marriage; and if anything were needed to confirm our opinion, it would be the present social aspect of Germany, where the facility of divorce strikes at the very root of morality, and vitiates it to the very core; the pillars of domestic peace are thus shaken, and an element of instability introduced into the sacred recesses of home. Feeling however thus strongly upon the subject, we cannot agree with those who regard such a connection as that between Ruth and Mr. Bellingham as morally binding upon the least guilty party. Perpetuity is an essential element in our conception of marriage; the presence of this idea in the mind of Ruth, though unrealized, and though in the boundlessness of her faith she sought no reciprocal guarantee, redeemed her, we think, from the consciousness of guilt, while its utter absence from the thoughts and intentions of Mr. Bellingham rendered the connection, in so far as he was concerned, an unholy one, and absolved his partner from all subsequent obligation. The more steadfast the fidelity of her own attachment, the more intense would be the recoil from her betrayer; and it seems to us that it would be a cruel injustice to render binding a compact entered into by one of the parties with manifest bad faith, and who, moreover, by his subsequent conduct had proved himself utterly unworthy of a woman's love; while marriage, accepted under such circumstances, as a mere means of worldly escape from disgrace, would be a profanation of the most sacred of all social relations. Such would be our justification of Ruth's conduct, considered under a moral aspect; for its artistic propriety we are glad to be able to appeal to so consummate an artist as George Sand, who, in her beautiful drama of Claudie, has embodied a story similar to that of Ruth. In the third act, she introduces the faithless lover Ronciat, as offering marriage to Claudie, the orphan girl whom he has so deeply wronged, and the passage in which she rejects his offer, so forcibly expresses, in a few brief words, the morale of the situation, that we are tempted to quote it. Rémy is Claudie's aged grandfather.

"Ronciat. Eh bien! Claudie, vous ne m'écoutez point? Je suis Denis Ronciat, et je vous offre ma main, foi d'homme!

Rémy, à Claudie. Ma fille! entends-toi c'est à toi de répondre. "Claudie (avec fermeté, se levant). Mon père, pour épouser un homme, il faut jurer à Dieu de l'aimer, de l'estimer, et de le CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 60.

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respecter toute sa vie; et quand on sent qu'on ne peut que le mépriser, c'est mentir à Dieu, c'est faire un sacrilege, je refuse. "Ronciat. La sérieusement?

"Claudie. Je refuse."

Mr. Bellingham's character is drawn from the life, and suggests many valuable lessons, teaching that it is the cold heart and the vacant mind which are most liable to fall into sin; while the coarse and callous form which his nature eventually assumes, exhibits the hardening effect of a vicious career, and is a solemn protest against the dangerous error, that a personal familiarity with wickedness can be contracted without permanent injury to the moral nature. His demeanour in the solemn presence of the dead gives the finishing touch to our author's sketch of the cold, heartless seducer; but, as we have no faith in the existence of such a disease as the complete moral ossification of the human heart, we are tempted to hope that this scene is an exaggeration, and to believe that no man could have remained so utterly unmoved under circumstances so solemn, or could have given utterance to a sentiment so revolting in its selfish apathy, as that with which he leaves Mr. Benson's house. "I wish my last remembrance of my beautiful Ruth was not mixed up with all these people."

An ancient chronicler with touching pathos relates the story of the treachery practised by the Spaniards towards the Yucaian islanders, whom they wished to decoy from their homes to labour as slaves in the Hispaniola mines. They did persuade the poor wretches, he says, that they came from the regions of the blest, where they should enjoy all kinds of delight with the fruition of all beloved things; and the islanders, infected with these subtle imaginations, singing and rejoicing, left their country and followed vain and idle hope; but when they saw that they were deceived and found not that which they desired, but were compelled to undergo grievous sovereignty and to endure cruel and severe labour, they either slew themselves, or choosing to famish, gave up their fair spirits, being persuaded by no reason or violence to take food; and so these miserable Yucaians came to an end.

The enormous wickedness of this conduct, by which, as

has been justly observed, humanity itself has been outraged and disgraced, finds its parallel in the baseness and perfidy of the seducer; for does he not, by appealing to what is most lovely in a woman's nature, her love, her trust, her abnegation of self, lure her into an abyss of wretchedness, and into a bondage more degrading than that of the Hispaniola mine? Men may call such actions youthful follies, but, as Mr. Benson truly observes, there is another name for them with God.

