because shared with women pure as the snows of their native mountains; bright, lofty, and overawing, as the clear, circumambient heavens, over their heads; and yet lovely as the fresh opening bosom of their own blushing and blooming June. "Mine own romantic country," must we leave thee? Beautiful patrimony of the wise and good; enriched from the economy, and ornamented by the labor and perseverance of two hundred years! Must we leave thee, venerable heritage of ancient justice and pristine faith? And, God of our fathers! must we leave thee to the demagogues who have deceived, and traitorously sold us? We must leave thee to them; and to the remnants of the Penobscots, the Pequods, the Mohicans, and Narragansetts; that they may lure back the far retired bear, from the distant forest, again to inhabit in the young wilderness, growing up in our flourishing cornfields and rich meadows, and spreading, with briars and brambles, over our most "pleasant places."

All this shall come to pass, to the intent that New England may again become a lair for wild beasts, and a hunting-ground for savages. The graves of our parents be polluted; and the place made holy by the first footsteps of our pilgrim forefathers become profaned by the midnight orgies of barbarous incantation. The evening wolf shall again howl on our hills, and the echo of his yell mingle once more with the sound of our water-falls. The sanctuaries of God shall be made desolate. Where now a whole people congregate in thanksgiving for the benefactions of time, and in humble supplication for the mercies of eternity, there those very houses shall then be left without a tenant. The owl, at noonday, may roost on the high altar of devotion, and the "fox look out the window," on the utter solitude of a New England Sabbath.

New England shall, indeed, under this proscribing policy, be what Switzerland was under that of France. New England, which, like Switzerland, is the eagle nest of Freedom; New England, where, as in Switzerland, the cradle of infant liberty "was rocked by whirlwinds, in their rage;" New England shall, as Switzerland was, in truth, be "the immolated victim, where nothing but the skin remains unconsumed by the sacrifice;" New England, as Switzerland had, shall have "nothing left but her rocks, her ruins, and her demagogues.'

The mind, sir, capable of conceiving a project of mischief so gigantic, must have been early schooled, and deeply imbued with all the great principles of moral evil.

What, then, sir, shall we say of a spirit, regarding this event as a "consummation devoutly to be wished?"-a spirit without one attribute, or one hope, of the pure in heart; a spirit which begins and ends everything, not with prayer, but with imprecation; a spirit which blots from the great canon of petition, "Give us this day our daily bread;" that, foregoing bodily nutriment, he may attain to a higher relish for that un

mingled food, prepared and served up to a soul "hungering and thirsting after wickedness;" a spirit, which, at every rising sun, exclaims, "Hodie! hodie! Carthago delenda!" "To-day, to-day! let New England be destroyed!"

Sir, Divine Providence takes care of his own universe. Moral monsters cannot propagate. Impotent of everything but malevolence of purpose, they can no otherwise multiply miseries, than by blaspheming all that is pure, and prosperous, and happy. Could demon propagate demon, the universe might become a Pandemonium; but I rejoice that the father of Lies can never become the father of liars. One "adversary of God and man" is enough for one universe. Too much! Oh! how much too much for one nation.

Charles Brockden Brown.

BORN in Philadelphia, Penn., 1771. DIED there, 1810.

WIELAND'S DEFENCE.

[Wieland; or, The Transformation. 1798.-The Novels of Charles Brockden Brown. 1857.]

THE

HEODORE WIELAND, the prisoner at the bar, was now called upon for his defence. He looked around him for some time in silence, and with a mild countenance. At length he spoke:

"It is strange: I am known to my judges and my auditors. Who is there present a stranger to the character of Wieland? who knows him. not as a husband, -as a father, as a friend? yet here am I arraigned as a criminal. I am charged with diabolical malice; I am accused of the murder of my wife and my children!

"It is true, they were slain by me: they all perished by my hand. The task of vindication is ignoble. What is it that I am called to vindicate? and before whom?

"You know that they are dead, and that they were killed by me. What more would you have? Would you extort from me a statement of my motives? Have you failed to discover them already? You charge me with malice; but your eyes are not shut; your reason is still vigorous; your memory has not forsaken you. You know whom it is that you thus charge. The habits of his life are known to you; his treatment of his wife and his offspring is known to you; the soundness of his integrity, and the unchangeableness of his principles, are familiar to your apprehension; yet you persist in this charge! You lead me

hither manacled as a felon; you deem me worthy of a vile and tormenting death!

"Who are they whom I have devoted to death? My wife-the little ones, that drew their being from me-that creature who, as she surpassed them in excellence, claimed a larger affection than those whom natural affinities bound to my heart. Think ye that malice could have urged me to this deed? Hide your audacious fronts from the scrutiny of heaven. Take refuge in some cavern unvisited by human eyes. Ye may deplore your wickedness or folly, but ye cannot expiate it.

"Think not that I speak for your sakes. Hug to your hearts this detestable infatuation. Deem me still a murderer, and drag me to untimely death. I make not an effort to dispel your illusion; I utter not a word to cure you of your sanguinary folly; but there are probably some in this assembly who have come from far; for their sakes, whose distance has disabled them from knowing me, I will tell what I have done, and why.

"It is needless to say that God is the object of my supreme passion. I have cherished in his presence a single and upright heart. I have thirsted for the knowledge of his will. I have burnt with ardor to approve my faith and my obedience.

