to catch the first indications of the fall of the tree, was a poet's heart; and that is a fine passage where he describes, on page 149, the zeal of the log-men in pursuit of a handsome pine. So with the description, commencing on page 161 and ending on the other side of the leaf, setting forth the dangers of the employment of riverdriving, or the conveyance of the logs from the woods to the boom. The book is valuable for its descriptions of the Forest Trees of America. This department of the volume is the result of much reading as well as observation; and the second part is unique indeed. It is as eutertaining as a good romance, while it opens the strange, adventurous life which is led by large numbers of our fellow men. It is estimated that on the Penobscot alone ten thousand men are engaged in lumbering.

This book, in connection with "Richard Edney," gives us Life in the Forests, on the Rivers, and in and around the Saw Mills of Maine, and for both we are thankful. We love to know something about Man every where.

This volume can be had at B. B. Mussey & Co.'s, Cornhill, Boston.

SKETCHES OF BOSTON, Past and Present, and of some few Places in its Vicinity. Pp. 112.

This work was suggested, we presume, by the approach of the grand railroad jubilee in Boston, and is certainly an admirable affair, so far as it goes. It professes to be only Sketches of Boston. It is profusely pictorial, presenting pictures of all the school-houses and churches, with brief sketches of their history. Sixty pages of small type are devoted to the rise and progress of Boston, showing a steady advance made in all good institutions by this noble town and city. The history of the public schools is very interestingschools that may well be the pride of every Bostonian. The volume embraces notices of Roxbury, Lynn, Watertown, Charlestown, Lowell, Brookline, Cambridge and Waltham. The notice of Cambridge is quite in detail and very interesting. The engravings in the book number one hundred and twenty. It can be had of A. Tompkins.

A YEAR ABROAD: or Sketches of Travel in Great Britain, France and Switzerland. By Willard C. George. Boston: A. Tompkins. 1851. Pp. 248.

Our author makes but very modest pretensions in his preface, and performs all he promises in his book. He gives us the results of five weeks observation in Great Britain, a brief stay in Paris, a sail on the Rhine, and two weeks in Swit

zerland. These Sketches are evidently written with care. They are not the mere tinsel of rhetoric with an apology of substance, but they sim to give, and they succeed in giving, a fair outline of what is observable in the line of travel pursued by the writer. They were written during the time of his journeyings, and were communicated to the "Gospel Banner ;" they have been revised, and now form a handsoma and ogreeable volume. We commend the book to our readers as embodying a large amount of information by which we can do a deal of traveling without leaving our firesides.

PATRIOTISM. A Discourse delivered before the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, on their Two Hundred and Thirteenth Anniversary. By Rev. T. S. King. Boston: A. Tompkins. 1851.

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This discourse was desired for publication by the Company before whom it was delivered, as eloquent, patriotic and instructive discourse," and such it really is. The preacher justifies patriotism as a virtue, provided for, and expected of us, by nature, and shows that if the Bible does not preceptively teach patriotism, it does illustrate that virtue by splendid examplesMoses, Samuel, David and the Savior appear before us. Then the true character of patriotism is opened; it is separated from hollow pretension; and the ideas it must support, and the work it must do in our own country, are eloquently expounded, magnifying the truth that "Patriotism is not only a legitimate sentiment, but a duty.”

Our thanks are tendered to our friend for a copy.

THE RAIL ROAD JUBILEE. Two Discourses. By Rev. T. S. King.

ses.

Some one has spirited away our copy of these elegantly printed and exquisitely written discourWe read them with great pleasure, and regard them as just the right kind of preaching to the Times-the taking up of a matter of absorbing interest, and so treating it with religious thoughtfulness and Christian eloquence, that the Memory of the Pageant is made more than the Reality was, by reason of the Meaning given to it. We remember two passages that impressed us very deeply-that where the preacher describes the work given to man to subdue nature, and shows that where devotion to material ends is not made contributive to the development of a lofty manliness, the man is subdued, rather than subduing ;-and that passage where he describes the progress which is given to pacific ideas by the interlinking of remote places by means of business enterprize.

