morality, the same precisely which led to the disastrous shipwreck of that people, as well as of the most illustrious heathen nations. It was this very idea, it seems to us, that man is subject, in his body, intellect and soul, to the laws of nature and society, which he is bound to obey, in the alternative of all sorts of disasters and woe which Christ came to annihilate and replace by a quite different and immeasurably superior gospel. No one doubts that there are physical laws, which the body must heed or perish; no one doubts that the intellect must be educated and trained; no one doubts that the requirements of social duty are important; but to make obedience to these laws and requirements the supreme and intimate aim of life-to make them the subject of any standard external to his inmost self, i. e. to God, is to pervert the very essence of the Christian view. It is to wander about still among the old handwriting of ordinances, to get mystified among the temple-caves of Indian devoteeism, or linger and dream in the groves of Greece. It is to forget revelation, and to blink the most signal fact of all history, that the Christ has come. We have no spacenor is this the place to enforce at length what we conceive to be the true Christian view of human life and destiny; but we may hint, we trust without offence, that a scientific organization of society,-the establishment of a true universal church among men, is the only issue out of the anarchy, the vice, the indigence, and the ignorance, which characterize the present condition of the world. Those erratic thinkers, the Socialists, have dimly discerned this, but they have done so mostly in the way of sentiment, and not science. The great desiderata now, are a perfect science of politics, and a perfect science of political economy, to ordain just relations among men, and surround them with abundance. And when these ends are achieved, but not till then, individuals will be enabled to live a life which shall be eminently noble and divine. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness says the Scripture, "and all other things will be added thereunto."

-Our young friend, BAYARD TAYLOR, is clearly the traveller of the nineteenth century. Bruce, Mungo Park, Ledyard, Captain Cook, and Burckhardt, were scarcely his rivals in going about the world, and only Humboldt, Madame Pfeifer, and our countryman, Dr. Kane,

have seen as much of its surface. He was scarcely fledged when he walked over Europe, and made a pleasing book out of the things he saw. We next heard of him in California, about which he gave us another book; then in Mexico; shortly afterwards in Central Africa; and, finally, in India, China, and Japan. The North and South Poles, we presume, are the only remaining regions that could furnish his eye with any novelty. He is the modern Ulysses, who has seen "many countries, many men," but with a double superiority over his ancient prototype-firstly, in that he is a young man; and secondly, in that the traversable globe is vastly bigger now than it was then. A small corner, only, of Europe, Asia, and Africa, was known to the Greeks, whereas now we have the whole of these continents quite accessible, with an entire new continent on this side the water, and innumerable islands of the sea, to say nothing of Australia and the hyperborean realms.

Mr. Taylor's latest book, the Journey. to Central Africa, is an instalment, we suppose, upon those other works which are to carry us through Persia, Hindostan, China, and Japan. It narrates so much of his more recent travels as refer to Egypt, Arabia, and Abyssinia. Beginning at Alexandria, it takes us up the Nile to the junction of the Blue and White Niles, and then along the White Nile, almost to the Indian Ocean. Every step of the way we find full of interest. A clear, simple, and truthful narrative, gives us confidence in our guide, while an undercurrent of strong yet genial enthusiasm keeps alive and animated. Mr. Taylor is one of those travellers who never overwhelms us with learning, gathered out of books; who never nauseates us by an excess of sentiment; who never tries how finely he can write; and, what is rare, who never astounds us by miraculous adventures and whopping lies. He tells us what he has seen in a sensible, direct way, and yet with sufficient clearness and fulness of detail to enable us to become interested compagnons du voyage. His nature is too earnest to allow him to indulge in wit, though the descriptions are by no means deficient in vivacity. His eyes are keen and observant, and when he does give us a sketch of natural scenery, the picture is sure to be well drawn and truly colored. A more decided love of romance would impart a greater piquancy and flavor to his stories, but, on the

other hand, might impair their truthfulness. He is the least of a grumbler, too, of all the travellers that we know. The untoward incidents and mishaps of his journeys he receives with a sort of imperturbable complacency that shows the true philosopher. There are men who could not go from Bond street to the Battery without being ruffled in temper a dozen times; yet he circumnavigates the earth, and we do not discover a single instance in which he loses his self-command. It must be a delightful serenity that he enjoys; or, is he too wise to put the smaller miseries of his adventures in books? Even the fleas and bugs which swarm in the narratives of other travellers, do not seem to have the power to bite and sting him into asperity. Has he travelled so much as to get casehardened? We should like to extract several passages from the Journey, but have no space.

