hollow-hearted libertine as a lure for his victim and the keys of Paradise to unlock the treasuries of superstitious princes. The care of the Vicegerent of God has been shared between the ministrations of the altar and the caresses of harlots, and from the same lips have issued at once the patriarchal blessing and the reeking fumes of debauchery. Some honorable exceptions there were, and we look back with delight upon the mild and heavenly radiance which they cast upon the Egyptian darkness surrounding them; some who, like the sixth Adrian, passed from the silence and seclusion of a priory to maintain their pure but feeble influence amid the mercenary bustlers of the Papal court, bitterly sighing, meanwhile, for the serene devotion of the lonely cell. But their lives were cast on evil times. Few and very sorrowful were the days of their pilgrimage; and they soon made way for successors of more daring ambition and less scrupulous consciences. It will hardly be expected that after contemplating so appalling a scene of iniquity as the history of the Papacy presents, we should draw from the whole a conclusion favorable to the civilization of Europe. Were the personal vices of the Pontiffs our only proper criterion, we should decide at once and without hesitation. But a judgment based upon so narrow a foundation must be miserably partial and inadequate. Many correlative considerations, altogether abstracted. from individual virtues or vices, must be duly weighed and appreciated. Upon some of these we have remarked at length; and when all are allowed the full weight which belongs to them, we incline, though hesitatingly, yet in common with some of the wisest and best men who have reviewed those gloomy ages, to think favorably of the Papal influence upon its contemporaries. We intend no courtesy to the Pontiffs. In truth, if true, it is but a sorry boast that, professing to address mankind as the commissioned ministers of the Most High, and to guide our wandering race by the pure effulgence of a light from Heaven, they should have left the world in doubt whether many of them were lunatics or hypocrites; or at best should, in the judgment of charity, have somewhat meliorated the barbarism of the most barbarous age of the Christian era. Dismal indeed must have been the darkness which such a torch could have enlightened, and it is with gratitude to the Common Father that amid the increasing light of a more auspicious era, we turn from gazing upon so dark a picture of folly and of crime. THE STREAM OF SONG. MERRILY, merrily glideth free, The glorious stream The stream of Song. Out from its pearly bed springing bright, Sublime and strong. Gently it wandereth mid sweet flowers, Catching the smiles of the joyous hours, Pursuing its waves Of rippled light. Swift as a cataract down it rushes- In wayward flight. Slowly and solemnly moveth now— Of waters unseen The stream of Song. Quietly, mournfully glide its waves, Slow as a march to the land of graves; And murmuring low, They flow along. Hushed are its musical tones of glee; Hoarse as the voice of a troubled sea It hurryeth on A tireless wave. Thus wayward, fitfully like a dream, Joyfully, mournfully glides the stream Of varying song Down to the grave! THE DEVIL'S PULPIT. "Love, Love! thou passionate in joy and woe! MRS. HEMANS. I AM not a fatalist. I would not disrobe the mind of its angel drapery, and degrade it to the level of a mere machine, yet I see many things in nature, many occurrences in life, which plainly speak of a guiding and governing hand, an immutable law, whose decrees can be violated only at a fearful hazard. The error of the Fatalist consists in this, that, by ascribing every human action to the direct will of God, he strips our race of that free agency which alone makes us responsible beings, and which is an essential element of a probationary state, forgetting that his own free choice-whether it be good or ill-is followed by a train of inevitable results, and that this choice is therefore the sovereign arbiter of his destiny. If a mariner in the Northern Ocean is driven by a furious tempest to the verge of the boiling Maelstrom, and, despite every exertion, is drawn into its circling currents, the guilt of suicide cannot be charged upon him; but if he approaches the whirlpool on a calm, sunny day, and deliberately guides his barque into its outer circle, then the free agency which he has exerted, the choice which he has made, gives to the action a criminal character, and however much he may struggle against the wave which bears him onward, he is nevertheless responsible for the result, since its cause was voluntary. Something like this takes place in the moral world. Two things are placed before us-virtue and vice-each of which has certain inevitable consequences, and between which every man must choose.. This choice once made, his destiny is fixed-inevitable results follow, and though he cannot avert them, though the hand of Fate is upon him, yet that fate is the consequence of his choice, and hence arises his responsibility. When therefore you behold a man struggling in the Maelstrom of iniquity, and whirled rapidly into its dark vortex, call it destiny, if you please, but remember that it is a chosen destiny, the resultant of his own conduct, and not of God's will. There is a dark page in the history of the past, dear reader, over which I would have you pause. In the life of one man have I seen the workings of a destiny so manifest and terrible, of a fate so merciless and yet so just, that I would hold it up as a beacon light to those who let passion and impulse guide the helm which should answer only to the touch of Reason. I would have you see, in the very first flashings of jealousy and revenge, a slumbering flame which the breath of circumstances will kindle into a furious blaze, shrouding peace, and joy, and honor, in its burning folds, and leaving in the heart but the charred and broken fragments of happiness and purity. I would have you feel that uncontrolled passion is a subtle poison which causes an inflammation both of the mental and moral system; a poison that acts upon the judgment with a fearfully destructive energy; a poison, one drop of which is death. But the tragedy of a life cannot be compressed