what a mark Arthur Ashton had already made on the minds of all who knew him. Not only in the village, - a mile and a half distant, — but far around Morning Side, there was a deference and affectionate respect with which every one approached him, altogether singular, I thought, towards a young man twenty-four years of age.

In my first estimate of his character, I hardly did him justice. To tell the truth, I thought it an easy matter to get a local country reputation. But I had not had a half-dozen conversations with him before I shared the general feeling.

Besides, I have somewhat changed my opinion of a judgment of character formed in the country. It seems to me to be under far less bias of factitious standards than in the city; and I believe we may pretty confidently accept for true steel what the free polarity of a hundred unsophisticated minds certifies to be such.

Arthur had been through college, which he left, as I have been informed, with much honor. He must have carried there the seeds of a wisdom which college-life in general, I fear, does but little to mature, and less to implant. He was something better than a knowing man. Of this the tones of his voice testified. I am not sure I can go so far as those who affirm that the voice is an infallible betrayer of character; that logic, sciolism, æsthetic culture, each mental and moral state, has a tone of its own, by which it is at once recognized: still, it must be acknowledged, that the ear has mystic and cunning ways of judging. While Arthur's conversation had the precision and ease of a cultivated man, there was a sort of undertone that had a strange fascination. It was at once felt to be the natural echo from a deep loving heart.

In Arthur Ashton, every one observed, also, a healthy and sustained enthusiasm in his daily employments. What he found to do, he did with his might. It was through the earnestness of his nature. Of course, at this late day, no one needs be told that farming is something more than mere physical toil, and gives scope to all the knowledge and science that can be brought to the subject. What surprised me in him was the rapidity with which he obtained and applied, at

the right moment, information relating to the manifold operations of dairy-produce, fruit-culture, cattle-breeding, haycuring, root-raising, grain-growing; all of which were perpetually assuming varying interests, according to markets, and the general progress of agricultural knowledge.

He was not a mere book-farmer. He had that practical sagacity which culls success out of theory; and he appeared to me to be amassing and distributing a whole encyclopædia of information relating to that business, which, as it was the first natural occupation of man, seems to touch both nature and man at more points than any other pursuit.

What walks we have had together! A favorite stroll was to the rear of his house, then skirted by a forest, thickly wooded with oak, chestnut, and maple, through which avenues had been opened, -the scene of many a rustic merry-making, and of serious talks when he and I would stray there to catch the last rays of the setting sun, pouring its golden light through the Gothic arches of the grand old trees. Oftentimes we sauntered half a mile down the road to a brook that gathered the waters from a wide circuit; and as they poured over precipitous rocks, or glided along a pebbly shore, they formed a glad, sociable stream, in harmony with some of our varying moods.

One other attraction for our steps I must not omit to name. This was a glen two miles distant, where was an abrupt gorge amid the high hills, which on two sides presented a perpendicular wall, forty or fifty feet high, and twice as many apart, all covered with moss and ivy. Through its partial gloom from overspreading trees, and its silence, broken only by the cry of the cat-bird, or the dripping of water, it was as a solemn temple,"fit for worship," as Arthur often said.

With like distinctness do I remember some of our walks over his farm. At every step, he revealed his manifold and exuberant life. In one field, he had tried a new agricultural experiment; in another, he had detected a sly freak of Nature; his fruit-trees were pets to which he imputed a sort of personal consciousness and will; there was not a note of the robin, the bluebird, the martin, which he did not observe,

and seem in his heart to respond to; nor was there a plant that we passed, from the dandelion and buttercup of the meadow, to the burdock and tansy that grew by the wayside, or the sunflowers that seemed to be always peeping over the walls to observe us, of which he did not have some pretty little bit of natural history to relate.

Ah! yes those were happy days; and few pictures more dear have I laid away in my memory than those which Morning Side then supplied, when some bright, dewy sunrising saw Arthur drive his team a-field to overturn the greensward in long furrows, which yielded their fresh earth-smell at every step, or when, at the close of a warm afternoon, he came up the lawn with loads of the sweet-scented new hay, or when at eventide he would sit at the front door, with his brothers and sisters around him; and the full moon, and the scream of the night-hawk, and the distant note of the whippoorwill, and the gleam of the lightning-bug, were the accompaniments of a scene of surpassing peace and joy.