In conclusion, we thank our author for directing public attention to a subject fraught with such painful interest, and one, the consideration of which is encompassed with so many difficulties, as that which she has embodied in her touching narrative. The one-sidedness of her view may, we fear, have a tendency, in some quarters, to lessen her influence as a moral teacher; from the reticence, however, necessarily induced by artistic considerations, we are by no means entitled to infer the absence of that full knowledge, and mature consideration of the subject, in its manifold bearings, which would be essential to invest her opinions with authority. We are aware also that many earnest thinkers would consign this subject to the sphere of silence, and regard it as altogether beyond the region of art; we respect their scruples though we cannot sympathize with them; so long as evils are ignored, and any allusion to them held to be inconsistent with good taste, no earnest conviction can be generated in the public mind; to the remedial power of truth, embodied in earnest words, moral maladies the most inveterate must eventually yield. And let not those who are labouring in the great cause of social amelioration, be appalled at the magnitude of the evils with which they are called upon to grapple, or feel tempted to despise the day of small things; as in the material universe, the tiny seed lodges in the hollow of the rock, and by its expansive force gradually undermines the superincumbent mass; so in the subtler regions of the mind, the germs of truth strike root, and spread forth their delicate fibres; and mountains of error and wickedness are loosened from their foundations, and the cheerful daylight shines in, where once reigned darkness and the shadow of death.

ART. V.-KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.

A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin; presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon which the Story is founded, together with corroborative Statements verifying the Truth of the Work. By Harriet Beecher Stowe, Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." London: Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 47, Ludgate Hill.

NOTHING was more apparent in Uncle Tom's Cabin than its moral earnestness. Every page is tremulous with life. Roused by the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act, the author wrote to relieve herself of the thoughts with which her spirit was burthened, as the cloud discharges its lightnings when it can no longer retain them. This naturalness of the book we regard as the secret of its power.

The accuracy of the portrait has been, however, disputed, and from various quarters the author has been indicted at the bar of public opinion, on the charge of having substituted fiction for fact, painted the "peculiar institution " in the lurid colours of a morbid and excited imagination, and, by falling into what the Times calls the "female error of over-statement, borne false witness against the land of her birth. We have here her reply to the charge. It is a voluminous case, but not more voluminous than forcible and pertinent. Every page bears directly on the issue raised, and, what is remarkable, her evidence is for the most part drawn from the brief of her accusers. Out of the mouth of their own witnesses she confutes them. The Statute Books of the Slave States, the Records of their Courts, and the Advertisements of their Newspapers, afford her the materials of her justification. And a crushing case she has made out. Not a character nor an incident is there in the original book, that is not here shown to be consistent with life and fact, by evidence which it is impossible to gainsay. In truth, the terrible facts divulged in the "Key" exhibit Slavery in far more revolting colours than Uncle Tom's Cabin did, and make it evident that the writer's patriotic feelings, and her regard for the honour of humanity, induced her to soften down many of the dread

realities upon which her narrative was founded. This is so much the case, that the perusal of the Key would, from its extreme painfulness, be a difficult and repulsive task, were it not for the rich settings in which the facts are placed by Mrs. Stowe. These give some relief to the hideous picture, and prevent its contemplation from being too revolting to be endured, while they teach many a lesson of candour and Christian love. It is evident that, with the quick sensitiveness and emotional power of the true woman's heart, the author combines, in an eminent degree, the calm and sober discrimination of the judicial character. In her records of the sins of the oppressor and the sorrows of the oppressed, we can almost hear the sighings of the heart, and trace the tremulousness of the pen; but these gushes of feeling are not allowed to unsteady the scales of justice, or to blind her to the redeeming traits which are often found in the characters of the men connected with the system, and the peculiar temptations to which they are exposed.

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'Human nature," she says, "is no worse at the South than at the North; but law at the South distinctly provides for and protects the worst abuses to which that nature is liable."-P. 73. "They who uphold the laws which grant this awful power, have another heavy responsibility, of which they little dream. How many souls of masters have been ruined through it! How has this absolute authority provoked and developed wickedness which otherwise might have been suppressed!"-P. 88.

She also declares, what no doubt is true, that—

"It is her sincere belief that, while the irresponsible power of slavery is such that no human being ought ever to possess it, probably that power was never exercised more leniently than in many cases in the Southern States."-P. 77.

Mrs. Stowe's work will be of inestimable value in America, where its authentic facts will probably excite greater attention in the Free States, which much need such detailed information, than its more alluring but, to an American, less convincing precursor. In this country it is sure of an extensive circulation, and it will do an important service in giving an intelligent and definite basis to the deep and wide-spread interest in American Slavery, which the author has called forth among all classes of our population.