witness the horrible deed. Some little incident excited the suspicion of Burton, and he induced her to confess to him the whole transaction. It was obvious enough that suspicion would fasten upon him, the well-known lover of her who had been so deeply injured. He was arrested, but succeeded in persuading her that he was in no danger. Circumstantial evidence was fearfully against him, and he soon saw that his chance was doubtful; but with affectionate magnanimity, he concealed this from her. He was convicted and condemned. A short time before the execution, he endeavord to cut his throat; but his life was saved for the cruel purpose of taking it away according to the cold-blooded barbarism of the law. Pale and wounded, he was hoisted to the gallows before the gaze of a Christian community. knife and a pan of potatoes, and began to prepare them for his dinner. The quarrelsome couple were in a more violent altercation than usual; but he sat with his back toward them, and being ignorant of their language, felt in no danger of being involved in their disputes. But the woman, with a sudden and unexpected movement, snatched the knife from his hand, and plunged it in her husband's heart. She had sufficient presence of mind to rush into the street, and scream murder. The poor foreigner, in the meanwhile, seeing the wounded man reel, sprang forward to catch him in his arms, and drew out the knife. People from the street crowded in, and found him with the dying man in his arms, the knife in his hand, and blood upon his clothes. The wicked woman swore, in the most positive terms, that he had been fighting with her husband, and had stabbed him with a knife he always carried. The The guilty cause of all this was almost frantic, unfortunate German knew too little English to unwhen she found that he had thus sacrificed himself derstand her accusation, or to tell his own story. to save her. She immediately published the whole He was dragged off to prison, and the true state of history of her wrongs, and her revenge. Her keen the case was made known through an interpreter; sense of wounded honour was in accordance with but it was not believed. Circumstantial evidence public sentiment, her wrongs excited indignation was exceedingly strong against the accused, and the and compassion, and the knowledge that an innoreal criminal swore unhesitatingly that she saw him cent and magnanimous man had been so brutally commit the murder. He was executed, nowith-treated excited a general revulsion of popular feelstanding the most persevering efforts of his lawyer, No one wished for another victim, and she John Anthon, Esq., whose convictions of the man's was left unpunished, save by the dreadful records innocence were so painfully strong, that from that of her memory. day to this, he has refused to have any connexion with a capital case. Some years after this tragic event, the woman died, and, on her death-bed, confessed her agency in the diabolical transaction; but her poor victim could receive no benefit from this tardy repentance; society had wantonly thrown away its power to atone for the grievous wrong. ing. Few know how numerous are the cases where it has subsequently been discovered that the innocent suffered instead of the guilty. Yet one such case in an age is surely enough to make legislators pause before they cast a vote against the abolition of Capital Punishment. Many of my readers will doubtless recollect the But many say the Old Testament requires blood tragical fate of Burton, in Missouri, on which a for blood.' So it requires that a woman should be novel was founded, which still circulates in the li- put to death for adultery; and men for doing work braries. A young lady, belonging to a genteel and on the Sabbath; and children for cursing their pavery proud family, in Missouri, was beloved by a rents; and If an ox were to push with his horn, young man named Burton; but unfortunately her in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, affections were fixed on another less worthy. He and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed left her with a tarnished reputation. She was by a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and his nature energetic and high-spirited, her family were owner also shall be put to death.' The commands proud, and she lived in the midst of a society which given to the Jews, in the old dispensation, do not considered revenge a virtue, and named it honor. form the basis of any legal code in Christendom. Misled by this popular sentiment, and her own exThey could not form the basis of any civilized code. cited feelings, she resolved to repay her lover's If one command is binding on our consciences, all treachery with death. But she kept her secret so are binding; for they all rest on the same authority. well, that no one suspected her purpose, though she purchased pistols, and practiced with them daily. Mr. Burton gave evidence of his strong attachment by renewing his attentions when the world looked most coldly upon her. His generous