mend itself to all fair-minded, patriotic men, with whom the interests of the country are more than the interests of a party. We welcome the recognition by the government of higher principles and influences than those which usually control the action of political bodies. Especially in the treatment of the Indians we are glad to acknowledge the humane and Christian policy which has been inaugurated under the auspices of President Grant. Where so many bad men are interested in perpetuating the old abuses, it is not strange that violent opposition should be made to any change; but we trust that the President will go on with his characteristic persistency in the wise and humane course which he has adopted, — extending the bounty of the nation, which is but justice, to all Indians who accept the conditions of peace, and holding up firmly to the retributions of the law those who choose to sustain themselves by acts of violence.

We have always had faith in our President as a man of great good sense and of perfect honesty, liable to mistakes as all men are, and especially all new men in places of great responsibility. But for a little while our faith has been shaken. The disposition shown by his particular friends and supporters in the Senate to evade and escape the thorough investigation into all the acts of the administration which it was proposed by Mr. Trumbull to authorize by the appointment of a special committee for that purpose, does not augur well for that section of the Republican party. Under the united and powerful influence of the national feeling, they have indeed changed their tone, and submit now apparently to the proposed investigations. But it is too late, and the measures now adopted are not thorough enough, to secure entirely the public confidence. When public men plainly wince or shrink from having their acts investigated in the most open and thorough manner, it is to the general public, who know little of partizan secrets, an evidence that something is wrong.

On the other hand, we rejoice to find that the President accepts the recommendations of the Civil Service Commission, and promises to do all that he can to cut off the abuses

in the appointments to office which have been such a means of corruption through the whole land.

THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS.

The visit to our country of this prince, whose personal bearing has been such as to commend him to the respect of all who have met him, is to be looked upon as an evidence of the friendly regard of a great monarch, or at least as a proof that he feels it to be for his interest to secure towards himself the friendly regard of our people. It is singular that the most despotic government and the freest government in the civilized world should for nearly a century, during the whole period of our national existence, have always been on terms of the most kindly relationship. Whatever helps to perpetuate these friendly relations between two great nations should be looked upon with satisfaction by all lovers of peace and concord.

man.

THE PRINCE OF WALES.

The almost hourly bulletins respecting the Prince of Wales during his dangerous illness were sought after by our people with hardly less of interest than in Great Britain. We remember pleasantly his visit here when he was a very young The accounts which we have had of him since then have not always been such as to increase our respect. But the two nations are so united by common interests and sympathies and blood, that what affects one deeply cannot but move the other. If, in our season of terrible affliction, the ruling classes in England sent out an exultant cry that "the Bubble of Democracy" had burst, and seemed to triumph in our sorrows, we do not forget that some of the leading minds and the common people of England stood firmly on our side, and that many there were intensely true to us and to our cause amid privations and trials almost as severe as our own people were subjected to. These things we do not forget. And the calamity which threatened England in the impending death of the heir to the throne, and the possible consequences of such an event, was felt here with a profound sympathy.

CUBA AND PARIS.

The judicial murder of medical student-boys, for a foolish and thoughtless act of desecration in a cemetery, excites on all sides among us a sentiment of execration and horror. So, the executions in France have done little to commend to our sympathies the government by which they were authorized. We turn with devout thankfulness to God for having saved us from any such act of savage vengeance even towards those who most deserved the heaviest retributions that violated laws and outraged humanity could inflict. But in our forbearance they have been paying a harder and heavier penalty than human governments can exact.

CORRECTION.

In our last number we said that Rev. Calvin Lincoln was not settled till after Dr. Gannett. A friend kindly informs us that the two friends were ordained on the same day, one in Fitchburg, the other in Boston.

THANKSGIVING.

The meadow floor is yellow yet,
And gleams with a golden gleam;
Still, through its stubble thickly set,
Steals the silent, sluggish stream.

