orable opinion of
my government which they had so generally expressed, but
specified three instances in which I had been unjust. I
thanked them, also, for the moral beauty of their conduct,
bore witness that an appeal to conscience had never failed,
and told them of my happiness in having the faith thus
confirmed, that young persons can be best guided by addressing
their highest nature. I declared my consciousness of having
combined, not only in speech but in heart, tolerance and
delicate regard for the convictions of their parents, with
fidelity to my own, frankly uttered. I assured them of my true
friendship, proved by my never having cajoled or caressed
them into good. Every word of praise had been earned; all
my influence over them was rooted in reality; I had never
softened nor palliated their faults; I had appealed, not to
their weakness, but to their strength; I had offered to them,
always, the loftiest motives, and had made every other end
subordinate to that of spiritual growth. With a heartfelt
blessing, I dismissed them; but none stirred, and we all sat
for some moments, weeping. Then I went round the circle and
bade each, separately, farewell.'

PERSONS.

Margaret's Providence journals are made extremely piquant and
entertaining, by her life-like portraiture of people and events; and
every page attests the scrupulous justice with which she sought
to penetrate through surfaces to reality, and, forgetting personal
prejudices, to apply universally the test of truth. A few sketches
of public characters may suffice to show with what sagacious,
all-observing eyes, she looked about her.

'At the whig caucus, I heard TRISTAM BURGESS,--"The old
bald Eagle!" His baldness increases the fine effect of his
appearance, for it seems as if the locks had retreated, that
the contour of his very strongly marked head might be revealed
to every eye. His _personnel_, as well as I could see, was
fitted to command respect rather than admiration. He is a
venerable, not a beautiful old man.

'He is a rhetorician,--if I could judge from this sample;
style in woven and somewhat ornate, matter frequently wrought
up to a climax, manner rather declamatory, though strictly
that of a gentleman and a scholar. One art in his oratory
was, no doubt, very effective, before he lost force and
distinctn