A moment listened to the cry, That thickened, as the chase drew nigh; last hundred years or more, saving the body politic from those dangerous revulsions which have in the same period of time harassed and retarded many of her neighbors. The attempted imitation of the English Constitution a half century since by France proved abortive, as sound political observers predicted must be the case, from the absence in that country of an organic development of democracy in the form of municipal corporations. There was no break-its incidents upon me, that I should hardly have water between the rage of ignorant, impoverished, turbulent masses, and the rashness of dreamy, hot-headed theorists." Speaking one day of the early Romans, Mr. Webster said that he could almost believe every thing related by historians of their extraordinary virtues, public and domestic, when he dwelt upon the fact that, though their laws authorized divorce, yet, for the first five hundred years, no individual ever availed himself of such a license! "It was the domestic training," he said; "it was the mothers who made a Publicola, a Camillus, and Coriolanus. Women, protected by the inviolability of the nuptial bond, were invested with a dignity that gave authority to instruction, and made the domestic hearth the nursery of heroes. "Public virtue," he said, "fell with private morality. Under Imperial Rome divorces were sought for and obtained upon the most frivolous pretexts, and all domestic confidence was destroyed. The inevitable consequence was the loss of all public morality. Men who had been false to their private obligations, would not be true to their public duties; Cæsar divorced his wife, and betrayed his country. "I have been to the very spot," continued Mr. Webster, "where this antlered monarch took his start that day; and so naturally and vividly had the poet impressed the scene and felt a deeper conviction of truth at Marathon or Salamis. "The other passage which strikes me as being so true to nature, also occurs in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel :' "The stag-hounds, weary with the chase, And urged, in dreams, the forest race, "Here we see that convulsive twitching of the limbs, the involuntary action of the nerves, which we have often noticed in dogs while sleepinga suppressed growl, perhaps, or broken cry. It is the observation of such natural traits that stamps the true poet. Homer is full of them; and Scott, who was ever studying nature, gives to his descriptions the beauty and force of truth. I always read him with pleasure and instruction." "It is the fashion of the present day," said Mr. Webster, "to decry Pope, or those who fail to abuse neglect to read him. A return, however, to true taste will take place, and Pope resume his proper throne on the English Parnassus. Later poets have stolen his thoughts, and, as if to conceal the theft, denied his wealth. "The sanctity of the nuptial bond is, in my But a mugget (as our Californian friends would opinion, one of the principal if not the chief say) of his brain, hammered and flattened by cause of the superior refinement, freedom, and present writers, fills a whole volume. He furprosperity enjoyed at the present time by Chris-nishes the capital of a hundred traders in potian nations." Mr. Webster was very familiar with, and often quoted, in familiar conversation, Scott's Poems. Two passages particularly delighted him, which he said brought the scenes and parties before him. The first was the beginning of the First Canto of the "Lady of the Lake:" "The stag at eve had drunk his fill, But, when the sun his beacon red And faint, from farther distance borne, Were heard the clanging hoof and horn. "As chief who hears his warder call, To arms! the foemen storm the wall!' etry of our day. "The caliph who destroyed the Alexandrian library has been perhaps not unjustly censured by subsequent ages; yet he consumed, doubtless, much that was worthless, and something, it may be, obnoxious. We do not need so general a cremation; but there is much of our later literature that would be better for the test of fire." 'Every new discovery of geological science," said Mr. Webster, "aids to confirm the narrative of the inspired historian; but geologists themselves sometimes, though with the intent of reconciling their discoveries with the Mosaic writings, build up untenable theories. Of these is M. de Luc, a celebrated French geologist of the last century, whose works I have been lately reading. He contends that the Deluge was not a general inundation, as both the Mosaic account and all historical tradition have taught us to believe; but a mere change of the solid and fluid portions of the earth's surface, so that what was formerly land became sea, and vice versâ; and this hypothesis he endeavors to show does not militate against the account of the great Noachian flood, as contained in the sacred text. But he does not take into consideration the fact, which may have been unknown to him, that many spots have been found in the midst of vast tracts of the ancient bottom of the sea thickly covered with trunks of trees and the accumulated remains of land animals. most extraordinary personage of whom we have any record. The true standard of comparison is, perhaps, the relative position of a man to his age-his contemporaneous altitude. Undoubtedly he was 'versed in all the science of the Egyptians,' as has been said of him; for he had received the most learned instruction under the immediate care of an Egyptian princess, who took the warmest and most enlightened interest in his welfare. The whole