the state of the inhabitants of this frontier as not only most anxious, but even "heart-rending." But all efforts made by the Governor to prevent war, proved quite fruitless. The Kaffirs were aware of their strength, and of the weakness of the colony; and they embraced the first favourable opportunity of assault. The last interview took place on December 19th; and on the 24th of the same month the first shot was fired in British Kaffraria, and by the Kaffirs. The results were most disastrous, in the commencement, to the army, and to the colony. A force exceeding five hundred was attacked in the Kuskama bush, and suffered the loss of many men and much ammunition. A small party of the 45th Regiment were all killed, and their bodies mutilated. The military settlements of Woburn, Johannesburg, and Auckland, were all taken by stratagem, and the male inhabitants put to death. Next came the attack on this town of Fort-Beaufort; but here, through the determined courage of the few English, and the large Fingoe force, the enemy received his first check. In this defeat we all acknowledged the hand of God, and the whole frontier considered it a most important achievement, strongly calculated to curb Kaffir violence. The daring of the aggressors in the first movement arose from a knowledge of the extensive combination that had been formed, including numerous and most formidable tribes, all influenced by the powerful Umlanjene; whose predictions and denunciations wrought upon their superstitious hopes and fears with amazing effect. Blinded with infatuation, they rushed down upon our troops, and subsequently into the colony at almost every part of the frontier extending from Graham's-Town to the Orange river, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles. The hostile force was from twenty to thirty thousand men. To a gracious Providence alone must the deliverance of the colony be attributed; for, from the extensive combination on the part of the natives, and the great want of unity among the colonists,-from the great strength of the armed force of the enemy, and the weakness of the colonial defences, all things encouraged them to believe that they would accomplish the prediction of Umlanjene, and drive the white man into the sea.—The Rev. John Ayliff. HINTS FOR COLOURED GLASS WINDOWS. THAT this art (of staining glass) is making great strides, there can be no question. Many of the old secrets hitherto as much hidden as the philosopher's stone, or the aurum potabile, seem soon likely to be discovered. Our deep red now approaches near to that which throws a ruby light upon the Lady Chapel at Wells, and the pure semi-opaque white may soon not be beyond our reach. Modern glass-painting is as much a new art as oil-painting was in the time of Van Eyck; and the great number of new churches has caused a demand for it which the revival of mediæval feeling has tended to increase. Every one familiar with our old "petrified religion," the cathedrals of England, remembers with delight those windows, mystic even in their number, "Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, As are the tiger-moth's deep damask'd wings, A shielded scutcheon glows with blood of Queens and Kings;" a windows that seem the spangled blossoms of that great stony net-work, that twisted round roof and pillar, that shoots thick leafage round the capitals, and branched arching over vault and doorway. If ever there shone " light that never was on sea or shore," it is that rainbowradiance that sheds "rose-bloom and liquid amethyst" on tomb and gravestone, like glory emanating from the wings of unseen angels. Glass-painters should go for their designs, not to books of rules and parallelopipeds, but where the Monks went,-to nature; and to nature with the same faith and ardour that the Monks went, guided by better taste and greater skill. The Monks took the oak-bough and the vine-branch, turned them to stone, and wound them round their columns. They plucked the honeysuckle, the wild rose, the violet, and the trefoil, and carved their semblances to decorate their stringcourses and their pateræ. They gathered flowers from the English hedges as the Greek took the acanthus from his mountain-foot, or as the Egyptian took his water-plants or his palm-twigs. Our botany shows what attentive lovers these hooded men were of nature, and how they sanctified each blossom with a pious name; blending so many with associations of the Virgin, and making the snowdrop and the lily her emblems,-Virgin's Bower, Our Lady's Mantle, Cross-Flower, St. John's Wort, Herb St. Christopher, and many others. The use of legends as decorations thoughtful and more suggestive than mere angular crystallisations is also too much overlooked in the present day. The most beautiful ornaments of the Alhambra are those gilded sentences from the Koran that fill every intersection. The Egyptian walls were but ever-expanded leaves of a religious book, and in which every letter has a written beauty of colour appealing to the eye that speaks every language as to the mind that may know but one. The Monks, too, encircled their tabletombs with Lombardic-" Jesu merci, prie pour