habits and dispositions. They carry with them the remembrance of their present life; they still keep up a delightful social intercourse, and converse of the things which happened to them when alive. Anchises is found by Eneas in a green and flowery vale, entertaining his fellow-spirits with a recital of his own exploits, and the various fortune of his friends. They harbour their resentments for affronts, or ill treatment received in the present life. Of this we have plentiful illustrations-among others, in the case of Dido, Ajax, and Agamemnon. Eneas espies Dido wandering in the great wood, and approaching, addresses her: Unhappy Dido! It was then true, too true, the report I heard of your death. Alas! that I should have been the cause of that death. I swear by the stars, by the great gods, that I left you against my will; but the same gods compelled me to do so who now compel me to visit these gloomy regions. But stop, do not run; why do you fly from me? I converse with you for the last time.' But in vain; no longer is she charmed by the sight of that face, or by the sound of that voice, though it be heard in the melting accents of love. Her love, once so fervent, so strong, which led her to die upon the funeral pile by her own hands, is turned to hatred, and she heeds neither his cries nor his tears, but leaves him to indulge in bitter, it may be, yet fruitless lamentations. And so Ajax, when Ulysses finds him among the shades, and entreats him in the most passionate strains to forget their former differences and become reconciled, departs without deigning to say a single word in reply. So also Agamemnon, who, it will be recollected, was slain by the contrivance of his adulterous wife, vents his spleen to Ulysses against her, and, because of her, against the whole female sex, in the following words: My wife has disgraced all the women that shall ever be born into the world, even those who hereafter shall be innocent. Take care how you grow too fond of your wife. Never tell her all you know. If you reveal some things to her, be careful you keep others concealed from her. You indeed have nothing to fear from your Penelope; she will not use you as my wife has treated me. However, take care how you trust a woman.'

The dead retain their affection for their friends left behind, and take a high degree of interest in their welfare, and are greatly rejoiced at hearing of their prosperity. Of the former we have a most touching example in the case of the mother of Ulysses, who, as soon as she sees him, with tears bursts out, O my son!' Of the latter we have a fine example in the case of Achilles, who inquires with the greatest earnestness after his son, and when he learns that his heart alone is firm, when that of every other hero quakes for fear, is so delighted and proud of him that he stalks with more than ordinary majesty over the meadow. From this interest which the dead are supposed to take in the affairs of the present world, doubtless originated the custom of the invocation of saints.

We have to notice the state of the dead as happy or miserable. On this point, the ideas of men have been vague, especially in the infancy of their intellectual cultivation. Their state was represented in early times as not wholly miserable, and still as not altogether desirable. Curse the shades,' Achilles tartly replies, when congratulated by Ulysses upon his singular good fortune in that he was adored by the Greeks while alive, and reigned over the shades after death; talk not to me of reigning over them, for I had rather be the veriest day-labourer that walks the earth. No rewards and punishments were supposed to be allotted to them, at least in places specially designed for each. Tartarus was the place of punishment of the giants alone, and Elysium was the abode only of heroes or demi-gods. But the conceptions of the Greeks gradually advanced in distinctness and correctness, until at length they came to suppose that men were admitted to Elysium and sent down to Tartarus. They even then, however, seem to have supposed only the grossest crimes were there punished. In Homer only one is mentioned, that of perjury. As they advanced in intellectual cultivation, and their moral ideas came to higher perfection, they supposed other crimes were punished, and finally that every virtue

met its due reward, and every vice its due punishment; such, in imitation of Plato and other philosophers, is the representation of Virgil. The ideas of the ancient Israelites seem to have been in like manner indistinct and defective, so much so, that some have contended that there is no allusion at all to the future existence of the soul in the Old Testament.

