land, he could only rule over free men; the shadow of his scepter could no longer be polluted by falling on a slave. The law was appointed to take effect on the first of August, 1834. And now let us turn aside and see this great sight, the emancipation in the solemn midnight hour of about 800,000 souls. The 31st of July came, 1834; it was emancipation eve. The negroes returned from their plantation labors at the usual hour. About ten o'clock they left the estates, and crowded the different chapels to hear their beloved missionaries; and their masters, to their honor be it recorded, ungrudgingly allowed them this privilege; it was certainly a graceful act on their part in this kindly manner to bid farewell to slavery; and all the more kindly considering the fears and excitements that had previously prevailed. Now was seen the wide extent of missionary influence, and its conservative power while it was still the foster-father of liberty; for though all the slaves were not converted, the Christian portion guided the movements of the whole, and brought all to the house of prayer. It was "a night much to be remembered," not by a destroying angel's visit, for it was the Lord's night of mercy, and in every island, "praise waited for God in Zion." The old Methodist watch-night service was employed on a new occasion, such as Mr. Wesley never contemplated when he held his first watch-night service at Kingswood, near Bristol. When wanting a few minutes of midnight, every one knelt down in silence; (O, who that was never a slave can conceive the emotions of slaves on the eve of such a tremendously glorious event to them ;). at length the clock struck the solemn sound-one-two-threefour-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve;-and they were free. Slavery was over. "Ethiopia" received her freedom on her knees; the chains fell off while she was literally "stretching out her hands unto God." They knelt down slaves, they rose up freemen. Their first utterances when free were thanksgivings to Jehovah, the several congregations in those many isles singing this noble doxology: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise him above ye heavenly host, Praise, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." What music was that asceding to heaven at the midnight hour, in that unclouded atmosphere? Such strains for such an event had never been heard since the foundations of the earth were laid! One could imagine that angels suspended their songs in amazement at this new wonder which the Lord had done, and this wondrous praise, till as it ceased below they burst forth with new raptures of "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men." One could imagine (perhaps it is not imagination) that "the spirits of the just made perfect" hushed their harps to listen; and that then prophets, and apostles, and Coke, and glorified missionaries, and all the redeemed, "cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb:" "for he hath saved the souls of the needy; he hath redeemed their soul from deceit and violence; and precious hath their blood been in his sight." So ended slavery in the British empire! Were not a people who could so receive freedom prepared to be free? We were not then in the West Indies, but in Southern Africa; and we witnessed the religious termination of slavery in that country. Business was suspended, and all the places of worship were opened in the morning in Graham's Town. Early in the afternoon an Auxiliary Bible Society was formed; and the day closed with a public prayermeeting of all denominations united in the Wesleyan Chapel. At five in the afternoon, the colonists held a public tea-meeting. And now a most pleasant incident occurred; we witnessed the gratifying spectacle. Twelve young men genteely clothed, who had that day receive emancipation, came forward with a request that they might be allowed to perform their first act as freemen, by voluntarily waiting on the company as servants, in honor of the nation which had made them free! Were not men of such nobility of mind worthy of liberty? Since emancipation, slaveholders have themselves emerged into freedom; the slave has lost his fetters, and the master has lost his fears. Incendiarism and insurrections are now unknown. "They sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, and none maketh them afraid." This is the crowning compensation for doing the thing that is right in the eyes of the Lord, and is quite equal in value to the twenty millions of wealth which a guilty nation laid as an expiatory offering upon the altar. Every man now finds his place in the commonwealth settled, not by his descent, or the color of his skin, but by his ability and worth; instead of a rivalry of race there is a rivalry of merit; and Lord Nelson's noble motto, "Let merit bear the palm," has ample scope for illustration. When the struggle was over, it was well said by Mr. Buxton, at a Missionary Meeting in London: "Let it not be supposed that we give the praise of the abolition of slavery to Mr. Wilberforce, or to Mr. Macaulay, or to any man. I know the obliga tions we owe them; but the voice of the Christian people of England was the instrument of victory. Its author, however, was not of human race, but, infinite in power; what His mercy decreed, His fiat effected.” ART. III.-THE POET AND THE DREAMER. 1. The Faerie Queen, by EDMUND SPENSER. 2. The Pilgrim's Progress, by JOHN BUNYAN. LANGUAGE, as well as dress, has its fashion. A simple mode of expression would have been thought rustical by the admirers of Sidney's Arcadia, and have been considered as ungraceful as the scanty drapery and shorn tresses of the Empress Josephine's court would now appear in that of the English queen. It was once deemed a refinement in France to call dinner "the meridianal necessity," and the sun "the amiable illuminator," when, instead of being asked to seat yourself, you were told to "fulfill the desire which the chair has to embrace you," when horses were called "plushed coursers," the ear "the gate of hearing," the cheek "the throne of modesty," and the hat “a buckler against the weather." Akin to this frivolous pedantry were the "taffeta phrases" at one time so much in vogue in the court of Queen Elizabeth, which Sir Walter Scott ridiculed in the character of Piercie Shafton, the euphuist. But this perversion of language was only temporary. A