Now, in the name of all-merciful Heaven, what can we do for such a wretched madman as this? Say not that he is not, we say he is a madman. That benighted intellect is not capable of seeing and un reality its miserable possessor groans in now, and much less capable is it of forming the poorest notion of aught beyond this present world. Again we say, what can we do what steps can we takewhat remedial measures can we devisewhat vigorous, searching, startling treatment can we pursue, which shall have the effect of meeting and vanquishing this deplorable malady-this mental darknessdarkness which may be felt! Much is being done, but more labor is called for. Every means by which the mind may be lifted from darkness into light; every machinery by which instruction-wholesome, solid instruction-by which recreation-cheering, beneficial recreation-may be furnished, should be brought into play. If we want to win the struggle against vice and ignorance, we must be no sluggards. The labor is incessant, but the reward will be glorious. soms vice has so long found a home that their minds are absolutely incapable of forming a conception of virtue. Let us, in conclusion, dwell a little upon these madmen. Reader, may we never dare to impugnderstanding the hell on earth which in God's justice or doubt his love. The prayer is needful ere you look on the scene which we are about to portray to you. In this wretched room, where the sun scarcely ever enters, where the pure breath of heaven is never known, an infant has just been born. Its parents are utterly degraded; we can not further describe them. The child is simply a burden, and is fed merely because to let it starve would be murder, and murder is punishable with death. The boy grows up, and every evil tendency grows with him. He may or may not be, in the eye of the law, dishonest, as circumstances n ay lead him. If there be inducement, he will be dishonest without scruple. Why should he not be? What does he know about right and wrong? Adm tting that even in his heart there may be some conscientious emotions, they are so poor and faint, so easily driven out, lah out, and silenced, that they scarcely offer the slightest barrier to any enormity. Why should he not live in open wickedness? Why should he not drink? Why should he not brawl and fight? So steeped is he in wretchedness, so lost is he and always has been from childhood-to self-respect, so utterly is he without notion of being esteemed for any god quality. so inorant is he of every thing beyond the fact of his existence, and the means by which he is enabled to live, that to his mind there weigh nrasons against any vice save the possibility of detection and punishment. And why stop at theft, drunkenness, profligacy, and rioting? Why should he not, if there be sufficient temptation, commit the darkest crime-murder? He will no doubt escape; but supposing he should not, and he should be caugu and be hung-well, there will be an end of him. Life has not been so pleasant that he would grieve very much to part with it now that he has had his day-and if by ill-luck he should suffer, be it so, he will die game. Yes, and he is caught, and he does die game, and thus he finishes a life which, from first to last, has been scarce relieved by one ray of sunshine or one faint gleam of truth and love. Reader, we hear sometimes of the last moments of a noble soldier. We hear of his dying efforts, of the number of the foe who fell by his hand, ere that hand sank powerless and the gallant spirit sped forth. And our sympathy is deeply moved, and our admiration evoked, for this brave man proved himself a true and loyal servant, and there attaches to his memory that respect and love which fidelity unto death will ever excite. for ourselves, oh! infinitely would we rather, when we lie down at the last, see other forms around us than the writhing bodies of dying enemies, and hear other sounds than their deep-drawn groans. The vision which we would ask to brighten for a moment our fast-glazing eye would be the happy faces of those whom we may have been instrumental in saving from death, and the sounds which we would hope might break upon our ear, would be the encouraging accents of those who were lost, but have been found, assuring us that our warfare has been accomplished, and that our victory is won. They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH SKETCH OF DR. TAYLOR. man whom we have known for many years, and known only to love. We were privileged to stand by his dying-bed, and to take his hand and feel its feeble pulsations, only a few hours before the arrival of the chariot of Israel, and the horseman thereof, in which, under convoy of angels, he took his departure upward to his final home in heaven. We quote the following from the pen of Professor Goodrich : WE place at the head of our present | pardoned this expression and tribute of number, as an embellishment, a very truth-personal affection and regard for a good ful portrait of a great and good man, whose hallowed memory we delight to honor-eminent as a preacher of the Gospel of salvation, and profound in the department of theology, upon the mighty themes of which he concentrated all the powers of his great intellect and heart