It may be proper here briefly to notice, in what future rewards and punishments were supposed to consist. We have already spoken of Virgil's description of Elysium: it was the counterpart of Italy, a sensual paradise, where heroes reposed from their toils after they had shuffled off their mortal coil, and amused themselves as they saw fit, in sports and conversation. Of the nature of the punishments the soul is to endure, the Platonists had a very beautiful theory. They suppose every passion which has been contracted by it during its residence in the body, remains with it in a separate state, and that the soul, in the body or out of the body, differs no more than the man does from himself when he is in his house or in open air. When, therefore, the obscene passions in particular have once taken root and spread themselves in the soul, they cleave to her inseparably, and remain in her for ever after the body is cast off and thrown aside. Thus the punishment of a voluptuous man after death consists in this: he is tormented with desires which it is impossible for him to gratify, solicited by a passion that has no objects adapted to it. He lives in a state of invincible desire and impotence, and always burns in the pursuit of what he always desires to possess.' Virgil has given this idea a beautiful poetic dress:

They lie below on golden beds display'd,

And genial feasts with regal pomp are made. The queen of furies by their side is set, And snatches from their mouths the untasted meat, Which, if they touch, her hissing snakes she rears, Tossing her torch, and thundering in their ears.' Such a punishment, too, seems to have been drawn in the description of Tantalus, who was punished with the rage of an eternal thirst, set up to the chin in water, which fled from his lips whenever he attempted to drink it. The sensible images by which the happiness or misery of the soul in the future world is represented, are in all cases those things which are looked upon with the greatest desire or dread by those that make use of them. The Jews' figure for the consummation of future bliss, is the garden of Eden; that for the intensity of future misery, the being consigned to a fire, of which that kindled in the valley of Hinnom, continually burning and smouldering, is a faint emblem. The Indian imagined his heaven an immense hunting-ground, abounding in every kind of most precious game, where the deer doth bound in her gladness free,' and the buffalo roams over the vast prairie. He is said to have had a singular idea of future punishment as respects the Spaniards, drawn from their greediness for gold: he supposed them placed either in a molten sea of this metal, or else the same, red-hot, continually poured down their throats.

Another point which deserves notice, is the forms of the dead. They are supposed to bear an exact resemblance to their forms when alive, so that they are at once easily recognised. They are enlarged, however, in size, to giant proportions, and are shadowy; they are seen, but cannot be felt. Of this many illustrations might be given. Eneas attempts to embrace his father, but, to his surprise, finds nothing but air, thin air. A spirit is indeed before him, and he discerns the form thereof, but it is something which cannot be felt. Achilles attempts to embrace the shade of his friend Patroclus, but it eludes his embrace, and in astonishment he exclaims, Heavens! every thing in Hades is spirit and shadow; of substance there is none.' Ulysses, when he attempts to embrace his mother

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I ardent wish'd to clasp the shade
Of my departed mother; thrice I sprang
Toward her, by desire impetuous urged,
And thrice she flitted from between my arms,
Light as a passing shadow or a dream.'

So

We have to notice one other idea, that of transmigration.

A belief in this, under different forms, is found to have prevailed among many nations. Some have supposed the soul to pass from one human body into another, some into the bodies of beasts, or even into plants and stones. The belief in this doctrine,' says Knapp, seems to have rested at first upon a certain supposed analogy in nature, where one body is always observed to pass into another, and even when it seems to perish, only alters its form and returns in different shapes. Or it may have sprung in part from the almost universal idea that every thing in the whole creation is animated by a soul, especially everything possessing internal life and power of motion.' This doctrine was a prominent article in the religious creed of India, of some of the nations of our own continent, and of Egypt; and from this latter country it is supposed to have been introduced by Pythagoras into Greece, and thence into Rome. The doctrine as held by the philosophers of these last countries was, that 'the souls of men exist in a separate state long before their union with their bodies, and that upon their immersion into flesh, they forget everything which passed in the state of pre-existence, so that what we call knowledge is nothing else but memory, or the recovery of those things which we knew before.' The poetical version of the same as given by Virgil is, that the souls, to prepare themselves for living upon the earth, come to the river Lethe, and quaff the waters of oblivion. Other nations, particularly in India and other parts of the East, have supposed that the soul passes into the vilest animals. singular story, arising from this belief, is given in the Asiatic Researches, from the literary annals of the Burmese. A priest died, and, according to custom, his fellowpriests proceeded to divide among themselves his effects. When they came to the robe and were about to cut it a louse was discovered, and showed, by his frequent going and coming, and by his extraordinary gestures, that the division of the robe would be no wise agreeable to his feelings. The priests, all astonishment, consulted God upon the occasion, from whom they received information of the character of this louse; that the soul of the priest had passed into it, and were commanded to delay for seven days their intended division, that being the length of time allowed for the life of a louse among the Burmese.'