better taste soon prevailed, and the age which produced Bacon, Shakspeare, and Spenser, spurned such fantastic jargon. Still the language was vitiated by foreign intermixture when the Pilgrim's Progress appeared. It is a book in which the soul of the writer was fused, and it drew other hearts to it, as a blossoming plant attracts the elements which nourish it. Written in the familiar idiomatic style which the people understood, it took hold of the popular mind with a grasp which has never been relaxed. Yet, admirable as its pure and vigorous Saxon is now esteemed, there was a time when the Pilgrim's Progress was looked upon as a book for the cottage and the nursery alone. The wits of Queen Anne's day smiled to hear Dr. Johnson say that the narratives of De Foe and Bunyan, two authors who had much in common, and who now sleep together in Bunhill fields, were the only ones he had ever read which he could have wished longer. Even after such a testimony from the great critic, Cowper dared not allude to Bunyan except enigmatically, lest he should provoke the facile sneer. Southey had not then written the life of "the glorious old dreamer" in his lucid English, nor had Macaulay placed him beside the author of Paradise Lost, and pronounced theirs the only creative minds of the latter part of the seventeenth century. To use one of Bunyan's own similitudes, "the precious stone was covered over with a homely crust." Art has since encircled it with costly settings, and genius has given form and color to its beautiful creations. It has been said that "allegory has defects so inherent and unconquerable that the English taste turns from it in its fairest forms;" and the question has been asked, "If Spenser could not bend the bow, what hand may try?" What the poet, with all his classic lore and rich command of words could not always effect, has been done by an untrained and unlettered mind. By instilling into his story the vital element of his own experience he gave it a human interest, and "in making the imaginations of his own mind become the personal recollections of another's," he accomplished what is said to be the highest miracle of genius. Others have vainly essayed to follow the illiterate tinker. Their imitations have been as brief as the rose's bloom; while the remark which has been made of Chaucer's Pilgrims is yet more true of Bunyan's: "their garments have not decayed, neither have their shoes waxed old," after a travel of many years. This book is now translated into every living language, not excepting the barbarous Feejeean; and the interest it excites in minds of the highest grade, proves the truth of Coleridge's assertion, that "intense study of the Bible will prevent any writer from being vulgar in point of style." It also confirms the principle which Ruskin would inculcate when he says that "Tintoret, although the most powerful, was not the most perfect of painters, because he was destitute of religious feeling, with its accompanying perception of beauty." "Such flowers can grow In that sole garden where Christ's brow dropp'd blood." But while the Pilgrim's Progress is now prized by the cultivated and intelligent, its peculiar charm is for those who first read it in the golden days of childhood. Then truly it becomes, "Bound up like pictures in our book of life," and its scenes and actors are not visions, but obvious realities. We still remember how perfect and entire those forms of beauty and of terror stood out before us, as we read the wondrous drama for the first time, by a lonely lamp on a winter's eve. How they played and wrestled with the flickering shadows on the wall! How wild they looked by the varying fire-light! Sunny faces were there and dragons horrible; forms dark as midnight, and others as brilliant as the figures of an ancient missal. Dreaded was the order to go to bed, for our way lay through passages of shadowy gloom, like the valley in which Christian fought with Apollyon, and our flesh crept at the thought that the monster might possibly stand in bodily shape before us. And Great Heart, the chivalrous knight, the spiritual Bayard, sans peur, sans reproche, who alternately helped the women, comforted the children, fought giants, and backed the lions, how strangely he became identified in our minds with the itinerant minister who laid his hand upon our head and talked to us of heaven! How we longed to travel with him to the Celestial City; to sit in the arbor on the side of the hill, and drink of the spring at its foot; to go with him to the Palace Beautiful, there to sleep in the Chamber of Peace; and to walk in the King's Garden among "trees of frankincense and all chief spices." The holy man did not know what a material image of heaven his words evoked, and could not dream that we had long been inquiring in what direction the Celestial City lay, while we only received jeering answers in return. We put aside the book as our literary stores increase, but we are apt to return to it when the mind awakens to strong spiritual influences. If the panorama then appears "less gross and bodily" it is not less impressive. We looked at it first through the eyes of the imagination, but now we follow the author's advice, and 66 Lay the book, and head, and heart together." The picture-gallery of our childhood becomes the monitor and guide of our youth, and we place it only below the One Inspired Book. We study them together, and the Pilgrim's Progress seems like "a casket of jewels of which we have just found the key." We find an echo of heaven in the words.. The writer appears like an instrument touched by an unseen hand, and we think of Blake, the dying artist, who, with melodies supernaturally sweet upon his lips, continually exclaimed, "They are not mine, my beloved! my Catharine, they are not mine!" We have often known this book of power called for by the dying believer; we have heard him ask to have Christian's passage over the river read to him when his feet were touching its waves, and he has spoken of the comfort it gave him, while he wondered that one in the fullness of his strength could so truly describe the shadowy land. The Lord has said, "What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." It seemed a grievous thing, in days when vice was rampant, and virtue needed all the aid the preached word can give, that Bunyan's tongue of fire should be silenced, and that he |