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'Wait for a few minutes, my brethren, while I go and make the devil pray.'

"He then proceeded with a smile on his lips to the focus of the tumult, and addressed the chief bully

At the consummation the rowdies roared three boisterous cheers, and Fink shook Cartwright by the hand, declaring

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By golly, you're some beans in a barfight. I'd rather set-to with an old "he"

“The desperado rubbed back the tangled festoons of his blood-red hair, arched his huge brows with a comical expression, and replied

"By golly, I'd like to see you do it, old snorter.'

"Very well,' said Mr. Cartwright; 'will these gentlemen, your courteous friends, agree not to show foul play?'

"In course they will. They're rale grit, and won't do nothin' but the clear thing, so they won't,' rejoined Fink, indignantly.

"Are you ready?' asked the preacher. "Ready as a race-hoss with a light rider,' answered Fink, squaring his ponderous person for the combat.

"The bully spoke too soon; for scarcely had the words left his lips when Cartwright made a prodigious bound toward his antagonist, and accompanied it with a quick, shooting punch of his herculean fist, which fell, crashing the other's chin, and hurried him to the earth like lead. Then even his intoxicated comrades, filled with involuntary admiration at the feat, gave a cheer. But Fink was up in a moment, and rushed upon his enemy, exclaiming,

"That war n't done fair, so it warn't.' "He aimed a ferocious stroke, which the preacher parried with his left hand, and, grasping his throat with the right, crushed

him down as if he had been an infant. Fink struggled, squirmed, and writhed in the dust; but all to no purpose; for the strong, muscular fingers held his windpipe, as in the jaws of an iron vise. When he began to turn purple in the face, and ceased to resist, Mr. Cartwright slackened his hold, and inquired

"Will you pray now?'

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"Afterward Fink's party behaved with extreme decorum, and the preacher resumed his Bible and pulpit.”

An odd scene that, certainly; and "not very apostolic," say you, sober reader? We join you in the remark; but it is characteristic, as we said in another case. We give it as a fact from our old friend Finley-a fact that illustrates not only the character of the man, but of the country and its early times. "Circumstances alter cases," is a popular proverb in the west, as well as elsewhere; and even good men are heard, occasionally, to affirm out there, that Lynch law is better than no law.

Mr. Bungay, in his volume of "Offhand Takings of Noticeable Men of our Age," says that he heard Peter, at Boston, during the last General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and thus describes the occasion:

"The great western preacher has arrived, and is now searching the well-thumbed Bible for his text. Quite a number of distinguished divines are present. The preacher looks like a backwoodsman, whose face has been bronzed at the plow. His black hair, straggling seven ways for Sunday, is slightly tinged with the frost of age. A strip of black silk is twisted around his neck, and a shirt collar, scrupulously clean, is turned down over it. He is of ordinary size, dresses plainly, and looks like a man perfectly free from affectation. In a fal

tering voice he reads a hymn. The choir wed

the words to sweet and solemn music, a fervent prayer goes up on the wings of faith-another hymn is read and sung-the 12th verse of the 11th chapter of Matthew is selected for his text. Now the old pioneer preacher, who has

waded swamps, forded rivers, threaded forests, traveled with Indians, fought with bears and wolves, preached in the woods, and slept in the field or on the prairie at night, is standing before us. Look at him, ye gentlemen with white neckcloths and black coats, who ride in car

with cushioned pews and soft benches to kneel How would you like to labor for nothing among wild beasts, and board yourselves, in a climate where the ague shakes the settlers over the grave two-thirds of the year? Would you exchange your fat livings, and fine palaces, and unread libraries for black bread and dry venison, a log hut and the society of bears and blue racers? God bless the brave, wise, and good men to whom we are so much indebted

for the blessings we enjoy. He says he would make an apology if he thought it would enable him to preach better, for he is afflicted with a severe cold. Some folks,' said he, 'say I am fifty years behind the age. God knows,' he continued, 'I am willing to be a thousand behind such an age. Religion is always of age, and can talk and run without stilts or silver slippers.' He concluded an able and interesting discourse which elicited undivided attention, with the following fact. During a splendid revival of religion at the west, a young preacher, manufactured in one of your theological shops out here, came to lend a helping band. I knew he could not handle Methodists' tools without cutting his fingers, but he was very officious. Well, we had a gale, a pentecostal gale, and sinners fell without looking for a soft place, and Christians fought the devil on their knees. Well, this little man would tell those who were groaning under conviction, to be composed. I stood this as long as I could, and finally sent him to speak with a great, stout, athletic man, who was bellowing like a bull in a net, while I tried to undo the mischief he had done to others. He told this powerful man to be composed, but I told him to pray like thunder-just at that instant the grace of God shone in upon his soul, and he was so delirious with delight, he seized the little man in his hands, and holding him up, bounded like a buck through the congregation.' It is impossible for

the

pen to do justice to this fact. The speaker moved us all to tears and smiles at the same moment, while he said what few men would venture to say."

