this, by the coarse collision of external hostilities. But that is not the question. The question is, whether that war, which we have been accustomed to tolerate and patronise at a distance, binding upon epauletted shoulders a bur-thing to be complained of. But, alas! it is not so. Iden which we would not touch with one of our fingers, should, or should not, be now brought near to each one of us, and what is to be the moral effect of such an approximation? Now, there are many men to whom life is not a warfare. It is a drudgery, or an amusement, or a weariness, or a lounge. Well for them if anything is found to bring them in front of the responsibilities of life, and death, and the life beyond! It may be said that this movement, with its parades, and holidays, and festivities, is likely to have any effect but this. I do not think so. No doubt there are many youths who do not look on it in the light we do, who join the ranks as a frolic, and remain in them as an amusement. They have no business there. The movement is an earnest and serious one, already national, and almost certain to be permanent. It is one in which the heart and strength of the country seem engaged, and in which thoughtful and religious men are taking an active part. War is not sport. It has too long been considered as such; and perhaps one of the chief reasons of this is the very fact that, in our modern times, in this country at least, the mass of the people have held themselves apart from its duties. To them it has been an expensive pageant, not a sad necessity, touching intimately their personal interests. Perhaps, when the golden harps of the future are strung to "chant the death of war," it may turn out that one of the chief steps towards that desired consummation has been the forcing of a great and Christian people to take up the subject seriously and individually. But, however that may be, the moral effect of their so looking at it cannot be other than good good for the unthinking crowd, good also for him in whose heart is something better and higher. Even our self-deception cannot blind our eyes so So let the sword-bayonet hang by the wall! Not to be handled without reverence, yet not to be hid from craven eyes,-to be accepted, if accepted at all, as part of our religion, and part of our life. LADY SOMERVILLE'S MAIDENS. (Continued from page 110.) TRE stroke had fallen-a greater stroke to Euphame than the events of war, vicissitudes of politics, strategies, plots, and blunders, and literary enterprises, which march so brilliantly across the field of Anne's life. The old mother in the Trinity was gone from this world-and although Euphame was a girl of much promise, who had made a lively impression on her friends and acquaintances, who had fast friends for her years and portionless condition, she was nobody's darling now; she had no beloved figure for ever hovering in her mind's eye; she had struggled through that rebellion of yearning, bereaved affection-that chill of lonely orphanhood; she was strong, and fearless, and faithful again, but-accept it with merciful forbearance that Euphame's heart was a little harder when the wound had cicatriced which had bled so profusely. It should not be so. Misfortune should soften, not steel; but it was the dangerous tendency of that composed, calm, unworldly spirit, when its living outlet was for ever closed, not to forget or forsake its Maker, not to abjure the heaven which had deprived it of its treasure on earth, but to draw off more and more from its fellows-to give warnings of undergoing a gradual ossification to the common joys and sorrows, troubles and cares of humanity; and What flaw is it, in good men and women, which causes their very virtue to "lean" to error's "side?" --which conjures a failing and a stumbling-block out of their merits themselves? It is not so with angels, who are able to minister to the humblest son or daughter of salvation-who have much joy over one sinner who repenteth; and we thank God reverently it was not so seen in the pattern and perfection of all righteousness-the Son of God and man. even while it labours sedulously among them, in what was to be expected of him? Remember, it was itself seems to stand apart from their sources. An in years to come that Lord Lovat's Highlanders excellent man or woman, but above ordinary wants marched into Edinburgh, surrounded a citizen's and weaknesses-an insensibility about the indivi- dwelling-house, and carried off, upon the warrant of dual-too superior for mortals in general a little their chief's instructions, by stages, to that "rock in cold, a little high-minded, with all his or her meek- the ocean," lone St Kilda, the raving, foaming daughness-a suspicion of superciliousness lurking beneath ter of Chiesly of Dalry, and wife of Lord Grange. the brother's or sister's charity. Euphame Napier had some grounds for her palpitation, though she scolded herself immediately on the rational ground-"What would a wild John