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words, expressive of the mild heroism
of the man.'
."* About six he sank into
a deep slumber. Awakening for a
moment he said, "Now is life so clear!
-so much is it made clear and plain!"
He then sank back into a sleep, which
"deepened and deepened till it changed
into that, from which there is no
awakening."

Schiller's death was presently known throughout Weimar, and the news soon spread over the whole of Germany. The sensation was universalthe grief of thousands deep and sincere. To Goëthe no one at first had the courage to mention the circumstance. He perceived that the people of his house were gloomy and embarrassed, and seemed desirous of avoiding him. He divined somewhat of the truth at last, and said, "I see-Schiller must

be very ill." That night the serene, unimpassioned, ever-collected man was heard to weep. In the morning he said to a friend, "Is it not true that Schiller was very ill yesterday?" The friend sobbed. "He is dead?" said Goëthe. "You have said it." "He is dead!" repeated Goethe, and covered his face with his hands.

So lived and died Friedrich Schiller-one whose works will never cease to shed a glorious lustre on the literature of his country and of Europe-a man, the very memory of whom "will arise afar off, like a towering landmark in the solitude of the past, when distance shall have dwarfed into invisibility many lesser people, that once encompassed him and hid him from the near beholder."

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

wishing to prove the truth of them, asserts that the early years of the author was passed among them. But, abolitionist and slave advocate have one other question,-"Who is Mrs. Stowe ?"

That question we shall endeavour to answer.

"SHE has filled her Northern readers | rule; whilst a native of Alabama, in with a delusion." So writes one of her own countrymen, on Mrs. Stowe's world-talked of book. "She has struck the death-blow to slavery," cries one. "But the blow will merely rivet the chains," retorts a second; and so on, from one to another; and literally, in the very old phrase, from the cottage to the palace," Uncle Tom's Cabin" is read and talked of; and wherever it is so, it appears to be the key to open up the old and foul subject of slavery. None can mistake at whom the shaft has been aimed. It went home too truly for that. Therefore, the defenders of that "peculiar institution," of which the southern states of America are the stronghold, do not attempt to impugn the literary merits of the book, but apply at once a plaster to the sore, and defend slavery. So that any adverse critique, upon Mrs. Stowe has run curiously, but naturally to a laboured defence of the "peculiar institution," whilst any encomiastic article on the book verges, on the other hand into a downright attack on slavery.

"A South Carolinian," in one magazine, cannot well deny the truth of Mrs. Stow's pictures, but declares that they are the exception, and not the

* Carlyle's "Life of Schiller."

She comes of a large family of writers. In a leading paper of that land, where women fulfil more public duties than they at present do here, and where literature has a plentiful company of followers among the softer sex, one may see the name of Mrs. Stowe, and of one of her family placed conspicuously amongst the list of contributors to its columns. This is in the "New York Independent," where occasional little crisp articles bearing the initials, "H. B. S.," may every now and then be seen.

Dr. Lyman Beecher, the father of Mrs. Stowe, and of eleven other children, all celebrated in their way; of whom eight, exclusive of Mrs. Stowe, are authors, was born in New England, in 1774, consequently some years previous to the American revolution. He was the son of a blacksmith, and brought up to the trade of his father. In America, education is more generally spread than in England; and the

son of the blacksmith found that his father's occupation was uncongenial to him. Still he continued in it till he could safely venture from the trammels of trade; and he was of a mature age when he entered upon his collegiate studies at Yale, Newhaven; a college which had the honour of partially educating Fennimore Cooper. After a severe course of probation, Dr. Beecher rose in fame as a pulpit orator. His style was simple and plain, but graphic and forcible, and came home to "men's business and bosoms."

He obtained a cure at Lichfield; and having published "Six Sermons on Temperance," became, through them, universally known; for they reached Europe, and were translated into foreign languages; he was called to, and accepted, the charge of the most influential Presbyterian church in the town of Boston; the inhabitants of which town are, by the way, noted for their particular and jealous regard to all matters relating to the pulpit. Over this church Dr. Beecher remained as pastor till the year 1832.

