take to be her gravest fault, the present writer takes to be her highest merit. She has brought home really evangelical and purely Christian religion to the common vulgar life of slaves, not to degrade but to adorn it. She has been no writer of a penny religious tract, which grows offensive in its morality, and whines in its every appeal to the Deity; but by the force of her genius, she has made the religion which does not choose many noble, or many great, or many wise, but chiefly the ignorant, the humble, and the meek, acceptable to the man of cultivated taste, and of classical learning. She does not only show us Tom a true convert to Christianity, whilst the elegant and refined St. Clair is yet ignorant of its comfort; but she shows us little Eva, the child, a minister unto her father, wise beyond his wisdom, learned in that lore which "to the Greeks was foolishness."

Great

And for this she is condemned. Ah, brother reader, who shall set a bound to the mercy of our common Father? who shall know what wisdom and what thought is clothed in the rugged brow of the porter who carries your trunk, or the beggar who may sweep your crossing? Do not let you and I imagine we alone are wise. knowledge we may have, no doubt, and the weariness, which a wise king declared to come from many books, but knowledge alone is acquired, wisdom comes from God. If we believe that the black Adherbal " exsul patriâ, domo, solus et omnium honestarum rerum egens," nearly breaks his heart at Jugurtha's cruelty, why not credit that the black Uncle Tom has also feelings. If we view naturally, and almost poetically, Touissant L'Ouverture pining in that mountain prison, and dying of a broken heart, away from his beloved family, treacherously imprisoned, after having freed his country, and by his government and laws, given proofs of the highest intellect, why should we deny the same faculties of endurance and affection to Uncle Tom, the field-hand of a Yankee planter? Let us beware how we judge of others as too good; the coward has an innate disbelief in bravery, the thief in honesty.

In regard to the pathos of the work,

* Sallustii Jugurtha xiv.

few who have read it, more especially the death of Eva, or the part, where Aunt Chloe finds out the death of her husband, can for a moment dispute it ; it is as perfect as that of Dickens or Thackeray, and as complete as that of Sterne, without the French tinge of sentiment; whilst the humour and wit have much of that complete and English air which Fielding possesses. The work itself is English in its nature, and we take it as a high compliment, that the author's tendencies are towards the English. Thackeray will not allow Swift, Irish born, to be an Irishman; "he had," he says, "nothing of the Irishman in him." So with Mrs. Stowe, the reader of delicate perception will find no Americanism, in the spirit of the book, although its scenes and characters are of the young republic. But as the reader has already been saturated, ere this, with critique, remark, discussion on, song from, and review upon, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," we will mercifully spare him, and return to its author.

Since "Uncle Tom" she has written little, or at least no work of note. She has, however, a work in preparation, which will no doubt realise a large price, she having been offered, and having refused, the sum of ten thousand dollars for the copyright of her celebrated work.

In appearance Mrs. Stowe is described as being of the middle size, is lady-like and prepossessing, decidedly not handsome, the mouth large but expressive, the eyes deep and full of thought and feeling. These eyes,"

says an authority, are of blueish grey, and have an expression of intelligence and wit, which lights them up, and fairly sparkles in them." She has been the mother of a numerous progeny, five of whom are still living. To raise an earnest and deep feeling, which should, perhaps at once and proximately, or perhaps remotely, lead to the abolition of slavery, a deep and earnest soul was needed, which should know and feel the miseries it denounced. In the subject of this biography, such an one has been found, abundantly gifted with those qualities. Living for seventeen years in the midst of these cruelties, she has arisen and denounced them in a voice which rings through Christendom, and yet in no bitter or vengeful spirit, for it is not

the least of Mrs. Stowe's merits that, whilst she has endeavoured to give freedom to the slave, she has at the same time brought pure and holy religion, and true Christianity to the

hearts of thousands of her readers, who will have abundant cause to bless the day when they took up-perhaps for idle amusement-"Uncle Tom's Cabin."

ALL the men who are capable of greatness do not achieve it. Not even all those who are both capable and worthy. Sometimes they devote themselves to the object of the hour, to some war of politics or controversy in theology, and, forgetting the future, ensure that the future shall forget them. Sometimes they see in the small circle of their daily life, things which must be done, if done at all, by earnest, patient men; and they do them, preferring duty to fame. Sometimes, but more seldom, they never find their places in the world, and, missionless and purposeless, wander on their weary way through that existence of which the end is the only thing certain.

