shot through the arm by T. J. Wells. Major McWhorter took a deliberate aim at C. H. Blanchard, seven or eight paces distant, but the shot was without effect. The only wound Bowie received, beside Crane's pistol-shot in the thigh, was one or two slight stabs from a sword-cane.

Thus, men of strong passions, guided only by blind passion, recklessly take or throw away life. But there is another set of men who fight duels, or rather make a show towards it, to gratify their vanity, by drawing a little temporary notice, which their personal worth or good conduct can not procure. These are generally worthless coxcombs, whose feeble nerves would be shattered and prostrated at the sight of an enemy in the field of battle, and who appear ridiculous in every situation where courageous conduct is required. This class of duellists do little harm other than to disturb the community; they quarrel to make peace; or if officious intermeddlers force them into a fight, are too much alarmed to hit, or, perhaps, see their antag onist. The affair is laughed at as a farce, and the parties, volentes, turned over to the police.

Many of this description challenge because they know the party challenged will not fight. The infamy or worthlessness of the challenger, in many instances, is such as to disgrace any decent man who notices him. These pretenders to bravery and gentlemanly feeling are absolute cowards. For no man, unless he is an arrant coward, will challenge another, knowing that he will not or dare not fight. There are others, insolent and impudent bullies, who attempt to tyrannize over and impose upon all orderly men about them; who literally endeavor to dragoon society, by fear of personal violence, into silence and seeming acquiescence, with respect to their conduct.

Another class accept challenges, and even challenge and fight for the very reason that they want true courage; they have not moral and independent courage enough to disregard the giddy assertions of that idle part of the community, who say that a man is a coward because he refuses to fight with hair-triggers at ten paces: not that such people have either belief or disbelief of what they say; they are too light-minded to form any settled conclusion, and repeat idly as the parrot, what some malignant acquaintance or friend (as friends go) has before said. The pride, weak nerves, and morbid sensibility of such a man force him to the pistol's mouth of a ruthless and unprincipled antagonist, as feeble, trembling, and unresisting as a lamb to the shambles, because he fears the detraction of the malicious and the gossip of the giddy.

Nervous and timid men of the foregoing description, if they come off unslain, fail to obtain their object; society will seldom believe them brave. There is an instinct in our nature that mocks every art upon this subject; it tells us whether a man is, or is not, fearless. Upon all, from the tottering infant to the savage bully, the same impression forces itself. The fearless man walks through life without reproach on his bravery, from those worthy of his notice, although he may continually have refused to fight duels.* No man ever persuaded the world he was fearless, unless the fact was so. Should it be a reproach, that a weak and nervous man has not the courage of a lion? It is a reflection upon God and nature to require it.

It has been urged that single combat is often the only redress that can be had for a personal injury. We apprehend those who hazard the assertion, are not too highly conversant with the moral code, and are much better acquainted with their own passions than the human heart: they tell us, wicked vengeance and murderous crime is redress. This is not the precept.

* Without going out of our own country, we may find many and high authorities for refusing to engage in a duel. That the omnipotence of public sentiment should, in some instances, have caused a dereliction from an acknowledged duty, we think no invalidation of the testimony.

"I give it as my decided opinion that your honor and reputation will stand not only perfectly acquitted, for the non-acceptance of his (Capt. Gunn's) challenge, but that your prudence and judgment would have been condemned by accepting it.”— George Washington to Gen. Nathaniel Greene.

"I do not think that fighting duels, under any circumstances, can raise the reputation of any man, and have long since discovered that it is not even an unerring criterion of personal courage.”—Commodore Stephen Decatur.

"No man would be happier than myself to see the whole barbarous system for ever eradicated."-H. Clay.

"My religious and moral principles are strongly opposed to duelling-I abhor the practice."-Gen. Alexander Hamilton.

"I have served in the army forty years without fighting a duel; ** shall have no duelling man about me, if I can help it."--Gen. Zachary Taylor.

"Is there no way of abolishing this absurd and barbarous custom? Duelling is no criterion of bravery."-Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.

"I am not bound to sacrifice my public reputation and outrage my public character merely to gratify General Lee in the line of his profession.- Wm. Henry Dayton, Chief-Justice of South-Carolina.

"This absurd custom decides no right, and settles no point."-Memorial SouthCarolina Am. Revolution Society.

