year he became a regular contributor or co-editor of the "New York Tribune," and at the close of the year removed to New York, where he now resides.

The following extracts from some of Mr. Hildreth's able works will give a fair idea of his strong, manly style, and his power of description and narration as an historian. The prominent qualities of his mind are courage and honesty. He is never afraid to speak out the deep convictions of his soul. Such a man all must honor, even if they do not coincide with his views; and by a grateful posterity will he ever be remembered as among the earliest and ablest of the opponents of slavery.

AN APPEAL FOR A "DELIVERER."

Ye who would know what evils man can inflict upon his fellow without reluctance, hesitation, or regret; ye who would learn the limit of human endurance, and with what bitter anguish and indignant hate the heart may swell, and yet not burst-peruse these Memoirs !

Mine are no silken sorrows, nor sentimental sufferings; but that stern reality of actual woe, the story of which may perhaps touch even some of those who are every day themselves the authors of misery the same that I endured. For, however the practice of tyranny may have deadened every better emotion, and the prejudices of education and interest may have hardened the heart, humanity will still extort an involuntary tribute; and men will grow uneasy at hearing of those deeds of which the doing does not cost them a moment's inquietude.

Should I accomplish no more than this; should I be able, through the triple steel with which the love of money and the lust of domination has encircled it, to reach one bosom-let the story of my wrongs summon up, in the mind of a single oppressor, the dark and dreaded images of his own misdeeds, and teach his conscience how to torture him with the picture of himself, and I shall be content. Next to the tears and the exultations of the emancipated, the remorse of tyrants is the choicest offering upon the altar of liberty!

But perhaps something more may be possible; not likelybut to be imagined—and it may be, even faintly to be hoped. Perhaps within some youthful breast, in which the evil spirits of avarice and tyranny have as yet failed to gain unlimited control, I may be able to rekindle the smothered and expiring

embers of humanity. Spite of habits and prejudices inculcated and fostered from his earliest childhood, spite of the enticements of wealth and political distinction, and the still stronger enticements of indolence and ease, spite of the pratings of hollow-hearted priests, spite of the arguments of time-serving sophists, spite of the hesitation and terrors of the weak-spirited and wavering, in spite of evil precept and evil example, he dares that generous and heroic youth!-to cherish and avow the feelings of a man.

Another Saul among the prophets, he prophesies terrible things in the ear of insolent and luxurious tyranny; in the midst of tyrants, he dares to preach the good tidings of liberty; in the very school of oppression, he stands boldly forth the advocate of human rights!

He breaks down the ramparts of prejudice; he dissipates the illusions of avarice and pride; he repeals the enactments which, though wanting every feature of justice, have sacrilegiously usurped the sacred form of law! He snatches the whip from the hand of the master; he breaks forever the fetters of the slave!

In place of reluctant toil, drudging for another, he brings in smiling industry to labor for herself! All nature seems to exult in the change! The earth, no longer made barren by the tears and the blood of her children, pours forth her treasures with redoubled liberality. Existence ceases to be torture, and to live is no longer to millions the certainty of being miserable. Chosen Instrument of Mercy! Illustrious Deliverer! Come! come quickly!

Come! lest, if thy coming be delayed, there come in thy place he who will be at once DELIVERER and AVENGER! Introduction to the "White Slave.”

THE TREATMENT OF SLAVES, CONSIDERED AS MEN.

There are some people whose sympathies have been excited upon the subject of slavery, who, if they can only be satisfied that the slaves have enough to eat, think it is all very well, and that nothing more is to be said or done.

If slaves were merely animals, whose only or chief enjoyment consisted in the gratification of their bodily appetites, there would be some show of sense in this conclusion. But, in fact, however crushed and brutified, they are still men; men whose bosoms beat with the same passions as our own; whose

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hearts swell with the same aspirations-the same ardent desire to improve their condition; the same wishes for what they have not; the same indifference towards what they have; the same restless love of social superiority; the same greediness of acquisition; the same desire to know; the same impatience of all external control.

The excitement which the singular case of Casper Hauser produced a few years since in Germany, is not yet forgotten. From the representations of that enigmatical personage, it was believed that those from whose custody he declared himself to have escaped, had endeavored to destroy his intellect, or rather to prevent it from being developed, so as to detain him forever in a state of infantile imbecility. This supposed attempt at what they saw fit to denominate the murder of the soul, gave rise to great discussions among the German jurists; and they soon raised it into a new crime, which they placed at the very head of social enormities.

It is this very crime, the murder of the soul, which is in the course of continuous and perpetual perpetration throughout the Southern States of the American Union; and that not upon a single individual only, but upon nearly one-half the entire population.