l'alme," flourished their shields with protests of knightly honour and daring, or introduced scrolls winding like immense horns from the mouths of Saints and Kings. Old English still gives us the opportunity of devotional sentences, and curt proverbs suitable to particular places. There still exist a thousand flowers, capable of myriads of combinations, which have never yet been employed by the artist. The beautiful curves and ellipses of the leaves of trees alone are sufficient to enrich a new order of architecture. The world was dead to the Monkish thinker as it is to us. He had Roman traditions weighing down his imagination, and Byzantine uglinesses goggling from every altar. He trampled over these, and strode out to the forest and the field. Here all was new, and yet eternal; perpetually changing, and yet grounded in stability. Grimly and faithfully he went to work, and at once the most poetical and suggestive of all styles of architecture rose to light: one not grounded on the finality and repose of abstract beauty, like the Greek; but full of aspiration to that heaven towards which pointed its spires, its towers, and its pinnacles. We hope that the professors of this interesting branch of art will step forward a little more boldly, and believe that the human imagination has still depths never fathomed either by the Roman or the Monk.—Athenæum. THE OBLIGATIONS OF EDUCATED MEN. Extracted from an Address delivered to the Students at the close of an Examination at the Mount-Allison Academy, Sackville, New-Brunswick, by the Rev. John Allison. LEARNING, next to religion, imposes obligations so sacred that they cannot be violated with impunity. These arise, in the first place, from its very nature; the object of education being, to furnish the mind with means and facilities for greater usefulness. In its application to academical or collegiate studies, it ought to be considered not so much an end, as a means to be employed for the accomplishment of a purpose higher than itself. Full many a youth is deluded with the idea that education is the act of attaining an eminence, toilsome indeed in its ascent, but from which he can enjoy his own reveries, and look down with contempt on the vulgar herd who are not so highly favoured as himself. There are those who devote themselves to the pursuit of literature merely for the pleasure they thence derive; while others seek knowledge, that by its attainment they may be furnished with the means of augmenting their own influence, or of adding to their wealth. It is true that influence and wealth are very generally found associated with superior intelligence; and, as the reward of application and industry, they may not be undesirable: but it is sordid in the extreme to make education subservient only to the aggrandisement of self; it is degrading it from its high and holy office, it is making that which ought to be the instrument of the highest good to man, the menial drudge of selfish passion. It is said that that prince of Kings, Alfred, wept when he found that his want of learning prevented him from opening the treasures of the Latin tongue to his people. We know to what heights of self-sacrificing effort an enlightened philanthropy has been able to elevate the great benefactors of mankind, and over what obstacles it has borne them onward to their angelic achievements. This ambition to mitigate the woes and augment the happiness of others, should pour all its generous impulses into the bosom of the student, and become the sleepless monitor of his waking, working hours. The world has a right to expect from educated men an acquaintance with its wants; and being furnished with the means of accelerating the march of improvement, and of mitigating the woes of our race, it should not be disappointed in this expectation. A brilliant light now quenched in death, but one whose example and words will live for many years, wrote as follows:-" Educated men are the natural sources and guides of popular opinion; and they are bound to stand forth boldly, to battle with prejudice, and breast the inundation of passion, though at some risk of being swept away by its fury." The heathen poet considered man but little more than an elevated brute; and what has been considered his celebrated description of a human being is but the eulogy of an infidel: Os homini sublime dedit; cœlumque tueri A Christian education gives a nobler view of man: it treats of his spiritual nature, and enforces duty in view of the immortality of his existence. The education which fails to recognise the spiritual relations of man a grand absurdity. He who has received a correct education, has learned that mind is something beyond the result of a mere skilful material organization: he has learned that it is a flame from heaven, purer than Promethean fire, that vivifies and energises the breathing form; that it is an immaterial essence, a being that quickens matter, and imparts life, sensation, and motion to the intricate framework of our bodies; which wills when we act, attends when we perceive, • "He gave man a sublime countenance, and bade him survey the sky, and raise his face, erect, towards the stars." |