demned, and sentenced to thirty days' imprisonment-an honor to which his children may well look back with pride.

In 1836, Mr. Cheever went to Europe, and was absent about two years and a half. On his return he was installed pastor of the Allen Street Church, New York. In 1844, he again visited Europe, and remained there a year. In 1846, he was installed pastor of the "Church of the Puritans," in New York, in which he still remains.

Mr. Cheever is the author of a great number of works, all excellent in their kind, evincing genius, scholarship, and industry in an eminent degree.' But he has what all scholars have not-ardent philanthropy and pure Christian patriotism, taking a deep interest in everything that pertains to the well-being of his brother man. As in the first years of his ministry, Mr. Cheever entered heartily the lists against our one giant vice-intemperance-over which almost the whole community were sleeping, so for the past few years his vigorous pen and eloquent preaching have been directed against our great national sin, slavery. To the columns of that ablest of papers, the "New York Independent," he has been a regular contributor since its establishment in 1849, and all his pieces, whether in literature, politics, practical morals, or religion, show great power and genius, but above all the pure Christian patriot. Within the last year, his heart has been more especially enlisted in the anti-slavery cause, in which he has signally distinguished himself. His views upon the religious aspect of the subject he has embodied in a work just published, en

The following list, believe, comprises all his works :-American Common-place Book of Prose, 1828; American Common-place Book of Poetry, 1829; Studies in Poetry, with Biographical Sketches of the Poets, 1830; Selections from Archbishop Leighton, with an Introductory Essay, 1832; God's Hand in America, 1841; The Argument for Punishment by Death, 1842; Lectures on Pilgrim's Progress, 1843; Hierarchical Lectures, 1844; Wanderings of a Pilgrim in the Shadow of Mont Blanc and the Yungfrau Alp, 1846; The Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, 1848; The Hill Difficulty, and other Allegories, 1849; The Windings of the River of the Water of Life, 1849; Voices of Nature to her Foster Child, the Soul of Man, 1852; Right of the Bible in our Common Schools, 1854; Lectures on Cowper, 1856; The Powers of the World to Come, 1856; God Against Slavery, 1857.

Dr. Cheever, in earlier years, was a contributor to the United States Literary Gazette,' ," "The Quarterly Register," and "The New Monthly Magazine." He has written articles of great ability for "The Biblical Repository,' "The New-Englander, 66 The Bibliotheca Sacra," and "The Quarterly Observer." He was a valuable correspondent of the "New York Observer" when in Europe, and editor of the "New York Evangelist" during 1845 and 1846. He is now writing a series of articles for "The Bibliotheca Sacra," on the Judgment of the Old Testament against Slavery, which evince characteristic argumentation combined with remarkable philological investigation.

titled "God Against Slavery," in which he rises, occasionally, almost to the sublimity of the ancient prophets in his denunciation of oppression.'

The following extracts from Dr. Cheever's various writings will, it is believed, give a fair and just view of the character of his mind, the subjects in which he is most deeply interested, and the quality of his style.

THE BENEFIT OF GREEK CULTURE."

With the exception of Shakspeare, on whom was bestowed one of the greatest minds God ever gave to man, the sweetest and best of English poetry is that which Greek scholars have written. Every page shows the power of an early familiarity with the treasures of antiquity. Spenser, that romantic and harmonious mind, grew up with Sir Philip Sidney, under the influence of classical studies. A greater than these, and after Shakspeare, it may be the greatest of all poets, was one of the profoundest Greek scholars that ever lived. He does not know the true power of Milton's poetry, who is ignorant of Milton's Greek. His genius, it is true, was baptized in a purer foun

1

3

"The fundamental trait of Dr. Cheever's character, which is the key to his preaching, is his sense of RIGHT. He detests compromises; he abhors oppression; he magnifies justice; he contends with all systems which bind, or enslave, or deteriorate, whether of governments, or forms, or laws, or institutions. He does not regard expediency, or consult consequences. Fear is a feeling utterly unknown to him. He becomes fired with indignation against all Austrias and Judge Jeffries. His fullest sympathies go forth towards the oppressed Bunyans, or the pilloried Baxters, or the exiled Kossuths, or the imprisoned Williamsons."-Fowler's American Pulpit.

2 "It was not an accident that the New Testament was written in Greek, the language which can best express the highest thoughts and worthiest feelings of the intellect and heart, and which is adapted to be the instrument of education for all nations." Again: "How great has been the honor of the Greek and Latin tongues! associated together, as they are, in the work of Christian education, and made the instruments for training the minds of the young in the greatest nations of the earth."-Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul, Chap. I.

3 Dr. Cheever must mean "after" in point of time, for surely he cannot doubt the immense superiority of Milton over Shakspeare in learning, genius, affluence and grandeur of thought, varied power, sublimity, and above all in that humble piety, united to that high, dauntless spirit that led him in those perilous times to buckle on his armor, and throw himself into the very front rank, and take the lead of the hosts of freemen to do battle not for the liberties of England only, but of the race.

He alludes to the imprisonment of Passmore Williamson, of Philadelphia, by Judge Kane, for an alleged contempt of court-an act so tyrannical that it excited universal indignation.

tain; it was familiar with the infinite, the eternal, the religiously sublime, in the poetry of the Bible; his mind was nourished and moulded more by the sacred writers than by all his other studies put together. Next to these came the orators, poets, and historians of Greece. He was wont to prepare himself for composition by the perusal of his Hebrew Bible, or of some Greek poet :

Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,

That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget

Those other two equalled with me in fate,
(So were I equalled with them in renown!)
Blind Thamyris, and blind Moonides:
And Tiresias and Phineas, prophets old.

Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers.

He had "unsphered the spirit of Plato," and held companionship with Eschylus and Sophocles and Euripides, and in thought and imagination was all fragrant with the richness of Grecian mind: his exquisite language was moulded on those ancient models, not less in its great strength in Paradise Lost, than in the lightness and harmony of the Allegro and Penseroso. Andrew Marvell, that rare example of virtuous patriotism, one of Milton's most intimate friends, and one of our best prose writers, as well as most pleasant poets, grew up under the same kind of discipline. Gray has been called the most learned man in Europe; he was certainly one of the most finished classical scholars. The spirit of the Grecian mind pervades his poetry, so elaborately wrought, so pure in its moral influence, abounding in such rich personifications, such lofty images, and often such sweet thoughts. Collins, too, that child of imagination and tenderness, was a superior Greek scholar, as any man would judge, from his exquisite lyrical productions. It would be pleasant to recall our associations through the whole compass of English poetry in an examination of this sort, but it is not necessary. Watts, Young, Addison, Goldsmith, Blair, the poet of the grave, Akenside, Home, Warton, Cowper, the youthful Michael Bruce, Logan, the author of that sweet ode to the cuckoo, Campbell, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Crabbe, and Bowles-all grew up under the influence of a classical education; and the loftiest of these familiar names are the names of deep Greek scholars. Is it not a little remarkable that the purest and the most valued of all English poetry should happen to be the produc

tion of minds thus severely disciplined? Our best poets, and our wisest, most virtuous, and practical scholars, are the men, let it be remembered, who in early life, and through the University course, lost much time upon the classics. It is preposterous to think of becoming a true scholar, even in English literature merely, without a knowledge of Greek.

DESCRIPTION OF THE MER DE GLACE.

At Montanvert, you find yourself on the extremity of a plateau, so situated, that on one side, you may look down into the dread frozen sea, and on the other, by a few steps, into the lovely, green vale of Chamouny! What astonishing variety and contrast in the spectacle! Far beneath, a smiling and verdant valley, watered by the Arve, with hamlets, fields and gardens, the abode of life, sweet children and flowers ;-far above, savage and inaccessible crags of ice and granite, and a cataract of stiffened billows, stretching away beyond sight-the throne of Death and Winter.

From the bosom of the tumbling sea of ice, enormous granite needles shoot into the sky, objects of singular sublimity, one of them rising to the great height of thirteen thousand feet, seven thousand above the point where you are standing. This is more than double the height of Mount Washington in our country, and this amazing pinnacle of rock looks like the spire of an interminable colossal Cathedral, with other pinnacles around it. No snow can cling to the summits of these jagged spires; the lightning does not splinter them; the tempests rave round them; and at their base, those eternal drifting ranges of snow are formed, that sweep down into the frozen sea, and feed the perpetual, immeasurable masses of the glacier. Meanwhile, the laughing verdure, sprinkled with flowers, plays upon the edges of the enormous masses of ice-so near, that you may almost touch the ice with one hand, and with the other pluck the violet. So, oftentimes, the ice and the verdure are mingled in our earthly pilgrimage ;-so, sometimes, in one and the same family you may see the exquisite refinements, and the crabbed repugnancies of human nature. So, in the same house of God, on the same bench, may sit an angel and a murderer; a villain, like a glacier, and a man with a heart like a sweet running brook in the sunshine.

The impetuous arrested cataract seems as if it were ploughing the rocky gorge with its turbulent surges. Indeed, the

ridges of rocky fragments along the edges of the glacier, called moraines, do look precisely as if a colossal iron plough had torn them from the mountain, and laid them along in one continuous furrow on the frozen verge. It is a scene of stupendous sublimity. These mighty granite peaks, hewn and pinnacled into the Gothic towers, and these rugged mountain-walls and buttresses-what a Cathedral! with this cloudless sky, by starlight, for its fretted roof-the chanting wail of the tempest, and the rushing of the avalanche for its organ. How grand the thundering sound of the vast masses of ice tumbling from the roof of the Arve-cavern at the foot of the glacier! Does it not seem, as it sullenly and heavily echoes, and rolls up from so immense a distance below, even more sublime than the thunder of the avalanche above us?

BUNYAN IN HIS CELL.

Now let us enter his little cell. He is sitting at his table to finish by sunlight the day's work, for the livelihood of his dear family, which they have prepared for him. On a little stool, his poor blind child sits by him, and with that expression of cheerful resignation with which God seals the countenance when He takes away the sight, the daughter turns her face up to her father as if she could see the affectionate expression with which he looks upon her and prattles to her. On the table and in the grated window there are three books, the Bible, the Concordance, and Bunyan's precious old copy of the Book of Martyrs. And now the day is waning, and his dear blind child must go home with the laces he has finished, to her mother. And now Bunyan opens his Bible and reads aloud a portion of Scripture to his little one, and then encircling her in his arms and clasping her small hands in his, he kneels down on the cold stone floor, and pours out his soul in prayer to God for the salvation of those so inexpressibly dear to him, and for whom he has been all day working. This done, with a parting kiss he dismisses her to her mother by the rough. hands of the gaoler.

And now it is evening. A rude lamp glimmers darkly on the table, the tagged laces are laid aside, and Bunyan, alone, is busy with his Bible, the Concordance, and his pen, ink, and paper. He writes as though joy did make him write. His pale, worn countenance is lighted with a fire, as if reflected from the radiant jasper walls of the Celestial City. He writes,