-Quite a different style of traveller from B. T., is our countryman, Pliny Miles, whose Nordurfari; or, Rambles in Iceland, we have been reading, while Fahrenheit has been above 90 in the shade, by way of a refrigerant. Our last acquaintance with Iceland was made through Miss Cooper's translation of Madame Ida Pfeiffer, whom Mr. Miles attacks in a very ungallant manner, calling her "the old Austrian dame-that Madame Trollope, the conceited Ida Pfeiffer- the woman that runs all over the world, and writes books about what she sees, and much that she does not see; and, because the Governor of Iceland would not be bored by her shallow Highness, then she pens all manner of false and libellous stories of the most kind, hospitable, unoffending race of people that the sun shines upon. The best comment that can be made on her book is, that she describes her journey to Mount Hekla, and her ascent to the summit, when the people here tell me she never put her foot on the mountain at all."

The Icelanders are Mr. Miles's pets; his memories of that hyperborean region, which has always presented itself to our imagination as one of eternal frosts and snow, are altogether sunny and pleasant, and he will permit no other traveller to pen a word to its discredit. It is only against Madame Pfeiffer the Icelandic traveller whom he directs his angry shafts, and not Madame Pfeiffer the intrepid lady, to whom he would resign his seat in an omnibus, like any other American. Two of a trade, even when of different

sexes, cannot agree even in Iceland. Bating this little outburst of irritability, Mr. Miles is anything but an ill-natured traveller; his fault lies in the opposite direction, and his jokes are so incessant that they become wearisome. His Icelandic experiences and reports give one a strong desire to visit that outer verge of civilization, to look into the crater of Mount Hekla, and pic-nic among the Geysers. Excepting that the sun rises at two o'clock in the morning, that forest trees are only three or four feet high, and that the earth produces no fruits, Iceland is like any other place. The people smoke tobacco, drink coffee, read novels, and talk politics, like other Christians; and Mr. Miles tells us that on his return from Mount Hekla he was met by his reverend friend, president of the college in Reykjavik, who addressed him in the following remarkable manner::-The old gentleman was "a drinking of his wine" at the hotel, it appears-" My dear Yankee friend, how are you; and how is old Mount Hekla, and the big Geyser, and all the little Geysers; and how are my friends, the Sulphur Mountains?" A greeting like this from the president of an Icelandic university rather unsettles one's notions of the gravity of the Norsemen. "Well, you are one of the boys," continued the president, "and I wish I could go across the Atlantic and see Niagara with you.'

Mr. Miles's book is rather an entertaining one, as well as instructive; but it is open to criticism as a literary production. It is dedicated to the author of Festus, and plentifully embellished with quotations from that strange poem. One of the chapters has a quotation from Shakespeare, which is credited to "The Ghost of Old Mr. Hamlet," and there are many more such niaiseries which do not give us a high idea of the author's gravity and seriousness of purpose. Such instances of flightiness tend to diminish our confidence, and leave us in doubt whether certain parts of the book be truth or fiction. But we thas confess our indebtedness to Mr. Miles for giving us a clearer and more familiar account of what Iceland actually is than any we have ever read before. If he does not always write with good taste, he is never dull; and, for our own part, we freely forgive him all his attempts at fun, for the sake of the information we have gained from his good-natured and rollicking narrative.

HE story of a great soldier and states

THE

man, whose blood was shed in the cause of American Independence, should be better known to those who to-day reap the harvest of the stormy seedtime. A Swedish hero, who bore the standard of the young Republic through fire and slaughter in the enemy's midst, merits at our hands at least American record. A "bubble," 66 Reputation," blown at the cannon's mouth in a foreign war for freedom, and soaring in after years high in the Swedish sun, reflects prismatic beauty from a long career of warlike chivalry, patriotism, and everready wisdom in council.

No one of the gallant foreigners who came to our aid attained in after life dignity and honor more elevated at home than Field-Marshal Count von Stedingk. He was a general-in-chief of the armies of his country. He led them in the field to victory and honor, and won in his long career the affection of four successive kings. For a quarter of a century he was their ambassador at courts whose policy and empire pressed hardest upon Sweden. In war and in diplomacy, wherever there was doubt and danger, Stedingk for forty years was ever sumVOL. IV.-23

moned to the lead. When the fortunes of Sweden had sunk in shadow, tottering, it seemed to ruin, Stedingk was named to a Regency, guiding the helm of State. At another time, a soldier again, we find him upholding the fortune of Swedish arms throughout a campaign, disastrous, it seems, everywhere where he was not; and when later the Northern Nations banded themselves against Napoleon, Stedingk, at the head of thirty thousand Swedes, first of the allied army to force the gates of Leipsic, marched with his crown prince victorious to the Rhine. Selected next to meet the great negotiators of the day, he signed his name to a broad page of history-a memorable peace of Paris. And when at last, surrounded by children and grandchildren, a white-haired patriarch of ninety years lay down to sleep, his heart and conscience reposed in the memories of almost a century. Heart and conscience reflected almost without a pang upon the long retrospect. He had loved his neighbor; he had lived among events whose great history bears his name honorably throughout the page; and his weeping sovereign came to lay upon his tomb a wreath of oak and laurel.