invalids and the fashionable. My residence is in the very center of this beautiful island, and when I tell you that a son of your Gilpin, the celebrated writer on the picturesque, gave us some hints toward laying out our garden, and that it has been cultivated by Scotch and Irish gardeners, you will easily conceive that, though we are so remote from you, our outward world does not greatly differ. In natural beauty my island does not seem to me inferior to the Isle of Wight. In cultivation it will bear no comparison."

Before the Revolution the society of Newport was formed of various and distinct elements. Besides professional men, many wealthy men of leisure, and active merchants, who lived sumptuously and entertained magnificently, there were the followers of the Puritans, who eschewed the vain diversions of the times and formed a circle of their own. There, too, were many Quaker families of wealth and respectability who had found an asylum in Rhode Island from the intolerant spirit of Massachusetts. The memory of the wise and good Roger Williams and his friend, the venerable John Clark, both banished from Massachusetts for their liberal ecclesiastical views, may well be cherished with admiring love by the States which they founded. Their Christian spirit softened the prejudices of those around them, and caused them to look with charitable eyes on those who differed from them in opinion. But where principle was concerned they were unflinching. Those who had imbibed their faith could not feel at ease in the society of the profane and ungodly. And there were many such. It was a skeptical age, and from the West Indian trade, as well as from the fashion of the times, intemperance prevailed to an alarming degree. So a wide gulf lay between the Puritanical and the worldly element; it could not be bridged over. The two classes of society remained distinct and apart, each doing its own work in its own

way.

The original character of Rhode Island gives the views of the noble men whose names are appended to it. They "swear in the presence of the Great Jehovah, as he shall help them to submit person, life, and estate unto the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and to those most perfect laws of his given in his most holy Word of truth to be guided and helped thereby." The original name of Rhode Island was Aquidneck, which means the Isle of Peace; but the early settlers are said to have changed it to its present name from its resemblance to the Isle of

Rhodes, "which lies in no bluer water in the far-famed Mediterranean Sea."

In my hasty sketch of Newport I have not mentioned the many natural objects which give it interest and individuality that lie everywhere around it. Easton's Beach, said to be one of the finest in the world, is the daily resort of hundreds of bathers during the fashionable season, and gives one a noble view of the broad Atlantic. That beach is the scene of a singular story too well authenticated for us to doubt. In 1750 a vessel with her sails set and colors flying was seen approaching the breakers, and those who watched her wonderingly were certain of her destruction. But, as if guided by an unseen power, she glided safely through rock and breaker, and her keel struck the sand without the slightest injury to any part of her. The beach was covered with people, and when they went on board they found no living thing save a cat and dog, who seemed to be tranquilly waiting for the breakfast that was just ready to be served. The vessel was one belonging to Newport, which had been hourly looked for from Honduras. The mystery of her desertion was never explained. Sachuest Beach, which lies eastward of Easton's, is the more picturesque, and gives us a view of two memorable spots, Paradise and Purgatory, as well as of the Hanging Rock. Paradise consists of a long row of sycamore-trees at the foot of a rocky hill, and is probably called so in contrast to Purgatory, which is a deep and fearful-looking chasm in the rocks. The Hanging Rock is a huge mass of stone that overleans its base. There it is remembered that Bishop Berkley loved to sit, and read, and meditate. Still wilder and grander is Conrad's Cave, which, if the sea had not washed away all traces of it, might be indeed a safe refuge for the pirate or the smuggler. There at the foot of the cliffs that form the coast lie immense rocks covered with marine grass, which the action of the sea has broken off and plunged in wild confusion into the water beneath. Wandering in another direction we find the Spouting Rock with its booming thunder and strange, unearthly echo. There the sublime and beautiful meet together. The great strong waves dash over mighty bowlders in profuse cataracts, and then, after throwing up their pearly spray, playfully retreat, leaving the rocks richly covered with tawny sea-weed, very beautiful to behold. Here we found mosses, pink, purple, and green, of every lovely shade of color, thrown high upon the rocks, and crisp and dried in the noonday sun. "We thank Thee for this goodly world,"

