--she suddenly turns to the nurse by her side, and laying her hand upon the nurse's arm, while an expression of surprise mingled with that of triumphant joy, she exclaims, to the astonishment of all present, "You did not tell me that Mr. Frith was dead, and that he had gone to heaven before me." "How did you know it?" inquires the mother in Israel to whom the words are addressed. "I see him. He is there among the angels. They are singing, and I hear his voice, and he is come to take me to heaven. O how sweet! O how sweet! Sweet! Sweet!" And the purified spirit, as the words become gradually softer, languishes into rest, and goes to join the loved one and the blood-washed host around the throne, and sing, in nobler, sweeter strains, the praises of redeeming love.

It is not a climate in which fond affection may linger and weep day after day over the remains of the departed before they are consigned to the dust. Rapid is the process by which the form, so precious to loving hearts, hastens to decay. A few brief hours only can be given to the indul. gence of fond regrets; and then even love itself hastens to hide away what is so dear in the concealment of the grave. Side by side, as they, but a few months ago, walked away in the fulness of earthly bliss, from the altar at which they had exchanged their vows of wedded love, so now they are borne to the grave. Lovely and pleasant in their lives, in death they are not divided. Large is the company of the mourners; for wide-spread sympathy has been awakened through the city towards the persecuted church which mourns over the imprisonment of the faithful pastor, and has now been bereaved of a pair of earnest, devoted labourers in a single night. Thousands attend the bodies to their last resting-place, and listen with chastened feelings to the solemn funeral service which closes the earthly history of the youthful couple, so suddenly swept away from life. Hundreds of sable and swarthy cheeks are bedewed with tears, as the sweet strains of the closing hymn go up to heaven :

"Our friends are gone before

To that celestial shore;

They have left their mates behind,

They have all the storms outrode !
Found the rest we toil to find.

Landed in the arms of God."

On the following day the chapel seems converted into a Bochim, while the missionary dwells upon the words, "Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." Only one short week ago, he that now sleeps in the dust stood in the pulpit, and in soul-thrilling words, which those who listened to them will never forget, delivered his message from God, and won some souls to Christ. It was his first and last message to that people. There, with his blooming partner, he had assisted in the sweet melody of music; their rich tones delighting all hearers, and giving them a better idea than they had ever conceived before of the harmony of the choir above. Now both voices are hushed in the silence of the tomb. They have passed away as a shadow; ascended to the glorious spirit-land, there to sing before the throne the song of Moses and the Lamb.

Some will speak for many years of the preacher who came from England to preach only one sermon, call them to repentance and salvation, and then sink into the dust; and of the beautiful young wife who, when dying, though not informed that her husband had gone to the better land before her, could distinguish his well-known, well-beloved voice in the angel throng that had come to convoy her own happy spirit to the Throne of God and of the Lamb.

XIV.

THE BAFFLED EXTORTIONER.

The infidel who turned his impious war
Against the walls of Zion, on the rook
Of ages built, and higher than the clouds,
Sinned, and received his due reward.

Pollok.

HE newspaper press is a mighty power both for good and evil, and it exercises a wide-spreading influence in the creation and control of those events which make up the history of the times in which we live. On the one hand, a powerful impulse is given by such publications to the best and holiest sympathies of which human nature is susceptible; while, on the other, they awaken and develope with fearful intensity all the base and violent passions which find their home in the hearts of men.

Jamaica is no stranger to this influence, though lying far away from the great centres of civilization. Within her shores a small band of noble hearts, in the face of a hostile and powerful combination, have commenced the advocacy of those rights which belong to men as such and as British subjects. And already unjust and unequal laws, intended to buttress and sustain the vile institution of slavery, are beginning to give way. These laws impose disability and degradation upon all who have any portion of African blood flowing in their veins, though even fairer in complexion than many of the whites themselves, excluding them from the jury box and coroner's inquest, shutting them out from every kind of public employment, and even damming up the loving sympathies which the white father may be sometimes disposed to indulge towards his coloured offspring by prohibiting him, however wealthy and generous he may be, from

bequeathing to them more than a trifling pittance of his substance, all beyond that, if so bequeathed, being escheated to the crown.

But there is also here a portion of the newspaper press as profligate as ever pandered to oppression and sold itself to uphold and work wickedness. Devoted to the interests of those who make merchandise of man and wring wealth and luxurious enjoyment out of the sweat and blood of the slave, there are men associated with the press as unscrupulous as men not destitute of intelligence and education can well be; —men in whom conscience seems to be extinct, who ignore all the claims of truth, righteousness, or humanity. For the love of gain, these men unblushingly advocate every kind and degree of wrong which the system of slavery involves; and, with inveterate malignity, pour out unceasing abuse upon all whose sympathies are supposed to be in favour of those hundreds of thousands of wronged children of Africa, who, under the British flag, wasted by excessive labour, or hurried through a shorter path to the grave by the cat and cartwhip, are diminishing with such rapidity as threatens, in a few brief years, to effect their extermination.

Prominent among these are two persons who are associated with the "Courant and Public Advertiser," a daily sheet that has distinguished itself by a reckless scurrility, which has spared none but the slave-holding fraternity by whom it is patronized. One of these is the proprietor of the paper, an adventurer from some part of Great Britain, who has supplied the want of a liberal education by an extensive knowledge of men and things. He is shrewd and intelligent, of unbounded self-possession and effrontery, and endowed in a large degree with that insensibility to danger which graces the bull-dog, and is, in men, often mistaken for courage. Pugnacious as the animal mentioned, he is ever prompt at a quarrel, and little cares he whom it may be with; and he is quite prepared to bring any dispute to the arbitrament of the duel. He has been known to have two or three of these affairs upon his hands at the same time; and after shooting down one antagonist, making a wife a widow and children

fatherless, he has left the field to commence a journey of sixty or seventy miles, that he may meet an engagement of a similar kind on the following day. He has fought a duel with one opponent, and wounded him, and then encountered another before leaving the ground.

By an unconscientious devotion of his columns to planter interests, and unmeasured abuse of the missionaries, who are toiling to shed light and comfort upon the dark path of the slave, he has secured for his publication the widest circulation of all the papers of the island. It finds its way to every planter's table, and yields to its busy, bustling proprietor a very ample revenue; while at the same time it gives him an influence that has secured for him a place in the legislature of the colony, where his restless activity, associated with a ready utterance, such as few of his colegislators can boast of, enables him to figure as a man of mark.

Connected with him in the subordinate capacity of editor is a native of the "Land o' Cakes," who possesses all the evil attributes of his principal without any of what may be regarded as his redeeming qualities. He is altogether a lower type of humanity, coarse and vulgar, and wallowing habitually in the low, debasing vices which prevail in a slave colony. He has the credit of having once occupied the position of paymaster in the army, and of having forfeited that position in a way that tarnished the lustre of his reputation for strict integrity. An outcast from really respectable society, he has become the hireling panderer to the ignorant, godless prejudices of the slave-driving class. Monstrous inventions, and ribaldry of the lowest kind, commend the "Courant" to their patronage; and these savoury morsels, it is well understood, are the productions of Bruce, who makes no secret of the unbridled malignity with which he regards the missionaries.

Under the conduct of these men, the "Courant" newspaper has outstripped all its compeers in the race for popular favour, not, however, by the superior talent which it displays; though, in addition to its able proprietor, it can.