A

From the doctrine of transmigration, as thus held, may have arisen the idea that it is unlawful to kill animals, and that whoever does so is to suffer death, and also to be punished hereafter, according to the nature of the animal killed, the manner of killing it, and the use made of it. Those who kill oxen, swine, goats, and other such animals, are to suffer between two burning mountains two thousand years; those who kill animals by immersing in boiling oil or water, are to have their bowels consumed by fire entering their mouths, and this is to last four thousand years; and all who, besides killing, skin, roast, or eat these animals, are to be transfixed on an iron spit, while they are cut and torn by the demons, and this is to last sixteen thousand years. This prohibition and punishment would seem very natural, upon the supposition that the soul passes into these animals, for in killing or eating them, oue might kill and eat his neighbour, or even his own father. This idea is beautifully expressed by Ovid, as translated by Dryden:

Thus all things are but altered, nothing dies,
And here and there the embodied spirit flies;
By time or force or sickness dispossessed,
And lodges where it lights in bird or beast;
Or hunts without till ready limbs it find,
And actuates those according to their kind;
From tenement to tenement is toss'd,
The soul is still the same, the figure only lost.
Then let not piety be put to flight,
To please the taste of glutton appetite,
But suffer inmate souls secure to dwell,
Lest from their seats your parents you expel;
With rapid hunger feed upon your kind,

Or from a beast dislodge a brother's mind.'

Hence too, perhaps, the care taken in some parts of the East of old worn-out or useless animals, such as old horses, oxen, cows, dogs, cats, monkeys, and reptiles. Of an establishment for this purpose among the Mahrattas, we find

an account in the Missionary Herald for 1841-2. In this establishment, the writer says, were about 100 old horses, 175 oxen and cows, about 200 dogs and cats, monkeys and reptiles, whose numbers he does not give. These are furnished with whatever they may need as long as they live.

The kind of animal into which the soul of a person enters, has been sometimes supposed to be that which he most resembles in his manners. For example, the soul of Orpheus, who was musical, melancholy, and a woman-bater, enters into a swan; the soul of Ajax, which was all wrath and fierceness, into a lion; the soul of Agamemnon, that was rapacious and imperial, into an eagle; and the soul of Thersites, who was a mimic and buffoon, into a monkey. The doctrine of transmigration, similar to that of the Greeks and Romans, seems to have been held by the Jews before and at the time of Christ. Hence the question of John the Baptist, 'Art thou Elias?' hence the report Peter said was abroad respecting Christ, Some say thou art Elias, others Jeremias, or one of the prophets;' and hence, too, the question put to Christ by the disciples respecting the blind man-Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'

Such are some of the ideas of the ancients respecting a future state; many of them erroneous, many absurd, but at the same time containing many germs of truth, which a more correct philosophy, the offspring of revelation, has more fully developed and confirmed. The perplexing doubts and fears, the absurd conjectures and ridiculous fancies of these have been swept away, and the light of revealed truth has broken in with a brightness which has for ever dispelled the mists of error and superstition which hung for so many ages over everything pertaining to the future world.