last Sunday said Dr. Thayer at Newport in his morning prayer. Newport is, indeed, a place to give thanks for. How often has it been like the breath of a new life to the weary and languid frame that has been withering in the hot and stifling city! How many with harassed minds and quivering nerves have looked forward to a week's sojourn here beside the ocean with hope and consolation! What a refreshment to the body it has proved, and what a tonic to the mind! Yes, again let us say, Thank God for Newport, for its sweet tones and harmonies, for its gentleness and grandeur, for its crystal waters and its bright and joyous atmosphere! May we not heave a sigh of pity for our poor Southern sisters, exiled, like Eve, through their own fault from a paradise which they loved so well? Their houses are left unto them desolate, and their habitation has another taken. One can scarcely glance at half the notable places in Newport in so brief a sketch as this, but there is one walk too preeminently lovely to be overlooked. By law it is forbidden to shut out the sea, so that the owners of some of the fine places on Belleview Avenue are compelled to leave a path for foot-passengers on the margin of their grounds. So we walk with the ocean on one side and charming villas with lawns, and vines, and trees, and gorgeous flowers on the other. The Summer home of Bancroft, the historian, is one of these. We frequently met him, a man with gray beard and whiskers and flashing eyes, riding on the Avenue. There, too, a Summer or two since we used to meet Jerome Bonaparte, with his little son, driving in a light, low carriage. So plain was his appearance that we at first mistook him for a Quaker.

Of the many homes that contribute to the beauty of Newport there is one that has for us a special charm. Facing the bay which is so beautiful in form and color, and made so memorable by scenes of historic record, it is separated from the ocean by the long green promontory on which Fort Adams stands in rugged strength. Beyond it white sails are glancing as they go in and out on their seaward way, while an undulating line formed by Canonicut Island is seen in the blue distance. the tongue of land and the house is a lucid cove, while on the shore above lie Titanic bowlders mottled with moss, lichen, and tawny grass. The Norman cottage of red and yellow, the rolling lawn, and the close-set shrubbery that bounds it, are part of this outlook to the west, and harmonize admirably with it. To the east, rising up from the water's edge, and sitting queen-like upon the bay, is the town of

Between

Newport, just near enough to give the idea of companionship, and hear the music of its bells, but far enough to have its inequalities softened and mellowed to the eye. The fine view of the bay is diversified by numerous islands and the sails of many vessels. Goat Island, with its own little bay, has the Santee and the Constitution, now used as a naval school, anchored beside it. Of the latter ship it is said but one block of wood remains of the original structure. But her past noble history will ever make her an interesting object. On Goat Island stands Fort Wolcott, which has been named after king, queen, and patriot successively. From the breakwater beyond the island the lighthouse with its unsleeping eye gleams all night in the darkness. To the north is Coaster's Island with its fine asylum, and midway lies Rose Island with only its outline distinguishable in the distance. To the west we behold the island of Canonicut, next in size to Rhode Island, with the remains of its old fort like a Donjon Keep of feudal times looking stern and lonely from beetling crags. Every window in the house frames some scene of rare gladness' and beauty. To the south we see country seats, green fields, hills and valleys, with those enormous rocks, time-covered and weatherstained, which contribute to make all the inland groupings of Newport so strikingly picturesque. In that direction beyond all else we again see the dark blue ocean. The immediate view gives us lawns and flowers glowing with sunshine. Masses of rich bloom fill high Italian vases carved all over with appropriate rural symbols. The sunbeams peer from between the clouds on a tiny lake with its green and white boat moored to the turfy bank. Then turning to the other window we see tufts of green foliage dropping down into a dingle, which, shutting out the intervening fence, forms a beautiful natural boundary to the place. Sweet bits of landscape, fresh and joyful, are all around. But the ever-lovely bay is the most absorbing object. There our eyes oftenest rest. Fierce conflicts have taken place, and deeds of heroism been performed upon it. Here the sloop Liberty was burnt by resolute men, tired of King George's tyranny, and here the French and English fleets had a naval engagement. Newport is a study that well rewards the diligent student. Those who have been contented to visit its hotels and hastily glance at what may be seen of it in fashionable drives, are like one who holds in his hand a precious volume with its leaves more than half uncut. Its charming shores, so varied by cove, headland, and cliff, its rocky ledges and giant bowlders,

its blue sea and green pastures, may speak to the eye, but its history appeals to the heart, and will remain

