blue eyes. and indignation throughout the land at so sudden dancing school are considered as institutions and important a defection. Was the Captain the of Satan. Their features are large and ircause or merely the instrument? Had not Walter regular, and though not free from a certain and Barnes, as well as he, become conscious of manly beauty in the men, are scarcely redeemthe actual impotence and intrinsic feebleness of ed from homeliness in the women by the the Whigs? Already, in the spring of 1834, the expression of intelligence and wit which lights paper had declared against the New Poor Law. Walter, who had offered wages without work to them up, and fairly sparkles in their grayish his pressmen, and had behaved so handsomely to Dr. Slop, was not the man to approve of the New All of them have the energy of character, Poor Law; and, while he lived, The Times carried restless activity, strong convictions, tenacity on a war against that measure, not only steady, of purpose, deep sympathies, and spirit of selfbut successful, although the success arrived only sacrifice, which are such invaluable qualities when Walter was leaving the world. Honor to in the character of propagandists. It would him for this, and to the Captain for the powerful be impossible for the theologians among them pen, almost whose last journalistic effort was a to be members of any other church than the series of vivid articles in favor of the Factory Bill. church militant. Father and sons, they have Barnes died in 1841; about the same time the been in the thickest of the battles fought in Captain's connection with The Times seems to the church and by it; and always have moved have slackened or almost ceased; and now it is together in solid column. To them questions said to have been that the influence of the present of schoolastic theology are mumineries, dry Mr. Walter, No. III., gave it a slightly Tractarian and Toryish bias, which was not long maintained. and attractionless; they are practical, living The present editorial management of The Times in the real present, dealing with questions is vested in "young Delaine," son of that "old which palpitate with vitality. Temperance, Delaine," who left The Times years ago, under foreign and home-missions, the influence of the auspices of Gladstone and Co., to set The commerce on public morality, the conversion Chronicle on its legs again, it having fallen upon of young men, the establishment of theological its face, in spite of its support of the New Poor seminaries, education, colonization, abolition, Law! The commercial manager is Mr. Mowbray the political obligations of Christians; on Morris, a gentlemanly man of dignified demeanor; matters such as these do the Beechers expend and the principal writer of the leading articles their energies. Nor do they disdain taking an the one who wields the "present thunder" of The active part in public affairs; one of them was Times-is the Rev. Thomas Mozley, of Guildford appointed at New York City to address Kossuth Street, near the Foundling Hospital. on his arrival. What is remarkable is that, though they have come in violent collision with many of the abuses of American society, their motives have never been seriously attacked. This exemption from the ordinary lot of reformers is owing not only to their consistent disinterestedness, but to a certain Yankee prudence, which prevents their advancing without being sure of battalions behind them; and also to a reputation the family has acquired for eccentricity. As public speakers they are far above mediocrity; not graceful, but eloquent, with a lively scorn of the mean, and perception of the comic, which overflow in pungent wit and withering satire; and sometimes, in the heat of extemporaneous speaking, in biting sarcasm. Their style of oratory would often seem, to a staid, church-going Englishman, to contrast too strongly with the usual decorum of the pulpit. MRS. B. STOWE AND HER FAMILY. THE family to which Mrs. Stowe belongs, is as widely and as favorably known as almost any other in the United States, and consists of twelve! the apostolic number. And of the twelve, seven are apostles of the pulpit, and two of the pen, after the manner of the nineteenth century. Of the other three, one has been swept into commerce by the strong current setting that way in America; and the other two, wives of lawyers of respectable standing, and mothers of families, have been absorbed by the care and affections of domestic life. They are said to be no way inferior, in point of natural endowments, to the nine who have chosen to play their parts in life before a larger public. Indeed, persons who know intimately all the twelve, are puzzled to assign superiority to any one of them. With the shades of difference which always obtain between individual characters, they bear a striking resemblance to each other, not only physically, but intellectually and morally. All of them are about the common size-the doctor being a trifle below it, and some of the sons