powerful aid to promote its success. That great national work, the ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, has done itself lasting credit by the insertion of a valuable article upon the subject. The Quarterly Review, also,-which, notwithstanding difference of opinion on certain points, must, I think, be allowed to have done immense service to letters, science, humanity, and religion,-is boldly putting forth its great power in behalf of this cause. It has already done excellent service by its articles on missionary works. The question of the general principle of Missions, in fact, is carried among the ruling minds of the empire. It is, therefore, every hour assuming a more practical aspect. In this highest enterprise of philanthropy, as in every thing appertaining to civilization, the first place is held by England. May our beloved country continue to be in the cause of Missions what she so long was in the cause of Mars! To adopt the words of a youthful writer, the gifted son of a gifted sire:

"Rule-but, Britain, rule no more,
As thou didst in days of yore,
With fierce war, with battle dire,
Bow, and sword, and cannon's fire;
Shed no more thy richest blood

O'er Earth's plains, on Ocean's flood;
But let war's dominion cease,

In thy last, long reign of peace.

Then, when the flag of peace unfurl'd

Shall freely wave o'er all the world,

The warrior's sword, with flowers enwreathed,
Rest undisturb'd, unhandled, sheathed;
The bloodless spear, the broken bow,
Musket and battle-axe laid low,-
Forgotten, lost, unused shall stay,
Or, rescued from dim rust's decay,
Re-forged, some peaceful form shall take,
Of reaping-hook, or plough, or brake;

Then, then shall Truth revisit earth,
Religion know a second birth;
The wilderness in gladness bloom,
Life, cheer the lonely desert's gloom;
Faith, make the blind bright visions see,
And Justice set the captive free.
Then Britannia o'er the deep
Shall still her march triumphant keep;
Not answering with her cannon's roar
The booming waves; but, to the shore
Of some unbrightened region bound,
Where error's last remains are found,
Bear gladly to the distant strands,
Of those expecting, thirsting lands,
Hopes with health and vigour rife,
Words of Everlasting Life.'

To you, Sir, are entrusted powers which, perhaps, beyond those of any other living writer, may be rendered instrumental in awakening the learned world and the great world to the claims of the Missionary character, and to the beneficence and glory of the Missionary enterprise! By consecrating to this object your genius, your talents, and your attainments, you, Sir, will treasure up no bitterness for that hour which is now on the wing, and which will soon arrive, both to the friends and to the enemies of Revelation and of Missions. To this may the hand of Heaven direct your energies! May you be long spared, and abundantly prospered in all your endeavours to enlighten, to elevate, and bless mankind! And at length, when gathered to your fathers, and numbered with the illustrious dead, may you receive one of those crowns of glory which will be awarded to all those who labour to advance the kingdom of Heaven upon earth!

LETTER XIII.

TO FIELD MARSHAL THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

MILITARY AND MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE ILLUSTRATED, COMPARED, AND CONTRASTED, IN RELATION ΤΟ THEIR RESPECTIVE CHARACTERS, CLAIMS, AND GLORY.

MY LORD DUKE,-I beg leave to address your Grace upon two subjects which I conceive to be of the utmost importance to mankind. These subjects are War and Missions. With the latter there is reason to believe your Grace is not intimately acquainted, and I am, therefore, anxious to place before you some of its principles, and a few of the facts by which those principles are illustrated. I shall, at the same time, take the liberty of inquiring a little into a subject with which you are profoundly conversant, and of venturing to express a judgment on the respective merits of the soldier and the missionary. Every age has had its heroes, and those heroes have been its gods, to whom have been raised statues, columns, and temples, in addition to the more substantial rewards of wealth, rank, and privilege. There is reason to hope that this order of heroes is coming to an end; for certain it is, that the sword will not devour for ever. The prime function of military heroes has been, to destroy men's lives; but the field now begins to be taken by a new order

of heroes, whose special province it is to save them. No glory or utility, your Grace will allow, can attach to war but as it makes for peace. Now whether is the greater, he who extinguishes a conflagration, or he who prevents it? When wisdom shall govern our world, and mankind shall use their reason, military enterprise will be little thought of; and they who aspire to conduct it, they whose occupation is war, will be viewed with small favour. That day, I trust, is now dawning; and I would fain hope, that your Grace is England's last Great Warrior. "Soldiers of fortune" must soon lay aside their swords, and devote their faculties to the arts of peace. The missionary character, in all points the reverse of the military, is fast commanding the attention of mankind; and the sense of its claims is becoming hourly stronger. Hitherto the power of the sword has been paramount, its reign universal. Mortal strife has, for thousands of years, been the pride of princes, and the business of nations. The experiment is sufficient. The efficacy of the sword, as an instrument of civilization, has been fully tried; with what success, let the whole earth proclaim. It is now time for mankind to sit down and calculate the commercial and political, the moral and religious value of military enterprise.

May I be permitted to point your Grace's attention backward for two or three thousand years, that I may exhibit before you the images, and remind you of the feats, of some of the principal destroyers of mankind? In attempting this, it is needless to go beyond Alexander, whose career commenced upwards of three hundred years before the Christian era. He is indisputably the grand prototype of modern martial heroes. Alexander's father having trampled on the liberties of Greece, was meditating the subjugation of other nations, when he was cut off. The son at once proceeded to carry out his father's pur

pose; and the first step of his dreadful course gave mankind an earnest of his future operations. When the noble Thebans made an attempt to recover the freedom of which they had been cruelly robbed by Philip, Alexander, having taken the city by storm, levelled it with the ground, and sold thirty thousand of the virtuous and innocent inhabitants into slavery. The conqueror's progress was worthy of his commencement. He rushed forth like a dragon, to destroy mankind, and desolate the earth. We next behold him on the banks of the Granicus, fearfully polluting its pure streams with the blood of man. Anon we find him at Issus, mowing down a host of six hundred thousand men, who had come to oppose him in defence of their king and country. Soon afterwards we view him filling the famous city of Tyre with unutterable calamity, taking it by storm, and, to gratify his vengeance, crucifying two thousand of its defenceless inhabitants. See him again at Arbela, assailing Darius, the lawful and unoffending king, who, with six hundred and forty thousand men, came forth to repel the invader, and who left behind him three hundred thousand of them slaughtered by the hero! Such are the deeds he actually performed; but these were only the buddings of his military glory! Nothing could satisfy his thirst of power but the subjugation of the globe itself. He aspired to plant his blood-stained foot on the neck of all nations; and, when it was suggested that the number of worlds was infinite, he burst into tears because he could not ascend to the stars, and carry his conquests throughout creation.

Such was Alexander, son of Philip, king of Macedon; and for these remorseless cruelties and dreadful crimes men have called him Great! Great he doubtless was, but it was in wickedness. He seems like an angel of death, who, by some error in the operations of nature, had become incarnate, and received a commission to desolate the