extent of Egyptian science in those days we can not fully know; but this we do know, that in the natural sciences, in astronomy, mathematics, and even in medicine, they were the masters of the Greeks; and that the deepest thinkers among the latter the sect of Pythagoras, as well as, afterward, the large-minded Plato himself—gained from them the rudiments of their teachings, or caught, at least, the first outline of those mighty speculations which ever since have astonished mankind. With these sciences, and with such speculations, Moses was familiar; but the nation he led out of bondage was not capable of ap "In my opinion the Mosaic history, rightly interpreted, speaks not only of the one great revolution on the earth's surface and character from the general deluge, but of several, perhaps as great, catastrophes of nature, however originating. I do not recollect at the present moment any particular passage in the sacred text illustrative of this belief, but I cherish the conviction from a general impression. The inspired writer fixes, with a precision that admits of no hesitation, the primitive dwelling-place of man in the central region of Western Asia, amidst four inland seas the Persian and Arabian gulfs on the one hand, and the Caspian and Mediterranean seas on the other-between the two great rivers of that central region, the Tigris and the Euphra-preciating them. It was for this reason, withThe third river of Paradise has been sought for farther to the north, in the region of Mount Caucasus; and some contend to have found it in the river Phasis. The fourth river, spoken of in Holy Writ, ancient commentators claimed to be the Nile; but the description of its course is so widely different from the present situation of that river, that a vast change in the earth's surface must have occurred to occa.sion the discrepancy. tes. To out doubt, that Moses withheld from them the high philosophy he had acquired from his Egyptian education-knowing it would rather serve to puzzle their understandings and perplex their judgments than to move and govern their hearts. And, indeed, we can not but perceive from his history that a higher, nobler, grander motive than any desire to perpetuate or aggrandize the science of Egypt pervaded and quickened the conduct of this great man. Whether we look "There is another circumstance to be ex-upon him as the founder and mighty lawgiver plained, and which can only be done by the of the Hebrew nation, or as the guide and supposition of some convulsion of nature. It teacher of the Hebrew people, we see that his is this: the one source in Paradise, in which whole intent was to inculcate a principle, wholly these four rivers had their rise, and whence foreign to Egyptian science—the direct, complete, they were to shed fertility and gladness over and constant responsibility of man to his great the earth, can not be found. It has escaped Creator. This was the fundamental principle, the most patient and minute research. higher far than the vain science of the schools, reason from analogy, and from circumstances though that might dive and penetrate, through which the sacred text justifies, may not this magical power, into the profoundest mysteries source have been dried up by some volcanic of Nature; this was the fundamental principle eruption, which we know to have dried up large that Moses strove, with all the energy of his rivers, and effected even greater changes? Ge- genius and affluent imagination, to stamp upon ological observation attests many vestiges of the mind of the chosen people. such changes; the Dead Sea in Palestine itself may be included among the lakes that reveal a volcanic origin. The irruption of the Black Sea into the Thracian Bosphorus, and the presumed irruption of the Mediterranean into the ocean, as well as many other partial revolutions in the earth and sea, show what changes have taken place, not necessarily to be ascribed to the last general deluge. "The study of geology, which may be called the Private Life of the Earth, is full of interest, and wholly corroborative of the Scriptures." "Moses," said Mr. Webster, one day after dinner, when the conversation turned on the Sacred Writings-"Moses interests me more than any character in sacred or profane history. He appears to me, in all respects, the "The writings of Moses, compared with those of other Asiatic authors so much nearer than ourselves to the source of primitive revelation, have this important difference-that whereas the latter serve but as the lights in the stern of a vessel to irradiate the past, his project their far shadows into futurity. They are, in their essence, eminently prophetic; and, coming down to us through a long line of ages, repeated by the Royal Psalmist, and resounding through that voice of warning and promise in the Desert, they still serve as prophecies, and await their final and full confirmation in God's own time. "Moses was the first and greatest writer in the Hebrew language, and the first that gave form and rules to the Hebrew language. He may have borrowed the Hebrew letters, as Cadmus is said to have borrowed the Greek, from the Egyptian hieroglyphics; but he took good | boarders she subsisted. She continued, however, care to exclude all their natural symbols, in or- to robe herself so magnificently in her anteceder to remove from his people every thing, how-dents, that it became a matter of surprise to ever remotely, suggestive of images and idolatry. "The more I study his writings, and compare them with those of Confucius and of the Indian and earlier Persian lawgivers and sages, the