been established, and he perfectly agreed in the sentiments of 'Squire Williams. Mr. Doolittle thought the corporal' ought to be severely punished for applying the term disgrace to one of the most consistent villages in the world- and that 'Squire Williams also merited a similar treatment. This brought on confusion and uproar and wrangling dissolved this important assembly. So much for the school at

Johnstown.

There was a great stir and commotion, likewise, in Johnstown, when one warm and smoky morning in September-the circus, with its wagons and a long line of horses, passed into the village. They were entertained at Ephraim Doolittle's, sign of the pumpkins, where the grand performance was to take place. This was a day of jubilee for Johnstown. The bare-footed urchins danced and wheeled round in circles, completely overflowing with transport and animation. Business was suspended — a general holiday commenced - and the circus! the circus!' was the only subject to be spoken of. Up rose the snowy tents, like the sudden creation of magic, and they were looked upon with a silent and awe-struck wonder. But just when the blue shadows of evening pointed across the village, the whole company, flashing with spangles and light, mounted upon their richly-caparisoned horses, with harlequin Tom at the head, paraded in front of 'Squire Williams' house, to the astonishment of all Johnstown. Windows flew up-doors swung back-old men ran for such a scene had never been witnessed before. Tom blew a blast upon his horn, and the little hills answered back with a treble joy. Strange evolutions were executed by the horses, but as this was only a foretaste of the grand exhibition and illumination at night, they vanished into their tents, and left the gaping multitude reflecting upon the mysteries of which they had been spectators. Night advanced- and such a sight! The corporal'God forgive his infirmities! had entered just far enough into the regions of bliss, to place himself upon a barrel-head in the centre of the street, where, in a burning torrent of eloquence, he was endeavoring to convince the good people of the absolute importance of every man's drinking three hogsheads of liquor per year. I shall never forget how he looked. Standing as he did, with a red flash of sunlight covering his whole head, like the halo which crowns the heads of pictured saints, both arms spread out like eagles' wings, he was springing into the importance of the subject, when his temporary foundation failed, and he sank by the weight of his argument, lodging upon the chimes of the barrel beneath his arms. 'Uncle Tim,' too, got in a talkative mood, and related many strange tales, almost too strange to be true.

The following morning, when the exhausted people of Johnstown arose, the circus had departed, and the tents vanished. They could not always think them mortal, and some were full in the belief that they had been amused by spirits. It was a question never satisfactorily settled among them, even to the present day.

There was once a great excitement caused in the village by Ephraim Doolittle imagining himself a dead man. The circumstances were these: One September day, when the sun was burning at the meridian, he was passing back and forth in front of his house, ruminating upon fashion and modern improvement. He finally lost himself in deep re

flection, and suddenly arousing to his senses, he cast his eyes about, and found he was shadowless, for it had vanished. He turned to the right and to the left, yet nothing but bright sunshine surrounded him. He grasped his limbs, and they appeared sensible of the touch-yet he must be a spirit without flesh, for his shadow had left him. He screamed with fury, to attract the neighbors, to go immediately in pursuit of his body-carried off, as he said, by internal improvement. The neighbors collected around him, all in a bustle, trembling with fear, and searched for his shadow- but it was no where to be discovered. 'Doctor Ranney' was sent for, but neither that worthy nor his goggles brought any thing to light. The doctor thought him a dead man, all but burying. The corporal,' however, winked to 'Squire Williams, who returned it with a smile, and a look at his own feet, around which there was full as much shade as around Mr. Doolittle's. The neighbors insisted upon burying Ephraim, and the parson said he had a melting discourse prepared for the occasion. Ephraim declared he was not a dead man, but modern times had been reforming him; he presumed his head would be missing yet—likely as not his handshe should be surprised at nothing any more; and now, while I think of it,' continued he, are you all sure you carry shadows as you once did?' They all looked, and behold they had fled! It was an awful time for Johnstown, and the mystery has never been unravelled to this day. As the sun wore away to the west, their shadows lengthened out, which convinced them they were yet mortal, and fleshly inheritors of the productions of the earth.

