default even to nature's religion! But art thou a Christian man-what law shall acquit thee, if that heavy charge lies at thy door-at the door of thy warehouse at the door of thy dwelling. Beware, lest thou forget God in his mercies! the Giver in his gift! lest the light be gone from thy prosperity, and prayer from thy heart, and the love of thy neighbor from the labors of thy calling, and the hope of heaven from the abundance of thine earthly

estate.

"But not with words of warning-ever painful to use, and not always profitable-would I now dismiss you from the house of God. I would not close this discourse, in which I may seem to have pressed heavily on the evils to which business exposes those who are engaged in it, without holding up distinctly to view the great moral aim on which it is my main purpose to insist, and attempting to show its excellence.

"There is such a nobleness of character in the right course, that it is to that point I would last direct your attention. The aspirings of youth, the ambition of manhood, could receive no loftier moral direction than may be found in the sphere of business. The school of trade, with all its dangers, may be made one of the noblest schools of virtue in the world; and it is of some importance to say it:-because those who regard it as a sphere only of selfish interests and sordid calculations, are certain to win no lofty moral prizes in that school. There can be nothing more fatal to elevation of character in any sphere, whether it be of business or society, than to speak habitually of that sphere as given over to low aims and pursuits. If business is constantly spoken of as contracting the mind and corrupting the heart; if the pursuit of property is universally satirized as selfish and grasping; too many who engage in it will think of nothing but of adopting the character and the course so pointed out. Many causes have contributed, without doubt, to establish that disparaging estimate of business-the spirit of feudal aristocracies, the pride of learning, the tone of literature, and the faults of business itself.

"I say, therefore, that there is no being in the world for whom I feel a higher moral respect and admiration, than for the upright man of business; no, not for the philanthropist, the missionary, or the martyr. I feel that Í could more easily be a martyr, than a man of that lofty moral uprightness. And let me say yet more distinctly, that it is not for the generous man, that I feel this kind of respect that seems to me a lower quality-a mere impulse, compared with the lofty virtue I speak of. It is not for the man who distributes extensive charities, who bestows magnificent donations. That may be all very well-I speak not to disparage it-I wish there were more of it; and yet it may all consist with a want of the true, lofty, unbending uprightness. That is not the man, then, of whom I speak; but it is he who stands, amid all the swaying interests and perilous exigencies of trade, firm, calm, disinterested, and upright,. It is the man, who can see another man's interests just as clearly as his own. It is the man whose mind his own advantage does not blind nor cloud for an instant; who could sit a judge, upon a question between himself and his neighbor, just as safely, as the purest magistrate upon the bench of justice. Ah! how much richer than ermine, how far nobler than the train of magisterial authority, how more awful than the guarded bench of majesty, is that simple, magnanimous, and majestic truth. Yes, it is the man who is true-true to himself, to his neighbor, and to his God-true to the right-true to his conscience-and who feels, that the slightest suggestion of that conscience, is more to him than the chance of acquiring an hundred estates."

ART. III.-LEISURE-ITS USES AND ABUSES.*

THE subject announced for discussion this evening, promises little novelty of thought or learned research, and may in the judgment of some savour too strongly of the lecturer's profession. But it has been chosen in the belief, that an audience, like the present, composed of persons distinguished for zeal in the acquirement of sound knowledge, would prefer practical, though familiar truths, to flights of fancy or pedantic display; and that they never would have invited one to address them, who, without a name for science or general literature, could only have been known to them as a preacher of morals, if they had wished him entirely to forget his office in complying with their request.

Leisure strictly signifies unoccupied time. A man of leisure is one who has nothing to do, a condition supposed to be honorable in those countries where false forms of society make the many the servants of the few; but happily not in our own, where the greatest good of the whole number is the glorious aim of an intelligent democracy. Here, the laborer is honorable, the idler infamous. We tolerate no drones in our hive, and every one, who would share in its sweets, must contribute to the general happiness. Indeed, a man among us must either be content to be busy, or content to be alone, like the truant school boy, who found no one idle but himself, and was glad to get back to school for the sake of company; or, like the solitary goose of Patrick O'Rooney,t be full of fun, and nothing to play with. So may it ever be. The sweat-drops on the brow of honest toil are more precious than the jewels of a ducal coronet, and the pen of a ready writer, the tools of the artisan, and the axe of the backwoodsman, are weapons of a nobler chivalry than ever couched the lance or wielded the sword.

In this nice sense of the term, we can have no leisure; for the truly virtuous and faithful will find occupation for every moment. Living in a world of so many wants, and with an immortality before us so full of reward, we can never lack an opportunity of doing good to others and profiting ourselves. But every man who pursues a regular calling, however closely he may devote himself to business, will have certain intervals of relief from his more pressing engagements. These constitute that leisure of which I would speak.