There had been at Boston and elsewhere a peculiar want felt, by the Presbyterian community, of some kind of collegiate institution, wherein to prepare and instruct those young members, who intended to embrace the calling of gospel ministry amongst them. To meet this want, there had been for a long time antecedent, a project on foot, which, in the year 1832, was carried out by the foundation of the " Lane Theological and Literary Seminary;" and to enable the very poorest of their younger brethren to enter this, and prepare himself for the ministry, a system of manual labour was instituted whereby any young man of determined industry could himself defray a large portion of the expenses, necessarily attendant on his education. The principal of this college must of course be himself a self-educated man of energetic and truly Christian character; and such a one was found in the father of Mrs. Stowe.

To aid him, a large corps of professors, learned, and known in each particular department, were selected, and the doctor removed to the college in the immediate neighbourhood of Cincinnati, taking of course with him his family, and amongst them already known for a certain energy and] depth

of character, his daughter Harriet at this time twenty years of age.

Cincinnati is situated on the banks of the Ohio, and is a very busy manufacturing and commercial town, containg at present about 125,000 inhabit ants but eighteen years ago, at the time of the first setling of the Lane Seminary not quite a third of the number. On a high hill which overhangs the city on the east, Lane Seminary is situated. Near the buildings consisting of lecture rooms, dining hall, &c., are the houses occupied by the principal and the various professors, and immediately surrounding them, are other houses of greater pretensions, occupied by bankers, rich traders, and men who have made their fortune in the city. The little village is called Walnut Hills; and is esteemed one of the very prettiest in the environs of Cincinnati.

"For several years," says one who writes with authority, and upon whose facts reliance can be placed, "Harriet Beecher continued to teach in connection with her sister. She did so until her marriage with the Reverend Calvin E. Stowe, professor of biblical literature, in the seminary of which her father was president."*

Professor Stowe was, at the time of his marriage, well reported as a biblical savant. He graduated at Bowdoin College, Maine, took his theological degree at Andover, was appointed Professor at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and went thence to Lane seminary. After her marriage with this gentleman her life glided on happily enough, with that soft and gentle pleasure, which adds so calm a glow to to the lives of the American clergy.

Mrs. Stowe does not appear to be what is called a "notable housewife," that part of wife-duty falling, it would seem, to the lot of a distant relative who has been her constant friend and guest, whilst the gifted authoress has devoted herself to the more genial occupations of educating her children, and of contributing occasional pieces to the newspapers and magazines. What she writes is marked with a highly religious and moral tone; on the production of an imaginative reli

*Article in a late number of Fraser's Magazine, from which, amongst other sources, we have derived great assistance and information.

gious work by her brother, the Rev. Charles Beecher pastor of Newark, New Jersey, Mrs. Stowe was selected to write the introduction: we say selected, for out of the nine authors of the family two of them are ladies, and, indeed, Miss Catherine Beecher, her sister, author of "Truth stranger than Fiction," and other tales, was, until the publication of " Uncle Tom," esteemed the better writer of the two.

To this portion of the author's life belong the scenes of various tales called the "May Flower," and the "Two ways of Spending the Sabbath."

But a great work was preparing for Mrs. Stowe, and her experience became ripe by degrees. She had long meditated upon slavery, and seen for years personally its horrors. Escaped slaves often came to the house of her husband, and received shelter and assistance, in some cases their wounds fresh and their backs still raw with the lash; helpless children and orphans of these slaves she herself had educated, with her own children in default of any school. But not alone in this way was she gathering materiel for her work. Running through Walnut Hills and within a few feet of the door of her house, is a road which her tale has rendered known, and the principal use of which was somewhat remarkable. It is none other than the "underground railway" alluded to in "Uncle Tom." On the road, certain Quakers and abolitionists of other sects lived, and had formed themselves into an association, for the aid of fugitive slaves who were escaping. It was done thus. One Quaker would get out his waggon, clap the fainting and exhausted fugitive therein, cover him with straw or hay, and hurry on as quickly as fast horses could carry him to the next abolitionist member of the association, who would go through the same process till the land of safety was reached.

Very often in the dead of the night, or in the still and early morning, Mrs. Stowe, bappily, watching by some sick child's bed, would hear the rattle of these waggons as they hurried past; and close upon them the tramp of horses falling quickly on the frozen ground gave token that their pursuers were near. It needed little imagination therefore to clothe such facts as these, but merely the pen of truth. Let us mark its tracings,

666

Phineas! is that thee?' "Yes; what news!-they coming?' "Right on behind, eight or ten of them, hot with brandy, swearing and foaming like so many wolves!'

"And just as he spoke, a breeze brought the faint sound of gallopping horsemen towards them.