"Who knows the name of Samuel Hopkins now? Whose eyes light up, whose heart beats faster, whose blood courses on with a warmer glow, when they read that homely designation? There are names such as are usually found in the pages of biographies, which, allied as they are to the world's history, cause the mind to teem with high associations; but Samuel Hopkins! Who is he? where did he live? what did he do? What acts of his give him a claim to the memory of the world?

The birth-place of Samuel Hopkins was Wateringbury, in Connecticut; the year, 1721. He appears-for the details on this head seem somewhat scanty to have been born in the middle class of life, and of religious parents, who looked to placing their son in the ministry as the highest point of their ambition. His special training began in 1736, under the inspection of a neighbouring clergyman. In 1737 he went to college and pursued the ordinary routine of study. Shortly after this time Whitefield, Edwards, and Tennant went through the country, preaching their peculiar doc

trines in a style which commanded attention. A hearing once gained, they took hold of the strongest minds, and impressed them with a conviction that there must be a revolution in forms of faith. They drew powerful distinctions between doctrinal and vital Christianity. They argued that there must be works, and not a mere barren belief.

Hopkins was now a young man. His was one of those natures which are more truthful than intellectual. His mind was firm rather than pliant. Hard to move, but when moved not soon stayed. More gifted with steadiness and perseverance than activity; and yielding to principle more easily than impulse. A mind of the true old Teutonic mould-sluggish, except under the influence of strong motives; lying little upon the surface, and requiring to be stirred in its depths by some deep-reaching force.

In 1740, the celebrated Whitefield visited the college at New Haven, and preached there. The stagnant waters began to move. Whitefield did not in most minds produce conviction. In many he engendered opposition; but he awoke inquiry, and introduced doubt. The most conservative are compelled to destroy before they can rebuild. The next spring, Gilbert Tennant, the New Jersey revivalist, followed Whitefield. If not so subtle, he was more energetic, impressive, and powerful; and he produced a great effect. Men began to rouse themselves as though from a long sleep. began to feel that knowledge was only one of the qualities required for the vocation of the preacher. Those who had looked to the ministry as a comfortable position, bringing at once respectability and subsistence, saw that to minister truly required patient, pains-taking charity; that it was a labour in which they must never weary;

They

and that earnest men, if they would perform it, must sacrifice self in untiring devotion. These reflections glanced into the mind of Samuel Hopkinsthat mind which afterwards proved so devoted and bold; and it wavered beneath their force. It was at this time that David Brainard, who was a member of the college, seeing probably the contest that was going on in the heart of the young student, spoke to him plainly and forcibly, and convinced him that he had yet to learn what was the true spirit of Christianity.

Distinct and different as the web of life is in each religious man, as well as in all others, there is always one thread which is woven into it. Of whatever form or phase of creed a man may be, he passes through no easy or pleasant period of life when he changes his faith.

In this state, Samuel Hopkins was now tossed about like a helmless bark upon a raging sea ;-and he paints the same old life-picture of agony as his fellows a picture with dim outlines and faint colours, as though the veil of the eternal mystery were drawn across it-obscure to the senses, but telling upon the imagination with all the force of half concealment. In this condition -as all those of soft and tender natures will he yearned for a guide through the valley of the shadow. Following Tennant, there came to New Haven the elder Edwards--one of the most powerful theologians America ever produced-and on his strength Hopkins resolved to rely for aid. So, forsaking college and leaving his father's house, he set out on horseback to traverse the eighty miles to Northampton, where Edwards resided. When he arrived the Puritan philosopher was from home; but he had a wife who, to a large share of his intellect, added that softness and tenderness of devotion which is so peculiarly and distinctively the property of woman. She seeing the disturbed state of the young truthseeker, encouraged him to remain, and solaced his gloom and led him on to more cheerful views.

In due time Edwards returned, and for some months the disciple remained under his chosen master, and was then ordained to the university. His first appointment was at Great Barrington (then called Sheffield), in the western portion of the State of Massachusetts.

This was in the year 1743. The scene of his labours was at some distance from the residence of Edwards; and the parting was a sore trial to both of them but in 1750 Edwards went to Stockbridge, as a missionary to the Indians; and until 1758 they were again in close and constant communication. Then Edwards was again removed to Princetown, and his death, which Hopkins mentions as one of the severest afflictions he ever had, soon after took place.