During a recent visit to the United States mint, I observed in the gold room, that a rack was placed over the floor for us to tread upon; and on inquiring its purpose, I was answered, that it was to prevent the visitor from carrying away with the dust of his feet the minute particles of precious metal, which despite of the utmost care would fall upon the floor, when the rougher edges of the bars were filed; and that the sweepings of the building saved thousands of dollars in the year. How much more precious the most minute fragments of time! and yet how often are they trodden upon like dust by thoughtlessness and folly? The necessity of labor was doubtless intended. for our salutary discipline, yet it is a most painful consideration, that so much of life's brief time is lost upon physical wants and momentary gratifications. To say nothing of our useless infancy, the long years of preparation for ac

A Lecture delivered before the New York Mercantile Library Association, in March, 1839, by Rev. George W. Bethune, D. D.

+Immortalized by Miss Edgeworth.

tive life, daily demands for sleep and food and social decencies, what makes up the business of the world? Ascend by day some eminence from which you can look down on this populous city, what busy crowds are hurrying to and fro—what a hum of anxious voices, what a clamor of incessant toil. Here a long train of flying cars are drawn along the level way; there, many a freighted vessel spreads her white canvass to the breeze, seeking distant continents, or folds her weary wings as she glides to her rest; below, the reluctant beast drags his heavy load; stately warehouses rise thick on every hand, and countless shops display their glittering wares; while marble palaces, with pillared fronts and thronged ascents, demand the admiring eye. What is the cause of all this struggle? What mighty end thus makes man and beast and element subservient. It is a vain attempt to answer the insatiable craving of the human heart, "what shall we eat, what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" With rare exceptions, mere living is the business of life, and mind the slave of the body's occasions-star-eyed science is invoked only to swell the profits of business by her money making or money saving inventions; dear poesy flings aside. the noblest lyre that ever woke echoes of freedom in American bosoms, to go into

-The Cotton Trade
And Sugar Line,-

while religion is allowed to tell vulgar rogues, that they must not steal, nor pull down flour stores, nor riot at elections; but is frowned back to her altars as an impudent intermeddler with things beyond her sphere, if she dare to speak of the mysteries of stock-jobbing, excesses of credit, or bubbles of speculation-and as for conscience, since the notable discovery that corporations have no souls, her scruples are silenced by an act of assembly. Surely mind, spiritual, immortal mind, was made for better uses; and when I think of the spacious shelves laden with well worn books, the crowded lecture hall, the munificent founders, and see before me the intelligent countenances of those who are the active members of the Mercantile Library Association, I am well assured that all is not lost, nor is the city wholly given to idolatry.

I have meant no disrespect for the city of New York. I have spoken of it only as part of the busy world. Disrespect for New York? It is my birth place, the home of my youth, and the asylum of my earliest affections. Grown it is indeed, almost out of my knowledge; and when I come to visit it, it seems strange yet familiar, as a vigorous young man in a long coat, whom one knew first a growing boy in a round-about jacket. I once went far away in a foreign land, picked up a New York paper, and read an advertisement of building lots in hundred and forty-second street; and on another page, an article on bringing the Croton River to New York. What folly! I thought to myself. Bring the Croton River to New York? let them wait a few years longer, and at this rate New York will go to Croton River. There must have been some mistake, however, for on my return the only inhabitant I found near that spot was a hermit poor, a fat and greasy citizen who croaked unconscious defiance of land tax and water rents.

77

Dear New York? Few of you, young men, remember it as I do, when we ran down the Flattenberg on our little sleighs, or skated on Lispenard's meadows and Burr's poud, and thought Leonard street "up town But cross in a summer's day to Weehawken, and climb the hill above the spot where the monument used to stand, till

"Your foot is no the verge of the cliff, and you can hear
The low dash of the wave with startled ear,"

And then look forth upon the bay, and you will see it unchanged.
"Tall spire, and glittering roof, and battlement,
And banners floating in the sunny air,

And white sails on the calm blue waters bent,
Green isle, and circling shore, are blended there
In wild reality-when life is old,

And many a scene forgot, the heart will hold
Its memory of this; now, lives there one,

Whose infant breath was drawn, or boyhood's days

Of happiness were passed beneath that sun,
That in his manhood's prime can calmly gaze
Upon that bay, or on that mountain stand,
Nor feel the prouder of his native land."