kindness won her heart, but the softening influence of love did not lead her to forego the dreadful purpose she had formed. She watched for a favorable opportunity, and shot her betrayer when no one was near, to They who feel bound to advocate capital punishment for murder, on account of the law given to Moses, ought, for the same reason, to insist that children should be executed for striking or cursing their parents. It was said by them of old time, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you resist not evil.' If our eyes were lifted up,' we should see, not Moses and Elias, but Jesus only. MOMENT S. BY RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. I lie in a heavy trance, With a world of dream without me; In waving bands about me. Appear in this phantom lair, Of Truth known elsewhere The world is wide; these things are small; A prayer in an hour of pain Be heard by the heart alone ;- By a light that is lit above, The beauty of love The world is wide; these things are small; They may be nothing, but they are all. A sense of an earnest will To help the lowly living, And a terrible heart.thrill If you have no power of giving;— An arm of aid to the weak ;-— A friendly hand to the friendless ;- Kind words so short to speak, But whose echo is endless The world is wide; these things are small; The moment we think we have learnt By which we could stand unburnt Long-lost and strangely riven, The world is wide; these things are small; A CHRISTIAN HOME. BY R. W. EVANS. Oh great, unspeakable is the blessing of a godly home. Here is the cradle of the Christian. Hence he sallies forth for encounter with the world, armed at all points, disciplined in all the means of resistance, and full of hope and victory under his heavenly leader. Hither he ever afterwards turns a dutiful and affectionate look, regarding it as the type and pledge of another home. Hither, too, when sore wounded in the conflict, he resorts to repair his drooping vigor. Here when abandoned by the selfish sons of this world, he finds, as in a sanctuary, the children of God ready with open arms to re. ceive him. And here the returning prodigal, enfolded in the embrace of those who know not of the impurities of the world with which he has been mixing, feels all at once his heart burst with shame and repentance. Merciful God, what a city of refuge hast thou ordained in the Christian Home! A true Christian Home can scarcely be said to die. It may disappear from the eyes of flesh, but its better parts, those which are truly valuable, belong also to our everlasting home. It has but to throw off the elements of flesh, and it becomes at once that spiritual home to which eternal bliss is appended. All its occupations are preparations for another life; all its actions converge to that point; its society originating in the flesh, has long ago been established in the spirit. Its inmates regard each other as companions of the life to come, and deride the power of any separation which this world can effect. They look with contemptuous pity upon the miserable expedient for union after death to which worldlings resort, the laying up their bones in a costly vault; thus making a mockery of home in a disgusting assemblage of mouldering skeletons. Being one in spirit, whether in the same grave or with half the world between, they are still in union. Rectory of Valehead. DEMAGOGUE ARTS. BY LORD BROUGHAM. Lord Brougham concludes his sketches of the celebrated English radical, John Wilkes, with the following just and forcible passage on the arts of the Demagogues : "The fall, the rapid and total declension of Wilkes' fame-the utter oblivion into which his very name has passed for all purposes save the remembrance of his vices-the very ruins of his reputation, no longer remaining in our political history -this affords also a salutary lesson to the followers of the multitude-those who may court applause of the hour, and regulate their conduct towards the people, not by their own sound and conscientious opinions of what is right, but by the desire to gain fame by doing what is pleasing, and to avoid giving the displeasure that arises from telling wholesome, though unpalatable truths. Never man more pandered to the appetites of the mob, than Wilkes; never political pimp gave more uniform contentment to his employers. Having the moral and sturdy English, and not the voluble and versatile Irish, to deal with, he durst not do or say as he chose himself: but was compelled to follow that he might seem to lead, or at least to go two steps and so rise to wealth and to power? When he penned the letter of cant about administering justice, rather than join a procession to honor the accession of a prince whom in a private petition he covered over thick and threefold with the slime of his flattery, he called himself a "manœuvre." When he delivered a rant about liberty before the reverent judges of the land-he knew full well that he was not delighting those he addressed, but the mob out of doors, on whose ears the trash was to be echoed