"The property of those alone
Who have beheld it, noted it with care,
And in their minds recorded it with love."

AUNT HELEN'S TOUR.

BY MRS. H. C. GARDNER.

NUMBER IV.

PONTOTOC, FEB. 20.

MA BELLE ADA,-The penny post-boy

has just brought in your letter, and, though I have nothing of special personal interest to communicate, I will improve the unaccustomed leisure of this stormy evening by writing to you. It has been a dull day, and I have been wandering over the house, losing myself in the different halls and stairways, yawning, and admiring the lofty rooms and their elegant furnishing, but without getting fairly waked up till I found my way to the cupola on the top of the building and looked out upon the wide and varied prospect. The busy city lay at my feet, but beyond, far down the sparkling bay, there were white-winged ships speeding on different missions to different ports, and on either shore were the glittering spires and compact houses that mark the miniature American cities.

It was a lovely sight, and it reminded me of my excursion yesterday. I wish I might have taken you with me, for no description can do justice to the wonderful things I saw during my travels. I can give only a few hints in regard to the principal places.

There can scarcely be any thing more delightful for a person whose journeyings over the face of the earth are limited by both physical and pecuniary weakness than the privilege of spending a day with a fine stereoscope which is well supplied with views. Such a day I enjoyed yesterday, and I made the tour of Europe in about four hours, besides visiting many objects of interest in our own country. First of all I visited Holland, and busied myself for half an hour with peering inquisitively into the quaint, tidy houses which border the straight and well-disciplined dikes. Having long ago, like most readers, made the acquaintance of the immortal Diedrich Knickerbocker, I could not now help recalling his humorous account of the ancient Dutch burghers. They did not believe in progress or novelty, and

their descendants are not given to either activity or credulity. The sketch needed no label to localize it. I knew where I was directly. The style of architecture, the primitive, odd methods for the continual reconstruction of the country's foundations, that Holland may not carelessly melt away from its position on the face of the earth, were all as fresh and clear in the picture as in the great author's delineation.

From Holland I went to Paris, the modern Vanity Fair, and from thence to Constantinople. I do not care particularly for pictures of houses crowded together, and the Turkish capital would have passed unremarked but for its association with the Bosphorus, which has a classic interest as being the time-honored receptacle of strangled and bagged sultanas. Our own glorious Niagara came next in all the refreshing beauty of contrast, and perfectly represented in every thing but its roar.

With the next turn of the wheel came a view of Rome, of St. Peter's Cathedral, and also of the statuary in the Vatican. Some of the figures were most beautiful, and no description has done them justice; but I shuddered with a strange dread when I saw the Laocoon with its impossible agony. I am glad that the broad ocean rolls between me and that impersonation of torture. That the artist lived long enough to execute his diabolical conception is a proof to me that he was not human.

a

The next two sketches were rivals, the first

scene among the rugged Swiss Alps, the other a picture of the White Mountains at sunrise.