The spikes of grain in the sunlight
Wave not their silken hair;
But still to the sea the waters bright
Their hidden jewels bear.

Still does the robin flit forlorn,

Though other birds have flown,

Through branches that, for glories shorn,
Make dreary, weary moan.

What of the teeming harvest store!

What of the laden wain!

Have to my heart the seasons bore

One ear of golden grain?

I hear the song glad voices raise ;
I see the banquet spread;

The thankful hymn of humble praise
To sweet rejoicing wed.

Ah! what fair spring-time flowers
That bloomed in the summer past
Have I, in these autumn hours,
Gathered to garner at last?

Even these alone: a heart more pure;
A spirit more surely shod;

A soul by faith grown more mature,
With a clearer vision of God.

- Harvard Advocate.

EGYPT THIRTY-THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. ONE important discovery is announced by M. Lanoye, and that five years old, a subterranean chapel beneath the temple of Denderah, traceable back perhaps to Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, giving new currency to the hypothesis that the earliest religious edifices of Egypt were under ground.

But these ancient monuments throw many lights upon Jewish history. The cruel treatment of the Jews was not original with the Pharaohs who oppressed them. It is shown to be the traditional policy of this most conservative government - what had been even of old, and therefore would be readily repeated again. Another fact, curiously illustrating the Jews being driven into this land of plenty by the pressure of famime, — thirty-seven men, women, and children are depicted on a tomb in Sad, praying the viceroy for shelter and sustenance; and they are of the Semitic race. The principal fact we take to be that the monumental inscriptions confirm the first book of Kings in regard to the capture and spoliation of Jerusalem by Sheshonk or Shishak. A remarkable correspondence can be traced between the customs of the two nations, making it probable that one proceeded forth from the other, so as to mingle their usages with its own, as in feeding the ovens with grass, in casting seed upon the waters, in signing with a ring instead of written names, in bottling liquors in skins of animals, in holding courts in the gateways, in the darkness of the inmost shrine of the temple, and the wings over the sacred chest. Such facts from authors like Wilkinson are far more valuable and unspeakably more interesting than Lanoye's half-imagined history of the ruthless conqueror, Ramesis the Great.

F. W. H.

RANDOM READINGS.

BY E. H. SEARS.

THE OLD AND THE NEW YEAR.

It has been a

In the Old

FAREWELL to eighteen hundred and seventy-one ! year of sorrow, disaster, bereavement and suffering. World it has brought war with its desolations, its hatreds and its bloody trail through one of the fairest countries of Europe; and in the New World it has brought accidents and conflagrations involving more of distress and anguish than ever came to any people in time of peace. "Where is God now?" said an Atheist, with grim satisfaction at finding some proof as he thought for his godless nocreed, as he watched the leaps of the roaring flame that was devouring Chicago. It is the operation of natural laws, says another, not of a Divine Providence, as if natural law had no lawgiver, or could have any operation unless the mind and energy of the lawgiver were immanent therein. And what is the immanence of God in man and nature, always working, but another name for the Universal Providence? Disaster and suffering on a larger scale and in grander pr. portions are not less providential than on the smallest scale and in individual life; not less when a hero perishes than when a sparrow falls; not less when a babe suffers and dies than when a whole city is ploughed through with conflagration. It has always been through suffering that mind has obtained its victories over matter. It has been through suffering that the grandest moral victories have ever been achieved. And so it will be till all the forces of nature have been yoked as the servants of humanity, and the spirit world is mirrored peacefully in the natural. Because we ignore or violate these laws we suffer. Hatreds and ambitions divide nations and peoples, and the slaughter and the bloodshed which they produce are their appropriate symbolization. The greed for gain and the love of material grandeur become absorbing and make men blind to the conditions of present safety, until violated law brings them back to their senses. It is our reckless rush and hurry in the race of life whereby the gaps are left open for the demons of disorder to come in. Over all and through all is the brooding and interworking Providence bringing home to us the great lesson of suffering, and opening more pro,