loudly condemn what we esteem our brother's error.

He has made

little progress in the path of righteousness, who has not learned the exercise of that charity which covereth all mistakes, and some transgressions.

'Peace be with all, whate'er their varying creeds-
With all who send up holy thoughts on high.'

I am sadder if not wiser than when, some five years since, 1 first attended a Shaker meeting. To-day is my second visit, but to another society. Then, it may be, I smiled with the rest at the eccentricities of Shaker devotion. Now a blush for human nature is prompted, when a grave elder addresses the gentiles to remind them of the obvious truths, that this is a house and an occasion of public worship; that those who do not like the mode, may stay away; but that there can be no excuse for merriment in those who voluntarily intrude upon such worship. This is pertinent unanswerable. And yet, to the unthinking, there is a spice of the ludicrous in the look of things, when, after half an hour's intermingled exhortation and singing the whole congregation of the chosen not only joining in the latter, but keeping time to it with their handsthe suggestion let us begin to labor' is made, and the brethren proceed to divest themselves of their drab frock-coats, as though the work were just commencing in earnest. I should have stated before, that the brethren and sisters come in at separate doors, and take seats at the opposite ends of the hall, facing each other. When they rise to engage in worship, the seats are all removed and piled against the walls. The two parties are now formed, each in a sort of half moon, the right line within two or three feet of each other. The men have at first laid away their wide-brimmed drab hats, which could not be kept on during service; the women have put away their nice plain bonnets, and appear in close-fitting caps, of snowy purity and whiteness.

And now, at a signal, the 'music' strikes up, to a wild, irregular chant, and the 'labor' begins. The first movement is very simple, consisting of a lively dancing march by the whole company, up to the farther wall of the temple, and then back to the close vicinity of the spectators. The evolutions are performed with extreme regularity and dexterity. I would have said 'surprising,' but it is not surprising that people do that to perfection which they have been doing every week, and perhaps every day, of their lives. We all know that habit gives great dexterity to the artist and the mechanic, as well as the juggler and the sharper. But I, who have none of this skill in Shakerism, may better spare myself the attempt to describe all the doings of which I was a patient and deeply interested spectator.

The only thing strongly provocative of the ludicrous, was the disparity of age among the performers. To see ponderous and solemn three-score-and-ten executing a vigorous and quick gallopade, or double-shuffle, for the glory of God, side by side with sedate fifty, athletic thirty, nimble sixteen, and the tender disciple of but eight or ten years-all in perfect time and exact accordance with the movements of matrons -no, maidens is the legitimate presumption of discreet fifty, mature six-and-thirty, and damsels of winning

-

--

sixteen was a spectacle at which to smile or sigh, as the heart should dictate. I may have smiled once or twice, but I am sure I sighed much oftener. They tell me (for I did not look that way) that the daughters of men who were there as spectators, indulged to excess their constitutional propensity to giggle, at what they esteemed the absurdities of Shakerism. Let me assure you, damsels, that this evinced neither good taste nor right feeling. It puts you, beside, in undesirable company. very I have seen blockheads so duЛl, so gross, so wholly animal, as to aggravate their uncouth features into a grin, at the spectacle of a water baptism.

Wilder and louder swells the music; quicker and more intricate becomes the 'labor.' Now all are prancing around the room, in double file, to a melody as lively as Yankee Doodle; now they perform a series of dexterous but indescribable manœuvres; now they balance; now whirl one another round in a fashion that I could describe, if I knew any thing of our Pagan amusement of dancing. But here is a hiatus in my education. I only know that some of the 'labor'* here performed, would do no discredit to the few ball rooms I have glanced into; far exceeding the performances in those, in point of regularity and precision, and not falling short in grace. The ball-dress is of course rather in contrast; but the unmistakable earnestness and devotion of these self-mortifying worshippers renders theirs by far the most interesting, and I will hope edifying, performance. We hear of people crucifying their sinful affections, every where; it is here alone that we are permitted to observe the process. Here alone do we overlook the battle-ground of a war against all carnal impulses; the holy war of King Shaddai upon Diabolus; the sanctifying devotions of a community of men and women who have cast from them for ever the master passion of humanity, and esteem themselves already enrolled in the company of the just made perfect. Tell me not, Skeptic, that this may be a pretence or a delusion; say not to me that beneath those homely garments beat hearts susceptible of other fires than those of devotion; pretend not that, beneath yon close-fitting cap and dainty green spectacles, you catch the twinkle of an unquiet eye. Out on your false judgment, Sir Skeptic! You are but looking into the depths of your own spirit, where all impurities luxuriate in rank profusion; and that maiden, as she swells with her gentle voice the sounding chorus,

'This is the path our Saviour trod,
This is the only way to God!'

is as certain that she has crucified all earthly affections, and is indeed in the 'only way to God,' (bigot, blush not for her, but for yourself!)