We regret the necessity of writing this notice without a copy of the Discourses, for we desired to quote the opening sentiment as written by the preacher, that God not only overrules the evil that men do, but carries on their good to ends never dreamed of by them; and also what he says of the value set on the poorest man by the Creator and Redeemer.

We pray Heaven to preserve the ability that can thus preach Christ.

OLIVER DITSON'S MUSIC. 115 Washington Street, Boston.

In the hurry of "moving," some pieces of new music from this establishment have been misplaced, but we remember that they were beautiful, and received the commendation of our musical friends. The reader will be safe in sending to or calling upon Mr. Ditson for the newest and best musical publications.

THE BOARD OF NATIONAL POPULAR EDUCATION. Proposing to supply the West with School Teachers.

There is one thing about this movement that ought to be distinctly understood, and that is, its pretensions to unsectarianism are worthless. We have known instances where Universalists have presented themselves as candidates for the Teacher's office, who had unquestionable abilities, and to whom the least exception could not be taken except on the ground of their theology. The same spirit has been shown in reference to Unitarians. A correspondent of the "Christian Register," Boston, Mass., shows that the "Board of National Popular Education," means only the Efforts of Orthodoxy to extend its power under a high sounding and liberal name. Mr. Slade, Secretary and General Agent of the Board, called on a prominent Unitarian in Syracuse, N. Y., to solicit funds for the aid of the work in which he was engaged, and on being asked if young women of unexceptionable moral and religious character, would be refused because they were Unitarians, Christians, &c., he replied, he supposed they would be refused. He might have said such had been refused. Another agent on being asked if what Mr. Slade had said was really so, replied, that only those were such" who believe the Bible and are Christians." He was then asked, says the correspondent above referred to, "whether they would receive and send out young women of Unitarian views; he replied, by no means, as they were not regarded as being full believers in the Scriptures, and therefore not regarded as Chrislians at all.' That I am not mistaken in this, let it be observed, he made a solitary exception in

the case of Dr. Channing. This exception is the best proof of the rule. When surprise was expressed at this, Mr. Smith remarked that no one need be surprised who had seen the Constitution of the Board. The following extract from the sixth article of the Constitution of the Board, contains the only theological qualification found in the Constitution. All the teachers to be received under the patronage of the Board, shall be of unexceptional moral and religious character.' No one who reads the name the Board has assumed unto itself, or the above qualifications of teachers found in the Constitution, would imagine that it was to be exclusive, illiberal or intolerant."

This Board of NATIONAL Popular Education take it upon themselves to say, that young women who receive the Unitarian, Swedenborgian, or Universalist interpretation of the Scriptures, are not women of unexceptionable moral and religious character. Their religious belief thus unchristianizes their character so far as the influence of this Board can go. It says plainly, we want to get possession of the Schools of the West for sectarian ends. The enterprise that at first seemed to us magnificent, now becomes an exhibition of the meanness to which religious men can degrade themselves as sectarians. What they call National is purely SECTARIANISM and Bigotry.

No SYMBOL OF HOPE AT FUNERALS.

The New York Independent (orthodox) has the following in an article relating to death and funerals: "And when one is buried, a few carriages fall behind a grim and heathenish hearse, black as midnight; for hearses are made as all our funeral habits are, to express but one unbroken sorrow, as if a Christian heart had but that experience! It is a shame that eighteen hundred years of Christianity yet leave Death grim and dismal as a devil's cave. To be sure there is sorrow, but there is sorrow ended as well as begun : there is release, there is rest, there is victory, as well as bereavement. And yet no badge of hope, not one sign of cheer, not a color or insignia of immortal joy and beauty mingled with the black crape and plumes of Christian heathenism about the tomb !"

Nothing can show better than this, how far Christians have gone from primitive Christianity.

COMPREHENSIVE RELIGION.