TENDERNESS OF PARENT MARTENS. A PAIR of martens had built under the slate roof of the cottage, above the bedroom window. The summer being unusually hot, the clay cracked, and the nest fell to the !! ground. It was picked up, with the young ones unhurt, placed in a basket, and hung under the sill of the window, so that the motions of the parent birds could be observed. They came to their young ones, and fed them as usual. One of the nestlings was the Tiny Tim of the family. He was half-starved, and well-nigh crushed by his more vigorous relatives. When they flew away, half fledged, he was still a shivering helpless little creature. 'On the morning after the flight of his companions, I was awoke, very early, by an unusual fluttering of wings. I looked out from my window-curtains, and saw the two old martins perched vis-a-vis on the edge of the basket. They twittered to each other, and I could almost fancy that they were conversing for some time. It must have been an important consultation. When it appeared to be over they flew away. Alas! you poor cripple,' thought I, 'what will become of you now? Your parents think it too much trouble to attend to you alone; a sharp east wind has set in; you have no warm covering to your nest, as it had be fore it fell from the roof-then one little hole was the only aperture, and whichever way the wind came it was the same to you-perhaps your parents are going to desert you;' but I did not know the bird mind.' The old birds are gone, but they soon return. They feed their little helpless young one-they gave him, as we supposed, more than enough; but they were going to be busy, and would not have leisure to give him another meal for a long time. Away they flew, but soon returned with their bills full of clay, which they deposited on the edge of the basket-then away again, then returned loaded as before, and thus backward and forward all day till they had worked up a wall more than three inches high, on that edge of the bas ket exposed to the east, from which the cold wind at that time had set in. The young bird was thus protected, and was also carefully tended by its parents till the time came when it was able to procure its own living.'-Jesse's Rural Studies.

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LOVE IS POWER. STRONG men dragged him within the enclosure of the trading-house, and they beat him and bound him with thongs. His horse, the sole companion of his solitude during many a long summer day and night march, was torn from him, and the rifle which had so often borne death to the buffalo on the prairie and the deer in the forest was broken before his eyes. From a rich and free Indian who had cattle and venison browsing wherever he roamed, and who Iwas respected by his tribe for his prowess and his wealth, Hisoona was almost in a few seconds reduced to beggary, and rendered more helpless than a squaw. Cold, silent, and impassible, there he stood in the centre of the stockade, with his brawny arms bound across his broad, manly chest, his wide nostrils breathing fire and scorn, and his piercing black eyes rivetted on the sky. He might have been taken for a bronze statue of a barbarian gladiator, whom the civilised subjects of a second Commodus were striving to provoke to life and action with their taunts and sneers. But though he heard be heeded them not; he seemed to have only sufficient Promethean fire to supply him with the breath of life; he had none to spend in flashes of passion. The acquired stoicism of the Indian was superior to the fierceness of his human nature; for although he felt the vibrations of fury at his heart, he scorned that man should know them only in his weakness. Hisoona was a Seminole Indian, and he was reputed to be the fiercest and most sanguinary of his tribe. He had been scorned in his infancy on account of his birth, his father being a Spaniard; and as the education of the boy invariably reacts in manhood, he had repaid to mankind in scorn and blows the account of sullen malevolence which the full-breeds of his tribe had lent him. He had grown up the very Cain of his race-jealous, cruel, dishonest, and sullen, but strong, impetuous, and utterly dauntless in battle. He had fought himself into consideration among his mother's people, and his name was known and feared by all the enemies of her tribe throughout the broad expanse of Florida. He was indeed a dauntless warrior who had longings to meet face to face this famous Seminole. He seemed to have no fear, and it was said that he had no mercy. Nearly fifty dried scalps hung in his lodge, which he had torn indiscriminately from the heads of men, women, and children; and many villages that no longer stood on the banks of the Oltamaha owed their blackness of desolation to his single hand and midnight brand. The name and fame of Hisoona were sung by the squaws in their wigwams while they sewed the buffalo-robes, or to their children as they hung in their wind-rocked cradles on the forest branches while they hoed the maizepatches, with much the same feeling that inspired them when they spoke of the evil spirit Wacondah. They said that Hisoona was too fierce even for a warrior, too powerful for a man, and too crafty for anything mortal; the fox and the beaver were neither of them so wise. He was a mystery, deeper and darker than the wigwam where slept the sun at night; he was stronger than the storm; and more unsearchable in his ways than the moose or the cougar. They dreaded the half-breed of the Seminoles, and yet they admired him; and many was the tale they recounted of his deeds, and many was the speculation they had hazarded regarding his fate; and now here he stood, as weak and helpless as the weakest of them, bound and scorned within the square of the white man's trade-house, reft of his arms and horse, and taunted by white hunters, and scourged by white men's hands.