during a long and laborious life with earnest zeal and Christian humility. His high and noble purpose, which absorbed all else, was, to honor God and save the souls of menas many as possible. Wealth, fame, mere earthly distinctions, worldly honors and pleasures were comparatively disregarded and left in dim eclipse on his field of celestial vision, while he pointed the powerful telescope of his strong and vigorous faith to the great future of his being, fastening an intense gaze upon the brilliant crown of righteousness which he saw away in the distance, gemmed and studded with brilliant stars in the firmament of heaven, undecayable forever and ever. In the varied walks of life, where his familiar footsteps were heard, in the scenes in which he mingled, in the pulpit, in the chair of theology, in the church, in her councils, in the lecture-room, in the meeting of inquiry, in the social circle of friends, in the more retired walks of life, and in the sacred precincts of the family, as a husband, a father, and a friend, his course and his example radiated the sunbeams of Christian benevolence and kindness all along his path. "Rev. Nathaniel William Taylor, D.D., Dwight Professor of Didactic Theology in Yale College, was born at New-Milford, Ct., June 23d, 1786, and graduated at Yale College in 1807. After residing for about two years in the family of Dr. Dwight, as his favorite amanuensis, he entered on the ministry; and was ordained pastor of the First Congregational Church in New-Haven, in April, 1812. His preaching was marked by extraordinary clearness, force, and pungency of application. He had great confidence, under divine grace, in the power of truth. Hence, he dealt with the hearts of men chiefly through their understandings; he enforced the claims of the Gospel, not by mere strength of assertion, but by vivid and luminous trains of reasoning; he turned the whole at last into an appeal to conscience; and the leading characteristic of his preaching was happily described by an eminent divine of Massachusetts: 'He makes every thing appear great: God, His smile, when the strongly-marked man, time, eternity! His ministry was and expressive lineaments of his face light-eminently successful. There were, in reed up with pleasure, was rich, warm like peated instances, powerful and long-cona sunbeam, and magnificent. We remem- tinued revivals of religion among his peober no smile on the face of any man to us ple; and these seasons of extraordinary so striking, save on the face of Daniel interest were conducted with so much Webster in his palmy days, which shone judgment, and care to avoid every kind of out sometimes like the sun from behind a excess, that the whole community around dark cloud, or like the lightning upon the saw and acknowledged that they were no bosom of the summer evening sky. mere ebullitions of excited feeling, but were marked by the peculiar presence of the converting grace of God. We place this portrait of his expressive face in our journal that many may look upon it at their leisure who have never looked upon the original. We shall be "When the Theological Department of Yale College was founded, in the year They are scattered throughout every part of the United States; and they will all testify that the great end at which he aimed in his theological system, was to exalt God, to humble man, and to bring all to the cross of Christ.' 1822, he was appointed Dwight Professor | listening to the lectures of Dr. Taylor. of Didactic Theology. But in accepting Nearly seven hundred young men have this office, he never thought for a moment enjoyed the benefit of his instructions. of relinquishing the duties of the ministry. On the contrary, while preparing young men for the sacred office, he continued to preach in the churches of our city or neighborhood, with his accustomed fervor and success. For nearly a year, in 1825-6, he acted as the regular supply of one of "About two months before his death he the societies at Hartford, which was des- was no longer able to meet his class; and titute of a pastor. As new Congregational from that time he daily committed to one churches have branched out from the two of their number a lecture to be read and original societies on the Green, his coun- discussed at their daily meetings. He sels and aid have been called in for the told them his course was ended; and with furtherance of each successive enterprise. a quiet and child-like submission to the On some of them he bestowed an amount will of God, he resigned himself to the of labor which, if reckoned in continuous prospect of a speedy death. To one of order, would make months and even years his friends he remarked: My only hope of pastoral duty. As a teacher in theolo- is in the atonement of Christ; and my gy, it was his great object to make his wish is to die with the words of the mar pupils think for themselves. It required tyr Stephen on my lips, "Lord Jesus reno ordinary effort to follow him through ceive my spirit!" His closing hours one of his lectures. They abounded in were without struggle or suffering; he profound principles and far-reaching views, rests from his labors, and his works do which, to a reflecting mind, were eminent-follow him!" ly the seeds of thought.' A gentleman He died in New-Haven, March 10th, who exchanged the bar for the pulpit, 1858, in the seventy-second year of his once remarked, that never in the severest age. He sleeps in that beautiful city of contests of the forum had he felt such a the dead, the New-Haven Cemetery.