is the king of diamonds, for his strict regularity; and St. Jerome is the king of spades (pique) for his picquant style."

The Duke of Orleans once dared Father André to employ any ridiculous expressions about him; this however our good father did very adroitly. He addressed him thus: Foin de vous monseigneur, Foin de moi, Foin de touts les auditeurs. He saved himself, by taking for his text the 7th verse of the 10th chapter of Isaiah, where it is said, all the people are grass---Foin in French signifying hay, and being also an interjection, fie upon!

SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY.

The speech of this eminent and humane lawyer on the Slave Trade Abolition Bill, was received with such distinguished applause, that the delivery of one passage was followed by three distinct cheers. Towards the conclusion, he introduced a most brilliant apostrophe, in which he drew a comparative estimate of the labours and the enjoyments of the original propounder of that bill, and the late despot of France.

He was not less energetic in his remarks on the treaty of France in 1811, which tolerated the slave trade for five years. When Mr. Horner moved for papers relating to the subject, Sir Samuel rose, and made a very eloquent speech, from which we make the following extract:

"That the British nation should be parties to a treaty, by which a traffic in human beings is sanc

tioned, is alone a sufficient cause of reproach; but to feel the whole extent of the disgrace which this treaty brings upon us, it is necessary to consider what the real nature of the traffic is. The above trade is, indeed, no where mentioned, but with some epithet, which expresses the horror which it inspires. It is described as inhuman, sanguinary, detestable, or by some other vague and general terms of reprobation; but such terms can convey but a very inadequate notion of the real horrors of this trade, to those nations which are happily strangers to it in practice. But in this country, it is in no such imperfect and indefinite mode, that this horrible traffic, this foul reproach to civilized society, is known. What the trade really is, we have fully ascertained. We have, as it were, reckoned up and taken the exact dimensions of all the miseries and agonies it inflicts. What might seem to others to be the heightenings and amplifications of eloquence; we, alas! know to be plain facts incontestably proved. We have made ourselves acquainted with the trade in its manifold, complicated, and yet unexaggerated horrors. We have dared to scrutinize minutely into every part of it. We have, by long and patient examination of numerous witnesses, traced in the very heart of Africa, the superstition and barbarism in the darkness of which its natives are all enveloped, to this powerful cause. On those shores which have intercourse with Europeans, we have almost with our own eyes beheld the wasted fields, and ruined villages, and flying inhabitants, which with certainty denote that slave ships are hovering on the coast. We have even descended in the holds of the ships, and have had the courage

to survey, and to drag forth to open day, the chained and crowded victims, writhing with agony, or wasting with disease, during the protracted miseries of the middle passage. We have traced up to this, as their source, all those habitual severities and cruelties, and that constant contempt of human life, and human misery, which distinguish the West Indian from every other species of slavery; and it is this trade, thus known to us in the full extent of its abominations, this system of fraud and oppression, and rapine, and cruelty, and murder, examined into, understood, scrutinized, and exposed, and execrated; to which the noble lord has, by the treaty, given the sanction of the British name, a treaty which, so far as it respects the slave trade, is repugnant to justice and humanity, disgraceful to the British character, and offensive in the sight of God."

CATHOLIC MISSIONARY.

Merolla, a Roman Catholic Missionary to the Congo, found much dfficulty in prevailing on the negro women to abandon some superstitious rites of their own religion; on the feast of the purification of the Blessed Virgin, he preached a sermon on the subject to the converts; in which, after expatiating on the criminality of their practices, and particularly the injury they offered to the immaculate mother of the Saviour, he suddenly drew up a curtain, and exhibited an image of the virgin, having a dagger stuck to its heart, with blood flowing copiously from the wound. The poor creatures fell into transports of grief at this dismal spectacle, and promised obedience to all the good father's instructions.

FREDERIC THE GREAT.

Previous to the battle of Lutzen, in which eighty thousand Austrians were defeated by an army of thirty-six thousand Prussians, commanded by Frederic the Great, this monarch ordered all his officers to attend him, and thus addressed them: "To morrow I intend giving the enemy battle; and as it will decide who are to be the future masters of Silesia, I expect every one of you will in the strictest manner do his duty. If any one of you is a coward, let him step forward before he makes others as cowardly as himself; let him step forward I say, and he shall immediately receive his discharge without ceremony or reproach. I see there is none among you who does not possess true heroism, and will not display it in defence of his king, of his country, and of himself. I shall be in the front and in the rear; shall fly from wing to wing; no company will escape my notice; and whoever I then find doing his duty, upon him will I heap honour and favour.'

HEROIC NEGRO.

Greater cruelty was perhaps never exercised than by the Europeans to the negroes of Surinam. Stedman relates, that nothing was more common than for old negroes to be broken on the wheel, and young ones burnt alive; and yet the fortitude with which they suffered, was equal to that of the most ardent patriot, or enthusiastic martyr. One of the fugitive, or revolted slaves, being brought before his judges,

who had condemned him previous to hearing what he had to say in his defence, requested to be heard for a few minutes before he was sent to execution; when leave being granted, he thus addressed them:

"I was born in Africa; while defending the person of my prince in battle, I was taken prisoner, and sold as a slave on the Coast of Guinea. One of our countrymen, who sits amongst my judges, purchased me. Having been cruelly treated by his overseer, I deserted, and went to join the rebels in the woods. There also I was condemned to become the slave of their chief, Bonas, who treated me with still more cruelty than the whites, which obliged me to desert a second time, determined to fly from the human species for ever, and to pass the rest of my life innocently and alone in the woods. I had lived two years in this

manner, a prey to the greatest hardships, and the most dreadful anxiety, merely attached to life by the hope of once more seeing my beloved family, who are perhaps starving, owing to my absence. Two years of misery had thus passed, when I was discovered by the rangers, taken, and brought before this tribunal, which now knows the wretched history of my life."

This speech was pronounced with the greatest moderation, and by one of the finest negroes in the colony. His master, who, as he had remarked, was one of his judges, unmoved by the pathetic and eloquent appeal, made him this atrociously laconic reply. "Rascal, it is of little consequence to us to know what you have been saying; but the torture shall make you confess crimes as black as yourself, as well as those of your detestable accomplices." At these