attention of the multitude, and prevent them from reflecting on the villainy of their rulers, or the nothingness of the false gods and the foul oracles, by means of which their rulers imposed upon their credulity, and kept them in the chains and fetters of ignorance and slavery. When a Roman Emperor or tyrant-for history warrants the assertion, that nine times in ten the terms were synonymous--attended the Amphitheatre or Circus, how pleased was he to behold the people so easily led astray from their true interests; how did it rejoice him to see, that by amusing them with so brutal an exhibition as a gladiatorial combat, or a chariot, or horse, or perhaps a monkey race, he could divert their minds entirely from the means by which he was contriving to perpetuate their slavery on the one hand, and the power of himself and his family on the other: And are "wE, THE PEOPLE," as our federal constitution has it, to be never any thing more than a silly, deluded multitude, led. by the nose, and made the victims, from generation to generation, of cunning, treachery and imposture? Are "we" to be, through all ages and in all climes, the same ignorant populace, the same servile dupes? Are "WE," by the most frivolous allurements, wholly unworthy of our dignity as rational beings, to be diverted from the study of that which most concerns our wel

fare, in order that demagogues or despots may use us as they please, not for our good, but for their sole pleasure and profit. So far, with the solitary exceptions of the American Congress of 1776-78, and the early period of our national existence, this has been and still is the history of mankind: And whether it is to be their future history, depends more upon the United States, than upon any other country. Borrowing an idea, for once, from one of those party sources, which we hold alike in equal contempt, we may indeed truly say, in relation to the improvement and prosperity of mankind, that as the United States go, so goes the world: Not that we aim to excite a spirit of national vanity or cgotism; but it is clear, that if the United States retrogade in the cause of liberty, and disappoint the hopes of mankind, as France has done, the nations of Europe, Asia and Africa, will never emerge from the ignorant, barbarous and slavish condition, in which they are all at present more or less held. From hence, if from any where, are the elder nations of the earth, now so deeply sunk in ignorance, bigotry and tyranny, to catch the flame of liberty and religion, pure and hallowed as it first descended from the throne of the Creator, upon the altars of the Patriarchs, and the minds of the Prophets. We have set the old world the first example

known in history, of a rational representative democracy or republic; the first example of the practical exercise of sovereignty on the part of the people: And if we sink into a degenerate state, before our example shall have taken a strong hold upon the European mind, all hopes of liberty are lost to mankind. Already the slaves of the "Holy Alliance"-that Alliance, of which the Arch Jesuit METTERNICH is the vital spirit, and whose sole object is to crush every where the friends of liberty-to banish them from the face of the earth-begin to draw consolation from the late exhibitions of mobocracy and Lynch Law in these states. "This," they exclaim," is the effect of your democracy; of your liberty and equality!" And shall we, by our neglect of education, and our viciated taste for idle, frivolous and corrupt amusements, confirm their hopes, and blast forever our own glorious prospects!

But to go on with the main design of this lesson, CIRCUS is but another term for circle; and as a circle has no end, it well represents the career of dissipation and ruin into which those are led who give themselves up to the habit of visiting Circusses; for in that career they may be sure of getting bewildered, and be lost at last in the shades of endless misery. The Circus is indeed like the whirlpool in the East river, near

New-York, called hell-gate; for the unhappy youth who plunges into its vortex, if he do not speedily make his way out, is whirled, like a skiff in hell-gate, into the abyss of destruction. A ceaseless round of idleness and licentiousness engrosses all his attention; and finding himself at last equally unfit and unworthy to be received into good company, he becomes what is called a "loafer;" lives thenceforward in despondency and wretchedness; and finally dies in despair of the divine mercy; and thus the comparison between the Circus and hell-gate is completely carried out; for all who die impenitent, and out of the pale of divine mercy, do most certainly go down to the gates of hell; and, what is still more awful, enter into those gates, never again to come out !—never again to escape the tormenting fires which they enclose! Fires which burn the more intensely, because of their confinement; and the heat of which no imagination can conceive. We are aware that this language is not suited to the delicate ears of pretended modern refinement; that refinement which discovers indelicacy in the Bible, whilst it can luxuriate in the licentious ribaldry of the stage and the Circus, and greedily devour the lackered sentiments of the debauched novelist! That refinement, which admires, nay almost adores, the imaginary heroes of a romance, sympathising in their

defeats, and rejoicing in their triumphs; but never spends itself for a moment upon such real heroism, such unparelleled sufferings, or such glorious triumphs, as those which mark the history of Jesus and his Apostles! That refinement, spurious and foul as the Sodom apple, which sheds tears over tales of fiction describing imaginary distress;, but was never yet caught weeping over the real sufferings of the Saviour on the cross! Well indeed might that blessed being exclaim of similar sentimentalists-"O! generation of vipers!" Our language, however, is the language of the Holy Spirit, the language of Divine Inspiration; the language which every faithful soldier of the cross is bound to employ on all proper occasions; but, say the sentimentalists, who are far more nice than wise, it is uncouth, it is unfashionable! Be it so-but remember, my young readers, that while the fashions of the world, and the world itself shall pass away, the word of God is imperishable! "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth-BUT THE WORD of our GOD SHALL STAND FOREVER!" So says a Prophet of God, the inimitable, the incomparable Isaiah; and while the flowers of rhetoric, the delicately woven sentences, and the false refinement, in which even some christian preachers veil the terror's of God's law from the eyes and the ears of fashionable sinners, shall be no more thought

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