These scenes have all passed away. It was only for a brief period that they were known. As we look back upon departed joys, we sometimes wonder they left us so soon; and to many a stricken heart it may even seem as if Nature at times shows herself to be a jealous step-mother, in snatching our blessings at the moment we are enjoying them the

most.

It is but a passing feeling. We re-assure ourselves by the conviction, that her relation to us is primal; that her great maternal heart is without waywardness; that it is from the depth of her infinite love that we have had the blessing for a while, and then its precious remembrance for ever; that she allows nothing to pall upon the appetite; that this perpetual shifting of events proves how inexhaustible are her resources, while time may show the new to be even better than the old. After all, the only defect is with ourselves, who, dazzled by what has been so bright before us, can, for a while, see nothing better and nothing other than the old.

(To be continued.)

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, AND UNITARIANISM IN

ENGLAND.

(Concluded.)

THE external happiness of Dr. Priestley's life was now to be interrupted, though the inward, founded on the love of God and man, could never be. Notwithstanding his friendship for Franklin, and his well-known adherence to the liberal side in the discussions relative to America, he had hitherto incurred no especial hostility from the party in power. He had even twice been offered a pension from the government, by those who were supposed to have influence to obtain it; but in each case declined, preferring that the expense of his scientific researches, when it went beyond his own means, should be aided by the unasked contributions of his many friends, rather than risk his independence by becoming a pensionary of government. But now the world beheld with wonder and awe the commencement of that revolution in France, which, at once gathering strength, and goaded into madness by the opposition it encountered, was to deluge, nat only France, but all Europe, with blood. At first, however, the progress of that revolution was hailed with delight by the noblest spirits in every nation. The destruction of the Bastile, the stronghold of time-worn oppression, was considered a suitable occurrence to be commemorated as the leading event of the mighty drama then in progress. On its third anniversary, the 14th of July, 1791, the friends of liberty in England hailed it with public celebrations. For that, in Liverpool, Roscoe furnished his famous ode, beginning

"O'er the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France

See the day-star of Liberty rise;

Through the clouds of detraction unsullied advance,
And hold its new course through the skies.

An effulgence so mild, with a lustre so bright,

All Europe with wonder surveys;

And, from deserts of darkness and dungeons of night,
Contends for a share of the blaze."

But, while this triumphant strain was resounding at Liverpool, at Birmingham a mob, infuriated by political and religious bigotry, were laying sacrilegious hands on the temple of God, and destroying the house, the library, and the instruments of a peaceful Christian philosopher, because he was known as one of the champions of freedom.

About two years before, Dr. Priestley had preached and printed a sermon on the subject of the Test Act, the harsh law, since repealed, by which Unitarians and other Dissenters were subjected to disabilities. This sermon led to a controversy with two of the clergymen of the town, in which they maintained those high doctrines with regard to the powers of government which seemed more worthy of the days of Charles II. than of a century after his time. This controversy served to mark Dr. Priestley and his church as the objects of popular hate. The mob found occasion for its violence in the celebration, by the liberal party, of the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile. Although Priestley had little to do with this, the rioters, encouraged, it was said, by some persons in power, burned the meeting-house in which he preached; then another meeting-house, and then his dwelling, demolishing his library and apparatus. His own life, and that of one of his sons, were in imminent danger. He had to escape from Birmingham. He says himself: “If, instead of flying from lawless violence, I had been flying from public justice, I could not have been pursued with more rancor, nor could my friends have been more anxious for my safety. One man, who happened to see me on horseback, on one of the nights in which I escaped from Birmingham, expressed his regret that he had not taken me; expecting, probably, some considerable reward, as he said it was so easy for him to have done it." He was earnestly advised to disguise himself on his way to London; but this he would not do, consenting only to the necessary precaution, that the place taken for him in the mail-coach should be in another name than his own. Arriving in London, it was some time before his friends would allow him to appear in the streets, fearing that party rage would follow him even there.