more I discover his vast intellect and superiority; while his conduct, both in Egypt and afterward, during the forty years' sojourn in the Arabian desert, proves that his moral qualities were as extraordinary as his intellectual power. By mingled firmness and kindness, by attention to their physical wants as well as religious instruction, he showed himself as beneficent as he was great. There was nothing inaccessible to the grasp of his mind, nothing insignificant to the goodness of his heart." In such a manner would Mr. Webster like to dwell upon the character and history of the first recorded lawgiver. It is not intended to give his very words, but his meaning; and so far as recollection serves, the order of his thoughts. A pleasure always to listen to him in his more familiar hours, it was a high privilege, when he spoke of sacred themes, and of the inspired writers; for then his language rose with his subject, as if he felt the inspiration of the men whose deeds and lives he described. MRS. BOARD FOR A LADY. RS. CARLACUE'S boarding-house was eminently respectable. It was situated not a hundred miles from Clinton Place, and was frequented by a stagnant set of people, all well-to-do in the world, and all stupid and tiresome. The gentlemen all wore evening coats in the morning, and the ladies affected black silk dresses, and were particularly solemn over dinner. Conversation rarely rose above a whisper at that imposing meal. The aspect of Mrs. Carlacue herself, who sat at the head of the long table, bony and grim as the skeleton at Egyptian banquets, was quite sufficient to restrain any indecent mirth or vulgar enjoyment. I am not now surprised that I suffer from dyspepsia. After eating so many of those melancholy dinners, where the digestive organs were absolutely chilled into inaction, it is not wonderful that I should find myself continually swallowing pieces of rhubarb, and feeling horrid symptoms about the gastric region. Why I staid there so long is still a mystery to me. It was the custom for quiet business people to go there; and to live at Mrs. Carlacue's was in some degree to entitle one's self to a character for prudence and propriety. Some business interests perhaps decided me to go there, and I am zoophytic in my habits, and change my locality with reluctance. Mrs. Carlacue was not a pleasant woman on the whole. She had seen better days-that is to say, her husband had once been a merchant, failed, and died, and left a traditionary respectability to Mrs. Carlacue as her widow's portion. On this and her every one that so eminent a lady should condescend to keep a boarding-house. All her professional avocations were performed in so royal a manner as to be positively awful to her guests. We were all afraid of her. She presented a bill in such a manner, that instead of the long array of figures, one saw only Mrs. Carlacue's illustrious genealogy stretching down the paper. Any budding rebellion against over-charges was quickly suppressed by the memories of the grandeur of Carlacue deceased, and the house yet existing in Lafayette Place, where the name of Carlacue was honored. No physical weakness on the part of her guests was at all sympathized in by Mrs. Carlacue. Were you ill, and unable to come down to dinner, it were an act of daring to demand meals in your room. There was a neighboring restaurant whose hospitality was open, but Mrs. Carlacue's system was not to be disturbed. She was never accustomed to wait on invalids when Carlacue was in his apogee. She did not keep a boarding-house-that was a point that she wished to have distinctly understood. If she took a few respectable persons to live with her, that was no reason why they should forget that she was a lady. Heaven forgive me, but there were times when I entirely forgot Mrs. Carlacue's claims to gentility, and thought her a heartless old humbug, who ruled over her entrapped guests like a vulgar, abominable old despot. There was a mystery residing in Mrs. Carlacue's establishment at the time that I lived under her iron sway. A pretty, child-faced girl, with long fair curls, who seemed to droop under the baneful influence of that dreary house as a flower spindles and whitens in a dark cellar. She was called Mrs. Grey, but beyond that we knew nothing of her history. She lived in a hall bedroom on the third story, and was a quiet and noiseless lodger. She seemed to have some deep grief eating into her heart; for her smile, when she did smile, was more melancholy than tears, and seemed like the pale ghost of some vanished happiness haunting her pallid features. She always dressed in black, and her attire, though betraying a forced economy, was always indescribably elegant. At first I put her down as a day-governess. Then I formed the theory that she was an officer's widow, subsisting on some small stipend. Then I rejected all these theories, and simply came to regard her as a mystery. Every one in the house seemed to soften at Mrs. Grey's approach-every one save the grim old Mrs. Carlacue. Arithmetical, hardened old merchants, prematurely old clerks, who had ciphered their youth away before they were out of jackets, wary and suspicious brokers, and respectable old maidens of independent means, all had a kind word for Mrs. Grey; she was so gentle, so pretty, so evidently grief-worn, so resigned, that it must have been a hard heart No answer came to this abominable insinuation, but I saw as well as if I was in the room the pale face contract with anguish, and the delicate form shudder at this savage blow. "I Pray let "The long and the short of it is, I want