wellnigh intolerable evil shall continue to
increase its boundaries, and strengthen its hold upon the government, the
political parties, and the religious sects of our country. Interest and
honor, present possession and future hope, the memory of fathers, the
prospects of children, gratitude, affection, the still call of the dead,
the cry of oppressed nations looking hitherward for the result of all
their hopes, the voice of God in the soul, in revelation, and in His
providence, all appeal to them for a speedy and righteous decision. At
this moment, on the floor of Congress, Democracy and Slavery have met in
a death-grapple. The South stands firm; it allows no party division on
the slave question. One of its members has declared that "the slave
States have no traitors." Can the same be said of the free? Now, as in
the time of the fatal Missouri Compromise, there are, it is to be feared,
political peddlers among our representatives, whose souls are in the
market, and whose consciences are vendible commodities. Through their
means, the slave power may gain a temporary triumph; but may not the very
baseness of the treachery arouse the Northern heart? By driving the free
States to the wall, may it not compel them to turn and take an aggressive
attitude, clasp hands over the altar of their common freedom, and swear
eternal hostility to slavery?

Be the issue of the present contest what it may, those who are faithful
to freedom should allow no temporary reverse to shake their confidence in
the ultimate triumph of the right. The slave will be free. Democracy in
America will yet be a glorious reality; and when the topstone of that
temple of freedom which our fathers left unfinished shall be brought
forth with shoutings and cries of grace unto it, when our now drooping-
Liberty lifts up her head and prospers, happy will be he who can say,
with John Milton, "Among those who have something more than wished her
welfare, I too have my charter and freehold of rejoicing to me and my
heirs."

NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.

"And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his kindly hearth."

So, in one of the sweetest and most pathetic of his poems touching the
loss of his literary friends, sang Wordsworth. We well remember with
what freshness and vividness these simple lines came before us, on
hearing, last autumn, of the death of the warm-hearted and gifted friend
whose name heads this article; for t