Consider the slaves as men, and the course of treatment which custom and the laws prescribe is an artful, deliberate, and well-digested scheme to break their spirit; to deprive them of courage and of manhood; to destroy their natural desire for an equal participation in the benefits of society; to keep them ignorant, and therefore weak; to reduce them, if possible, to a state of idiocy; to crowd them down to a level with the brutes.

HAMILTON, WASHINGTON, AND JAY.

In Hamilton's death the Federalists and the country experienced a loss second only to that of Washington. Hamilton possessed the same rare and lofty qualities, the same just balance of soul, with less, indeed, of Washington's severe simplicity and awe-inspiring presence, but with more of warmth, variety, ornament, and grace. If the Doric in architecture be taken as the symbol of Washington's character, Hamilton's belonged to the same grand style as developed in the Corinthian-if less impressive, more winning. If we add Jay for the Ionic, we have a trio not to be matched, in fact not to be approached, in our

history, if, indeed, in any other. Of earth-born Titans, as terrible as great, now angels, and now toads and serpents, there are everywhere enough. Of the serene and benign sons of the celestial gods, how few at any time have walked the earth!

DUEL BETWEEN HAMILTON AND BURR.

It was not at all in the spirit of a professional duellist, it was not upon any paltry point of honor, that Hamilton had accepted this extraordinary challenge, by which it was attempted to hold him answerable for the numerous imputations on Burr's character bandied about in conversation and the newspapers for two or three years past. The practice of duelling he utterly condemned; indeed, he had himself already been a victim to it in the loss of his eldest son, a boy of twenty, in a political duel some two years previously. As a private citizen, as a man under the influence of moral and religions sentiments, as a husband, loving and loved, and the father of a numerous and dependent family, as a debtor honorably disposed, whose creditors might suffer by his death, he had every motive for avoiding the meeting. So he stated in a paper which, under a premonition of his fate, he took care to leave behind him. It was in the character of a public man. It was in that lofty spirit of patriotism, of which examples are so rare, rising high above all personal and private considerations-a spirit magnanimous and self-sacrificing to the last, however in this instance uncalled for and mistaken-that he accepted the fatal challenge. "The ability to be in future useful," such was his own statement of his motives, "whether in resisting mischief or effecting good in those crises of our public affairs which seem likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with prejudice in this particular."

With that candor towards his opponents by which Hamilton was ever so nobly distinguished, but of which so very seldom, indeed, did he ever experience any return, he disavowed in this paper, the last he ever wrote, any disposition to affix odium to Burr's conduct in this particular case. He denied feeling towards Burr any personal ill-will, while he admitted that Burr might naturally be influenced against him by hearing of strong animadversions in which he had indulged, and which, as usually happens, might probably have been aggravated in the report. Those animadversions, in some cases, might have been occa

sioned by misconstruction or misinformation; yet his censures had not proceeded on light grounds nor from unworthy motives. From the possibility, however, that he might have injured Burr, as well as from his general principles and temper in relation to such affairs, he had come to the resolution which he left on record, and communicated also to his second, to withhold and throw away his first fire, and perhaps even his second; thus giving to Burr a double opportunity to pause and reflect.

The grounds of Weehawk, on the Jersey shore, opposite New York, were at that time the usual field of these single combats, then, chiefly by reason of the inflamed state of political feeling, of frequent occurrence, and very seldom ending without bloodshed. The day having been fixed, and the hour appointed at seven o'clock in the morning, the parties met, accompanied only by their seconds. The bargemen, as well as Dr. Hosack, the surgeon, mutually agreed upon, remained as usual at a distance, in order, if any fatal result should occur, not to be wit

nesses.

The parties having exchanged salutations, the seconds measured the distance of ten paces; loaded the pistols; made the other preliminary arrangements, and placed the combatants. At the appointed signal, Burr took deliberate aim, and fired. The ball entered Hamilton's side, and as he fell his pistol too was unconsciously discharged. Burr approached him apparently somewhat moved; but, on the suggestion of his second, the surgeon and bargemen already approaching, he turned and hastened away, Van Ness coolly covering him from their sight by opening an umbrella.

The surgeon found Hamilton half-lying, half-sitting on the ground, supported in the arms of his second. The pallor of death was on his face. "Doctor," he said, "this is a mortal wound;" and, as if overcome by the effort of speaking, he immediately fainted. As he was carried across the river, the fresh breeze revived him. His own house being in the country, he was conveyed at once to the house of a friend, where he lingered for twenty-four hours in great agony, but preserving his composure and self-command to the last.1

A new work has recently appeared, entitled "The Life and Times of Aaron Burr, by J. Parton," of which an able review, deservedly severe, may be found in the "Atlantic Monthly," for March, 1858. "The New York Independent," at the close of a long, critical article upon it, thus speaks: "We do not say that it is a dull book. It is all the worse for not being dull; it is a bad book, thoroughly bad; being not so much a defence of Burr, as it is of wickedness itself."