have craved this for you. And oh! may I be kept unto the end by him." On one of her children saying to her "The Lord is thy Shepherd," there was a deep response in the words, "thou shalt not want." On some attempt being made to convey to our dear mother the grateful feelings of her children for the blessings of her care and influence, she said, "my sense of unworthiness-my short-comings-my omissionsbut not, I trust, rebellion of spirit, have been especially present with me of late-but all forgiven by my heavenly Father-all blotted out for my dear Redeemer's sake." These expressions were uttered with a power and reverential solemnity which the words cannot convey; they came from the depths of an humble soul, at rest in her Saviour's love.

of individuals or of associated bodies. A great po-
litical revolution, such as that which has recently
convulsed France, when considered in reference to
the waste of life, the public distress, and far more
to that untold misery which broods silently around
thousands of family circles, blasting the hopes,
and paralyzing the energies of whole generations
of sufferers, is an evil, than which perhaps no
greater is permitted by an all-wise Providence to
overtake a community. Yet He who permits it,
has not withheld a restoring influence even from
this dreadful display of human passion. Doubt-
less, by the immediate influence of his ever
present power, he causes their sorrows to return
with showers of spiritual blessings upon the heads
of humbled and repentant sufferers. Doubtless,
He teaches to many in this school of adversity,
lessons which they would have been slow to learn
in prosperity. But it is also true that through
those laws by which he has seen fit to surround us,
and which, although to the casual observer seeming-
ly irregular and intermitting, are known by the
comprehensive mind to be constant and sure in their
operation, he provides a remedy for much of the
evil which flows from the unrestrained passions,
or the misguided judgment of men.
The phi-

Very early on second day morning, the 30th of Tenth month, she saw one of her sons who had not been previously with her, and spoke to him of her "tender love," her "deep interest," and sent a message of earnest counsel to a much-loved grandson. It was now evident that her strength was rapidly sinking-utterance had become very difficult; but her mind remained clear. In a touching manner she thanked her eldest son for all his kindness to her, and expressed her affec-losophy which suggests the reflections in the tionate desires for her grand-children. She was passage to which we are referring, although here perfectly aware of her situation, and when told applied to great political movements only, has an that her pulse was almost gone, she exclaimed, application no less consolatory to events of less "what a favour! Have I strength for a few extensive character. We may see much around words?" We bent over her to try to catch every us to excite reasonable apprehension. We may precious accent, and heard thus much. "If it be deplore the sacrifice of great principles in order thy holy will, grant that the work may be cut to meet present real or supposed evils. We may short, and a release permitted from this suffering; tremble under the conviction that the present but if not consistent with thy holy will, grant tendency of things is opposed to the permanency patience to endure unto the end.—Óh sustain !— of institutions which we believe to have originated That we may all meet again." This world was in a wisdom higher than our own, and which we had now receding from her, and heaven opening to her hoped might have descended to our children's view. The breathing gradually and almost im- children as a wall of defence against the enperceptibly ceased-the "silver cord was loosed," croachments of a world lying in wickedness. But and she "fell asleep in Jesus." let us look beyond the present anxieties; let us remember that the same Divine Hand which by means hidden, or but partially revealed, often controls the motives of men or overrules their actions on some great public theatre, to the promotion of his beneficent ends, watches no less over those who act in more retired stations, and will eventually, under all circumstances, make "the wrath of man to praise Him.” L. L.

For Friends' Review.

REVOLUTIONS.

The following eloquent passage, selected from a foreign journal, may afford the subject of interesting and consolatory thought to those who have learned to look beyond present evils, to final results. Such a habit of nfind eminently befits the Christian. It is the natural result of those comprehensive views which habitually regard the life to come as the vast theatre on which the great problems of the life present are to be certainly solved. But it by no means disregards the manifest overruling of a beneficent Providence in those events which are of daily occurrence. It leads us to confide in His wisdom, whether he see meet to interfere immediately for the control of men's purposes, or whether he permit his ends to be carried out and perfected through the agency of those motives which ordinarily influence the acts