FIVE years passed away, and again I was called through the village of Johnstown. The old tavern, at the sign of the two pumpkins, had drooped away yet lower with age, and Ephraim had vanished, shadow and all. I was told by the 'corporal,' (who was the only personage of the celebrated characters above ground,) that Ephraim died by a breach in a blood-vessel, while pouring out fire and fury against a rail-road director. Johnstown appeared, however, just as lazy, and sleepy, and dull, as ever. You might hear the blue-flies, with their droning hum, all day in the air; the dust in the streets was too indolent to rise; the pumpkins on the tavern-pole always hung straight down without motion. The corporal' was every man's servant, and said he was now getting to be quite an important man, as Doctor Ranney and Uncle. Tim had been called away. I hurried through the atmosphere about me, for a languid influence began to creep over my spirit, and a short time would work my downfall. As I left the village in my rear, I mounted a fertile upland, and turning my eye, caught the sign of the tavern tipped with the parting light of day-and thus I bade it farewell.

R.

THOUGHTS IN TRINITY CHURCH-YARD.

"THE spirit of speculation is devouring us up. It is working a melancholy change in the better sentiments and affections of the heart. It is the ruling spirit, too often, it is to be feared, and brings under subjection, or altogether smothers, those purer emotions which should have free sway in the hearts of men. Even the dead are not secure from the evil effects of this reigning passion. The repose of the grave is no longer a repose, while a church-yard, crowded with its pale, decaying tenants, is found to obtrude upon the business marts of a commercial city.'

That angel girl, who, like a rose
That fades, was blasted in her bloom,
And there, with death in deep repose,
As cold as marble, fill'd her tomb;
Whose grave was guarded as a thing
Too sacred for unhallowed thought,
And to the turf of which, in spring,

Full many a flower was kindly brought -
Now that those living ties are broke

By absence some rude, curious swain,
In heartless mood, with jeer and joke,

Grasps the white palace of the brain,
Shakes from its cells the dust of time,
And talks of what the papers name
'Improvement, in her march sublime.'

In Trinity a column rears

-

Or once did rear- to shining worth
Its summit tall: but a few years
Have plunged it headlong to the earth:
And there it lies; its ruins strew

A hero's turf, who gave his life
For freedom, and whose valor true
Departed only with his life:
Amid the fragments ye may find
A sentence from a patriot's lip,
('T was the last effort of his mind,)
Behold it 'Don't give up the ship!

H. H. R.

THE ECLECTIC.

NUMBER TWO.

NO NOBLE mind can long retain ignoble views of our common nature. No such mind will be intolerant of the faults or skeptical of the better traits of that nature. The reason is, such men take wider, and deeper, and more philosophical views of themselves and of their fellow beings around them; they are impressed with a higher and more genuine respect for the human soul; they are too conscious of their own deficiencies, to permit themselves to be despotic censors of their brethren. Hear again the great eclectic of modern times: Error is nothing but incomplete truth converted into absolute truth. Men are scarcely ever more than halves and quarters of men, who, unable to understand, accuse each other. As every error contains some truth, therefore every error should be treated with profound indulgence; and all those halves of men that we constantly meet with around us, are nevertheless fragments of humanity, and we should still respect that truth and that humanity of which they participate.' What a contrast between this bland, affectionate, and confiding philosophy, and that stern dogmatism, that self-appropriating, and exclusive, and one-eyed spirit, which has so often characterized the advocates of truth, in their encounters with errorists, and which still lives to multiply divisions among men, and to check the career of universal peace and general unanimity! The former is the genuine philosophy of human nature, and as such it must symbolize with every unsophisticated heart. The latter is a compound of partial views and narrow feelings. The one tends to knit us to our species in closer union, draws out the generous and the charitable feelings of our nature, to send them abroad over mankind, and appeals continually to our sense of what is just, beautiful, and true. The other, what shall we say of it? Troja et patriæ communis,' etc., combines all the hateful attributes of sectarian animosity, controversial acrimony, calumniating harshness, and persecuting rancor.