Highlandman want with a poor body like me? How could I provoke him?" And she might have spared a portion of her dread and aversion for the gallants, three deep, ruffling along the street; their laced coats, with the deep cuffs terminating in the knots of riband at their elbows, the knots of riband at their knees, the knots of riband at their sword-hilts, the knots of riband in their cocked hats-these knots of riband, and the fashion of them; the powdered full-bottom wigs; the pale or flushed faces were imported from London; the serious, offended Presbyterians, their fellow-subjects, would have it that they commissioned, also quarterly, a catalogue of wicked oaths from London. But the gallants were customary nuisances; and Euphame, even unattended, by her quiet, pure, unflinching face, disarmed their ogling and swaggering, and almost induced some bold, but not shameless eyes to sink abashed. But Euphame was much esteemed in the Hospital, and in her seventeenth year she was as staid, and true, and kind, though not as tender a maiden, as had ever worn its laurels. In this her closing season, she was employed in many offices of trust and responsibility, notwithstanding Mrs Jonet had never been known to devolve any special duty or toil upon another. One honourable distinction awarded to Euphame was that, on the completion of a masterpiece of embroidery, while Katie Crichton was left in the hall to pick out and spoil still further her section of the work, Euphame was despatched, under the plaid, which fell so prettily over her head and shoulders compared with their ordinary garniture of cap and tippet, to display the performance to their foundress, Lady Somerville. Euphame had been seen and noticed by Lady Somerville frequently, and had gone occasionally to her house in the Queen's Close, but never by herself, or on an individual mission. Euphame was in the High Street-the pride of the old metropolis-passing rich in the black, stanchioned, grim Tolbooth; Edinburgh's beloved St Giles's, fresh from one of its many last touches, fair in shaft, arch, and keystone, where the clock from the Abbey of Lindores was now tolling the hour, where, in the Old Kirk above, Jenny Geddes arrested the astounded Dean, and in the vault below, the dust of Euphame's ancestors, the Napiers of the Wrichtishouse, mingled Merchiston; the cross and its unicorn, where Montrose and the Argyles met the same violent death, ascending to where the tall houses sent terraced pleasure-gardens down to the Nor Loch, on whose waters citizens boated on the summer evenings, and across whose ford fugitives fled red-handed,-all ending in the frowning Castle, with its grand hill. Euphame, in her grave way, liked the progress through the streets, and the ideas which were sug-in loving communion with that of the Napiers of gested to her. Up the clattering, dark, rugged Bow, safe, and only safe, in broad sunshine; crossing with a thrill before the high, black-browed house where the burgher's wife saw the gigantic woman join her comrades, heard the immeasurable laughter, watched the wildly-waving torches, and asked next day, when she had recovered from her trance of terror, who lived in that mansion, and was answered, Major Weir. In Euphame's day, the black staff which "suffered" with its owner was still said to tap up and down the disused stairs, and attend as a porter at the closed doors, signs and clothes-lines swinging from upper stories, the wretched Grizel Weir's wheel to hum within the and impeding the light above-Euphame needed more untenanted house, and unhallowed lights to light up than modern dexterity to tread her way scathless. its darkness. Euphame was not before her time-But here was a sight which meets living eyes-the she was not very superstitious, but she was not incredulous; and Mrs Jonet as implicitly believed in "Satan's Kingdom Unmasked," as in "Peden's Prophecies." A There Euphame was scared a second time. Highlander in his dusky tartan and nodding plumes brushed past her-a John Highlandman with keen eyes and unkempt locks; and not the uncouth goodwill and barbarous fidelity of their Highland Bawby in the cellar-like kitchen of Bristo Street-scarcely the broad daylight could reconcile Euphame to the clans. The city guard, enrolled for the peace and protection of the lieges, were notoriously fierce; and a Macdiarmid or Macdonald, fresh from his awful haunts, from a Glen of Weeping, or Corrie of the Mist, who had placed a dead man's head on the board, and stuffed the mouth with bread and cheese; who had tortured an enemy by horrid huer and thirst; who had marched down into the Lowlands in many a foray, his banner waving, his bagpipes playing in triumph, amidst the smoke of burning houses, the groans of wounded men, and the shrieks of abducted women Booths and stairs, water-carriers' barrels, and carters' bags of yellow sand, hucksters, caddies, chairs and their bearers, and fat sows trotting in and out below George Heriot boys, with