Where the wretched Northern renegade
  On a Southern journal plies his trade,
  Swearing and writing, with scowl or smile,
  That all that is Yankee is low and vile.

  Where the cowardly dough-face talks of war
  But fears we are going a little too far;—­
  Hoping the North may win the fight,
  But thinking the South is ‘partially right.’

  Where the trembling, panting contraband
  Makes tracks in haste from the happy land;
  And where the officer-gentlemen
  Catch him and order him home again!

  Where the sutler acts like an arrant scamp,
  And aids the contractor to rob the camp;
  Both of them serving the South in its sin,
  And all of them helping the devil to win.

  So the game goes on from day to day,
  But there’s ONE behind all who watches the play;
  Well he knows who at last must beat,
  And well he will reckon up every cheat.

  Wolfish dark player, do your best! 
  There’s a reckoning for you as well as the rest;
  Eastward or westward your glance may wend,
  But the devil always trips up in the end.

* * * * *

JONATHAN EDWARDS AND THE OLD CLERGY.

Of late years the attention of many thinking men has been much turned to the early clergy of America.  One reads of St. Peter’s Church that, notwithstanding its immense size above ground, it has an equal amount of masonry under ground.  Of the iceberg even more can be said, since its submerged proportions are of vastly greater extent than its visible surface.  One may well inquire how much of American greatness is hidden in its foundation.  How massive indeed must be the hidden corner-stone on which rests the structure of national character.  New England is now turning its attention to the histories of ancient families; genealogy is no small feature in modern literature, and thus the age seems to confess that such research is a token of advance.

I believe that the strength of our ancestors was owing to their pure and simple piety; indeed, one can not go back even for a century without meeting this element in clear developement.  The old New England preachers were of a character peculiarly adapted to the severe exigencies of their day.  They stood as iron men in an iron age.  However rude in other social features, the early settlers, as they worked their way to the frontier, demanded the soothing influences of pastoral care, and the first institution reared in the forest was the pulpit, the next the school-house.  The pastors were settled for life, and minister and people abode in communion, with little change but that of age.  In seeking a field, the youth just launched into his profession ‘candidated’ among vacant churches, and was heard with solemn attention by the selectmen and bench of deacons.  Notes were taken by the more fastidious for subsequent criticism, and the matter was discussed with all the importance of a national treaty.  When the call had been accepted, the stipend was generally fixed at one hundred pounds, and a rude parsonage opened its doors of welcome.  To this was almost invariably attached a farm, whose native sterility called for such expenditure of toil that it might truly have been said,