I said I meant no disrespect for New York, neither did I for merchants. My father was a merchant of New York, and dear to his son, above most things in this life, is the reputation he won in the walks of commerce, and by the application of its gains, for unsullied integrity and noble benevolence. It is beyond the power of thought to estimate the blessings which God has conferred upon the world by the influence of commerce and commercial men. The history of modern civilization and modern liberty is indentified with the history of commerce. The first dawnings of rational freedom were in the commercial republics of Venice and Genoa; though spoiled by success, and depraved by luxury, their merchant-princes became tyrants, and then slaves. But scarcely later in the Lower Netherlands, the merchant cities of those brave Saxons and Frisons, who preferred to wring from the sea an asylum for freedom, rather than submit to Roman conquest or Frank oppression, with thoughts as free as the ocean breeze which wafted their freighted barks, first taught the world the lesson of constitutional government, and the strength of confederated rights; first proclaimed that the right of government was not in the hereditary noble, but in man; and insisted upon the admission of every man, even the humblest, to freedom, though they reserved the honor of citizenship as a reward of integrity and industry. From the free cities of Flanders, from among their merchants and tradesmen, arose the first men of the people that dared to take power by the throat, and bind the hands of tyranny by the cords of reason; and since that day, true civil liberty, I mean that which secures alike the happiness of the whole people, most abounds where commerce is the most active and the most free. In our own happy land, we have brought those lessons of equality, confederation, and self government, nearest to perfection; but we have yet more to learn. Unhallowed is that pride and insolence of wealth, which would make the political rights of the poor and rich unequal, for then would the fate of Venice and Genoa be ours. Unhallowed is that fanaticism, which, from partial prejudices or selfish interests, would strain the cords of our union to disruption, for then the chaotic dance of atoms would be repeated in the concussion of civil wars, and final confusion of rights and liberties; but, though perhaps may differ from some who hear me, I must be permitted to add, as the wish of one humble but sincere patriot, happy will that day be, when trade shall be free as the spirit of the constitution, every shackle taken from her wings, and, after a just tax paid for the support and protection of government, duties be demanded from none, nor privileges granted to any, that are not granted to all; when every man shall be justified in pursuing whatever honest occupation he pleases, and trade when he pleases, and in what he pleases, be it goods or be it money, and there be acknowledged no right or power in hands to restrain the honest uses of capital, to endanger or distract

I

any

the common currency, to exact from the consumer an artificial price, or to deprive the producer of his just rewards. Only let commerce be free, and the sinews of commerce, agriculture and manufactures, be free, and we need not fear for the freedom of the world. They are young giants that need no swaddling bands—growing oaks, that ask no hot-house care.

Nor should it be forgotten, that we owe to commerce the discovery of once unknown continents, and that but for her, we should never have gloried in the name of Americans. It is commerce which makes the luxuries of each land common to all; brings the spices of the tropics to enrich the dainties of our winter festivals, cheers us in the morning with the sober berry's juice, and refreshes us in the evening with the cup that cheers, but not inebriates, mingled and blessed by the fair hands of those we love. The hordes of India, the serfs of Russia, the paupers of Britain, toil, at her command, for us.

There are also in the stern ethics and the fearless confidence of enlarged commerce, some of the finest exhibitions of lofty humanity and generous truth. "It might tempt one," says an admirable author, "to be proud of his species, when he looks upon the faith reposed in a merchant by a distant correspondent, who, without one other hold of him than his honor, confides to him the wealth of a whole flotilla, and sleeps in the confidence that it is safe. It is indeed an animating thought, amid the gloom of a world's depravity, when we behold the credit which one man puts in another, though separated by seas and by continents; when he fixes the anchor of a sure and steady dependence on the reputed faith of one whom he never saw; when with all his fear for the treachery of the various elements through which his property must pass, he knows, that should it arrive at the door of his agent, his fears and his suspicions may be at an end. We know nothing finer than such an act of homage from one being to another, when perhaps the diameter of the globe is between them; nor do we think that either the renown of her victories, or the wisdom of her counsels, so signalizes the country in which we live, as do the honorable dealings of her merchants, or the awarded confidence of those men, of all tribes and colours and languages, who look to our agency for the faithfulness of all management, and to our keeping for the most inviolable of all custody." Thus Chalmers wrote of the merchants of his country; but we may adopt his language for our own. It was indeed said across the water, that "the Yankee nation, from General Jackson to a shoe black, was a fraudulent bankrupt;" but the intelligent and candid Mr. Cowell, the agent of the bank of England, and one of the most liberal minded and observing strangers that ever visited our shores, has declared that out of debts of at least fifteen millions, all but some fourteen or fifteen hundred of dollars is safe, and that ultimately so. A tolerable dividend for a bankrupt's

estate!

And when we remember the mutual anguish, the desolated hopes, the universal gloom of the crisis, through which we passed, the toil that was endured, the sacrifices that were made, and the unavoidable confusion that reigned, the world must admit that the American merchant will not yield his honor while his sinews obeys his will, or a gasp of life remains.

Yet giving to commerce all its due, the life of an intelligent being should have far higher ends than those the pursuits of business can immediately promise. If immediately beyond the grave be not all a dream, it will be to those who are prepared to enter it, an immortality of mind and affection, where the grosser influences of the body, its low necessities and animal pleasures, which demand so much of present care and toil and time, shall be unknown