"My days have been spent in searching for the revelation of that will; but my days have been mournful, because my search failed. I solicited direction; I turned on every side where glimmerings of light could be discovered. I have not been wholly uninformed; but my knowledge has always stopped short of certainty. Dissatisfaction has insinuated itself into all my thoughts. My purposes have been pure, my wishes indefatigable; but not till lately were these purposes thoroughly accomplished and these wishes fully gratified.

"I thank thee, my Father, for thy bounty; that thou didst not ask a less sacrifice than this; that thou placedst me in a condition to testify my submission to thy will! What have I withheld which it was thy pleasure to exact? Now may I, with dauntless and erect eye, claim my reward, since I have given thee the treasure of my soul.

"I was at my own house; it was late in the evening; my sister had gone to the city, but proposed to return. It was in expectation of her return that my wife and I delayed going to bed beyond the usual hour; the rest of the family, however, were retired.

"My mind was contemplative and calm,-not wholly devoid of apprehension on account of my sister's safety. Recent events, not easily explained, had suggested the existence of some danger; but this danger was without a distinct form in our imagination, and scarcely ruffled our tranquillity

"Time passed, and my sister did not arrive. Her house is at some

distance from mine, and, though her arrangements had been made with a view to residing with us, it was possible that, through forgetfulness, or the occurrence of unforseen emergencies, she had returned to her own dwelling.

"Hence it was conceived proper that I should ascertain the truth by going thither. I went. On my way my mind was full of those ideas which related to my intellectual condition. In the torrent of fervid conceptions, I lost sight of my purpose. Sometimes I stood still; sometimes I wandered from my path, and experienced some difficulty, on recovering from my fit of musing, to regain it.

"The series of my thoughts is easily traced. At first At first every vein beat with raptures known only to the man whose parental and conjugal love is without limits, and the cup of whose desires, immense as it is, overflows with gratification. I know not why emotions that were perpetual visitants should now have recurred with unusual energy. The transition was not new from sensations of joy to a consciousness of gratitude. The Author of my being was likewise the dispenser of every gift with which that being was embellished. The service to which a benefactor like this was entitled could not be circumscribed. My social sentiments were indebted to their alliance with devotion for all their value. All passions are base, all joys feeble, all energies malignant, which are not drawn from this source.

"For a time my contemplations soared above earth and its inhabitants. I stretched forth my hands; I lifted my eyes, and exclaimed, 'Oh that I might be admitted to thy presence! that mine were the supreme delight of knowing thy will, and of performing it!—the blissful privilege of direct communication with thee, and of listening to the audible enunciation of thy pleasure!

"What task would I not undertake, what privation would I not cheerfully endure, to testify my love of thee? Alas! thou hidest thyself from my view; glimpses only of thy excellence and beauty are afforded

me.

Would that a momentary emanation from thy glory would visit me! that some unambiguous token of thy presence would salute my senses!' "In this mood I entered the house of my sister. It was vacant. Scarcely had I regained recollection of the purpose that brought me hither. Thoughts of a different tendency had such absolute possession of my mind, that the relations of time and space were almost obliterated from my understanding. These wanderings, however, were restrained, and I ascended to her chamber.

"I had no light, and might have known by external observation that the house was without any inhabitant. With this, however, I was not satisfied. I entered the room, and, the object of my search not appearing, I prepared to return.

"The darkness required some caution in descending the stair. I stretched my hand to seize the balustrade by which I might regulate my steps. How shall I describe the lustre which at that moment burst upon my vision?

"I was dazzled. My organs were bereaved of their activity. My eyelids were half closed, and my hands withdrawn from the balustrade. A nameless fear chilled my veins, and I stood motionless. This irradiation did not retire or lessen. It seemed as if some powerful effulgence covered me like a mantle.

"I opened my eyes and found all about me luminous and glowing. It was the element of heaven that flowed around. Nothing but a fiery stream was at first visible; but, anon, a shrill voice from behind called upon me to attend.

"I turned. It is forbidden to describe what I saw: words, indeed, would be wanting to the task. The lineaments of that being whose veil was now lifted and whose visage beamed upon my sight, no hues of pencil or of language can portray.

"As it spoke, the accents thrilled to my heart :-Thy prayers are heard. In proof of thy faith, render me thy wife. This is the victim 1 choose. Call her hither, and here let her fall.' The sound, and visage and light vanished at once.

"What demand was this? The blood of Catharine was to be shed) My wife was to perish by my hand! I sought opportunity to attest my virtue. Little did I expect that a proof like this would have been demanded.

"My wife!' I exclaimed; 'O God! substitute some other victim. Make me not the butcher of my wife. My own blood is cheap. This will I pour out before thee with a willing heart; but spare, I beseech thee, this precious life, or commission some other than her husband to perform the bloody deed.'

"In vain. The conditions were prescribed; the decree had gone forth, and nothing remained but to execute it. I rushed out of the house and across the intermediate fields, and stopped not till I entered my own parlor.

"My wife had remained here during my absence, in anxious expectation of my return with some tidings of her sister. I had none to communicate. For a time I was breathless with my speed. This, and the tremors that shook my frame, and the wildness of my looks, alarmed her. She immediately suspected some disaster to have happened to her friend, and her own speech was as much overpowered by emotion as mine.

"She was silent, but her looks manifested her impatience to hear what I had to communicate. I spoke, but with so much precipitation as