-EDtension of his faculties, such a bracing and ITOR ECLECTIC. invigorating effect upon his mind, as in 6 From Chambers's Journal THE NATURE AND CONSEQUENCES OF BRITISH STORMS. IT is fortunate for the holders of most | of our public offices that the bulk of the people have no direct personal interest in attending to their proceedings. Every body's business is nobody's business, and so they escape observation and blame. This is not the case, however, with the poor old clerk of the weather-office, who seldom exercises his official functions without interfering more or less unpleasantly with the health, comfort, or daily avocations of a people highly sensitive of skiey influences," and much given to grumbling at every shift of the seemingly 66 inconstant wind; which chops about to every point of the compass just when it is wanted to be steady, and seldom blows continuously from one quarter except when it comes from the baneful east. This unreasonable habit of grumbling at the fluctuations of the weather, and of charging our climate with fickleness and irregularity, merely because we are ignorant of the great laws that regulate its changes, seems to have come down to us as a portion of the practical wisdom of our ancestors, who, however wise in other respects, were certainly not weather-wise, but otherwise. The storms that har- "Lang after kenned on Carrick shore! first determined. Suppose we have before us the log-books of a group of ships that have all been involved in the same storm in the North Atlantic Ocean. Mark on a chart or map the position of each ship on a certain day, say the thirteenth October, and through each ship so marked draw an arrow to indicate the direction of the wind-if any-at that particular place on that day. Then it will be found that all the ships lying within a certain circle, of about one hundred miles diameter, experienced a dead calm. The logs of the ships lying immediately around this central region of calm will record winds of hurricane violence; while the arrows will show that these winds were all blowing in one continuous circular stream, so as to form an immense aërial whirlwind, which in the northern hemisphere is found invariably to turn in the direction opposite to that in which the hands of a watch move. In the southern hemisphere the whirlwind that constitutes every storm turns in the contrary direction with equal persistency. It would be difficult for poets to exaggerate on this subject; for the belief that storms were brewed and directed by witches pervaded all classes from peasant to king. In the year 1589, during the usually unsettled month of September, a storm, or rather a series of storms, swept over Scotland and the northern seas. Most storms are headstrong and rebellious, but this was also disloyal and ungal- The vessels still more remote from the lant in an eminent degree, for it drove center will have winds of diminished force, back repeatedly the noble Danish fleet but all blowing in directions that form which bore to our shores the Princess subordinate parts of one great whirlwind. Anna of Denmark, the affianced bride of A great law of storms is already apparent; the Scottish king, and the future queen storms are huge whirlwinds, always reof Great Britain. Both wind and sea volving in the same order in the same strove to prevent the course of true love hemisphere, and in contrary orders in the from running smooth. The baffled Dan- two opposite hemispheres formed by the ish admiral was at last compelled to run equator. To avoid the confusion attendback for shelter to Upslo on the Norwe- ing the indiscriminate use of the terms gian coast; and the youthful king soon storm, tempest, gale, hurricane, etc., and to followed "to Norway owre the faem," mark distinctly the characteristic property determined to win his wife in spite of the of storms, Mr. Piddington has happily opposing elements. Whilst the tempest designated the whole phenomenon by the was raging in Scotland, the Lady Mel- term cyclone. It is evident that within the ville, first lady of the bed-chamber to the area of the same cyclone the wind blows king's expected consort, was drowned as from every point of the compass, so that she was crossing Leith ferry. From Sir while one log-book registers, on the thirJames Melville's memoirs, we learn that teenth October, a north-east gale, another in Denmark this ungracious storm was may indicate a hurricane from south-west; allegit to have been raisit by the witches a third, a gale from south-east; while a of Denmark, by the confession of sundrie fourth may describe how the ship became of them when they were burnt for that quite unmanageable for want of wind, and cause. What movit them was a cuff, or. rolled her masts out in a heavy cross-sea; blow, quilk the admiral of Denmark gave each vessel being differently affected by to ane of the bailies of Copenhagen, both wind and sea, according to her posiwhose wife being a