At Sheffield he remained for sixteen years, and then went to Newport, the second town in point of importance in New England, and in 1770 he became the minister of the first Congregational church founded there. The Congregationalists, it may be remarked, have produced some of the most energetic and able advocates of the abolition of negro slavery; and it is to that sect Mrs. Beecher Stowe and her family belong. Newport was then the great slave-mart of the Northern States of America; and here a new experience came before Hopkins. He had seen slavery as an institution-had been familiar with it from his birth; he had even shared in it himself by owning a slave at New Barrington, and selling him when he left that place; but he had never thought of the origin of the system or of its rightfulness. Here he was brought into contact with it in its very beginning, and in its most fearful form. The sailors who manned the ships talked freely-boastfully, perhaps, of the process of slave-catching. They joked over the horrors of the passages-the crammed hold, out of which day by day black corpses, bearing the marks of suffocation, were draggedthe fever amid the crowd-the dead and dying together, and no escape for the healthy-the baffling calms of the tropics, the scarcity of water, and the pent-up wretches under the burning sky parched to madness, and flung overboard to end their torments. All this Hopkins heard; and time after time he saw the captured slaves emerge from the ship, woe-begone, emaciated skeletons. All this Hopkins saw. new view of slavery was opened up, before which his heart sank, his spirit faltered, and his soul shrunk terrorstricken. What an institution, he thought, for a free country.

A

From the cruelty to the wrongful

D

ness of the practice was but a short step. Could it be right, this outrage on the affections-this buying and selling of human life-this bartering of God's creatures. Brain and heart answered, "No, it is a foul crime against humanity -a dread sin against the faith of the Cross!"

What was he to do? He asked that of his soul-and we must now recall the time and the circumstances in which that one man-a poor man too -put to his inner self that solemn query. There was no movement against slavery. His was one of the first hearts into which the solemn voice had come, denouncing it. The command which he felt to wash his hands of it, sounded as hard as that olden injunction, "If thy right eye offend thee, put it out." The cry of, "Freedom for the slave!" had not yet gone forth. It pealed through him; but where was he to find a responsive echo-where rouse one? In England, there was as yet no movement. In all Christendom, there was no pity for negro suffering and wrong. In all America, the institution was established. He was alone-a weak man before a gigantic evil-face to face with a foe out of all comparison with his apparent strength. Nay more, his own friends were slave-traffickers, so were his own congregation; slave-trading was the commerce of the place-the foundation and the support of its wealth and prosperity. To do his duty, he, isolated as he was, must stand up against all this. Well might he hesitate before the magnitude of the attempt and its dangers. Well might that question, What was he to do? echo through his heart, awaking among its fears solemn thoughts. It was for Hopkins a life question, and, what was more, he felt it to be so.

Aye, what was he to do? In that self-asked question he had raised a spirit which would not be laid. How was he to answer it?

He was to answer it as he ought to answer it as he did answer it. He had made up his mind that slavery was cruel, wrong, antichristian; and as a Christian man, above all as a Christian minister, he felt not only that he could not countenance it, but was bound to denounce it. He thought long and anxiously over the best course to pursue, and at length he resolved

upon preparing a sermon upon the subject. Over that sermon many earnest days and nights were spent; but at length it was ready. The sabbath came: the minister stood face to face with his flock. Hopkins had no fear now. The sense of danger did not enter his mind. The great idea which possessed it left no space there for smaller or meaner ones. He was ready to sacrifice not only his position, his congregation, his church-but life itself, so that he might once, only once, bear testimony against a vast and appalling wrong. The sermon began and went on, and the preacher with searching eyes watched the faces of the congregation. He had taken care not to say bitter things, in bitter words to men, for the first time to be aroused to a true sense of their own acts. He spoke "more in sorrow than in anger." He did not strive for eloquence, though high truth, unadded to, must needs, "like perfect music joined to noble words," have been eloquent. He did not raise any subtle theological point, but, taking his own doctrine, the doctrine of the sect he founded, and which has since perished, he insisted that the essence of Christianity consisted in unselfish, disinterested benevolence, totally inconsistent with the act of reducing human beings to the condition of slaves, and utterly opposed to the cruelties with which slavetrading was accompanied.

Apart from its success or want of success, that sermon was one of the finest efforts of moral heroism ever performed in the world. It was a grand act, bearing all the merit of devotion, all the chivalry of selfsacrifice. What a lesson to the thousands of men who, filling American pulpits to-day, tolerate, defend, justify slavery, try to reconcile it with Christianity, for fear of losing their influence. If they were really followers of their Master-truly ministers of him who knows no distinction between bond and free; and if, like Samuel Hopkins, they had the manliness, the truthfulness, the courage, to take the right side, slavery could not endure for a year.

The congregation did not show any indignation. Their first emotion was that of surprise, when they heard that which they had till then never deemed anything but а righteous, lawful traffic attacked. But as the preacher