my room ma'am," continued the Carlacue. can't afford to give my house for nothing to people that no one knows nothing about. You'd better tramp, ma'am-I want my room." "I am ill, very ill, Mrs. Carlacue. me stay for a few days. will be dangerous for me to move just now." "The doctor, indeed! Who's to pay him, I'd like to know? I won't, that's certain. Perhaps your particular friend, Mr. Troy, would like to foot your bills." The doctor says it indeed, that refused to grant her a little sym- husbands, don't leave their wives without monpathy. That heart, however, rattled-I willey." not say beat-in Mrs. Carlacue's bony old bosom. She looked with a hard, relentless eye on poor Mrs. Grey. She snubbed her at the table before the guests; she turned a deaf ear to her requests; she sent her the outside slice of the roast beef; and helped her last to pumpkin pie. I was some time before I arrived at the secret of this savage demeanor, and it was not until poor, patient Mrs. Grey fell suddenly ill, and was obliged to have a doctor, that I discovered that she owed Mrs. Carlacue a bill for board. Then Mrs. Carlacue expatiated to her friends on her amiability in retaining this gentlewoman in her house. She had a husband somewhere in California, Mrs. Carlacue said, with a sneer, but the promised remittances did not arrive. It was always the way with those people. They always had husbands somewhere, that never made their appearance, and were expecting remittances by the next steamer that never arrived. When she had her house in Lafayette Place, she always paid her bills, and the lamented Mr. Carlacue would have died before he permitted her to live on any one's bounty. Oh, you old bedizened hypocrite! you know in your secret heart that Mr. Carlacue passed out of this world owing $50,000, and that your fine furniture in Lafayette Place was sold under execution; and that there exists still on Madame Larami's books an unsettled account with the name of Carlacue at the head of the page. Days and weeks passed, and still poor Mrs. Grey kept her room. It was no common illness that struck her down, I knew. It was hope deferred, and wounded pride, and all the misery that a delicate nature suffers when touched by such remorseless hands as those of old Carlacue. I did what I could. I sent her fruits, and preserves, and books in secret-for I tell you I was afraid of the old dragon—and I declare I would have paid her bill, only I was then a poor clerk myself on eight hundred dollars a year, and had a young brother at school depending on me. One morning as I was going out after breakfast, and as I paused, from a sort of vague instinct, opposite poor Mrs. Grey's door, I heard a stormy voice that I knew too well. It was sharp, grating, horrible as the filing of a saw. "It's scandalous," I heard Mrs. Carlacue say, for that pleasant voice was hers-"scandalous, I say. Could you not get some one else to swindle, madam, besides a poor, lone widow. I have been a lady, ma'am, myself, and I hope am one still, and I know how ladies should act, and I must say that your treatment of me is such as I did not expect." Again the sneer. Even my poor attentions were tortured into a crime against the suffering, friendless woman. Once more Mrs. Grey pleaded; once more the Carlacue voice rang shrilly with brutal taunts through the house. It was more than I could bear. I was on the point of marching into the room, and braving the Hecate of our house myself, when there was a bounding step on the stairs; a sunburnt, bearded young man came leaping up three steps at a time, and stood before me. "Which is Mrs. Grey's room?" he asked, hurriedly. My heart beat. An instinct told me that the preserver had arrived. "There, Sir," I answered, pointing to the door. He entered, and, I confess it, I listened. There was a faint scream of joy, an embrace that echoed audibly, and a moment's murmuring talk. Then, I regret to say, I heard a succession of the most frightful oaths I ever heard, in the midst of which the Carlacue voice seemed to be faintly combating. I heard Mrs. Carlacue-the great Mrs. Carlacue-the queen of vanished kingdoms, called more ugly names by that bearded young man, than I ever heard woman named before; and over all, and through all, I heard the dear, sweet voice of Mrs. Grey pleading for mercy toward her enemy. In a few moments out rushed Mrs. Carlacue, livid, breathless, disordered in her bearing, and holding in her hand a slip of white paper, which bore on it the name of the Mechanic's Bank. I slipped back into my room, not caring to encounter the old fury in her hour of humiliation, but I breathed a thanksgiving to Heaven from the bottom of my heart that Mrs. Grey had found her husband, and Mrs. Carlacue her master. N 18 THE GREAT EPIDEMICS. ASIATIC CHOLERA. N 1817 the eyes of physicians were directed toward the jungles of India, for under the burn "Indeed, Mrs. Carlacue," I heard a faint, well-known voice reply, "indeed I can not help it. I paid you as long as I could, and I expect a remittance every day from my husband. The moment it comes you shall have your money."ing sun of that distant land a strange and ter"Christmas is coming too," said the old brute, rible pestilence was raging. The affrighted nawith a horrid laugh. "Husbands, if they are tives called it Mordechie-an Arabic word, which may be translated the Death-blow-a singularly | report draws a terrific picture of the state of expressive title. This had long before been the army: corrupted by the French into Mort de chien. It "Old and young, Europeans and natives, is usually believed to have originated