back. When he spoke a speech in parliament, of which no one heard a word, and said aside to a with his followers, that he might get them to go, royal bounty forge to themselves and their country three with him. He dared not deceive them grossly, chains, that they also may make the ladder they clumsily, openly, impudently-dared not tell them are to mount by, than the patriot of the city did to opposite stories-in the same breath-give them delude the multitude, whose slave he made himself, one advice to.day, and the contrary to-morrow-that he might be rewarded with their sweet voices, pledge himself to a dozen things at one and the same time; then come before them with every pledge unredeemed, and ask their voices, and ask their money on the credit of as many other pledges, for the succeeding half year-all this, with the obstinate and jealous people of England, was out of the question; it could not have passed for six weeks. But he committed as great, if not as gross, frauds upon them; abused their confidence as entirely, if not so shamelessly; catered for their depraved appetites in all the base dainties of sedition and slander, and thoughtless violence, and unreasonable demands, instead of using his influence to guide their judg-friend who urged the fruitlessness of the attempt at ment, improve their taste, reclaim them from bad courses, and better their condition by providing for their instruction. The means by which he retained their attachment were disgraceful and vile-like the hypocrite, his whole life was a lie. The tribute which his unruly appetites kept him from paying to private morals, his dread of the mob, or his desire to use them for his selfish purposes, made him yield to public virtue: and he never appeared before the world without the mask of patriotic enthusiasm or democratic fury;-he who, in the recesses of Mendenham Abbey, and before many witnesses, gave the eucharist to an ape, or, prostituted the printing press to multiply copies of a production that would dye with blushes the cheek of an impure. making the house listen- Speak it I must, for it has been printed in the newspapers this half hour" he confessed that he was acting a false part in one place to compass a real object in another; as thoroughly as ever minister did when affecting by smiles to be well in his prince's good graces, before the multitude, all the while knowing that he was receiving a royal rebuke. When he and one confederate, in the private room of a tavern, issued a declaration, beginning, "we the people," and signed by the order of the meeting,"-he practised as gross a fraud upon that people, as ever peer or parasite did, when affecting to pine for the prince's smiles, and to be devoted to his pleasure. in all the life they led consecrated to the furtherance of their own." AN EVENING SONG. BY FRANCES K. BUTLER. Good night, love! May heaven's brightest stars watch over thee! So dark and still, It is the abuse, no doubt, of such popular courses, that we should reprobate. Popularity is far from being contemptible; it is often an honourable acquisition; when duly earned, always a test of good done or evil resisted. But to be of a pure and genuine kind, it must have one stamp-the security of one safe and certain die; it must be the popularity that follows good actions, not that which is run after. Nor can we do a greater service to the people themselves, or read a more wholesome lesson to the race, above all, of rising statesmen, than to mark how much the mock-patriot, the mob-seeker, the parasite of the giddy multitude, falls into the very worst faults for which popular men are wont the most loudly to condemn, and most heartily to despise, the courtly fawners upon princes. Flattery, indeed! obsequiousness! time serving! What courtier of them all ever took more pains to soothe an irritable or to please a capricious prince, than Wilkes, to assauge the anger or gain the favor by humoring the prejudices of the mob? Falshood, truly intrigue! manœuvre! Where did ever titled suitor for promotion lay his plots more cunningly, or spread more wide his net, or plant more pensive-My knees are bowed, my hands are clasped in prayer, ly in the fire those irons by which the waiters on Good night, dear love!—God keep thee in his care! Charm thee from ill! My heart is hovering round thy dwelling-place, Good night, love! Soft lullabies the night winds sing to thee! VOICES OF THE TRUE HEARTED. No. 3. BY LILIAS GRIEVE. PROFESSOR WILSON. There was fear and melancholy in all the glens and valleys that lay stretching around, or down upon St. Mary's Loch, for it was the time of religious persecution. Many a sweet cottage stood untenanted on the hill side and in the hollow; some had felt the fire, and been consumed, and violent hands had torn off the turf roof from the green shealing of the shepherd. In the wide and deep silence and solitariness of the mountains, it seemed as if human life was nearly extinct. Caverns and clefts in which the fox had kenneled, were now the shelter of Christian souls-and when a lonely