notable witch, con- tion with respect to the center of the sulted her cummers, and raisit the said cyclone. storm to be revengit upon the said admiral." A general idea of the nature of British storms may be easily acquired by considering the method by which that nature was The several directions of the wind in each locality having demonstrated that the storm was a great whirlwind, let us next ascertain the hight of the mercurial column in the barometer on each ship on the day in question. Around the circumference or outer margin of the cyclone the mercury will be found to stand high, to be lower at positions nearer to the center, and lowest of all within the central area. Hence Mr. Redfield justly inferred that a cyclone is a revolving eddy in the lower and denser strata of the atmosphere, in which the air is thrown out from the center by the same centrifugal action which throws off water from a revolving mop. By comparing the entries in the logbooks of another group of ships, lying considerably to the north eastward of the former, it will be found that the cyclone has traveled bodily to the north-eastward, on the 14th, 15th, and succeeding days of October; and we are thus made acquainted with another important property of storms -namely, that of their progressive motion. separate the front from the rear of the cyclone, the front lying to the eastward, While the front is passing over any place, the mercury falls until the dividing diameter arrives there, and rises again during the passage of the rear. It is obvious, from the direction in which the wind turns, that the storm will begin every where in Europe with a southerly wind and a falling barometer, and end with a northerly wind and a rising barometer. At all places lying on the south side of the center's path, the wind will veer from the south, through west, to north; while at places on the north side of the center's path, it will veer from south, through east, to north. At all places in the path of the center, the wind will blow with increasing violence from south-south-east, until after a short interval of calm, while the center passes over, it will shift abruptly to the opposite point, north-north-west. At all such places, also, the depression of the mercury will be greater. ་ Such are the well-defined marks by which the passage of a cyclone over the British Islands may be distinctly recognized, either during its occurrence, or by a subsequent comparison of the meteorological observations taken at different points during its transit. In this manner it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the cyclones of the North-Atlantic Ocean appear first among the West-Indian Islands; then sweep along the sea-board of the United States; pass over Newfoundland, and thence come wheeling across the Atlantic to Europe. A violent paroxysm of bad weather along the whole of the western coasts of Europe marks the termination of this oceanic polka; for since a cyclone generally ex- The several observatories along the pands in area as it progresses, its diameter western coasts of Europe form an exoften stretches across one or two thousand tended cyclonic coast-guard, employed miles by the time that it reaches Europe. night and day in collecting materials for Passing on to the north-eastward, a cy- this purpose. The writer of these reclone is gradually broken up among the marks has carefully examined and comvalleys and mountain-chains of the conti-pared the daily readings of the barometer nent, and ultimately degenerates into and thermometer, and the records of the several small independent and confused storms, in which the cyclonic character can no longer be recognized. Hence the erroneous views of those who have studied storms only on land. direction and force of the wind, made during the last ten years at several principal stations extending from Bordeaux to the Orkney Islands. The result of this examination is a complete confirmation of what was only a necessary deduction from the previous labors of Redfield and Reid namely, that every considerable atmospheric perturbation in Portugal, France, Great Britain, Norway, etc., is due to the presence of an Atlantic cyclone. In order to form a clear and definite idea of the behavior of a cyclone, as it approaches to, passes over, and departs from, the British Islands, take on a map the center of a circle a little to the west of England, so that its circumference may graze the west coast of Ireland, and also The winds, then, those so-called "charextend further south than the Bay of Bis- tered libertines," are subjected to definite cay. This will represent one of our great and unvarying laws, of which the hitherto winter cyclones, such as have been inves- inexplicable motions of the atmosphere tigated by Sir W. Reid, Mr. Milne Home, are only immediate and necessary conseProfessor Lloyd of Dublin, and others. A quences. The nature of these laws has line through the center from west-south-been already briefly indicated, and we west to east-north-east will represent the track along which the cyclone travels, and a diameter at right angles to this line will shall next proceed to apply them to explain some of the most remarkable characteristics of our peculiar climate. |