grows in sound doctrine, free government, and mental culture, will it also grow in Presbyterianism. In the several ecclesiastical, political, and social spheres, it appears as the most catholic, cosmopolitan, and civilizing of modern systems of Church government. It is the only one of them which, besides being adapted to the permanent wants of Christian society, is also specially adapted to the peculiar wants that environ it in the present age; and it is the only one of them which, besides having actually existed, in its leading features, through all the past, can be theoretically projected through all the future.

Taking expediency as a test, this is proving as much as could be proved in its favour.

C. W. S.

THE FALL OF SEBASTOPOL.*

[From the United Presbyterian Magazine.]

SEBASTOPOL has fallen! The event to which we have so long looked forward with so much alternation of hope and fear is now announced on unquestionable authority. By most of us it must have been regarded as a question of time, since the battle of Inkermann, and especially since the battle of Tchernaya: at length it is proclaimed as an accomplished fact; it is regarded as a matter of history. It should be our first impulse to raise our hearts in gratitude to the God of battles, for the victory with which he has been pleased to crown the arms of the allied troops.

Sebastopol has fallen! The fact may be viewed with the soldier's eye. France and England, from the commencement of the war, staked their military reputation on the capture of Sebastopol. Whether it was wise or unwise to hazard the glory and even the existence of two armies on the success of an expedition about which the information of statesmen and generals was so fragmentary and conjectural, nothing remained for them, after it had been undertaken, but to brave all consequences, since the siege could not have been raised without a virtual acknowledgment of defeat. At home there would have been a rankling sense of national humiliation; throughout the world there would have been a deep-seated conviction that France and England have lost their pre-eminence among the great powers. But, notwithstanding all the objections of military and non-military critics, it has not yet been proved that

* We have selected this article from the United Presbyterian Magazine, of Scotland, because it presents the views of our Scotch brethren upon this interesting and engrossing topic, and because these views coincide with our own.-Ed.

the expedition to the Crimea was injudicious or ill-advised. Had the design been simply to conquer Russia, or to inflict on her the greatest amount of injury where it would have been felt most humbling and most detrimental, perhaps the blow might have been struck more effectively elsewhere. When it was to destroy the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea, and to relieve Turkey from all fear of her aggression, the only proper point of attack seems to have been that which was selected. In the prosecution of the war there has been a scant display of the qualities which history has taught us to admire as the proofs of consummate generalship; no brilliance of conception in the plan of the campaign; no far-seeing anticipation of the moves of the enemy; no dexterous turning to account of unforeseen contingencies. It has been a soldiers' war, and nobly have the soldiers done their duty. It was supposed that during the long peace commercial pursuits might have enervated the minds of men, and the military spirit might have evaporated. Never did any army exhibit more conspicuously the elements of true heroism, in the perilous landing, in the ravages of pestilence, in the protracted siege, in the general engagement at the cannon's mouth, in "the imminent and deadly breach." It may be more Caledonian than Christian, but we dare not deny that it gives us high pleasure to see that the spirit which conquered at Bannockburn still stirs the bosom of Scotchmen, and that, after forty years' cessation of arms, the French and English have fought not less bravely as allies, than they fought as enemies on the field of Waterloo. Let us discontinue the art of war as soon as we can: let us lose the courage that insures success in war-never.

Sebastopol has fallen! Let us view the fact with the philanthropist's eye. Our victory, signal as it is, has been dearly purchased. Thousands of warriors, who were lately walking abroad in the pride of conscious power and prowess, with the dew of their youth still upon them, are no more. Each of them was connected by tender ties with some loved circle, in which the national rejoicings will provoke no other response than the wail above the dead, and it will be long ere the mother and the wife and the sister and the fatherless child can listen to the name of Sebastopol without a pang. Thousands more have received wounds which, besides the pain of the ambulance and the hospital, will compel them to drag out the remainder of their life perhaps in sickness, perhaps in decrepitude, perhaps in dependence, perhaps in poverty. The increase of taxation has already restricted the enjoyments of many families, nor can it be expected that, after so profuse an expenditure, there shall be an immediate return to the prosecution of financial reform. The national debt must be increased; the national trade may be crippled. It is no wonder if there should be philanthropists among us who, on the contemplation of these and kindred ills, should choose as their watchword, "Peace at any price." We do not love war for its own sake more than they: it

is the most terrible scourge which an angry Providence lets loose to chastise or desolate guilty nations. We boldly affirm, however, that there are circumstances in which nations cannot avoid war without being traitors to the cause of God and of humanity. The Manchester school, cradled in the study of political economy, confines all its ideas within the categories of dear and cheap; whatever cause cannot be supported or defended without clear loss, must go by the wall. Britain has never been governed on this shopkeeping principle, and cannot, unless the nature of Britons be changed; for he would be held to disgrace the name who would avow it as his chief aim to live as cheaply as he can. In their private capacity they scorn to withhold what is due to religion and benevolence, merely that they may live cheaply; in their national capacity it is their will that their country shall do its duty whatever it may cost. Those who think otherwise aspire in vain to be their leaders. Is this, then, the measure of the Manchester school? They are first-rate shopkeepers; they are incompetent statesmen, because statesmen of one idea. With regard to the Peelites, who have lately gone over to the side of peace, they are a more subtle race, and a plain man can scarcely presume to comprehend all their doublings and windings. But we suspect that their strongest motive for wishing peace at any price is, that they begin to see that this war, if vigorously prosecuted, will be more conducive to the spread of civil and religious liberty than they deem expedient. The war, notwithstanding all its dreadful concomitants, will be worth all its cost if it demonstrate that France and Britain in alliance can keep the peace of the world. Of all men, none should be more desirous of its success than the members of the Peace party.