their governors, as they are to defile for centuries. Adie Napier was no longer among them. Adie's time was expired; and in the licence of his liberty, poor Adie had plunged headlong into reckless courses, and, without friends or money, had found himself enlisted as a soldier, almost before he had time to look about him and bethink himself, and come to a proper mind, and settle on a sober footing. And so it seemed that poor Adie's careful education had proved worse than useless, and that he had been very far from responding to the wise, liberal, large-hearted goldsmith's aim. Yonder where he stands in his ruff, with the jewel in his hand-would that it could have been a boy's heart, and that he could have so traced its mysterious workings, that he could have made all provision for its manifold wanderings, if such foresight had been within human ken. But here still was Mark Crichton among the foremost boys-the fifth or sixth form of the hospital--with broadening chest and towering head, and after the picture of Hardyknute, with "dark-brown cheek" and "dark-brown brow." Euphame had her old slight acquaintance with him, and her old impression of him ---a diligent lad, and likely to be an indefatigable man, but of a somewhat hard and bitter consistence. Euphame did not consider that she herself was cold as well as spotless" as snow on Rona's crest." Euphame had not the coveted faculty which we all want sorely-"To see oursel's as ithers see us." professional spoilers of idols, to uphold its dignity- Euphame was greeted civilly by Lady Somerville's The High Street was much given over to traffic sober, punctilious waiting-woman, who was fully forty, already; the gentle names of ancient proprietors wore a close curch or cap, with a plain band, tight were beginning to hover like ghosts over warerooms skirts, keys at her girdle, and linen sleeves drawn and public offices; but conspicuous then as now, over her ruffles; but while she sought Lady Someroutshining the tokens of prince and peer, proud pre-ville's cabinet to discover whether she was at liberty late and luxurious ambassador, where the Netherbow to receive her guest, she made Euphame be conducted and the High Street exchanged greetings, stood the through the gusty passages and deposited in the matted house of Master John Knox, where the magistrates parlour where Miss Peggy and Miss Clara Spottiswoode, presented him with his private study, "built of with the assistance of a young woman in a chintz daillis," where he addressed the moved crowd from gown and fly-cap, with a half-impudent, half-frightened the broad window, and where, like a man leal in expression, were playing their afternoon's game at every pulse, albeit stern, he fulfilled gallantly enough ombre, sipping their little glasses of citron-waters, the half-effaced inscription still helping to indicate fanning themselves, tapping with their high-heeled his tenement, "Lufe God above all, and ye neighbour shoes on the floor, languishing, as they had displayed as ye self." Euphame gazed at it lovingly; and, though their airs and graces to an admiring world thirty years she was not much given to such reflections, not be- before, hugging their barking dogs, and arranging their cause of her Presbyterianism, but because of the ex- tray of images. It was clear that these ladies were of ceedingly still nature of the girl, she thought of Mar- a different order from Lady Somerville; and, indeed, jorie Bowes of Berwick, and Margaret Stewart of save by a disdainful glance round, and a loud ejaculaOchiltree; and how he asked the one, whether she tion, "One of Lady Somerville's canaille," they did could aid him to bear his heavy burden, and she en- not deign to notice the panting, blushing girl, for gazed that she would shift the weight from his broad Euphame was but a primitive, rustic lass, with all her shoulders to her slight back on an occasion-and rare qualities and her town breeding. Euphame counted her favoured that she was literally embled to carry the fainting traveller's baggage for him in one day's weary trudge in the Low Countriesand Euphame did not dream that there was any sorcery or witchcraft in the paction; or in the last suit he won, though the reformer rode, "with ane great court on ane trim gelding, nocht like ane prophet or ane auld decrepit priest, as he was, but like as he had been ane of the blood royal, with his bands of taffetie, feschnit with golden rings and precious stanes, and did sae allure that puir gentlewoman, that she could not live without him." At last Euphame was in the Canongate, whose "lands" were still the pride and pleasure of all the families of degree and substance who had not migrated at the Union. At the head of the Canongate was the sign of the White Horse, whence, sixty years later, the tavern was kept by Lucky Boyd, and there issued from it, late on a hot Saturday night in August, the important note, which imparted such gratification to the conceited, enthusiastic