"I frankly admit that I fear God; and that I fear Him more than man."-R. Barnwell Rhett, U. S. Senator, S. C.

our Saviour taught, our religion inculcates, and our laws enjoin. Malice, vengeance, and crime have no place but in the catalogue of iniquity. If one respectable man says a harsh and injurious thing of another, it is almost uniformly in some moment of high excitement, in the bar or elsewhere, the result of instant and angry passion, of which the offending party, in a few hours, when he becomes cool, is heartily ashamed. Most willingly would he make reparation if he had an opportunity; but he can not, and will not, be bullied into it by threats of punishment. Nothing more or less than this is a challenge. Let the offended party wait till the excitement has passed off, and he will find a share of the sin resting upon himself, and the offender, if a true man, either prepare to recall the offensive language or at least make sufficient concession to prepare the way to a reconciliation.

But this requires more moral courage, and fearless firmness, than most men, as society is constituted, are masters of; they prop their doubtful courage and trembling nerves by applying to some supposed friend, who often turns out to be one of those malicious whisperers and agitators who are so peculiarly anxious to be connected with an "affair of honor" and fancy themselves the gainers of a certain amount of eclat by the connection; generally, in addition, having some secret revenge to gratify against the offender, for which reason he is too often applied to. Here the cunning machinations of malice have full room for action: a duel is of course advised, as the only redress honor can allow of; every means is used to bring it on; every sinister trick and argument is employed to keep the principal firm to his desperate purpose, and until eventually he surrenders his judgment and his life into the hands of selfishness and wickedness. Such instigators and agitators have cold and cruel hearts, dead to every moral sense or feeling of humanity; generally afraid to encounter danger themselves, in the field of battle or even in the ridiculous duel. Who ever heard of a brave and fearless man exciting and urging on another to the destruction of himself and the misery of his unoffending wife and helpless children? What man of real courage would not use all possible means to adjust it? The working of insidious cruelty and malice, under the seemly garb of friendship, alone would do otherwise. Not such as these, but men of great moral worth, fearlessness, and independence, should be applied to for advice and aid, who will generally settle the matter with a few words of advice to the parties; perhaps laugh at the trifles that set the passions in commotion; have some silly mis

take or misunderstanding explained, and thus end a matter which, under other circumstances, might have ended in blood. The brave man is always generous, feeling, and just, and others submit to his judgment with pleasure.

Such are, in our estimation, duelling and its consequences, and the characters of the men who engage in the practice, which if it does not involve wickedness and criminality, innocence has no name, and morality no place in the human heart. These do not exist, if it be not a crime.

Thus much against duelling. It may be asked of us, In case of unprovoked assault or aggravated and unpardonable insult, what remedy, what redress? Let any of our readers get Mr. Sabine's book; con over its four hundred pages of instructive and interesting matter, and then, if he can, blame us for adopting, in this regard, the policy of Sam Houston: "I will never do any thing to originate a quarrel with any man. If any one quarrel with me, it is his privilege; but I shall take care that he do me no harm."

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF ZODIACAL SYMBOLISM.

A LETTER to the Hon. E. G. SQUIER, announcing a series of important Discoveries in the Primitive History of Man. By LUKE BURKE, Editor of the London Ethnological Journal.

All

You are aware that I have been engaged almost unremittingly, for some years, in the systematic investigation of the nature and origin of mythology, considered in its universality. You are aware, too, of my repeated assertions, that very extraordinary and wholly unexpected results have attended this investigation; but though I have attempted to give you some idea of these results in the course of conversation, it is impossible that my account, brief and rapid as it was, could have left any clear, much less any permanent, impression on your mind, so vast and intricate is the subject, so numerous and elaborately systematized the conclusions to which I have arrived. my friends are in the same position as yourself in this respect; for, knowing that I could not by any viva voce explanations do justice to my opinions, or overcome the skepticism which their seemingly extravagant pretensions could not fail to excite in the minds of all persons of cautious judgment, I have rarely proceeded with any one beyond a few generalities, usually called for by some friendly interest in my pursuits, or by my own desire to account for my protracted silence, and the non-appearance of the promised continuation of the work which I was editing. I have, therefore, lived for the last few years in a state of almost complete intellectual isolation--a state neither pleasant nor profitable, though inevitable under the circumstances. More than once I have endeavored to escape from it, by publishing a brief account of my views; but my attempts have hitherto been failures, as a natural anxiety to do justice to the subject constantly led me into a minuteness of detail and