figure crept stealingly from one hiding place to another, on a visit of love to some hunted brother in faith, the crows would hover over him, and the hawk shriek at human steps, now rare in the desert. When the babe was born, there might be none near to baptize it; or the minister, driven from his kirk, perhaps poured the sacramental water upon its face from some pool in the glen, whose rocks guarded the persecuted family from the oppressor. Bridals now were unfrequent, and in the solemn sadness of love many died before their time, of minds sunken, and of broken hearts. White hair was on heads long before they were old; and the silver locks of ancient men were often ruefully soiled in the dust, and stained with their martyred blood. But this is the dark side of the picture. For even in their caves were these people happy. Their children were with them, even like the wild flowers that blossomed all about the entrances of their dens. And when the voice of psalms rose up from the profound silence of the solitary place of rocks, the ear of God was open, and they knew that their prayers and praises were heard in heaven. If a child was born, it belonged unto the faithful; if an old man died, it was in the religion of his forefathers. The hidden powers of their souls were brought forth into the light, and they knew the strength that was in them for these days of trial. The thoughtless became sedate the wild were tamed-the unfeeling were made compassionate-hard hearts were softened, and the wicked saw the error of their ways. All deep passion purifies and strengthens the soul, and so it was now. Now was shown and put to the proof, the stern, austere, impenetrable strength of men, that would neither bend nor break-the calm, serene determination of matrons, who, with meek eyes, and unblanched cheeks, met the scowl of the murderer-the silent beauty of maidens, who, with smiles, received their death-and the mysterious courage of children, who, in the inspiration of innocence and spotless nature, kneeled down among the dew-drops on the green sward, and died fearlesly by their parents' sides. Arrested were they at their work, or in their play, and with no other bandage over their eyes, but haply some clustering ringlets of their sunny hair, did many a sweet creature of twelve summers, ask just to be allowed to say her prayers, and then go, unappalled, from her cottagedoor to the breast of her Redeemer. In those days had old Samuel Grieve and his spouse suffered sorely for their faith. But they left not their own house, willing to die there, or to be slaughtered whenever God should so appoint. They were now childless; but a little grand-daughter, about ten years old, lived with them, and she was an orphan. The thought of death was so familiar to her, that although sometimes it gave a slight quaking throb to her heart in its glee, yet it scarcely impaired the natural joyfulness of her girlhood, and often, unconsciously, after the gravest or the sadest talk with her old parents, would she glide off with a lightsome step, a blithe face, and a voice humming sweetly some cheerful tune. The old people looked often upon her in her happiness, till their dim eyes filled with tears-while the grandmother said, "If this nest were to be destroyed at last, and our heads in the mould, who would feed this young bird in the wild, and where would she find shelter in which to fauld her bonnie wings?" Lilias Grieve was the shepherdess of a small flock, among the green pastures at the head of St. Mary's Loch, and up the hill-side, and over into some of the little neighboring glens. Sometimes she sat in that beautiful church-yard, with her sheep lying scattered around her upon the quiet graveswhere, on still, sunny days, she could see their shadows in the water of the Loch, and herself sitting close to the low walls of the house of God. She had no one to speak to, but her Bible to read-and day after day the rising sun beheld her in growing beauty, and innocence that could not fade, happy and silent as a fairy upon the knowe, with the blue heavens over her head, and the blue lake smiling at her feet. "My Fairy," was the name she bore by the cottage fire, where the old people were gladdened by her glee, and turned away from all melancholy thoughts. And it was a name that suited sweet Li- | net, and then down into a coral cave in a jiffey to lias well-for she was clothed in a garb of green, their mermans-for mermaid, fairy, or mere flesh and often, in her joy, the green graceful plants that and blood women, they are all the same in that regrew among the hills were wreathed round her hair. spect-take my word for it." So was she dressed on Sabbath-day, watching her The fallen ruffian now rose, somewhat humbled, flock at a considerable distance from home, and sing- and sullenly sat down among the rest. Why," ing to herself a psalm in the solitary moor-when quoth Allan Sleigh—“I wager you a week's pay, in a moment a party of soldiers were upon a mount you don't venture fifty yards, without your musket, on the opposite