in Jessore, where it prevailed in August; but we have satisfactory evidence that it was in Nuddeah and Mymensing as early as May. The true origin of the disease is enveloped in mystery. Some learned physicians believe that they have found descriptions of it in the writings of the Greeks, and are confident that Celsus alludes to it. However that may be, it is certain that it has prevailed for ages in India. It was repeatedly seen by the medical men of the last century who practiced in Bengal, but it had never before been known to sweep so destructively over the entire peninsula. It confined itself to narrow belts of country, and appeared only at intervals in them. When it did prevail, however, it was often very malignant. Thus at Hurdwar, during a festival in 1780, it is said to have swept away 20,000 human beings. The next year it attacked a division of Bengal troops, at Ganjam, so fiercely that 5000 were admitted into the hospital during the first day, and by the end of the third half the corps were sick. Men who, up to the time of their attack, were in perfect health dropped dead, and few who survived the first hour failed to recover. We have accounts of still earlier visitations of this terrible disease. Le Begue de Presle tells us that it destroyed 30,000 natives and 800 Europeans in Bengal during the year 1762. The great epidemic of Asiatic cholera, however, commenced, as we have already said, in the summer of 1817. It did not attract much attention until it had attacked Jessore, a town about a hundred miles northeast of Calcutta. Twenty or thirty died daily; and although the inhabitants soon took the alarm and fled to the country, 6000 perished in a few weeks. Early in September it reached Calcutta, and almost immediately began to spread to the north and west, depopulating many large cities. fighting men and camp followers, were alike subject to its visitations, and all equally sank in a few hours under its grasp. From the 14th to the 22d the mortality had become so great as to depress the stoutest spirits. The sick were already so numerous, and still pouring in from every quarter so quickly, that the medical men, though day and night at their posts, were no longer able to administer to their necessities. The whole camp then put on the appearance of a hospital. The noise and bustle almost inseparable from the intercourse of large bodies of people had nearly subsided; nothing was to be seen but individuals anxiously hurrying from one division of the camp to another, to inquire after the fate of their dead or dying companions, and melancholy groups of natives bearing the biers of their departed relatives to the river. At length even this consolation was denied them; for the mortality was so great that there were neither time nor hands to carry off the bodies, which were then thrown into the neighboring ravine, or hastily committed to the earth on the spot on which they had expired, and even round the officers' tents. All business had given way to solicitude for the suffering. Not a smile could be discerned, not a sound heard, except the groans of the dying and the wailing over the dead. Throughout the night especially a gloomy silence, interrupted only by the well-known dreadful sounds of poor wretches laboring under the distinguishing symptoms of the disease, universally prevailed. Many of the sick died before reaching the hospital; and even their comrades, while bearing them from the outposts to medical aid, sank themselves, suddenly seized by the disorder. The natives, thinking their only safety lay in flight, had now begun to desert in great numbers; and the highways and fields, for many miles round, were strewed with the bodies of those who had left the camp with the disease upon them, and speedily sunk under its exhausting effects." About that time the great Indian army, organized upon the old Oriental plan, containing 10,000 troops and 80,000 camp followers, was about taking the field, under the command of the Marquis of Hastings, against the Hindostanee chiefs. On the 6th of November the pestilence reached them. The weather was most oppressive. A moist and suffocating heat relaxed the fibre of the troops. The flags drooped idly from their staves, for not a breath of air stirred the immovable calm. The thermome-gal, has been estimated at 220,000. ter ranged from 90° to 100° in the shade. The disease at first attracted but little attention, as it confined itself to the camp followers, and did not destroy a great number of them. At last, however, it burst forth with great violence and ran its course in twelve days. The rapidity of its increase may be learned from the statement that, on the first day of its general prevalence, seventy-nine, and on the second five hundred, were admitted into the hospital. The Bengal The disease disappeared as suddenly as it came, not, however, before it had swept into eternity a number of souls variously estimated at from three to nine thousand. The most particular statement that we have seen makes the mortality of those frightful twelve days amount to 764 officers and 8500 men. The entire mortality, during the prevalence of cholera in Ben Now was noticed that direful march along the lines of communication so characteristic of this pestilence. The disease crossed the Deccan, at the steady, leisurely rate of a pedestrian, making from fifteen to eighteen miles a day. It took no definite course, and obeyed no atmospheric currents, but marched at once in several directions. By July, 1818, it had reached the western coast of India. Eye-witnesses record the usual mutations of feeling |