a trifle above it-neither stout nor slight, but compactly and ruggedly built. Their movements and gestures have much of the abruptness and want of grace common in the New England States, where the opera and Nine of the Beechers are authors. They are known to the reading and religious public of the United States, by reviews, essays, sermons, orations, debates, and discourses on a great variety of subjects, chiefly of local or momentary interest. All of these productions are marked by vigorous thought; very few by that artistic excellence, that conformity to the laws of the ideal, which alone confer a lasting value on the creations of the brain. Many of them are controversial, or wear an aggressive air which is unmistakable. Before Mrs. Stowe's last book, her celebrity was hardly equal to her maiden sister's. Catherine had a wider reputa- at Andover, he had been appointed Professor, tion as an authoress, and her indefatigable acti- at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, vity in the cause of education had won for her; whence he had been called to Lane Seminary. very general esteem. I may add in this connec- Mrs. Stowe's married life has been of that tion that it is to her the United States are in- equable and sober happiness so common in the debted for the only extensively useful associa- families of Yankee clergymen. It has been tion for preparing and sending capable female | blessed with a numerous offspring, of whom teachers to the west. She had the energy and five are still living. Mrs. Stowe has known the tact to organize and put it in successful the fatigues of watching over the sick bed, and operation. her heart has felt that grief which eclipses all Harriet Beecher was born in Lichfield, about|others--that of a bereaved mother. Much of the year 1812. After the removal of the her time has been devoted to the education of family to Boston, she enjoyed the best educa- | her children, while the ordinary household tional advantages of that city. With the view cares have devolved on a friend or distant of preparing herself for the business of instruc- relative, who has always resided with her. tion, she acquired all the ordinary accomplish- She employed her leisure in contributing occaments of ladies, and much of the learning sional pieces, tales and novelettes to the maga usually reserved for the stronger sex. At an zines and newspapers. Her writings were of early age she began to aid her eldest sister, a highly moral tone, and deservedly popular. Catherine, in the management of a flourishing Only a small portion of them are comprised in female school, which had been built up by the the volume-" The Mayflower "—already well latter. When their father went West, the known. This part of Mrs. Stowe's life, spent sisters accompanied him, and opened a similar in literary pleasures, family joys and cares, establishment in Cincinnatti. and the society of the pious and intelligent, This city is situated on the northern bank would have been of as unalloyed happiness as of the Ohio. The range of hills which hugs mortals can expect, had it not been darkened at the rive for hundreds of miles above, here re-every instant by the baleful shadow of slavery. cedes from it in a semicircle, broken by a valley The "peculiar institution" was destined to and several ravines, leaving a basin several thwart the grand project in life of Mrs. Stowe's square miles in surface. This is the site of the husband and father. When they relinquished busy manufacturing and commercial town their excellent positions in the East in order to which, in 1832, contained less than forty build up the great Presbyterian Seminary for thousand inhabitants, and at present contains the Ohio and Mississippi valley, they did so more than one hundred and twenty thousand with every prospect of success. Never did a —a rapid increase, which must be attributed, literary institution start under fairer auspices. in a great measure, to the extensive trade it The number and reputation of the professors carries on with the slave States. The high had drawn together several hundred students hill, whose point, now crowned with an obser- from all parts of the United States; not sickly vatory, overhangs the city on the east, cellar-plants of boys sent by wealthy parents, stretches away to the east and north in a long but hardy and intelligent young men, most of sweep of table-land. On this is situated Lane whom, fired by the ambition of converting the Seminary-Mrs. Stowe's home for eighteen world to Christ, were winning their way long years. Near the Seminary buildings, through privations and toil, to education and and on the public road, are certain comforta- ministerial orders. They were the stuff out ble brick residences, situated in yards green of which foreign missionaries and revival with tufted grass, and half concealed from preachers are made. Some of them were view by accacias, locusts, rose-bushes, and known to the public as lecturers: Theodore vines of honeysuckle and clematis. These