All these views, in design, coloring, and tone, reproduce as correctly as possible their originals. I lingered long upon the banks of the storied Rhine, recalling to mind the old German romances and the wild legends of the Black Forest, and silently arousing my old enthusiasm for Luther and his compeers. It was almost a natural transition to Geneva, and from thence to sea-born Venice. I got no glimpse of modern life there. The stately palaces which overhung the canals that serve for streets were so distinctly represented that the very net-work pattern of the guards about the window balconies could be plainly traced. Light gondolas waited on the waters below, just as they did when the Doges of Venice were in the questionable habit of “chucking" unwary people through that dark, historic bridge into eternity.

| But you will tire of my description, though you would never weary of the views themselves; so I will leave the instrument and take you to a Church fair and give you something

more tangible than my fanciful tour. It was called a tea-party last evening, but to-day it has been christened "a success." What the success consisted in I did not learn. There was a great crowd of people pushing and elbowing each other, and there were little boys and girls to step on our dresses and tumble under our feet. It was like being passed through a set of rolls to reach the tables, which were laid in a small room behind the large vestry. There was a piano in brisk operation somewhere. I heard considerable said about some articles for sale, but I was not strong enough to make my way to them. The piano had the element of final perseverance well developed, though not more strongly than the persons who were eating in the refreshment

room.

A stranger would have supposed that they had been engaged to do all of that part of the work, and had gone through a preparatory course of fasting. The jaw movement was very regular, the upward, downward, and sidelong motion were each perfectly rendered. Verily, I thought, "man is fearfully and wonderfully made." How those free-ticketed public men did eat! And what blessed opportunities for staying their unfortunate stomachs, in spite of the high prices, do these public suppers afford!

You will think this but a meager description of a fair in the city, but it is all I saw. Your query in regard to the pulpit-talent of this region should be answered by a better critic than myself. I heard two sermons last Sunday, which were unlike most others in this respect, that there was no sentence in them without a clearly-expressed thought of its own. And each thought was so striking and original that the hearer could scarcely resist the impulse to stop and consider it well; but the speaker gave us no leisure for that. Most preachers, after throwing out a new idea, begin to turn it over and speculate about it till it loses all its freshness. But we had sentiments full of exquisite beauty immediately succeeded by strong and sometimes rough statements of truth, and every body's attention was on the stretch to appropriate the whole. It was not like listening to one speaker-there seemed to be a great many of them. An extravagant use of adjectives was noticeable, but whether this use in his hands were a defect or a grace I could not determine. I only know that when the idea expressed was divested of its descriptive overplus it was quite as big a thought as I cared to digest.

By the way, what a variety in manner and tone we find in the pulpit! There is very lit

tle naturalness. If pulpit mannerisms were of any earthly use I would touch with reverence the hem of the preacher's garb of affectation. I know a preacher whose voice in conversation is full of pleasant, musical intonations. God gave him thus a power to charm, and adapted this power to the various expression of Christian experience, or to sound a note of alarm in the sinner's ears. He goes into the pulpit and begins a regular sing-song. The monotone would be ludicrous were it not for its sublime associations. The speaker would never think of assuming it if making a political or lyceum speech; he would be hissed if he did.

Another preacher commences with his voice keyed on B flat, and draws a long straight line till he is out of breath, and then makes a sudden swoop like a fish-hawk. And he keeps doing it. His oratory is like the parallel lines of the musical staff with a jumping-off place at the end of each. I heard a sermon a fortnight ago which from beginning to end was like the waves of the sea when they are not driven by the winds and tossed. It had a smooth, regular, undulating motion, first up a little, then a short, downward slide, the curves all smoothly turned, and the whole sermon executed on three notes-g, a, b. These letters are meant to go separately. They are simple musical signs, and do n't mean a pun at all.

But I am no critic, and all these mannerisms which annoy me may have their value for others. Many hearers think more of the "holy tone" than of the sermon. I remember how a good woman was delighted with the prayer of a Millerite exhorter, now extinct, just because it exhibited such vocal power. One expression of that prayer has lingered in my memory for twenty years. He called himself a worm, and begged to be used as a whip to give some mountain a thrashing.

I am coming home. The Spring is almost here, and the steadily-lengthening days and mild breezes whisper of budding trees and flowers. The seasons hurry by one after the other, and the brief years which make up our earthly existence will soon all be registered. I am coming home to work. Life is too earnest for idleness, too serious for the pursuit of pleasure. I am coming home to the quiet grave on the green hill-side to study its sweet lessons, to fit myself, with God's help, for the higher, purer life which eternity will open to me. Adieu. AUNT HELEN.

