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SUBJECTS DESCRIPTIVE AND MISCELLANEOUS.

THE SELF-INFLICTING TORMENTS OF THE GAMESTER.

No man who has not felt, can possibly image to himself the tortures of a gamester. Of a gamester like me, who played for the improvement of his fortune, who played with the recollection of a wife and children, dearer to him than the blood that bubbled through the arteries of his heart; who might be said like the savages of ancient Germany, to make these relations the stake for which he threw; who saw all his own happiness and all theirs, through the long vista of life, depending on the turn of a card! All bodily racks and torments are nothing compared with certain states of the human mind. The gamester would be the most pitiable, if he were not the most despicable creature that exists. Arrange ten bits of painted paper in a certain order, and he is ready to go wild with the extravagance of his joy. He is only restrained by some remains of shame from dancing about the room, and displaying the vileness of his spirit by every sort of freak and absurdity. At another time, when his hopes have been gradually worked up into a paroxysm, an unexpected turn arrives, and he is made the most miserable of men. Never shall I cease to recollect the sen. sation which I have repeatedly felt, in the instantaneous sinking of the spirits, the conscious fire that spread over my visage, the anger in my eye, the burning dry. ness of my throat, the sentiment that in a moment was

my own existence, and all mankind. How every malignant and insufferable passion seemed to rush upon my soul! What nights of dreadful solitude and despair did I repeatedly pass during the progress of my ruin! It was the night of the soul! My mind was wrapped in a gloom that could not be pierced! My heart was oppressed with a weight that no power appeared equal to remove! My eyelids seemed to press downward with an invincible burthen! My eyeballs were ready to start and crack their sockets! I lay motionless, the victim of ineffable horror!

A description of the field of battle, where Varus, the Roman General and his army, had been destroyed by Arminius. Also of the tribute of respect paid by Germanicus and his legions to the scattered and unburied bones of their slaughtered countrymen.

Touched by this affecting circumstance, Germanicus resolved to pay the last human office to the relics of that unfortunate commander and his slaughtered soldiers. The same tender sentiment diffused itself throughout the army. Some felt the touch of nature for their relations, others for their friends, and all lamented the disasters of war, and the wretched lot of human kind. The army marched through a gloomy solitude; the place presented an awful spectacle, and the memory of a tragical event increased the horror of the scene. The first camp of Varus appeared in view, the extent of the ground, and the three different enclosures for the eagles, still distinctly seen, left no doubt that the whole was the work of the three legions.

Farther on were traced the ruins of a rampart and the hollow of a ditch well nigh filled up. This was supposed to be the spot where the few who escaped the general massacre, made their last effort, and perished in the attempt. The plains around were white with

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in heaps, as the men happened to fall in flight, or in a body, resisted to the last; fragments of javelins, and the limbs of horses lay scattered about the field: human sculls were seen upon the trunks of trees. In the adjacent woods stood the savage altars where the tribunes, and the principal centurions were offered up a sacrifice with barbarous rites. Some of the soldiers who survived that dreadful day, and afterwards broke their chains, related circumstantially several particulars. "Here the commanders of the legions were put to the sword; on that spot the eagles were seized; there Varus received his first wound, and this the place where he himself the mortal stab, and died by his own sword. "Yonder mound was the tribunal from which Arminius harangued his countrymen. Here he fixed his gibbets, there he dug his funeral trenches, and in that quarter he offered every mark of scorn and insolence to the Roman Eagles." Six years had elapsed since the overthrow of Varus, and in the same spot the Roman army collected the bones of their slaughtered countrymen. Whether they were burying the remains of strangers or of their own friends, no man knew; all, however, considered themselves as performing the last obsequies to their kindred and their brother soldiers. While employed in this pious office, their hearts were torn with contending passions; by turns oppressed with grief, and burning for revenge.

A monument to the memory of the dead was raised with turf; Germanicus, with his own hand, laid the first sod; discharging at once a tribute due to the legions, and sympathizing with the rest of the army.

EULOGY ON GENERAL WASHINGTON.

In contemplating the revolution of this country, the mind naturally recurs to the means by which so great an object was accomplished, and its eye at once rests upon Washington! A man, a soldier, and a patriot

the wisdom of the earth, so pure a system of practical morality—a code of ethics more sublime in its conception-more simple in its means more happy and more powerful in its operation: and if he cannot do so, I then say to him, Oh! in the name of your own darling policy, filch not its guide from youth, its shield from manhood, and its crutch from age! Though the light I follow may lead me astray, still I think it is light from Heaven! The good, and great, and wise, are my companions-my delightful hope is harmless, if not holy; and wake me not to a disappointment, which in your tomb of annihilation, I shall not taste hereafter! To propagate the sacred creed-to teach the ignorant -to enrich the poor-to illumine this world with the splendors of the next-to make men happy you have never seen-and to redeem millions you can never know-you have sent your hallowed missionaries forward; and never did a holier vision rise, than that of this celestial and glorious embassy. Methinks I see the band of willing exiles bidding farewell perhaps forever, to their native country; foregoing home, and friends and luxury-to tempt the savage sea, or men more savage than the raging element-to dare the polar tempest, and the tropic fire, and often doomed by the forfeit of their lives to give their precepts a proof and an expiation. It is quite delightful to read over their reports, and see the blessed products of their labors. They leave no clime unvisited, no peril unencountered. In the South Sea Islands they found the population almost eradicated by the murder of idolatry.

"It was God Almighty," says the royal convert of Otaheite, "who sent your mission to the remainder of my people!" I do not wish to shock your Christian ears with the cruelties from which you have redeemed these islands. Will you believe it, that they had been educated in such cannibal ferocity, as to excavate the earth, and form an oven of burning stones, into which they literally threw their living infants, and gorged their infernal appetites with the flesh! Will you be

Mercy!-and the blood of his creatures as their best libation! In nine of these islands those abominations are extinct-infanticide is abolished-their prisoners are exchanged-society is now cemented by the bond of brotherhood, and the accursed shrines that streamed with human gore, and blazed with human unction, now echo the songs of peace, and the sweet strains of piety. In India, too, where Providence for some special purpose, permits these little insular specks to hold above one hundred millions in subjection-phenomena scarcely to be paralleled in history-the spell of Brahma is dissolving-the chains of Caste are falling off-the wheels of Juggernaut are scarce ensanguined -the horrid custom of self-immolation is daily disappearing-and the sacred stream of Jordan mingles with the Ganges. Even the rude soldier, 'mid the din of arms, and the license of the camp, "makes," says our missionary, "the Bible the inmate of his knapsack, and the companion of his pillow." Such has been the success of your missions in that country, that one of your own judges has publicly avowed, that those who left India some years ago can form no just idea of what now exists there. Turn from these lands to that of Africa, a name I now can mention without horror. In sixteen of their towns and many of their Islands, we see the sun of Christianity arising, and as it rises, the whole spectral train of superstition vanishing in air. Agriculture and civilization are busy in the desert, and the poor Hottentot kneeling at the altar, implores his God to remember not the slave trade. If any thing, sir, could add to the satisfaction that I feel, it is the consciousness that knowledge and Christianity are adadvancing, hand in hand, and that wherever I see your missionaries journeying, I see schools rising up, as it were, the landmark of their progress. And who can tell what the consequences of this may be in after ages? Who can tell whether those remote regions may not hereafter become the rivals of European improvement? Who shall place a ban upon the intellect

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