* APROPOS of the 'labor' of dancing. A kind friend, (the prince-regent of story-tellers, who-a murrain on him!-always forestalls the market with the latest and best,) having our personal welfare much at heart, gave us, on a recent occasion, the annexed admonitory anecdote, as we stood waiting for a side-couple,' in a quadrille, at a private evening party: A sumptuous ball,' said he, 'was once given by the English officers and residents at Canton, at which the Chinese officers, civil and military, were guests. The mandarins, and other dignified disciples of Confucius, looked on, with the gravity of so many oysters. They understood nothing of the poetry of motion,' and the rigadoons and pirouettes, the gallopades and mazourkas, appeared to them altogether too laborious for amusement. They could in no wise comprehend it; and finally, after great consideration, a solemu Taou-kwang inquired, with evident commiseration, of one of the English officers, why the barbarians' did not make their servants do that! One should see, of a winter's evening, (from the street, without hearing the music,) the curled and pluméd male and female heads bobbing up and down, through the frost-covered windows of Masonic Hall, to realize fully the celestial spectator's idea of labor lost.' EDS. KNICKERBOCKER.

as is the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury. I will stake my head, that her conviction is stronger and clearer than theirs.

The power of excitement and of sympathy is too hackneyed a theme for any thing beyond a passing remark. But here the working of the principle upon the unsophisticated may be observed to perfection When the labor' commenced, the maidens of tender yet womanly years evidently felt a little of something like embarrassment at the presence, though accustomed, of so many strangers. Their conviction that they were doing God service was not shaken, yet there was evidently a feminine dread of misapprehension and ridicule; a spice of it only, and chastened down to the neighborhood of nothing, but still a feeling which no breast of innate modesty and truth can at once calmly and wholly discard that their worship would seem amusingly absurd to that mob of profane eyes and godless hearts: especially as they passed round in procession, within a breath of the masculine multitude, who formed a wall in close proximity to their path, you could mark the rising of a faint tinge of ruddier hue upon those else colorless and passionless features, evincing that their existence had not yet become all spiritual or vegetable; that, beneath that leaden coffin of the heart, yet lurked the embers of human emotion. The vestals of riper maidenhood condescended to no such struggling weakness. They had no thought but for One. But as the exercises proceeded, and devotion became enthusiasm, all distinction was lost; and the young and fair were only remarkable among their elders by their excess of fervor, or perhaps of physical power. At length, what was a measured dance becomes a wild, discordant frenzy; all apparent design or regulation is lost; and grave manhood and gentler girlhood are whirling round and round, two or three in company, then each for him or herself, in all the attitudes of a decapitated hen, or an expiring top. The scene and its interest grow painful; and I am glad that the crazy woman has at length made her way back into the tabernacle, and commenced her strangely shrill and discordant music. The spell is dissolved; an elder proclaims that 'the assembly is dismissed;' the multitude escape their merriment, and I to my meditation.

TO AN EYE.

FROM THE COMMON-PLACE BOOK OF A LOVER.

VOL. XI.

Its glance reveals a seraph there abiding:
When falls the lash, its liquid lustre hiding,
As cower the quivering wings of timid dove,
Lapped into languor, dearly, tenderly -
The heart does homage, wondering at the spell
That thus so silently, and yet so well,

Has bound it in a trance of ecstacy:

--

Oh! he on whom that eye in kindness bends,

May laugh at faithless men - he has a world of friends!

68

THE BARD.

'Igneus est ollis vigor, et cælestis origo!'

THAT sacred beam which warms the poet's mind,
E'en by himself can never be defined,

And, like the darkness that in Egypt dwelt,
May not delineated be, but felt:

It is not of the heart, nor of the head,

But of the inmost soul, sustained and fed
By that ambrosial feast to Israel given,

Gathered on earth, but sent direct from heaven!