While he was preaching, years ago, General Jackson entered the church, when a pastor seated in the pulpit gave his "brother Cartwright" a nudge, and whispered that the old hero had just come inas much as to advise, "Now be particular in what you say." But Peter, to the astonishment of every one, louder than ever, exclaimed-"Who cares for General Jackson? He'll go to hell as soon as anybody, if he does n't repent.”

When the sermon-a home-made one -was ended, a friend asked the general what he thought of that rough old fellow, and received for answer, "Sir, give me twenty thousand of such men, and I'll whip the world, including the devil!”

It is quite possible, brother reader, that your and our notions might not quite agree with the general's; yet neither of us can fail to see in this eccentric but veteran evangelist, the man of his times and his circumstances. And you, dear sir, starched, and brushed, and perfumed, who now recline in the stuffed arm-chair of your garnished study, wondering why the world should take any interest in such a specimen of humanity—what kind of

a specimen would you have been? what would you have done in the rough battles through which this weather-worn, but jolly-hearted old man has borne the standard of the cross-borne it with a brawny but ever-faithful arm? God bless the old man, with all his oddities; and may he yet fight his way into heaven.

Peter Cartwright joined the "old Western Conference" in 1805, though he began to travel a year earlier, we believe. He was a young man-only about eighteen years old when he entered the itinerant field, and he has been in its foremost struggles ever since. The" old Western Conference" was in that day the only one beyond the Alleghanies. It extended from Detroit to Natchez, and each of its districts comprised a territory about equal to two of the present conferences beyond the mountains. Those were the days of great moral battles in that vast field; and the men who fought them were made great, some of them gigantically so, by their circumstances. Among them were Young, Walker, Shinn, M'Kendree, Burke, Lakin, Blackman, Quinn, and similar mighty men. Cartwright began his regular travels with Lakin on Salt River Circuit, (save the name!) Most of his fellow-heroes have gone to their rest; but they gained the field, and fortified their cause all over it. They, in fact, laid the moral foundations of our ultra-montane States. The few remnants of the old corps should be cherished and honored by their Church.

THE DEAF AND DUMB GENTLEMAN.-I remember, when in the province of Archangel, a deaf and dumb gentleman paid the town a visit; he was furnished with letters of introduction to some families there, and was well received at the governor's table; his agreeable manners and accomplishments, joined to his misfortune, made him a general favorite, and caused much interest; he could read French, German, Russian, and Polish; was a connoisseur of art, and showed us several pretty drawings of his own execution. Two or three times I was struck with an expression of more intelligence in his face than one would expect when any conversation was going on behind his back. It was not until three years after, that I accidentally heard this very man spoken of in St. Petersburgh. He was one of the government spies!-Englishwoman in Russia.

[For the National Magazine.]

A CHIP OF LOGIC.

reasoning, reduced to the ultimate, becomes syllogism. If the analysis does not make this truth clear to all minds, the same

syllogism. A rhyme, an epigram, or a sonnet; a riddle, a bon-mot, or a pun will, at any time, carry the day against it in the contest for popularity. And what is worse, even with many of the hard thinking and the naturally logical, scientific logic, with its formal shibboleth of two premises and a conclusion, has for a century or so lost its unquestioned position as a science, and sunk to the category of, at least, suspected humbug. One would think, certainly, that the science of reasoning, the very art of convincing should be able to reason itself clear of all doubt; and place its claims in a position settled as self-evidence. The science of demonstration, surely, ought to demonstrate itself. Yet, strange to say, the respectable, though much overrated talents of Whately, and even the transcendent talent of Sir William Hamilton, have failed fully to convince the age-at least that part of our living age which is in the afternoon of life -that the syllogism is not only a mode of reasoning, but that it is the mode, test, and type of all reasoning. Many look upon Whately as a learned charlatan, with a triple iron mold in his hand, ready to run all our common sense into its iron form. They are as unwilling to believe that they have been always reasoning syllogism, as was Monsieur Jourdan to be convinced that he had all his days been talking prose. Not only do many doubt that all reasoning is syllogistic; but they hold that such claims, to be respected at all, should be above question. If they are doubtful they are false.