Sebastopol has fallen! Let us view the fact with the politician's eye. Some politicians have affected to feel great difficulty in ascertaining the object of the present war. It may be stated in a sentence to preserve the balance of power in Europe. The war was not undertaken from any romantic or chivalrous determination to maintain the independence of the Turkish empire. To restore the sick man to health may be beyond the skill of the physicians in extraordinary, whether in France or in England: the most they are able to effect may be to furnish him with two rather strong crutches, instead of strangling him according to the autocratic prescription. Neither was it undertaken from any jealous or revengeful determination to destroy the Russian empire. No design of dismembering or partitioning its ever-growing territory was expressed or felt every idea of territorial conquest was studiously disowned. It was undertaken to resist the encroachments of Russia on the liberty and independence of Europe. While we have been cultivating the arts of peace, the northern despot has been cultivating as assiduously the arts of war, for the purpose of enabling him to carry out the hereditary policy of his dynasty, which is said

to embrace three main points-to seize Constantinople, to humble England, and to march into India. What convinced him that the time had arrived for the execution of the first point, we do not pretend to know. Lord Palmerston says it was the tone of speech or the course of action adopted by the peace party; others say it was the pacific policy of the Earl of Aberdeen, of whom it was believed that he would rather connive at spoliation than issue a call to arms; others say it was a supposed impossibility of co-operation between France and England. We know that the attempt was made, and that the attempt amounted to a proclamation of war against European freedom. Hence has arisen the wonderful harmony, which, with a few exceptions, has animated all ranks. They feel that the real question at issue is one that lies far deeper than any of the questions which are so keenly agitated among ourselves; it is not whether we shall be ruled by Conservatives or Whigs, Radicals or Chartists, but whether we shall have a country we can call our own. They are unwilling that Britain should ever play Carthage to Russia's Rome, and to avoid such a degradation they have spared neither blood nor treasure, as if the battle had already been for London, and Edinburgh, and Dublin. O what a load was lifted from the heart of every friend of his country, when the telegraph announced that the Malakoff was in the hands of the French! He felt that although the war might be protracted for years, the crisis was past, and that a whole generation must elapse before Russia or any other power shall be able or willing to erect any fortification which shall be as formidable to Europe as that which has just been demolished. Surely, before another generation, knowledge and religion will have so leavened society with their benignant influence, that men will hang the trumpet in the hall, and study war no more. Sebastopol has fallen! Let us view the fact with the Christian's eye. It is wrong to represent this war as being in any sense a religious war. It is waged in the name, not of religion, but of liberty. Yet wars that have been undertaken only to gratify ambition, or to quench in blood the sparks of liberal sentiment, have often been rendered subservient to the wider diffusion of Christianity; and it is not difficult to perceive, at least many probabilities, that the defeat of Russia will turn out rather to the furtherance of the Gospel. France and England will undoubtedly employ their increased influence with Turkey to procure the repeal of the law that makes it a capital crime for a Mohammedan to change his religion,—to procure the extension of the privileges of the Greek Christians, and untrammelled liberty of prophesying for Christ and our missionaries of all denominations. France, brought into intimate alliance with England, may learn how much of the superiority of this country in order, and in commerce, and in morality, is due to its Protestant faith, and that a nation of Papists and Infidels carries in its bosom the germs of innumerable revolutions. It was the disgrace of Louis Philippe, that after eighteen years' tenure of supreme

power, he left Frenchmen untrained to the exercise of civil and religious liberty: the root of his policy was selfishness, and since the root was rottenness, the blossom went up as the dust. The permanence of Louis Napoleon's sway depends on his formation of a sound state of public opinion, morally and religiously; if he pursue this policy, his throne may become as secure as that of Victoria. If he would proclaim that the empire is toleration as well as peace -if he would guard the rights of Protestants, whether they accept or refuse the gifts of his imperial liberty-if he would strip the priests of the Papal Church of all political power-if he would resolve, that although he acquired his crown by indirect and crooked methods, he shall wear it for the benefit of his subjects rather than his own, then would France be great, and glorious, and free. Protestant France! and then France and England against the world! May not Russian soldiers and Russian prisoners carry home with them truths they will not willingly let die? It would be an incalculable blessing to the world if the vast empire with which we are now at war, instead of burning with that desire of conquest, which must always kindle against it the antagonism of other nations, would set out in a career of Christian civilization, and become the competitor, if not the ally, of those whose enmity it now provokes. The fall of Sebastopol is the fall of another of the strongholds of superstition and despotism in our world; and although we should err in our conjectures, with regard to the mode or direction of its influence, we rejoice in the fact, because it is preparing the way of the Lord. Thy kingdom come!

Bousehold Choughts.

HINTS TO A MINISTER'S WIFE.

DR. JOHN H. RICE TO MRS. JANE I. WHITE.

UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, Feb. 13th, 1828. MY DEAR JANE,-I have a thousand times purposed to write to you since your marriage; but have never yet seen the time when I could fulfil my intentions. It was needless for me just to drop you a line assuring you of my love; for of this you know you have a large share. I wished to write something that might be profitable to you in the very important relation which you now sustain. But delay never makes anything easier; and, at present, I can only send you a hasty scratch instead of a letter.