D. Weld was an oratorical celebrity. For a were occupied by Dr. Beecher, and the Pro fessors. There are other residences more pretending in appearance, occupied by bankers, merchants and men of fortune. The little village thus formed is called Walnut Hills, and is one of the prettiest in the environs of Cincinnatti. year all went well. Lane Seminary was the pride and hope of the Church. Alas for the hopes of Messrs. Beecher and Stowe! this prosperity was of short duration. The French Revolution of 1830, the agitation in England for reform, and against colonial slavery, the fine and imprisonment by American For several years after her removal to this courts of justice, of citizens who had dared to place, Harriet Beecher continued to teach in attack the slave trade carried on under the connection with her sister. She did so until federal flag, had begun to direct the attention her marriage with the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, of a few American philanthropists to the evils Professor of Biblical Literature in the Semi- of slavery. Some years before, a society had nary of which her father was President. This been formed for the purpose of colonizing free gentleman was already one of the most dis-blacks on the coast of Africa. It had been tinguished ecclesiastical sarans in America. patronized by intelligent slaveholders, who After graduating with honor at Bowdoin Col-, feared the contact of free blacks with their lege, Maine, and taking his theological degree human chattels; and by feeble or ignorant persons in the North, whose consciences impelled them to act on slavery in some way, and whose prudence or ignorance of the question led them to accept the plan favored by slaveholders. However useful to Africa the emigration to its shores of intelligent, moral, and enterprising blacks may be, it is now universally admitted that colonization, as a means of extinguishing slavery, is a drivelling absurdity. These were the views of the Abolition Convention, which met at Philadelphia in 1833, and set on foot the agitation which has since convulsed the Union. The President of that Convention, Mr. Arthur Tappan, was one of the most liberal donors of Lane Seminary. He forwarded its address to the students; and, in a few weeks afterwards, the whole subject was up for discussion amongst them. At first there was little interest. But soon the fire began to burn. Many of the students had travelled or taught in schools in the slave States; a goodly number were sons of slaveholders, and some were owners of slaves. They had seen slavery, and had facts to relate, many of which made the blood run chill with horror. Those spread thro' the pages of Uncle Tom's Cabin, reader, and which your swelling heart and overflowing eyes would not let you read aloud, are cold in comparison. The discussion was soon ended, for all were of accord; but the meetings for the relation of facts were continued night after night and week after week. What was, at first, sensibility grew into enthusiasm; the feeble flame had become a conflagration. The slave owners among the students gave liberty to their slaves; the idea of going on foreign missions was scouted at, because there were heathens at home; some left their studies and collected the colored population of Cincinnatti into churches, and preached to them; others gathered the young men into evening schools, and the children into day schools, and devoted themselves to teaching them; others organized benevolent societies for aiding them, and orphan asylums for the destitute and abandoned children; and others again, left all to aid fugitive slaves on their way to Canada, or to lecture on the evils of slavery. The fanaticism was sublime; every student felt himself a Peter the hermit, and acted as if the abolition of slavery depended on his individual exertions. At first the discussion had been encouraged by the President and Professors; but when they saw it swallowing up everything like regular study, they thought it high time to stop. It was too late; the current was too strong to be arrested. The commercial interests of Cincinnatti took the alarm-manufacturers feared the loss of their Southern trade. Public sentiment exacted the suppression of the discussion and excitement. Slaveholders came over from Kentucky, and urged the mob on to violence. For several weeks there was immi nent danger that Lane Seminary, and the houses of Drs. Beecher and Stowe, would be burnt or pulled down by a drunken rabble. These must have been weeks of mortal anxiety for Harriet Beecher. The board of trustees now interfered, and allayed the excitement of the mob by forbidding all further discussion on slavery in the Seminary. To this the students responded by withdrawing en masse. Where hundreds had been, there was left a mere handful. Lane Seminary was deserted. For seventeen years after this, Dr. Beecher and Professor Stowe remained there, endeavoring in vain to revive its prosperity. In 1850 they returned to the Eastern States, the