side of a narrow dell. Lilias was in- down yonder shingle where the fairy disappeared ;" visible as a green linnet upon the grass-but her and the wager being accepted, the half-drunken felsweet voice had betrayed her-and then one of the low rushed on toward the head of the glen, and was soldiers caught the wild gleam of her eyes, and as heard crushing away through the shrubs. In a few she sprung frightened to her feet, he ealled out, "A minutes he returned, declaring, with an oath, that roe-a roe-see how she bounds along the bent!" he had seen her at the mouth of a cave, where no and the ruffian took aim at the child with his mus- human foot could reach, standing with her hair all ket, half in sport, half in ferocity. Lilias kept ap-on fire, and an angry countenance, and that he had pearing and disappearing, while she flew as on tumbled backward into the burn, and been nearly wings, across a piece of black heathery moss, full of drowned. "Drowned!" cried Allan Sleigh. pits and hollows—and still the soldier kept his mus- drowned-why not? a hundred yards down that bit ket at its aim. His comrades called to him to hold glen, the pools are as black as pitch, and deep as his hand, and not shoot a poor little innoceut child-hell-and the water roars like thunder-drownedbut he at length fired-and the bullet was heard to whiz past her fern-crowned head, and to strike a bank which she was about to ascend. The child paused for a moment, and looked back, and then bounded away over the smooth turf-till, like a cushat, she dropt into a little birchen glen, and disap. peared. Not a sound of her feet was heard-she seemed to have sunk into the ground-and the soldier stood, without any effort to follow her, gazing through the smoke toward the spot where she had vanished. A sudden superstition assailed the hearts of the party, as they sat down together upon a ledge of stone. "Saw you her face, Riddle, as my ball went whizzing past her ear-curse me, if she be not one of those hill-fairies, else she had been as dead as a herring-but I believe the bullet glanced off her yellow hair, as against a buckler." By St. George, it was the act of a gallows-rogue to fire upon the creature, fairy or not fairy-and you deserve the weight of this hand-the hand of an Englishman, you brute, for your cruelty!"—and uprose the speak er to put his threat into execution, when the other retreated some distance, and began to load his musket-but the Englishman ran upon him, and with a Cumberland gripe and trip, laid him upon the hard ground with a force that drove the breath out of his body, and left him stunned and almost insensible. "That serves him right, Allan Sleigh-shiver my timbers, if I would fire upon a petticoat. As to fairies, why, look ye, 'tis a likely place enow for such creatures-if this be one, it is the first I ever saw, but as to your mermaids, I have seen a score of them, at different times, when I was at sea. As to shooting them, no-no-we never tried that, or the ship would have gone to the bottom. There have I seen them sitting on a rock, with a looking-glass, combing their hair, that wrapped round them liks a "Ay, why not, you English son of a deer stealer?” “Why not-because who was ever drowned that was born to be hanged?" Aud that jest caused universal laughter-as it is always sure to do, often as it may he repeated in a company of ruffians, such is felt to be its perfect truth and unanswerable simplicity. After an hour's quarrelling, and gibing, and mutiny, this disorderly band of soldiers proceeded on their way down into the head of Yarrow, and there saw, in the solitude, the house of Samuel Grieve. Thither they proceeded to get some refreshment, and ripe for any outrage that any occasion might suggest. The old man and his wife hearing a tumult of many voices and many feet, came out, and were immediately saluted with many opprobrious epithets. The hut was soon rifled of any small articles of wearing apparel, and Samuel, without emotion, set before them whatever provisions he had-butter, cheese, bread, and milk-and hoped they would not be too hard upon old people, who were desirous of dying, as they had lived, in peace. Thankful were they, in their parental hearts, that their little Lilias was among the hills-and the old man trusted, that if she returned before the soldiers were gone, she would see from some distance their muskets on the green before the door, and hide herself among the brakens. The soldiers devoured their repast with many oaths, and much hideous and obscene language, which it was sore against the old man's soul to hear in his own hut; but he said nothing, for that would have been wilfully to sacrifice his life. At last one of the party ordered him to return thanks in words impious and full of blasphemy, which Samuel calmly refused to do, beseeching them, at the same time, for the sake of their own souls, not so to offend their great and bountiful Preserver. "Confound the old canting covenanter-I will prick him with my bayonet if he won't say grace;" and the blood trickled |