"In with you-quick, boys in!' said Phineas. 'If you must fight, wait till I get you a piece ahead.' And, with the word, both jumped in, and Phineas lashed the horses to a run, the horseman keeping close beside them. The waggon rattled, jumped, almost flew, over the frozen ground; but plainer and still plainer, came the noise of pursuing horsemen behind. The women heard it, and, looking anxiously out, saw, far in the rear, on the brow of a distant hill, a party of men looming up against the red-streaked sky of early dawn. Another hill, and their pursuers had evidently caught sight of their waggon, whose white cloth-covered top made it conspicuous at some distance, and a loud yell of brutal triumph came forward on the wind. Eliza sickened and strained her child closer to her bosom; the old woman prayed and groaned, and George and Jim clenched their pistols with the grasp of despair. The pursuers gained on them fast; the carriage made a sudden turn, and brought them near a ledge of a steep overhanging rock, that rose in an isolated ridge or clump in a large lot, which was, all around it, quite clear and smooth. This isolated pile, or range of rocks, rose up black and heavy against the brightening sky, and seemed to promise shelter and concealment. It was a place well known to Phineas, who had been familiar with the spot in his hunting-days; and it was to gain this point he had been racing his horses."*

With the cruelties which drove them to run so hotly for their liberty, she has grown familiar by hearing, either from the slaves themselves or from others, narrations of which she has given no overcharged picture. Taking one day a collecting tour, her brother James Beecher, now engaged in commerce at Boston, met with a prototype of Legree; a brutal slave-owner, whose great argument with his slaves was a blow from his fist, which would fell an ox.

* Uncle Tom's Cabin,

On hearing this James Beecher felt his abolitionst feelings rise, but knowing his powerlessness, merely opened his eyes wider with a horrified gesture. The planter took it for a movement of discredit. 'Feel," said he, as a proof of his truthfulness, "feel my fist, its calloused with knocking the niggers heads about," and he stretched forth, said the narrator, "a heavy clenched hand like a blacksmith's hammer."

was

Not only personally did she witness these, but her husband-also a deeplyinterested abolitionist himselfcollecting statistics against the inhuman trade. So that slavery was, in fact, a very hideous incubus on Mrs. Stowe's life, brooding for ever, poisoning with its noxious life the very gospel truths she read, since Christian professors themselves held and sold slaves. And this is the danger we all run-meeting with men who are above us so very much in profession, so much below us in practice. Going to church or meeting, she would hear, perchance, a minister as did the Rev. J. C. Postell-declare, "1st, That slavery is a judicial visitation; 2nd, That it is not a moral evil; 3rd, That it is supported by the Bible; 4th, That it has existed in all ages."

"It is not a moral evil," said Mr. Postell. "The fact that slavery is of divine appointment, would be proof enough that it cannot be a moral evil. So far from being a moral evil, it is a merciful visitation.-'It is the Lord's doing, and marvellous in our eyes."

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Or again, she sees the resolution in plain type and paper-how plain those letters will look upon the judgmentday of the Harmony Presbytery of South Carolina, "that the existence of slavery itself is not opposed to the will of God, and whosoever has a conscience too tender to recognize the relation as lawful, is 'righteous overmuch,' is 'wise above what is written,' and has submitted his neck to the yoke of men, sacrificed his Christian liberty of conscience, and leaves the infallible Word of God for the doctrines and fancies of men."

Truly thinks mild and gentle Mrs. Stowe, as she hears such a sermon, or reads this real paragraph-"The Devil can quote scripture for his purpose." Other paragraphs there are in this same paper, which have a silent, but a searching and biting commentary, on

the reverend gentleman's sermon, and on that Harmonious Presbyterian resolution. As her eye wanders down the advertisements of the organ of the slave-owners, it meets such as these, which curiously confirm her in her heretical opinions, and wed her still more closely to "the doctrines and fancies of men":"

"Ten dollars reward for my woman Siby, very much scarred about the neck and ears by whipping.

"ROBERT NICOLL, MOBILE, ALABAMA." "Ran away from the plantation of James Surgette, the following negroes: Randal, has one ear cropped; Bob, has lost an eye; Kentucky Tom, has one jaw broken." Mr. Surgette having, it appears, distributed his favours pretty equally. But we will not prolong the brutal extracts. Now and then her eyes swim, and her heart beats more quickly, when she comes upon a trace of some poor original of Uncle Tom:

--

Ran away, a negro named Arthur ; has a considerable scar across his breast and each arm, made by a knife; loves much to talk of the goodness of God.