great project of their life defeated. After a short stay at Bowdoin College, Maine, Professor Stowe accepted an appointment to the chair of Biblical literature in the Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts, an institution which stands, to say the least, as high as any in the United States. These events caused a painful reaction in the feelings of the Beechers. Repulsed alike by the fanaticism they had witnessed among the foes, and the brutal violence among the friends of slavery, they thought their time for action had not come, and gave no public expression of their abhorrence to slavery. They waited for the storm to subside, and the angel of truth to mirror his form in tranquil waters. For a long time they resisted all attempts to make them bow the knee to slavery, or to avow themselves abolitionists. It is to this period Mrs. Stowe alludes, when she says, in the closing chapter of her book: "For many years of her life the author avoided all reading upon, or allusion to, the subject of slavery, considering it too painful to be inquired into, and one which advancing light and civilization would live down." The terrible and dramatic scenes which occurred in Cincinnatti, between 1835 and 1847, were calculated to increase the repugnance of a lady to mingle actively in the melee. That city was the chief battle-ground of freedom and slavery. Every month there was something to attract attention to the strife; either a press destroyed, or a house mobbed, or a free negro kidnapped, or a trial for freedom before the courts, or the confectionary of an English abolitionist riddled, or a public discussion, or an escape of slaves, or an armed attack on the negro quarter, or a negro school-house razed to the ground, or a slave in prison, and killing his wife and children to prevent their being sold to the South. The abolition press, established there in 1835 by James G. Burney, whom, on account of his mildness, Miss Martineau called “the gentleman of the abolition cause," and continued by Dr. Bailey, the moderate and able editor of the National Era, of Washington city, in which Uncle Tom's Cabin first appeared in weekly numbers, was destroyed five times. On one occasion, the Mayor dismissed at mid enough to come up with him. He sleeps now who had lost their property by his means, night the rioters, who had also pulled down the houses of some colored people, with the following pithy speech: "Well, boys, let's go home; we've done enough." One of these mobs deserves particular notice, as its victims enlisted deeply the sympathies of Mrs. Stowe. In 1840, the slave catchers, backed by the riff-raff of the population, and urged on by certain politicians and merchants, attacked the quarters in which the negroes reside.Some of the houses were battered down by cannon. For several days the city was aban- During her long residence on the frontier doned to violence and crime. The negro of the slave States, Mrs. Stowe made several quarters were pillaged and sacked; negroes visits to them. It was then, no doubt, she who attempted to defend their property were made the observations which have enabled killed, and their mutilated bodies cast into her to paint noble, generous, and humane the streets; women were violated by ruffians, slaveholders, in the characters of Wilson, the and soon afterwards died of the injuries re-manufacturer, Mrs. Shelby and her son ceived; houses were burnt, and men, women, George, St. Clair and his daughter Eva, the and children were abducted in the confusion, benevolent purchaser at the New Orleans and hurried into slavery. From the brow of the hill on which she lived, Mrs. Stowe could hear the cries of the victims, the shouts of the mob, and the reports of the guns and cannon, and could see theflames of the conflagration. To more than one of the trembling fugitives she gave shelter, and wept bitter tears with them. After the fury of the mob was spent, many of the coloured peo le gathered together the little left them of worldly goods, and started for Canada. Hundreds passed in front of Mrs. Stowe's house. Some of them were in little waggons; some were trudging along on foot after the household stuff; some led their children by the hand; and there were even mothers who walked on, suckling their infants, and weeping for the dead or kidnapped husband they had left behind. auction sale, the mistress of Susan and Emeline, and Symes, who helped Eliza and her boy up the river bank. Mrs. Stowe has observed slavery in every phase; she has seen masters and slaves at home, New Orleans markets, fugitives, free coloured people, proslavery politicians and priests, abolitionists, and colonizationists. She and her family have suffered from it; seventeen years of her life have been clouded by it. For that long period she stifled the strongest emotions of her heart. No one but her intimate friends knew their strength. She has given them expression at last. Uncle Tom's Cabin is the agonizing cry of feelings pent up for years in the heart of a true woman. HYMN ON THE MORNING. BY RICHARD CRASHAW. O Thou Bright Lady of the mern! pity doth lie This road, which ran through Walnut Hills, and within a few feet of Mrs. Stowe's door, was one of the favourite routes of "the underground railroad," so often alluded to in Uncle Tom's Cabin. This name was given to a line of Quakers and other abolitionists, who, living at intervals of 10, 15, or 20 miles between the Ohio river and the Northern Lakes, had formed themselves into a sort of association to aid fugitive slaves in their escape to Canada.