within the brief limits of a magazine; the agony, the guilt of years, cannot be painted upon the narrow canvas of an hour, and it is only upon the last act of the drama, upon the closing scenes of a dark and eventful life, that I shall at present dwell. Nestled amid the shade of circling hills, its northern limit washed by the crystal waves of an inland lake, and buried in a demi-forest of arching trees, my native village wins even from the passing traveler, whose eye roves carelessly over the fleeting landscape, many an expression of delight and surprise; and in truth" the village of the vale," as it has been not inaptly termed, might well compare, in the wild romance of its history, the grand and solemn beauty of its surrounding scenery, the quiet happiness and simplicity of its inhabitants, and the artless but winning loveliness of its "daughters fair," with any other which has formed the theme of the painter's pencil or the poet's song. It is a flower in a rocky cave; a gem in an iron casket; beauty set in grandeur. Leaping adown the hills that form its southeastern boundary flows a clear and sparkling streamlet, but not in the gay sunlight do its waves flash like liquid crystal, but darkly along the depths of a mountain gorge, where the sun rays never penetrate, and where the rocks around are damp and dripping with the dews of earth it wends its solitary way, now expanding into a broad and circular lake, then winding through some narrow and tortuous channel, or again leaping madly from the top of some high crag, and pouring its sheet of melted silver upon the dark rocks below. And where it shoots from its mountain prison into the warm sunlight, dashing adown an inclined plane of gray and broken rocks, its high walls suddenly pause, as if to gaze with wonder and admiration upon the broad and beautiful plain spread out before them. Underneath lies a broad platform of rock, level as the surface of the stormless sea, and slightly elevated above the stream that goes murmuring by. It is a beautiful scene-the gorge-the waterfall-the rock-the landscape-a strange blending of grandeur and grace, of beauty and sublimity, of the Gothic and Corinthian. It was a sunny day in June, and at the entrance of the ravine a gay party were engaged in laughing but earnest conversation. The prominent figures of the group were a lady and gentleman, whose mutual glances, as the gay jest and quick retort went round, were eloquent of that affection which can live but once, and lives forever. Descended from an Italian family, on whose ancestral scroll were blazoned the emblems of nobility, Claude Leon had all the fierce pride and passionate earnestness of his race, and though an exile, and his father before him, from his own sunny land, though his native sky and native shore had faded from his view when but an infant, yet he had not forgotten his high lineage, but exhibited in his lofty air and fiery glance the pride and daring of an Italian noble. He had lived in my native village but a single year, and yet strange stories were whispered round of his past career. And surely, none could feel the influence of his fierce eye, and mark the quick and glowing movement of his thoughts, without feeling that he was a child of passion, a creature of impulse, a rudderless barque upon a stormy and furious ocean. His dark, suspicious glance was never still. From eye to eye and face to face it passed with a rapid but earnest glare, as if he feared that every hand grasped an assassin's dagger, and every smile masked a treacherous heart. His acquaintances were few in number, and even they could scarcely brook his imperious temper, his suspicious, and almost insulting questions, and the sudden bursts of passion which often marred his finely cut, and even beautiful features. And this man of impulse, of unchecked and uncontrolled feeling, this haughty child of a haughty race, with the passionate blood of Italy bounding through his veins, had learned, in the presence of the fair maiden by his side, to smother passion, to act the calm and reasonable man, for he loved-loved with the fierce ardor that is born of a southern clime, loved wildly, fiercely, and forever. And strangely enough Louise M- returned this love. His opposite in every respect, with no one feeling or ruling motive common to both, she had yet yielded to the rapid growth of an affection which was as ardent as it was unaccountable. Eighteen summers had showered their gifts of flowers and sunshine upon her head, and left her a model of graceful and innocent beauty. Her figure was petite, but faultless in its mould; her hair of a glossy brown fell in rebellious but beautiful clusters upon the clear snow of her neck and bosom; her cheeks were round and full, tinged with the flush of health and happiness, and gay with playful dimples, while her dark blue eye, swimming in a flood of liquid love, was a sure and unerring index of a generous heart. Alas! she could not read in her lover's earnest glance, the veiled flashings of a proud and revengeful spirit she could not hear in the music tones that whispered to her of love the subdued murmurings of wild and dangerous passion. Let us trace back a little the thread of a wild and devious life. Let us bare to the sunlight the mysterious depths of a troubled heart, and strip from the face of guilt and crime its mask of purity. Midnight-silence--a dying father and a heartless son! The wan and wasted invalid, grateful to the Savior whose love has ransomed him from endless death, has bequeathed a portion of his wealth to the Church. The will, with its trembling signature, lies on the snowy covering of his couch. The expectant heir grasps it with eager hand, his flashing eye leaps from word to word, and, as he reads the legacy of the dying Christian, blood rushes to his heated brow, fury burns in his fierce heart, his passionate spirit tramples upon the solemnity of death, and the miscreant curses his dying father. Claude Leon, that curse was thine! A lofty hall--a kneeling maiden and an angry brother! Pale, and emaciate with want, thinly clad, and scarcely able to lift her imploring hands, the erring sister pleads for pardon. She has dared to follow the impulse of her heart; she has given her hand to an inferior in rank and |