Dis

"J. BISHOP, SOUTH CAROLINA." These little paragraphs, somehow or other, disturb any nascent belief in Harriet Stowe's breast, in the doctrine of the Rev. J. C. Postell, as to slavery being "a merciful visitation." turbed somewhat by such readings, she will perhaps seek to take a walk, and, putting on her bonnet, takes one of her children with her, very likely to make, at the same time, some benevolent visit in Walnut Hills. The sun is hot and glaring, and the logs of wood on the underground railway, on which the waggon of the escaping slaves bounces, and jerks, and rattles so at night, have had the mud baked on them, till it has cracked and partially peeled off in the heat. But even at this time there is a slow, laborious bumping on the logs still heard, and, raising her parasol to see whence it comes, her eyes encounter some such a sight as this:

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all, a white man on horseback, carrying pistols in his belt, and who, as he passes, has the impudence to look at them without blushing. At the house they stop at, they learn that he had bought these miserable beings in Maryland, and was marching them in this manner, to some of the more southern states."*

Truly our authoress cannot quite conform to the slave-owners' doctrines, and so, that in 1833, when the Abolition Society met at Philadelphia, and sent forth its reports to every part of America, which set on foot an agitation which has convulsed, and will convulse, America for years, it found a ready disciple in Mrs. Stowe, and, in fact, in the whole of the inhabitants of Lane Seminary.

Mr. Arthur Tappan, who was the president of the Abolitionist Convention, was at the same time one of the most honoured patrons and liberal donors of Lane Seminary, and as such, forwarded the addresses of the Convention to its principals. The young men, ardent and enthusiastic, and under such humane teachers as Dr. Beecher and Professor Stowe, soon caught the abolitionist fever. They had been instructed with the idea of going on foreign missions, and of Christianizing the heathen. They found that at home-nay, in their own immediate neighbourhood, there was a still darker heathenism-a worse than Egyptian blackness.

Their sensibility grew rapidly into enthusiasm. Some amongst them, who were slave-owners," says a credible author, gave liberty to their slaves. Others collected the coloured population of Cincinnati, and preached to them. Some formed Sunday and evening schools, every one felt interested, and acted again to quote our authority, as if the abolition of slavery depended upon his individual exertions.'

To keep this fire still alight, and to prevent such enthusiasm from falling down to a dull and formal protest, there needed some antagonism, and it was soon found. The traders of Cincinnati took the alarm, and, as interest was their tender point, feared for the loss of their southern trade. Throughout the whole of the northern states,

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the same feelings raged, with little less excitement. In Boston, the abolitionists' houses and stores were burnt, and one gentleman was hurried with a rope round his neck to be hanged, and only saved from that fate by the interposition of the authorities. In New York, the anti-abolitionists pulled down the houses, and burned an African church. When brought before the magistracy, the feeling of the court and judges was in favour of the rioters, and in most instances they were acquitted. Negro school houses were razed to the ground; now and then came an armed attack on the negro quarters, or the office of the abolitionst press, which would be broken into, the presses broken, and the type scattered. Even woman were warred against. A Miss Prudence Crandall, somewhere in Connecticut, had set up a school, to which she admitted coloured children on terms of equality with her white pupils, in itself not so alarming a matter, but a number of the most pious and distinguished gentlemen of her state aud neighbourhood, including a judge of the United States court, took an early opportunity to break up her school, and to send her out of the town. The excitement prevailed everywhere, with about equal violence, as the following quoted from an eye-witness, will testify:

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"From New York I passed on to Philadelphia, and thence to Washington. In every village and town on my way I heard the same execrations vented against the abolitionists, with accounts of new riots, in which they had suffered, or new attempts to subject them to more legal punishments. There seemed to be a general conspiracy against freedom of speech and freedom of the press. A learned judge of Massachusetts, after severely denouncing the abolitionists as diaries, proposed to have them indicted at common law as guilty of sedition, if not of treason. The accomplished governor of the same state said ditto to the judge, and added fresh denunciations of his own. Almost the only person in New England of any note, as I understand, who ventured to withstand the popular clamour, or to drop a word of apology for those unfortunate abolitionists, was Dr. Channing, whose writings have made him well known wherever the English language is read; but whose refusal, on this occasion, to

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