receiver, "Mr Johnson sends his compliments to Mr Boswell, being just arrived at Boyd's;" and straight before Euphame lay the noble quadrangle and the towers of Holyrood, where John Knox rebuked Mary in vain-and the "sweet face," which all men had bidden "God save!" when she came home to her rough, tumultuous Scots, in the delicate bloom of her girlish widowhood, was all disfigured with wounded pride and angry vexation, and, alas! anything but honest conviction and brave repentance. Within another stone's throw was the Queen's Close, which some dowager Margaret or Mary had honoured as a temporary residence, or where she had thought fit to drop the shackles of state and ceremony in visiting a chosen waiting-woman or an attached court adherent, and so had bequeathed the name of the locality, all the same as if she had planted her body and train within its limits. In Euphame Napier's memory the principal dwelling presiding over the range-a clumsy mass of building, not so romantic as the house in Bristo Street, and with but its rambling vastness, a mitre here, and a star there, and the Virgin's pot of lilies above all, unshattered by the (To be continued.) METHODISM IN THE FAR WEST, AND Ir is nearly sixty years since, to the north of the Ohio, a traveller might have been seen pursuing his course in a region, smiling it may be now under every token of human industry and cultivation, but then comparatively bare, rough, and uninviting. If the scene was strange, no less was the traveller. In form stalwart and muscular, in countenance strongly marked with the proofs of nervous energy, corresponding with his broad, manly person; he had for the moment, nevertheless, the air and appearance of one somewhat perplexed as to his present circumhome for three years; a journey of five hundred miles stances and prospects. He had been absent from lay before him ere he could reach it; his horse had gone blind; his saddle was in a sad state of disrepair; the patched bridle might snap anew at the next jerk; his clothes bore ample traces of the backwoods through which he had torn his way; and, to crown this dearth of all comfort, the money, on the strength of which he was to travel homeward, amounted only to seventy-five cents. It was a Methodist preacher on his way home f.om one of his earliest circuits. Cured of his pas sion for such work, he might be supposed ready to exchange it for an easier life. Continuing in it, he might have been expected soon to have fallen a martyr under his fatigues and dangers-fording rivers waist-deep, or floating across them on a rolling log, or miserable "dug-out;" doing battle for life and purse in lonely roads, and, worse still, in places where there was scarcely any road; preaching no brief homily, but for three long hours at a time, to audiences ranging from a single hearer to ten thousand, and with a voice that startled the echoes of the old forests, and swelled in thunder along the prairies. Neither of these results ensued. Our preacher stuck to his duties like a Christian hero, and has attained to a good old age, with sufficient vigour left him to indite an autobiography, peculiar, yet most racy, full of thrilling incidents, and supplying glimpses into a strange life, now fast vanishing under the advancing wave of riper civilisation. His life previous to the journey homeward which we have just mentioned, fitted Peter Cartwright"the backwoods preacher," to give him his own title for the rough work he had to do, and the rough scenes in which his early lot was cast. Born in Virginia about 1785, he was removed by his parents, with the rest of the family, to Kentucky. At that time it was much of a wilderness, where the bear and buffalo roamed in freedom, and the Indians did their best, by war and massacre, to exclude the whites. Of the party to which the Cartwrights belonged, seven families one night insisted on remaining at Crab Orchard, instead of proceeding further. Before the morning they had all, with the exception of one man, fallen under the tomahawk of the Indians. Logan County, in which his father ultimately settled, was the Texas of that time, and bore the name of "Rogues' Harbour," as the place to which all refugees from justice made their escape. The boy's morals were not likely to be very correct under the training of such society around him. We have his own confession for it that he was "a wild, wicked boy," fond of races and dancing, and a very successful gambler. Peter is another instance of what the Church of Christ owes to pious mothers. His mother warned him against his youthful follies, and, with little help from the father, did what she could to imbue him with right principles. He had otherwise scanty opportunities for education. Log-cabins and canebrakes were all the colleges he ever knew. About the year 1801, a sacramental meeting was held by some Presbyterian ministers at Cane Ridge. It was the first of those camp-meetings which have constituted so peculiar a feature