"The balance is preserved in social life by contending passions and interests, as in the physical world by opposite forces, under circumstances when, to all human appearance, remedy is impossible and hope extinguished. The orbit of nations is traced out by the wisdom of Providence not less clearly than that of the planets; there are centripetal and centrifugal forces in the moral as well as the material world. As much as the vehement passions, the selfish desires, the inexperienced zeal, the expanding energy, the rapacious indigence, the mingled virtues and vices

of man, lead at stated periods to explosions or, revolution, do the desire of tranquillity, the interests of property, the horror at cruelty, the lessons of experience, the force of religion, the bitterness of suffering, reinduce the desire of order, and restore the influence of its organ, government. If we contemplate the awful force of the expansive powers which, issuing from the great mass of central heat, find vent in the fiery channels of the volcano, and have so often rent asunder the solid crust of the earth, we may well tremble to think that we stand suspended, as it were, over such an abyss, and that at no great distance beneath our feet the elements of universal conflagration are to be found.* But, strong as are the expansive powers of nature, the coercive are still stronger. The ocean exists to bridle with its weight the fiery gulf; the arch of the earth has been solidly constructed by its Divine architect; and the only traces we now discover, in most parts of this globe, of the yet raging war of the elements, are the twisted strata, which mark, as it were, the former writhings of matter in the terrible grasp of its tormentors; or the splintered pinnacles of mountains, which add beauty to the landscape; or the smiling plains, which bring happiness to the abodes of man. It is the same in the moral world. Action and reaction are the law of mind as well as matter, and the equilibrium of social life is preserved by the opposite tendency of the interests which are brought into collision, and the counteracting force of the passions which are successively awakened by the very convulsions which seem to menace society with dissolution." Blackwood.

For Friends' Review.

NEW RELIGIOUS INTEREST-GOV. BRIGGS.

The following is forwarded for insertion in the Review, should the editor think it proper. It is pleasing to notice the public avowal and earnest enforcement of those great truths, at the same place and by the same class of men, where and by whom some of our early Friends suffered so much, for promulgating the same doctrines.—J.

Correspondence of the N, Y. Express.

Marlboro Hotel, Boston, Feb. 7. The Union Conference of churches for this week was crowded and deeply interesting, and was held in one of the largest churches. After appropriate prayer, and singing by the congregation, Mr. Huntington remarked, that what we especially needed, to inspire us with confidence and hope, as well as with due solemnity, was to feel that God by his Spirit was present with us. Practically, we had been too much in the condition of those who replied to Paul that they "had not so much as heard that there was any Holy Thirty five miles below the surface of the earth, the central heat is everywhere so great, that granite itself is held in fusion.-HUMBOLDT, Comos i. 273.

Spirit." We needed a deep realization of his being, and of our dependence on his influences. One object, he said, of Christ's coming into the world was to "show us the Father," and to open the way for a mission of "the Spirit of Truththe Comforter-who might abide with us forever." We needed a new realization of this doctrine of the Divine presence and power among us,—such as the Saviour promised; and such as the Apostles and Augustine, Fenelon, and others, have described, as their highest joy and confidence. How soon would despondency, and doubt, and perplexity be dispersed, could we say in faith, "The Lord is our helper.'

The promotion of this living faith, this spiritual elevation, was the immediate object of the present meeting. He would not say the work was holier than that of another great meeting, the same evening, in the neighbourhood, embracing in its generous purposes the heathen world. Both were essential to the completion of human character in a high tone of enlightened piety-involving faith in the Redeemer and communion with the source of all good-neither could fail to manifest itself in enlarged philanthropy.

It was not so much infidelity as indifference that was now the just occasion of alarm. Men did not reject Christianity: but still, in their view, sorrow and death had no voice speaking of retribution-eternity had no awfulness-God, no loveliness-Christ, no beauty, to arouse men to the real sublimities of their being. We needed to be renewed, regenerated, renovated, through the power of Divine love in Jesus Christ,-then nothing would divert us from the simplicity of the Gospel, and from the great work assigned us.

Gov. Briggs, being present and invited to speak, said, he had learned from the papers with deep satisfaction, the object and progress of these meetings. What object of attention could be more becoming, to beings accountable and immortal? If spiritual interests were real, which none doubted, they were every thing. Here we are, amid the busy scenes of life, rushing forward to endless destiny-to be happy with the saved, or to mourn with the lost! Spiritual interests, he said, involved individual responsibility. Religion was a personal concern to each. The divine appeal was, "Give me thine heart." Let the heart be really consecrated to God and his works, and the fruits would at once manifest themselves, exhibiting the spirit of Christ. Social religious services of this kind had always met with divine approbation. "They that feared the Lord spoke often one to another; and the Lord hearkened, and heard it." But if we were truly wise, we should carry this spirit into our retirement; and, as individuals and members of families, at once settle the question, to be wholly "on the Lord's side." Hesitation in a matter of such acknowledged importance, was consummate folly, as well as guilt.