Now this may be a case of great distress for this helpless, but pretentious science. But what is it but a part of a still greater distress-a specific difficulty under a generic one? Mind, entire mind, is scarce able to analyze itself. Consciousness, the act of self-analyis, is the highest, yet most difficult and least certain of all the mental operations. Our faculties seem made to operate outwardly; and to give them an inward direction is almost as unnatural as to force the ape to walk on his hind feet. Introversion seems almost perversion. Now logic is merely a mental effort to analyze the reasoning process; and the analysis shows that all

inner labyrinth of mental operations. Nor is it wonderful that the most difficult of all mental operations-reasoning-should be the most difficult of analysis. No faculty can well turn back and ascertain its own existence. No human eye ever saw itself. Yet the route by which men have arrived at the laws of mental operation is a legitimate one. Metaphysics has a large amount of well-ascertained truths, as well as a large number of unascertained problems. And these very unascertained problems, with all their perplexity and mystery, are most valuable to the human mind. The unanswered questions are perhaps as valuable, as ennobling, as founded in man's best nature in all their unsatisfactoriness, as the ascertained truths. Metaphysics may have abounded with errors. It is liable to many a reproach. It must take its turn as a topic of pleasantry and banter. But he who absolutely discards and ignores higher metaphysics is that much an ignoramus. And he who rejects logical analysis because it can scarcely, with much experiment and argumentation, make clear the perfectness of its own performance, is not only a poor logician but a mistaken reasoner.

To a warm fancy the syllogism is, indeed, hopelessly dry-dry as the Maine law to a thirsty toper. But then, all reasoning is dry, and the purer the drier; so that absolute, bare, essential ratiocination, must be perfect drouth. Nay, so meagre and thriftless does the syllogism appear to some minds, that they consider it the last reproach upon human reason itself, to assert that the syllogism is its universal type. All A is B, all C is A therefore C is B. If that be the quintessence of human reason, let us abdicate and decamp. Nevertheless, after some patient examination, we feel authorized and bound to affirm to our glowing imaginatives, that it is even so. All reasoning, stripped of verbiage, divested of imagination, laid base and blank, is syllogism. We can flounder as we please; we can never, without overstepping the bounds of reasoning, escape Whately, with his trine iron clamp. Reasoning men think syllogism; wise men act syllogism; so far forth as we think reasonably, and act wisely, we are syllogistic.

Now what man does not in every specific case regulate his conclusions and his steps of conduct by some general principle? He who is not governed in specific steps and instances by principle is an unprincipled man.

Major premises or general principles are formed in various ways, and are of various kinds. The maxims of experience, the self-evident truths, the popular proverbs, the precepts of the moral law, the dictates of the statute law, the conclusions of science, all form general truths, under which each new case that turns up is subsumed, to guide us to the true conclusion. A man is perpetually learning from others, or deducing from his own experience, those principles which he applies to every particular occasion that demands any one of them. The mature man of experience is stored with those maxims, more or less clearly stated in words to himself, by which | he coolly and surely judges at every new step. The professional man, from his standard authors, and from his own experience, draws those truths by which he judges and treats each new case. While the man of genius, or the man of tact, with a keen natural intuitive eye, deduces from his own observations those subtile rules which no words can express, and, therefore, no master communicate; but which enable him, at each new step, to perform those curious chef d'ouvres, which he has not learned, and cannot teach. It was, I think, Sir Joshua Reynolds, who said, "Genius begins where rules end."

Much of the difference between minds consists in the degree in which they adopt and control themselves by major premises. Mr. Burke characterized Lord Chatham as being too much governed by general maxims. Imperious geniuses, like Chatham, are fond of sweeping generalizations; they are impatient of nice consideration, whether the specific case is precisely covered by the major; they leap to the conclusion, either by stretching

the extension of the general, or fiercely cramping the minor under its covert. Despotic men force reason. Much of the prejudices too of old men consist in their too great fondness for the maxims they have deduced from personal experience; a fondness, which induces them to apply their maxims to unsuitable cases. On the other hand, there are minds that possess no general principles of action. They guide themselves by no rule. Their life is random. Their character is fickleness. They live to little purpose. Medium between these opposite extremes was the course stated by Patrick Henry. "I have no light by which my feet are guided but the lamp of experience." From experience he learned that fleets and armies are the indications of war; the present conduct of England was a case of fleets and armies; the case of England therefore was a case of war.

