incessant, covering the top of the mountains, and the hills, and the plains where the lotus tree grows, and the cultivated fields, and they are falling by the inlets and shores of the foaming sea, but are silently dissolved by the waves." The snow levels all things, and infolds them deeper on the bosom of nature, as, in the slow summer, vegetation creeps up to the entablature of the temple, and the turrets of the castle, and helps her to prevail over art.

The surly night-wind rustles through the wood, and warns us to retrace our steps, while the sun goes down behind the thickening storm, and birds seek their roosts, and cattle their stalls.

"Drooping the lab'rer ox

Stands covered o'er with snow, and now demands

The fruit of all his toil."

Though winter is represented in the almanac as an old man, facing the wind and sleet, and drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of him as a merry wood-chopper, and warm-blooded youth, as blithe as summer. The unexplored grandeur of the storm keeps up the spirits of the traveller. It does not trifle with us, but has a sweet earnestness. In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and merry, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends. The imprisoning drifts increase the sense of comfort which the house affords, and in the coldest days we are content to sit over the hearth and see the sky through the chimney top, enjoying the quiet and serene life that may be had in a warm corner by the chimney side, or feeling our pulse by listening to the low of cattle in the street, or the sound of the flail in distant barns all the long afternoon. No doubt a skilful physician could determine our health by observing how these simple and natural sounds affected

us.

We enjoy now, not an oriental, but a boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fire-places, and watch the shadow of motes in the sunbeams.

Sometimes our fate grows too homely and familiarly serious ever to be cured. Consider how for three months the human destiny is wrapped in furs. The good Hebrew

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revelation takes no cognizance of all this cheerful snow. Is there no religion for the temperate and frigid zones? We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew scriptures speak adequately of his condition and experience, from the setting in of winter to the breaking up of the ice.

Now commences, the long winter evening around the farmer's hearth, when the thoughts of the indwellers travel far abroad, and men are by nature and necessity charitable and liberal to all creatures. Now is the happy resistance to cold, when the farmer reaps his reward, and thinks of his preparedness for winter, and through the glittering panes, sees with equanimity "the mansion of the northern bear," for now the storm is over,

"The full ethereal round,

Infinite worlds disclosing to the view,
Shines out intensely keen; and all one cope
Of starry glitter glows from pole to pole."

H. D. T.

THE THREE DIMENSIONS.

"Room for the spheres!"-then first they shined,

And dived into the ample sky;

"Room! room!" cried the new mankind,

And took the oath of liberty.

Room! room! willed the opening mind,

And found it in Variety.

VOYAGE TO JAMAICA.

[Continued from Dial for July.]

THE sect which exercises by far the greatest influence over the colored population, and especially the " peasantry," as the plantation negroes have been called since their emancipation, is the Baptist. The people of this sect are much the most numerous denomination of Christians on the island, and their preachers espouse the cause of the laboring blacks, with great zeal. The largest congregation in Kingston is under the charge of Mr. Killish, a baptist preacher, whose place of worship is a little way out of town, on the "Windward Road." According to the "Jamaica Almanack," his church numbers more than 1700 communicants. I set out with the purpose of attending there one afternoon, but a heavy shower of rain delayed me on the way, and I did not arrive until just as the meeting was breaking up. As the multitude began to spread out on the green before the house, and more slowly by groups in different directions, I thought as I looked around on them, (myself the only white man,) that I had never before seen happiness so strongly expressed. I do not know how much the delightful air, just cooled by the shower, or their religious exercises may have influenced their feelings, but joy was beaming on every countenance, both young and old. Their smiles and adieus and kind friendly words to each other seemed to me of the most unquestionable sincerity; and I could not but say to myself, - these are a people strongly disposed to be happy. It may sound like extravagance, but when I think back on the many groups of joyous negroes which I saw in Jamaica, I am always reminded of Wordsworth's beautiful description of the uniform happiness ofi nstinctive life, — of mere innocent animal existence, as compared with the sad results to which the various abuses of our powers reduce too many of our own species.

"The black-birds in the summer trees

The lark upon the hill

Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.

With nature do they never wage
A useless strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free.

But we are pressed by heavy laws,
And oft, when glad no more,
We wear a face of joy because
We have been glad of yore."

That there is sorrow and suffering enough among them, however, and some individual cases too, which may be traced directly to emancipation, there is no doubt. The old self-constituted porter of the ice-yard was an instance of this. The building occupied as the ice-house had been formerly, and until within two or three years, the dwelling of a Mr. Pacifico, a merchant to whom the porter had belonged. On the day of emancipation, this old man had been set free among the rest. But from having no relatives, or from local attachment, or some other cause, (I was unable to learn its nature,) he appeared to look for no other home than the ice-yard. He was very old and decrepit. His speech was utterly gone. One eye was sightless, and the other shrunk and faded; his limbs so paralyzed that he always walked by the fence; and I never saw him two rods from the gate, which he, however, always seemed to make a point of opening in the morning, and closing at night. He slept on the narrow stair-case leading to the agent's rooms, with nothing under him but the mat, his feet hanging down the steps; and the only evidence, I observed in him, of direct and active, or any other than a sort of mechanical intelligence, was, that he always gave a "hem," as a warning for me not to tread on him, as I passed up and down the stairs at night. Mr. Pacifico's family used generally to send him his food; but sometimes they neglected it; and then he would get outside the gate, and beg of the fruit and cake women, or else wait till the agent returned to dinner, when he would crawl up into the room and stand leaning against the wall, until something was given him to eat. I tried once or twice to talk with him, but it was utterly useless. Besides the loss of sight, and speech, and the use of his limbs, he had other marks of great age. His muscles, (for his very scanty clothing was all in rags,) were entirely shrunken away, and his

nails had grown, almost literally, like bird's claws. To use a quaint quotation, “he looked as if Death had forgotten to strike him," and ought, in mercy, to be reminded of omission.

*

The baptist clergy, or missionaries, as they are generally called, have done much permanent good in Jamaica, and much too, that, no doubt, might be proved to be present evil. Their influence on the moral and intellectual condition of the colored people, through Sunday and other schools, and preaching, has, beyond all question, been most salutary. Concubinage, that sometime "pleasant vice" of the Jamaica planter, which has long since become "the whip to scourge him," is now greatly on the wane, chiefly through their exertions. They have, it is true, like Pope Gregory VII., when he enforced the celibacy of the English clergy, found it much easier to prevent and dissolve new, than to break up old connexions. These connexions are no longer so numerous, nor so openly and shamelessly formed, as they were a very few years ago; but they are by no means abolished. While the brig was discharging cargo, I saw a neatly dressed and agreeable, but rather pensive-looking, young brown woman enter the ice-yard, with an infant in her arms, and address some inquiry to the agent, in a suppressed but anxious tone, which he answered by a shake of the head; when she turned and went away with a disappointed air. The agent said, this was a young woman who had "lived with " a friend of his, which friend (an American) had been in business, a year or two, in Kingston; but some five or six months before our arrival, he had returned to the United States. The young woman was ignorant of the fact, that it was not his intention, when he left, ever to return to Jamaica, and so, whenever there was an arrival from any of our Northern cities, she was sure to call on the agent, with whom the person in question had had some business connexion, hoping to receive tidings of him. Poor soul! our brig had brought the tidings of his death. But this news, the agent said, he could not find in his heart to tell her. I saw her once afterwards. She had the

The first Sunday School in Jamaica was established at Spanishtown, in 1832, by the Rev. Mr. Philipps, a baptist missionary.