— -So my wakeful lay shall knock Any fugitive was taken by night on horse-On th' oriental gates, and duly mock back, or in covered wagons, from station to The early lark's shrill orisons, to be station, until he stood on free soil, and found An anthem at the day's nativity. the fold of the lion banner floating over him, And the same rosy-fingered hand of thine, and the artillery of the British Empire be- That shuts night's dying eyes shall open mine; tween him and slavery. The first station But thou faint god of sleep, forget that I north of Cincinnatti was a few miles up Mill Was ever known to be thy votary. Creek, at the house of the pious and honest- No more my pillows shall thine altar be, hearted John Vanzandt, who figures in chap- Myself a melting sacrifice; I'm born Nor will I offer any more to thee, ter nine of Uncle Tom's Cabin, as John Van Again a fresh child of the buxom morn. Trompe. Mrs. Stowe must have often been Heir of the Sun's first beams, why threat'st thou so roused from her sleep by the quick rattle of Why dost thou shake thy leaden sceptre? Go, the covered wagons, and the confused gallop- Bestow thy poppy upon wakeful woe, ing of the horses of constables and slave- Sickness and sorrow, whose pale-like lids ne'er catchers in hot pursuit. "Honest John" was always ready to turn out with his team, and the hunters of men were not often adroit know Thy downy finger; dwell upon their eyes, SEDERUNT XII. [SCENE:-The Shanty. Major and Laird sit- sederunt will be most barren; there is nothing, ting crooning over the fire.] MAJOR.-Let us have it by all means, or our positively nothing going on at this unhappy season of the year, when the wind and rain and fog and damp combine to render man MAJOR.-What weather! rain, rain, rain. Where is it to end? Did you ever see any- DOCTOR.-Stop, Major, for pity's sake. I thing like it, Laird? Oh! there is another have been delighted at lately witnessing anothtwinge. Hang it, man, throw on another log, er instance of the liberality of our publishers LAIRD.-Whisht, whisht, Major, ane wad in furnishing the public at a moderate rate, think that ye're 'na ower gratefu' for the meercies o' Providence. The saft weather, though a wee bit cauld, will bring on the grain noo buried in the earth, and the grass and flower o' the forest will rejoice in MAJOR.-Drat the grass and forest flowers! A week's fair weather and genial sunshine would do more for the fields, and man, too, than all last month's storm, and wind, and rain, and frost, and LAIRD.-Haud now,-frost? MAJOR.-Frost, as I live! and May more than half gone. [Enter Doctor.] I'll leave it to the Doctor. DOCTOR.-And what are you two old fogies fighting about, now. The weather, I'd bet a pound, to judge from your positions over the I with specimens of art, which a few years ago were exclusively the property of the wealthy. have been inspecting a painting which blends the historical with the poetical, and while intently examining the work, I fancied I could read the whole tale the canvas would portray. LAIRD.-An' what might it be? DOCTOR.-It is a painting illustrative of fashionable life. To the right may be seen a large and handsome house, decorated externally with unusual magnificence. This house, now, I would suppose to be occupied by some rich' personage, who, after serving, for many years his king and country, retires, on the death of his wife, to this his habitation, accompanied by his secretary, who assists him in winding up his public affairs. The statesman, for so I will call him, has a young and beautiful daughter of "sweet seventeen," as all heroines of tales are; the secretary, who is also good-looking, clever, witty, but poor, meets our heroine DOCTOR.-I cannot say, considering I am not and falls in love. It is not to be supposed an early riser, but an application to the Obser- that the father would countenance any such vatoryproceedings, either on the part of the secreMAJOR.-I can observe well enough for my-tary or of his daughter, and to avoid the posself. I was up at day break, and the puddles were covered with ice. fire. MAJOR.-Yes, this infernal, cold, damp, raw and blustering weather. We had frost last night, had we not, Doctor? DOCTOR.-Then, Major, you are, doubtless, right; but the weather is a stale subject to talk upon, and I have a little story that I hope will interest you while supper is preparing. sibility of such a catastrophe he dismisses the DOCTOR.-But, before going further, I'll des |