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soul. Then is the purest, deepest, sweetest rapture, save that which comes from heaven. It were cheap to buy one draught with the crown of empire.

Difficulties, when overcome, insure honor. What laurels can be gathered from the field of sham battle? No enemy, no glory. The brave man scorns the feeble adversary. The greater the foe the more noble the victory. Rome gave her best honors to Scipio, because he prostrated Hannibal. America honors Washington because he drove the giant forces of Britain. England awards to Wellington her highest praise because he struck down Napoleon, her mightiest foe. Mark the aged Christian pilgrim, as he rises from some fearful conflict in holy triumph. Hark! Methinks I hear him say, "O glorious gospel of the blessed God! Because thou dost task all my powers; because thou dost lead me to the arena; because thou dost bring me to the mightiest foes; to principalities and powers, leagued for our destruction; to rulers of darkness, and wicked spirits, panting for our everlasting death; to the world and the flesh; to earth and to hell, thus making me a spectacle to infernal and heavenly worlds, to God the Spirit, God the Son, and God the Father; therefore will I glory in thee." Go ask the blood-washed throng if they would erase one trial from their history. Ask David on yon mount of glory, why the angels fold their wings, and drop their harps to listen to his story. Would you have an honored life, an honored memory, a blessed immortality, shrink not from conflict.

CAPABILITIES.

IT has often been a question whether great men are the producers or the produced of great crises. We see a Cromwell live for forty years a quiet country-town life, till at length a national convulsion arising, he, being strongly interested in the views of one of the parties, dashes forward, and, before passing fifty, has all but the crown of England upon his head. Again, we see a French sous-lieutenant of artillery plunging into his country's history at a time of similar confusion, and making himself the most formidable sovereign upon earth before he is thirty-five. If we were to limit our regard to such facts as these, we should be disposed at once to conclude, that a man of powerful character is nothing, unless an opportunity arise for his entering upon a grand career. But, on the other hand, we often see a powerful

mind arise in times comparatively tranquil, and work great marvels, apparently by its own inherent energies. We see at times. what seem to be occasions for the coming forward of great men upon the stage, and yet they do not come. We then begin to think that perhaps a Cromwell or a Bonaparte contributes to some great, though indefinable extent, in producing the events to which his appearance at first seemed subordinate. We suspect that the civil wars of England, and the French revolution, would not have taken the turn they did, but for the potent and overmastering influence of these individual actors. Thus we are prevented from coming to a decision on the point. And, in fact, this is a question which stands unsettled amongst thinking men until the present hour.

The question, as it appears to me, can never be definitely settled on the one side or the other; for neither view is wholly true. But I believe that the truth preponderates in favor of the argument which considers men as requiring circumstances to evoke their mental powers. Strong, active, and original minds will ever tell to some degree upon their circumstances, be these as impassible as they may; but they cannot tell to a great degree, unless at a time when the social elements are in some confusion. And this is simply because, let a single mind be ever so powerful, the fabric of society and its conventionalities is, in ordinary circumstances, stronger still, so that no one can do more than merely modify it in some slight degree, or prepare the way for future operations whereby it may be affected. If the matter be narrowly examined, it will always be found that, where an occasion for the appearance of a great leader passed over without any one coming forward, the necessary stir of the social elements was wanting. The vis inertia of the mass is what all single minds find fatal to them, when they attempt to do great things with their fellow-creatures. Hence a Luther, rising in the twelfth century, when the Romish church was at its highest pitch of power, would have broken his head against its walls. As an obscure heretic, his name would have been forgotten in a few years. Such minds as his must, in the course of nature, have arisen at various periods among the conventual brotherhoods; but they would never become distinguished for more than a somewhat latitudinarian way of dealing with the authority of the prior, or perhaps an occasional fractiousness at the elections of sacristans. It is like the wind-sown seed, much of which comes to nothing because it lights in stony places, while only what chances to fall on good ground fructifies. And there is another thing to be considered. The most powerful minds are more or less dependent upon things external to them, in order to be roused into due activity. Such a mind droops like the

banner by the flagstaff, till the wind of occasion unfurls it. It may pine, and chafe, and wear itself out in vain regrets and ennui, like the prisoned huntsman, or, in the desperation of forced idleness, or unworthy occupation, waste itself upon frivolities idler than idleness itself. But still it will be for the most part a lost mind, unless circumstances shall arise capable of raising it to its full force, and eliciting all its powers. Here a consideration occurs, calling for some collateral remark. We are apt, at a tranquil period, to pity the men who have to fight through civil broils such as those in which Spain has for some years been engaged. In reality, these men are happier than we think them. They have the pleasure of feeling their faculties continually at the full stretch. Victorious or defeated, hunting or hunted, they are thoroughly engrossed in the passing day; not a moment for the torture of excessive ease. Providence is kind to the men who undertake dangerous enterprises. Even when death comes to them-no matter how dreadful his shape -he is met in a paroxysm of mental activity, which entirely disarms him of his terrors.