But envy not, contented sons of clay,
The rare possessor of this glorious ray;
'Tis a devouring flame, a torch to illume
And lighten others, but itself consume.
Even thus it seems to gross corporeal eyes:
But know that he that bears it, death defies.
He asks nor sculptured brass nor breathing bust,
To cancel earth to earth, and dust to dust;'
More dear to him his very throes and pains,
Than all ambition gives, or avarice gains;
Throes that no common offspring bring to birth,
All time their heritage, their home all earth;
The fire that wastes his strength, and day by day,
As sword the scabbard, wastes his frame away,
Lights up a lamp that richer gifts bestows

Than all the wealth that famed Aladdin's shows;

A lamp whose dying rays the brightest rise,

And their last glimmerings beam an earnest of the skies.

LETTERS

OF LUCIUS M. PISO, FROM ROME, TO FAUSTA, THE DAUGHTER OF GRACCHUS, AT PALMYRA.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE PALMYRA LETTERS.'

LETTER THREE.

You are right, Fausta, in your unfavorable judgment of the Roman populace. The Romans are not a people one would select to whom to propose a religion like this of Christianity. All causes seem to combine to injure and corrupt them. They are too rich. The wealth of subject kingdoms and provinces finds its way to Rome; and not only in the form of tribute to the treasury of the empire, but in that of the private fortunes amassed by such as have held offices in them for a few years, and who then return to the capital, to dissipate in extravagances and luxuries, unknown to other parts of the world, the riches wrung by violence, injustice, and avarice, from the wretched inhabitants whom fortune had delivered into their power. Yes, the wealth of Rome is accumulated in such masses, not through the channels of industry nor commerce; it arrives in bales and shiploads, drained from foreign lands by the hand of extortion. The palaces are not to be numbered, built, and adorned, in a manner surpassing those of the monarchs of other nations, which are the private residences of those, or of the descendants of those, who for a few years have presided over some distant province, but in that brief time, Verres-like, have used their opportunities so well as to return home oppressed with a wealth which life proves not long enough to

spend, notwithstanding the aid of dissolute and spendthrift sons. Here have we a single source of evil equal to the ruin of any people. The morals of no community could be protected against such odds. It is a mountain torrent tearing its way through the fields of the husbandman, whose trees and plants possess no strength of branch or root to resist the inundation.

Then in addition to all this, there are the largesses of the emperor, not only to his armies, but to all the citizens of Rome; which are now so much a matter of expectation, that rebellions I believe would ensue were they not bestowed. Aurelian, before his expedition to Asia, promised to every citizen a couple of crowns; he has redeemed the promise by the distribution, not of money but of bread, two loaves to each, with the figure of a crown stamped upon them. Beside this, there has been an allowance of meat and pork — so much to all the lower orders. He even contemplated the addition of wine to the list, but was hindered by the judicious suggestion of his friend and general, Mucapor, that if he provided wine and pork, he would next be obliged to furnish them fowls also, or public tumults might break out. This recalled him to his senses. Still, however, only in part, for the other grants have not been withdrawn. In this manner is this whole population supported in idleness. Labor is confined to the slaves. The poor feed upon the bounties of the emperor, and the wealth so abundantly lavished by senators, nobles, and the retired proconsuls. Their sole employment is, to wait upon the pleasure of their many masters, serve them, as they are ready enough to do, in the toils and preparations of luxury, and what time they are not thus occupied, pass the remainder of their hours at the theatres, at the circuses, at games of a thousand kinds, or in noisy groups at the corners of the streets, and in the market-places.

It is become a state necessity to provide amusements for the populace, in order to be safe against their violence. The theatres, the baths, with their ample provisions for passing away time, in some indolent amusement or active game, are always open, and always crowded. Public or funeral games are also in progress, without intermission, in different parts of the capital. Those instituted in honor of the gods, and which make a part of the very religion of the people, are seldom suspended for even a day. At one temple or another, in this grove or that, within or without the walls, are these lovers of pleasure entertained by shows, processions, music, and sacrifices. And as if these were not enough, or when they perchance fail for a moment, and the sovereign people are listless and dull, the Flavian is thrown open by the imperial command, the Vivaria vomit forth their maddened and howling tenants, either to destroy each other, or dye the dust of the arena with the blood of gladiators, criminals, or captives. These are the great days of the Roman people; these their favorite pleasures. The cry through the streets in the morning of even women and boys, 'Fifty captives to-day for the lions in the Flavian!' together with the more solemn announcement of the same by the public heralds, and by painted bills at the corners of the streets, and on the public baths, is sure to throw the city into a fever of excitement, and rivet by a new bond the affections of this bloody people to their indulgent emperor.

Hardly has the floor of the amphitheatre been renewed since the