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rise, they have at length broken over at this spot, and have torn the mountain down, from its summit to its base. The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature corroborate the impression.

3. But the distant finishing which nature has given to the picture is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the foreground. It is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous. For, the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth, blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach, and participate in the calm below.

4. Here the eye ultimately composes itself; and that way, too, the road happens actually to lead. You cross the Potomac above its junction, pass along its side through the base of the mountain for three miles, its terrible precipices. hanging in fragments over you, and within about twenty miles, Fredericktown, and the fine country round that. This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic. Yet here, as in the neighborhood of the Natural Bridge, are people who have passed their lives within half a dozen miles, and have never been to survey these monuments of a war between rivers and mountains, which must have shaken the earth itself to its center.

LIV.-INFLUENCE OF SLAVERY.

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

1. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to

imitate it, for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive, either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion toward his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present.

2. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst passions, and, thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other!

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3. For if the slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another, in which he must lock the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavors to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of a people, their industry also is destroyed. For, in a warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. This is so true, that, of the proprietors of slaves, a very y small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor.

4. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis,-a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift

of God?-that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revo lution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute. which can take side with us in such a contest.

5. What an incomprehensible machine is man, who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict upon his fellow-man a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose! But we must wait with patience the workings of an over-ruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing a light and liberality among their oppressors, or at length by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality.

LV.-CHRISTIAN IN DOUBTING CASTLE.

JOHN BUNYAN.

1. Now, there was not far from the place where they lay, a castle, called Doubting Castle, the owner whereof was Giant Despair, and it was in his grounds they were now sleeping; wherefore he, getting up in the morning early, and walking up and down in his fields, caught Christian and

Hopeful asleep in his grounds. Then with a grim and surly voice, he bid them awake, and asked them whence they were, and what they did in his grounds? They told him they were pilgrims, and that they had lost their way. Then said the giant, you have this night trespassed on me, by trampling and lying on my ground, and therefore you must go along with me.

2. So they were forced to go, because he was stronger than they. They also had but little to say, for they knew themselves in a fault. The giant, therefore, drove them before him, and put them into his castle, into a very dark dungeon, nasty and stinking to the spirits of these two men. Here they lay from Wednesday morning till Saturday night without one bit of bread, or drop of drink, or light, or any to ask how they did; they were therefore here in evil case, and were far from friends and acquaintance. Now in this place Christian had double sorrow, because it was through his unadvised haste that they were brought into this distress. 3. Now, Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence; so when he was gone to bed, he told his wife what he had done, to wit, that he had taken a couple of prisoners and cast them into his dungeon for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her also what he had best do further to them. So she asked what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound; and he told her. Then she counseled him that when he arose in the morning, he should beat them without mercy.

4. So when he arose he getteth him a grievous crab-tree udgel, and goes down into the dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating them, as if they were dogs, although they never gave him a word of distaste; then he falls upon them, and beats them fearfully, in such sort that they were not able to help themselves or turn them upon the floor. This done,

he withdraws, and leaves them there to condole their misery, and to mourn under their distress; so all that day they spent their time in nothing but sighs and bitter lamentations.

5. The next night, she, talking with her husband about them further, and understanding that they were yet alive, did advise him to counsel them to make away with themselves. So when morning was come, he goes to them in a surly manner, as before, and perceiving them to be very sore with the stripes that he had given them the day before, he told them that since they were never like to come out of that place, their only way would be forthwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison. For why, said he, should you choose life, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness? But they desired him to let them go. With that he looked ugly upon them, and rushing to them had doubtless made an end of them himself, but that he fell into one of his fits (for he sometimes in sun-shiny weather fell into fits), and lost for a time the use of his hands; wherefore he withdrew and left them as before, to consider what to do. Then did the prisoners consult between themselves whether it was best to take his counsel or no; and thus they began to discourse: Chr. - Brother, what shall we do? The life that we now live is miserable. For my part I know not whether it is best to live thus, or to die out of hand. "My soul chooseth strangling rather than life," and the grave is more easy for me than this dungeon! Shall we be ruled by the giant?

6. Hope. Indeed our present condition is dreadful, and death would be far more welcome to me than thus forever to abide; but yet let us consider; the Lord of the country to which we are going hath said, "Thou shalt do no murder"; no not to any man's person; much more then are we ferbidden to take his counsel to kill ourselves. Besides, he that

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