וי

'You are a thief,' said Abel Paynter, a strong and hardy Kentuckian, as he swung a thong round his head and laid it on Hisoona's shoulders. You stole my traps last fall when I was out on the Oltamaha, and you burned my shanty at Ontas Creek. I'll pay you, you savage!' The dark red streaks followed the cruel and degrading blows, but Hisoona moved not; not a muscle of his fine athletic frame gave one quivering indication of pain. He stood as rigid as if he had been hewn from the sacred redpipe-stone, which is found only in that Indian theatre of

human creation, the Cotteau du Prairie; and with his eye fixed on the blue sky above him, he seemed not to hear or feel.

'It was this Indian rascal that shot my horse two days ago when I was out scouting on the flats,' said Aaron Bardel, as he shook Hisoona violently; otherwise I should have been in time to apprise Governor Ellis of the blackfeet war-party, who surprised Middleton's waggons last night, and robbed the Florida Trading Company of more powder and lead than will be good for the trappers and hunters on the Mississippi this fall. I shall make his black steed carry me in lieu of my brown Bess, however.' 'Stop till the old man comes,' cried several of those who stood around and eyed the prisoner sullenly. He is coming up from the Red Beech Creek, and if he does not order this Seminole to be suspended from all future service in mischief and upon the tough limb of some sycamore, I am no judge of law.'

As these rude and lawless men spoke, the strong, heavy outer gate of the stockade was opened, and a horseman, armed and seemingly somewhat agitated, rode into the square. A broad straw hat spread over his square shoulders, from which hung down his back a screen of gauze. His shirt was of the purest, whitest linen, gathered round his waist, and tightly bound to his body with a red silken sash, in which were stuck pistols and a bowie-knife. A rifle lay on his crupper before him, and as he lightly sprung to the ground, threw the reins over the neck of his docile steed, and laid his handsome rifle carelessly against the logs that walled in the trade station, it was easy to see that he had authority. He was low in stature, but strong and active in form, and the motions of his agile limbs seemed to keep time with his rolling, restless eye. As soon as he perceived the group which encircled Hisoona, he walked quickly towards the spot where those who formed it were collected, and, pushing his retainers aside, he confronted the Indian.

'And so you have trapped the big beaver of the Oltamaha at last,' said Governor Ellis, glancing his eyes proudly and rapidly round; 'you have torn the fangs from the grisly bear of the Seminoles. Ay, ay, my man,' said he, drawing his knife and cutting the thong that bound the Indian's arms, you have neither rifle nor horse now, so go home and tell your squaw that you will help her to nurse the papoose and hoe the corn.'

'Hugh, hu! wa, ha!' was Hisoona's only response to this insulting speech, for in a moment he had bounded towards the gate of the stockade, seized the rifle of the governor, mounted his horse, and, dashing out of the fort, swung the murderous weapon over his head with a triumphant, grim smile. Once he paused when he gained the open plain, but it was only to shout defiance to all the trappers and hunters at the station, and to declare that he would kill the first white man he met.

The sun was gradually sinking in the west. His beams were streaming over the uncultured wilderness, which lay like the mother of vegetation asleep, by the murmuring Oltamaha, until labour should come with his ploughshare and reaping-hook to awaken her up to action. It was a peaceful scene, because there were no warring elements at work in all the wide prairie and forest-lands that stretched westward from the most extreme settlement of the whites to the trading-house of Governor Ellis. It is true that Hisoona was abroad, and Hisoona, it was said, was an incarnation of war; but he had no one to call forth his evil passions now, although the vow of death was yet on his haughty lips, and the scowl of defiance was on his cheek. It has been argued that war is natural to man, and that when he fights he but obeys the impulses of his nature. Does it not seem wonderful, then, that they who most study nature imbibe the most of love? Old Horace declares that his nature and studies disqualify the poet from being a warrior, and that although he sings in admiring strains the deeds of the warrior, yet he has not the spirit which he canonises in his song. Hisoona might be called a child of nature with his pride and savagery; but does not this seem erroneous when examined? This Indian loved the