of American religious life. The effect produced by it led to meetings of a similar nature. At one of these Cartwright attended; but he had already experienced some awakening of conscience. During three months, he had been in great distress. As in the case of Bunyan, a vivid fancy wrought in him all manner of horrors, till on one occasion, like Luther, he deemed himself in personal conflict with the devil. It is easy to account for the shape which conviction took with him, from his past life, strong imagination, and slight education; and his case shews how foolish the inference, so commonly drawn in such conversions, that, because of the extravagant fancies connected with them, there could be no root of genuine repentance underneath. It does not follow that, because the great change ensues under circumstances and characteristics different from our own, we have any warrant to disparage its reality. Wretched under a sense of guilt, Peter listened, amid weeping multitudes, to the preaching of the gospel. As he prayed, the sense of pardon came to him-light and joy filled his mind-it was the hour of his deliverance ;-never since has he doubted that then and there the Lord forgave his sins, and, to use the peculiar phrase of American Methodism, "gave him religion." Having received licence as an exhorter in 1802, he addressed large congregations; and at length, abandoning secular work, he went on circuit. Large numbers under his preaching became, as he describes it, "soundly converted unto God." Year after year he renewed his itinerancy, varying the circuit, but meeting with the same success. He married in 1808; and, in the same year, was ordained elder by Bishop M'Kendree. In the Tennessee Conference, 1812, he was advanced to the dignity of presiding elder. He had no ambition for the honour; for, in spite of a stern energy of character, which would have led him to mount the forlorn hope in behalf of Methodism, there seems about him an essential vein of modesty, and he made efforts to induce Bishop Asbury to recall the official dignity, to which he had been appointed. He had no difficulties on the score of the work assigned him. He was ready, at a moment's notice, for any amount of it; and the Wabash district seemed more than enough for any spiritual Hercules,-ranging, as it did, over the States of Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky, and obliging him, in order to overtake his circuit, to cross the Ohio sixteen times in the course of the year. No proper conception can be formed of the adventurous life which Cartwright was compelled to lead, without some reference to the thrilling incidents with which his biography teems. Take two samples of the trials which this brave, good man had to meet in his perilous journeys through the wilderness. On his way to a conference in Sangamon county, his waggon was overturned. By the time it was set up again and reloaded, night had fallen; and as he was exhausted with his efforts to raise and reload the waggon, he struck a fire at the root of a tree, and encamped for the night. The sad result must be given in his own simple words :— The "Just as day was reappearing in the east, the tree at the root of which we had kindled a small fire fell, and it fell on our third daughter, as direct on her, from her feet to her head, as it could fall; and I suppose she never breathed after. I heard the tree crack when it started before it struck the child, but it availed nothing. Alto fall, and sprang, alarmed very much, and seized it though this was an awful calamity, yet God was kind to us; for if we had stretched our tent that night we should have been obliged to lie down in another position, and in that event the tree would have fallen directly upon us, and we should all have been killed, instead of one. carving knife, and then all the inside had a dry rot; but this we did not suspect. I sent my teamster to those families near at hand for aid, but not a soul would come nigh. Here we were in great distress, and no one to even pity our condition. My teamster and myself fell to cutting the tree off the child, when I discovered that the drew her out from under it, and carefully laid her in our tree had sprung up, and did not press the child, and we feed trough, and moved on about twenty miles to an acquaintance's in Hamilton County, Illinois, where we buried her." tree was sound outside to the thickness of the back of a "I was immensely sick, and the day was intensely warm. At length I found a little green bush that afforded a small shade. Here I lay down to die. I saw a house a little way off over a field, but was unable to get to it. In a few minutes a lady rode up to me, and, although I had not seen her for twenty years, I instantly knew her, and she recognised me, and after a few minutes she rode off briskly after help. "In a little time there came a man and buggy and a small boy. The boy mounted my horse. The man helped me into the buggy, and drove up to his house, |