It follows from these considerations, that there must, at all but extraordinary times, be a vast amount of latent capability in society. Gray's musings on the Cromwells and Miltons of the village are a truth, though extremely stated. Men of all conditions do grow and die in obscurity, who, in suitable circumstances, might have attained to the temple which shines afar. The hearts of Roman mothers beat an unnoted lifetime in dim parlors. Souls of fire miss their hour, and languish into ashes. Is not this conformable to what all men feel in their own case? Who is there that has not thought, over and over again, what else he could have done, what else he could have been? Vanity, indeed, may fool us here, and self-tenderness be too ready to look upon the misspending of years as anything but our own fault. Let us look, then, to each other. Does almost any one that we know appear to do or be all that he might? How far from it! Regard for a moment the manner in which a vast proportion of those, who, from independency of fortune and from education, are able to do most good in the world, spend their time, and say if there be not an immense proportion of the capability of mankind undeveloped. The fact is, the bond of union among men is also the bond of restraint. We are committed not to alarm or distress each other by extraordinary displays of intellect or emotion. There are more hostages to fortune that we shall not do anything great, than those which havnig children constitutes. Many struggle for a while against the repressive influences, but at length yield to the powerful temptations to nonentity. The social despotism

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presents the fêtes with which it seeks to solace and beguile its victims; and he who began to put on his armor for the righting of many wrongs, is soon content to smile with those who smile. Thus daily do generations ripe and rot, life unenjoyed, the great mission unperformed. Do angels ever weep? If they do, what a subject for their tears in the multitude of young souls who come in the first faith of nature to grapple at the good, the true, the beautiful, but are instantly thrown back, helpless and mute, into the limbo of commonplace! Oh conventionality, quiet may be thy fireside hours, smooth thy pillowed, thoughts; but at what a sacrifice of the right and the generous of the best that breathes and pants in our nature, is thy peace purchased!

Is not one great cause of the dissatisfaction which rests on the close of most lives just this sense of having all the time nade no right or full use of the faculties bestowed upon us? The inner and the true man pent up, concealed from every eye, or only giving occasional glimpses of itself in whimsical tastes and oddities-uneasy movements of undeveloped tendency-we walk through a masque called life, acting up to a character which we have adopted, or which has been imposed upon us, doing nothing from the heart, "goring" our best thoughts to make them lie still. Pitiable parade! The end comes, and finds us despairing over precious years lost beyond recovery, and which, were they recovered, we would again lose. And, if such be a common case, can we wonder at the slow advance of the public or national improvement? There must be a design with regard to highly-endowed natures, that they are to bear upon all around them with such intellectual and moral force as they possess, and thus be continually working on for the general good. This we might consider as a sort of pabulum requisite for the public health -something analogous to air or food with respect to the bodily system. But is this moral necessary of life diffused as it ought to be? Let the endless misdirections and repressions of human capability answer the question.

QUEEN ESTHER.

THE chronicles of great women have been somewhat confined to modern times. History is full of heroic acts, striking virtues, wonderful sacrifices and exalted heroism of distinguished women, but little has been said of the illustrious women of the Scriptures little, we should say, comparatively speaking; they have been honored, applauded, selected as models of virtue, but profane history has not done them ample justice. Their lives, it is true, were secluded, and few striking occasions occurred for history to note or applaud. Foremost in the list of illustrious women is Queen Esther. Her history is a remarkable one-few women of modern times united so much beauty to so much worth and virtue, so much piety, purity, faith, decision, exalted character and eminent services.

The book of Esther, in which great historical events are recorded, is well known to the reading world-there is so much interest in the narrative, the story is so extraordinary, and the result so great and startling, that by some it might have been considered a mere romance, one of those Persian tales and fabulous stories which abound in that empire; but it has been cautiously and understandingly incorporated in the Jewish canons, and although there are doubts to whom the authorship of the book of Esther should be ascribed, whether to Mordecai, to Ezra, the scribe, to Joachim, the high priest, or the events collected in a book by order of the Great Synagogue, as is conjectured by the learned Dupin, it is certain, that all the events recorded in that book did actually occur, and were so written in the Persian chronicles; and Sir Robert Ker Porter, in his travels through Persia, speaks of the tombs of Esther and Mordecai being still standing at Shusan. The chronology of the book, however, is very uncertain, and it is somewhat difficult to ascertain who was the Persian monarch spoken of in Scripture as the king Ahasuerus. Archbishop Usher says it was Darius Hystaspis who married Esther; that Atassa was the Vashti, and Artystina the Esther; but history gives no such character to these personages as is recorded in the book. Scaliger will have it that Xerxes was the Ahasuerus, and Hamestres the Esther, but then Hamestres was a woman of violent character, incontinent and tyrannical, unlike Queen Esther in every respect.

There are two books of Esther; one is apocryphal, and from that book it is evident that Artaxerxes was the King Ahasuerus. not Artaxerxes called Mnemon, but Artaxerxes Longimanus. Josephus says it was he. Severus Sulpitius says it was he Most of the ancient and modern writers speak of that monarch as the king Ahasuerus, from the well known fact that he was ever

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