It was the idea, he said, of some, that religion was not befitting the young. But really they

P.

FRIENDS' REVIEW. PHILADELPHIA, THIRD MONTH 24, 1849.

useful concerns of life, and the accommodation of | respectability, have generally made their way the housewife and the farmer, is properly regarded through difficulties and opposition, with which even as being worthy to claim the solicitude of the long the poorest of our colour are not obliged to conheaded thinker.. tend-and that notwithstanding these adverse circumstances, many of them hold situations in civil society, of which no man of either race need be ashamed; we must agree that the problem of their capacity to rise to respectability even among us, has been already solved. We are told that when a sophist was labouring to demonstrate to a philosopher, the impossibility of motion, the latter got up and walked; and when H. Clay authoritatively declares that the coloured people among us must always be a degraded race, we may return an answer, equally conclusive, by pointing to hundreds and other parts of the free states. of the present coloured inhabitants of Philadelphia,

that it would be practicable, if it was even desiraAs probably no man, in his sober senses believes lions of slaves now in the United States, or their ble, to colonize on the African coast, the three milcontinually increasing descendants, to say nothing of the free coloured, the principle assumed in H. Clay's letter, if applied to the United States in general, would exclude every plan for the extinction of slavery.

Some of our readers may, perhaps, be surprised, after the copious notice taken in last week's number, of H. Clay's letter on emancipation, to see so much space in the present, devoted to the same subject. It is not expected that the opinions advocated in this journal, in relation to slavery, will exercise any sensible influence on the proceedings of the people of Kentucky. Yet the Editor would not feel himself excused, without entering his protest against the doctrine advanced in Henry Clay's letter, that colonization must be an essential condition, without which no plan of emancipation ought to be adopted. If we admit the supposition, that the coloured race, must, while they remain among us, continue what H. Clay says they are now-a degraded population—it must be owing to their natural incapacity to rise above that situation, or to the obstructions which the white race are placing in their way. The doctrines of the colonizationists, of whom H. Clay is none of the least conspicuous, fully admit the capacity of the negro race to exercise and enjoy all the rights of freemen, when transported to Africa. We hear nothing of their being necessarily a degraded race, after they are colonized in their father-land. Upon what zone. principle then do we determine that they cannot rise to respectability on the west as well as on the eastern side of the Atlantic? Does any man venture to assert that the Anglo-Saxon race is so intrinsically and indomitably cruel, as to keep the coloured population always oppressed, and sunk below the level for which the faculties bestowed upon them by a gracious Creator, have qualified them?

It is freely admitted that a cruel prejudice against the coloured race has found a place both among the people of the North and South; which unavoidably presents a stubborn obstacle to their elevation in civil society. But this prejudice is itself the offspring of slavery, and would necessarily decrease, and eventually vanish, if the cause was removed. But further, the assertion that the people of colour, in the free states, are a degraded class, may be confidently denied.

When we reflect that the whole coloured population of the United States has descended, at least in part, from ancestors imported as slaves from pagan Africa-that their transition from slavery to freedom generally placed them in the lowest rank of freemen-that such of them as have risen to wealth or

The formation of colonies on the African coast, of extending civilization there. Yet if we could if judiciously conducted, may be useful as a means adopt the opinion that the negro race must always be a pest, while they remain among us, they would to civilize and christianize the pagans of the torrid not appear the most eligible missionaries to send

the United States, colonization is totally futile. And But as a mode of extinguishing slavery in even if practicable, the compulsive transportation concilable with justice. The civilization of Africa of this part of our native population would be irrewould be an object worthy of our strenuous exertions; but to us it is a secondary object, while the restoration, to the common rights of humanity, of the millions who have been planted here by acts of

the most flagrant injustice, is unquestionably a primary one. The injustice of the existing system is too glaring to require an argument. Every year of its continuance adds to the load of guilt already the mode of its extirpation; but it appears vain to incurred. Prudence may be justly consulted as to attempt reconciling either with wisdom or justice, a plan of emancipation which is so gradual as to make no impression on the system, unless indeed it may be an increased impetus to the internal slave trade, till after the lapse of more than a third of a century.

MARRIED, At Mississinawa Meeting House, Grant Co., Indiana, on Fourth day, the 20th of 9th

month last, ISAAC R. SMITH to MARY, daughter of Jesse Thomas.

At the same place, on the 20th of 12th month last, JOHN RATLIFF to SARAH PEARSON. At the same place, on the 24th of 1st mo. last, JOSEPH OVERMAN to ANNA Jones.