HALF the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.-Guesses at Truth.

TRANSLATED FROM HAGENBACH'S HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES.

FREDER

BY REV. B. H. NADAL, D. D.

NUMBER II.

REDERICK WILLIAM I, king of Prussia, the father of Frederick II, showed himself worthy of his great ancestor, who, in a time of similar affliction, had opened his country to the oppressed Huguenots. He received these men now turning away from Kassl kindly and yet cautiously, and this caution was all the more needful because their enemies had not neglected to circulate all sorts of reports to their injury, charging them with Socinian and other heresies. Some even pretended to quote from them-"It is enough that we confess God, the Father, and the Holy Ghost; the second Person is not essential;" indeed, "Christ died in despair on the cross, and therefore perished forever." Frederick William had both the Salzburgers carefully examined by his theologians, the Provosts Roloff and Reinbeck, and only when they were found orthodox, and in agreement with the Augsburg confession did the king promise them assistance and a place of refuge, provided they should be driven out of their own country.

They did not wait long; expatriation, before forbidden, now became obligatory under the so-called patent of emigration, published October 30, 1731. According to this order all persons in the country not permanently-settled residents, all farmers without political rights, all day-laborers and house-servants who adhered either to the Augsburg confession or to the doctrine of the Reformed Church, were required under the heaviest penalties to leave the country within eight days. In like manner all the workmen in the mines, in the furnaces, in the salt-works were to be at once dismissed without further pay. Such as were owners of houses or land were allowed from one to three months, at the end of which they were to be outlawed and declared stripped of all right, both of property and citizenship. Only those who within fifteen days should repent of their errors and abjure them, and should formally return to the Romish Church, were offered mercy.

The patent produced a general commotion. The Evangelical corpus at Regensburg protested against it as a violation of the Peace of Westphalia. But the Archbishop replied that these people were rebels, and that as such he

no further than to permit really-permanent inhabitants to remain through the hardest part of the Winter, and fixed St. George's day of the year 1732 as the limit of their stay. Meanwhile, to give effect to the edict in relation to such as did not belong to this class, there appeared at the end of the first-fixed term, on the 24th of September, two squadrons of dragoons, who, under the pretext of giving the poor creatures passes, drove them together with the rudest violence, and brought them to the archiepiscopal residence, where they were kept for a long time confined in prison before they were permitted to leave the country.

From December, 1731, till November, 1732, the exiles might be seen in numerous companies and at various intervals starting on their long journey. How much their removal did toward desolating the country the authorities do not agree, but the loss is set down as high as thirty thousand souls. We are unwilling to linger among the scenes of distress which their departure in the severe Winter occasioned, nor would we repeat the acts of outrage and barbarity by which those scenes were made still more distressing. We would rather accompany them on their distant way as they leave the land of oppression behind them, and see them under the Almighty's free sky as they move along over the roads which his good angels have thrown up for them, where the breath of liberty already begins to breathe around them, and where the prospect opens up to them of reaching, if not a paradise, without care or trouble, at least a new earthly father-land. Such a land stood open to them on several sides. The two messengers had already received orally from the king of Prussia the assurance that he would remember them in the day of their troubles and banishment. This assurance was repeated in writing on the 2d of February, 1732; "from royal Christian pity and heartfelt sympathy he would reach them a loving hand and receive them in his country." Every thoroughfare of his kingdom should be open to them, and all princes and States whose counties they might touch in passing should be entreated to aid them in their journey; it was a duty which one Christian owed to another. Every man should have for his daily expenses four groschen, and every woman and maiden three groschen, and every child two, to be paid out of the king's exchequer. They were to enjoy, if they settled, all the privileges and rights which belonged to other colonists, among which were especially understood non-liability to taxation and other favors. At the same