The power to draw large major maxims and wide generalizations from many individual experiences is the high prerogative of a comprehensive mind. To do this with great newness, truth, and justness; to do it with a value and a surprise, is a high reach of philosophy. It marks an inventor in ideal operation for which the patent office makes no provision; for which the world makes no adequate compensation; and for which the contents of the millionaire's purse has not the material for a proper equivalent. The mind which lives amid these truths of its own originating has an Olympian residence. The man who in addition to this is able to apply the maxims he forms to each new case as it rises, adds the practical to the theoretic philosophy. He who draws up his major with comprehensive truth, and applies it to the fortuitous minor with accuracy, is master of the great syllogism of life. The man who is grand at a major only is in great danger of becoming a closeted abstractionist; the man who is merely clever at the minor, sinks to an expert red-tapist; the man who is great in the former and exact in the latter is a born statesman.

It is amusing to everybody but himself, to see how the bookish inhabitant of the major regions is snubbed by his lively neighbor of the minor. It is a feud between the Highlands and the Lowlands. The sublime dweller in the Highlands breathes a pure auroral ether; his visible

horizon encircles a range of grand sublimities; his ear is saluted with echoes of far-floating melodies from dim transcendental mountain tops. The Lowlander is, mayhap, a snug mechanic, who listens with good stomach to the click of his own hammer, or the clack of his own mill, which promises the eating of his three meals a day, and a favorable surplus in his annual balance of account. Neither party should indulge in contempt; since each is the complement of the other. The magnanimous master of the major lives in splendid uselessness for want of the power of practical appliance; the adept of the minor lives a life of littleness for want of a range of comprehensiveness. Let each not despise his fellow's want, but properly realize his want of his fellow.

But it is time that we show by a few llustrations how truly men reason in obelience to the unfelt laws of the syllogism. We shall find the illustrations wherever we turn in the most obvious walks of business or professional life.

Your tradesman who pays you a debt which you could not prove, has learned that, for him, "Honesty is the best policy." Under this major, his minor is, this act would be honesty; and ergo it is policy. His syllogism, H is P; A is H; ergo A is P. The thief who steals your purse under plea of necessity, assumes the major that necessity is justifiable; this theft is necessity, ergo, &c. His syllogism is, N is J; T is N ; ergo T is J.

A court of law, unconscious as it may be of the fact, is a syllogism. The judge, in whose brain the general principles of civil law are deposited, furnishes the major premise; the witness, aided, or, perhaps, plagued by the lawyer, furnishes the specific case, or minor; the jury, who apply the general principles obtained from the judge to the case made out by the testimony, furnish, in their verdict, the conclusion. Saith the judge, He who doeth thus and so, is guilty of murder; and this is the major. Saith the witness, This prisoner here at the bar, Jack Ketch, did thus and so; and that is the minor. Saith the jury, in their verdict, Jack Ketch is guilty of murder; and that is the conclusion. The syllogism, D is G; JK is D; ergo, J K is G.

A doctor, his patient and his pill, albeit very innocent of all knowledge of the fact,

are a syllogism. As the doctor rides to the scene of disease, he carries the general principles of medicine, derived from books and practice, in his head. For such and such symptoms, such and such a medicine is beneficial; and this is the major. The patient, whom he finds, presents such and such symptoms; and this is the minor. The conclusion is, For this patient there is this pill; and this conclusion, (or rather the major term therein,) the patient must therefore swallow. Syllogism S is M; P is S; ergo P is M.

Theology has also her great syllogisms. Assuming a division of theology into evidences of revelation and doctrines of revelation, the former present a variety of majors, the latter one great major.

The argument from miracles assumes the major, that what is miraculous is of divine origin; the minor, that Christianity is miraculous; and the conclusion, that Christianity is of divine origin. Hume's argument against miracles was, Whatever is contrary to experience is false; miracles are contrary to experience; miracles are therefore false. The argument from and against prophecy is essentially the same as miracles; for prophecy is simply a case of miraculous knowledge. The various arguments in behalf of revelation derived from confirmatory history and archæology, unexpected coincidences in the various Scripture narratives, from human need of revelation, from the moral character and influence of the Bible, all have their various majors, minors, and conclusions.

In regard to the doctrines of revelation, as provable by Scripture, there is one great major, and one general syllogism: the argument is, this doctrine is true; for whatsoever revelation asserts is true; and this doctrine is asserted by revelation. Or, clothed in the exactitude of syllogism

the assertions of revelation are true; this doctrine is an assertion, &c. ; ergo, &c. A is T: D is A: Dis T. Scripture controversialists assume the major as common ground. The battle is generally upon the minor. This is a matter of fact to be made out by interpretation of Scripture language; which is not essentially and strictly a logical process, although logic is an instrument perpetually employed in it.

We have, of course, in our observations, dealt only with the great syllogisms that belong to the leading paths of life. But it