In the Memoir of Wordsworth there is a lengthy letter on Education addressed to a clergyman, from which we take the following sensible para

graph "I will allow, with you, that a religious faculty is the eye of the soul; but, if we would have successful soul-occulists, not merely that organ, but the general anatomy and constitution of the intellectual frame must be studied; for the powers of the eye are affected by the general state of the system. My meaning is, that piety and religion will be the best understood by him who takes the most comprehensive view of the human mind, and that, for the most part, they will strengthen with the general strength of the mind, and that this is best promoted by a due mixture of direct and indirect nourishment and discipline. For example, Paradise Lost,' and Robinson Crusoe,' might be as serviceable as Law's Sermon Call,' or Melmoth's Great Importance of a Religious Life;' at least, if the books be all good, they would mutually assist each other."

HOPE IN THE DUNGEON.

A writer in the American Messenger, (orthodox) has visited the Auburn, N. Y. State Prison, and found a gleam of hope for the prisoners after he visited the Chapel, and then adds :-"What provision for rebel man, undone by his own depravity and guilt! He may in repentance and faith find pardon and forgiveness in a just as well as merciful God, and even in his dungeon sing with the joy of a renewed soul, and enjoy the bright anticipations of heaven."

On reading this, the thought leapt up in our mind, Has God any dungeon worse than man thus makes for his fellow man? Is there any realm of existence where repentance may not come and be available for the restoration of man to the Divine favor? We believe in the negative. Herein the Universalist vindicates God, the author of every provision by which man shows or receives mercy. No part of eternity is worse than the Auburn State Prison. Hope is as universal as the presence of God.

THE ASSERTION OF A PRINCIPLE.

When we assert a right principle we are upholding something that is of perpetual consequence. It is not a strife for the hour. We cannot tell what great objects it will ultimately effect beyond the end to which we are directing it. It was thus with the Colonists when they, in their puritan zeal, denied, as they ought to have denied, the claim (not request) of the English ministers to enter their pulpits in Boston. These ministers came from a church in which the Puritans had no representation; and should the Puritans

allow one claim, other claims would follow, till their religion would be crushed as a heresy and a treason. To deny their pulpits to those who claimed them for another Church, was to assert the principle which, when fully developed, made every man a hero and every hero a giant in the struggle of the Revolution.

"The controversy upon the intention of the English ministry to send a Bishop to America, contributed as much as any other cause," says John Adams, "to arouse attention to the claims of Parliament." And this spirit we need now, when too much liberty is thought to be owned by the people, when men read their Bibles with fear, and women with trembling,-when the horror of endless ruin threatens the deluded mind as the penalty of studying the Holy Scriptures without the intervention of a Church, or a Creed. We need to lift our ideas of nobility into the atmosphere in which St. Luke lived, and which breathed into him the spirit of heaven as he wrote of the Berean Jews in contrast with their brethren at Thessalonica :--" These were more NOBLE." And why more noble? Had they better parentage? moved they in "higher circles?" were they more wealthy, or had they more of the honors of this world? Of all this we know nothing. The history tells us nothing of all this. But why St. Luke considered the Berean Jews more noble than the Thessalonians, is given in plain terms,-they were more noble in that they heard the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether the things asserted by the Apostle were so. Their nobility was in their intellectual and moral freedom. They did not fear the frown of the Synagogue. They did not hear with trembling, they did not fear to exercise liberty of thought, but with ALL readiness of mind they received the word, took it home, and weighed it in the balance of the Scriptures.

With such nobleness of mind let us hear, and compare with the Scriptures whatever, in sincerity and earnestness, may be preached to us of Jesus and the Resurrection. None can preach as Paul preached at Athens. The glory of that day cannot return. We can claim no "apostolic succession." We ask only like him, in spirit,—the spirit of love, consistency, and persuasion,-to preach Jesus and the Resurrection. We are ready to hear any one who will thus preach to us; but to treat us as those who must give up reason and judgment, and bow to the mere assertion of authority, is idle, for by such treatment a moral evidence is given that nothing of the Apostolic spirit has passed upon such preachers. They do not belong to the nobility of Bereans.