เ

Why is it that our nature is in such poor repute with the many? Why is it, that they are so ready to cry poor human nature,' and lift their eyes in horror at every fresh proof of its imperfections and weakness, but are so slow to acknowledge and to feel the ever-unfolding manifestations of its inherent dignity and native excellence? One prime reason undoubtedly is, that they do not understand themselves. They partake not of the spirit of that ancient maxim, Reverence thyself.' Many fall into the gross paralogism of judging a whole from a part, of arguing against a thing from its abuse, not from its use, and of forming a judgment upon its character from its accidental rather than its natural developments from its momentary rather than its permanent tendencies. Their conclusions are consequently unjust. But not more than those who forget the fundamental sameness of all human beings, and the positive oneness of the reason, and the moral sense in all minds, of whatever grade or condition. The elimination from the mind of this important truth is disastrous to another recollection equally salutary in its influence. It is that the causes of error are alike in all minds, though the occasions may be infinitely diversified. These potent agents, which

have already precipitated so many of our fellow men into the whirlpools of moral delinquency, are ever at work in our own minds, endued with tendencies which accident alone may have hitherto kept from their deplorable consummation. The reflection that they may soon hurl us from our pedestals, might be of great service in correcting an uncharitable disposition, if such a feeling should unhappily exist in our

bosoms.

But men view each other at too great a distance, to be accurate judges of character. They do not come near enough to discern those fine pencillings of moral worth which are frequently spread over a coarse and somewhat forbidding intellectual exterior. Good qualities are apt to escape the notice of a remote view, while the bad, like floating sticks, appear larger than life. Beside, it is the nature of ugly objects to impart a modicum of their own deformity to adjacent objects; or, at any rate, to unfit minds that are governed more by sympathy than by steady principles for the appreciation of minute beauties, that are thus unfelicitously situated. Is not this the reason why one luckless aberration often plunges the mighty from their pinnacles of reputation, almost excommunicates them from the pale of human sympathy, and exposes them as lawful game for the dogs of persecution? So far is public opinion from understanding the first principle of eclecticism, that it seldom or never adequately regards an invaluable lesson taught by almost every page of history, that a very great preponderance of excellence is consistent with many pernicious errors.' Seneca observes of a pure philosopher, who lived in a wicked age, that Nature had brought him forth to show mankind that an exalted genius can live securely, without being corrupted by the vices of the surrounding world.' It is but an extension of the same idea to say, that perhaps the majority of men subserve a purpose in the demonstration they afford that great virtues can safely coexist in the same mind with much obliquity of moral view, and many variations from the rule of right action.

After all, men - serious men—perhaps men in general-agree in more points than they differ, even upon moral and religious matters. And if so, how unreasonable to lay such a stress upon the minutiæ of difference, and pass over so cursorily the great features of similarity! The immense conclusions' of the reason, and the felt testimony of the moral and religious nature, are elements of sameness, sufficient to unite, in one eternal bond of affection, the whole brotherhood of the virtuous and the well disposed, in spite of all the many and even important varieties of opinion and of sect, which that high nature has so fruitfully developed. Good men,' says the amiable and philosophic Mackintosh, have not been able to differ so much from each other as they imagine; and amidst all the deviations of the understanding, the beneficent tendency of their nature keeps alive the same sacred feelings.' There are points essential to human virtue, and human happiness, to which they harmoniously assent. To these central foci, all serious minds, however eccentric their orbits, come back at last, to drink in new supplies of light and heat. 'Common reason,' says Bishop Butler, will have some influence upon mankind, whatever becomes of speculation.' The boundaries of systems, and the obscure and more remote parts, are the favorite scenes either of border warfare or of internal dissension. All the grand outlines of truth are easily seen, and generally acknowledged,