DIED,-On the 5th inst., HANNAH DENNIS, widow of the late George Dennis, of Portsmouth, R. I., aged about 75 years, a worthy member of Rhode Island Monthly Meeting; gathered in a good old age, we trust, to that rest which is unchangeable.

On the 6th inst., MARY A. POTTER, wife of William T. Potter, of Newport, and daughter of Abraham Anthony, late of Portsmouth, R. I., aged 60 years, and member of Rhode Island Monthly Meeting. This dear friend, though of a slender constitution, was enabled to minister largely to the comfort of her family and numerous friends, and had appeared latterly to be improving in general health, when she was suddenly arrested, and in little more than a week was taken from works to

rewards.

On the 12th inst., at her residence near Westminster, Guilford Co., N. C., POLLY, widow of William Beard, deceased, in the 70th year of her age, a member of Deep River Monthly Meeting.

For Friends' Review.
MACAULAY'S HISTORY.

peared in the Era, and we shall not now undertake an analysis of its contents. It has ere this found its way into the hands of a large class of our readers, and to most of them it is becoming somewhat familiar, from the numerous extracts which are quoted in the newspapers and magazines. It is an exceedingly readable book. The style is that which lends such a charm to the author's essaysbrilliant, epigrammatic, vigorous. Indeed, herein lies the fault of the book, when viewed as a mere detail of historical facts. Its sparkling rhetoric is not the safest medium of truth to the simpleminded inquirer. A discriminating and able critic has done the author no injustice in saying that, in attempting to give effect and vividness to his thoughts and diction, he is often overstrained and extravagant, and that his epigrammatic style seems better fitted for the glitter of paradox than the sober guise of truth. The intelligent and well-informed reader of the volume before us will find himself at times compelled to reverse the decisions of the author, and deliver some unfortunate personage, sect, or class, from the pillory of his rhetoric, and the merciless pelting of his ridicule. There is a want of the repose and quiet which we look for in a narrative of events long passed away; we rise from the perusal of the book pleased and excited, but with not so clear a conception of the actual realities of which it treats, as would be desirable. We cannot help feeling that the author has been somewhat overscrupulous in avoiding the dulness of plain detail, and the dryness of dates, names, and statistics. The freedom, flowing diction, and sweeping generality of the Reviewer and Essayist are maintained throughout; and, with one remarkable exception, the "History of England" might be divided into papers of magazine length, and published without any violence to propriety as a continuation of the author's labors in that department of literature, in which he confessedly stands without a rivalhistorical review.

* * *

* * * * *

We find in the National Era a notice of this popular writer, from which we take the following criticism upon his style. However adapted to a review, it strikes us as peculiarly inappropriate to history. The perpetually recurring antithesis, which for a time gives point to the narrative, at length wearies by its elaborate monotony, and one's confidence in the truthfulness of the history is shaken by the author's evident temptation to suit his facts to the structure of his sentence. We fear that he is liable to a more serious charge than a defect in style. We find in his volume little evidence of that appreciation of virtue for its own sake, that instinctive admiration of high moral qualities, without which the historian will certainly fail to take rank among those who have "Personal portraits are sketched with a bold benefitted mankind. Macaulay is far in advance freedom, which at times startles us. The old of most of his predecessors in a comprehensive familiar faces,' as we have seen them through view of the subjects included under the title of the dust of a century and a half, stand before us history; he has learned that those who are go- with life-like distinctness of outline and coloring. verned are at least objects of as much interest as Some of them disappoint us; they come in a 'questhose who rule; and that the progress of society tionable shape.' Thus, for instance, in his sketch of means something more than the acquisition of William Penn, the historian takes issue with the territory, or the concentration of power. He is world on his character, and transforms the saint below Clarendon in artistic delineation of charac- into a pliant courtier. Of the grounds upon which ter; inferior to Hume in the purity and lucidness he attempts this reversal of the verdict of six of his style, and not to be compared with Hallam generations, we are not informed as fully as we in elevation above partizan opinions, or in the ju- could wish; and it will certainly be safe, until dicial impartiality of his decisions. As a contri- these are fairly presented, to allow the Founder bution in aid of this great subject, his work has of Pennsylvania the benefit of a doubt as to the unquestionable value, but the History of that un-accuracy of the historian's decision. J. G. W." paralleled period of English annals, which he has undertaken to elucidate, will be written by a wiser and better man. R- -S.

Those who preach to others what they do not practice themselves, would do well to remember the rebuke implied by the proverb, "Physician

"A brief notice of this volume has already ap- heal thyself."