Seated again, in the house, he proceeded, "As I told you, when they found the poor girl on the steps, she had fainted away with affright, and her brother, the tory, carried her over to their own house, which was near the Major's. There, after a little while, she recovered her senses, and as soon as she could comprehend what was going forward, and remembered what had occurred, she asked about her lover, and in truth he seemed to be her only concern. Her brutal brother had gone out again to mix with the British, and point out to them which were the houses of the tories, so that they might be spared from the conflagration that was preparing; but those about her told her the whole truth, and pointed from the window to the burning house. At first she could not believe the horrible tale, but when they assured her that it was as they said, and that her sweetheart was consuming in the building, she uttered such a

that all were terrified; she ran from the house, sobbing and screaming, towards the pyre of her heart's idolatry, and would have cast herself into the blazing pile, had not one of the officers restrained her. Poor Debby Jarvis! From that hour she became a raving maniac. Shortly after, Heaven relieved her of her mortal suffering, by death, and the good people of Danbury buried her body by the side of the calcined bones of her murdered lover. Her brother listed in the British army, and I never heard of him more.

"That night the British troops rioted in drunkenness, until just before daylight, when their general, Tryon, was told by his spies that the Yankee militia were gathering at Bethel, to give him battle, and, like a coward as he was, he instantly ordered a retreat; but before he went, every house in the town, except those belonging to the tories, was set on fire, and he marched out with his army by the light of the blazing dwellings."

I SHALL not assume that, in all countries where, in past ages, the Church has established holidays, evil has been, and is the result of these holidays with the people. I only purpose at this time to speak of the influence of the holiday system where I have had fair opportunity to observe it, in England-among a people most closely allied to us in every respect. I will venture, however, to say that we believe, for, to us, good reasons, that England-or Britain-is the least holiday-cursed of the nations of Europe; so that my readers, taking my English sketch as a starting point, can draw such pictures for other countries as they see fit. Holidays are the greatest curse of the laboring classes of England. They make holidays of other than saints' days. They calculate on idling one or more days in the week, and generally take Monday. It is so universal as a custom in many sections, as to seriously incommode the operation of manufactories, and artisan and mechanic shops;

but no remonstrance of employers can remedy the evil, as it belongs to almost the whole trade-working population. I speak from what I have seen thoroughly. These holidays are partly saints' days, partly State days, and partly whim or habit days. It has ever been the policy of the Catholic Church-of which the Established Church of England is but a tail-to divert the common and better sense of its votaries from the flagrant assumptions of power and spirituality it has taken, by easy relaxations and showy pageants. In proportion as a people are uninformed and rude, the seductiveness of this bait has developed itself; and a habit indulged in for ages, and strengthened by vices and dissipations consequent upon idleness, is not readily broken when national rudeness is worn off. The child learns to love and covet what the parent enjoys; the apprentice surely imitates the journeyman and master, and with a common will they cling to customary spendthrifting of time. The com

plaint is heard everywhere, on mingling with Englishmen of business, especially factors and artisans, that such and such a one of their help is gone upon a "spree," has taken a holiday, or is not yet through with his Sunday, for the idle Monday is called a continuation of the Sabbath; which, among the workingclasses of England, is regarded as the greatest of sportive holidays, especially in the maritime and manufacturing cities and towns, and in the mining districts. On this day they most interchange their visits, eat their best dinners, and drink their deepest draughts. Confined to toil for the week, without resort to fly to beyond the tap-room, and feeling no sympathy with a religious establishment which only interests itself towards them by picking their pockets, and contemning their carnal rags, should they chance to rub against its purple and fine linen, the mass of people seek any other place than the church for instruction or entertainment. They naturally turn from toil to the bowl, which, while it obscures the hateful Past for a moment, also shuts out the baldness of the Future. Those few institutions devised by the government or philanthropic societies, and opened free to the public, are shut to the class who most need their influence, because, forsooth, they have no certain day of leisure but the Sabbath to enjoy them in. How can they get loose from the drudgery of the week to wander among the creations of the sculptor and painter, albeit there are noble galleries of them free to the public on certain week-days? or the volumes of the free reading-rooms and libraries, of which, by the way-unlike in France-there are none? The Sabbath is legitimately the only leisure their condition allows them, and the conscientious government closes its munificent academies and galleries on that day. Joseph Hume some years ago made a move in the House of Commons to throw open these places on the Sabbath, for the benefit of the poor, but it was ruled down by pious indignation. Bishops and Lords could feel a holy horror at the bare idea of the toiling man and woman, or the indigent child, peacefully and pleasurably enjoying the culture that pleads to the rudest heart, from marble and canvas. They could shut the doors of temples filled with dumb images of grace and beauty, though God's universe, full of statuary and painting-of poetry and song, and music-was spread abroad as gayly and cheerily on the Sabbath as on the Monday. They could draw a veil

over Minerva and Venus, the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, though the hills and valleys, opened to the laughing sunshine, were infinite emblems of Eternal Justice and Superhuman Beauty, and whose music of brooks, birds, leaves and young breezes, dallying with the lips of odorous flowers, ceased not with the break of the Sabbath morning. They could shut out what little semblance of God might be seen in dingy cities, and at one o'clock P. M. on the Sabbath-day, open ten thousand hells full of infernal spirits, to madden the brain, corrupt the heart, and brutalize the affections of man. There was no state revenue to be derived from Mr. Hume's movement, save some little improvement of morals -some little growth in intellect and spirit, and decrease in pauper and convict lists; but the ten times ten thousand tap-rooms all over England, with their beer-mugs facilitating the malt tax, and gin-glasses quickening the Treasury's heart with accumulating duties—these plead in the name of ten million pounds sterling of revenue, and who can withstand them? Who of that filthy alliance of Church and State, will rise up to cut off a penny from that fund whereon his salary hangs suspended, like a Damoclean sword? Religious indignation is cheap. Dogs have been taught to utter it, even to the exercise of "bell, book and candle;" but religious patriotism. that involves the least probability of self-sacrifice in its love for humanity, is quite another thing.

Let the Church and Churchmen, more punctilious than gracious, determine in their own good time whether it is execrable to transport Mails, and open the doors of public galleries on the Sabbath. They cannot, with all their puff, pomp and indignation, convince any true man that either of those acts are more sinful in the eye of Infinite Goodness, or more depraving to humanity, than their license of beast-making groggeries! Nay, who car for a moment doubt, in the city of London, teeming full of men and women seeking intensely for some diversion, that it were better to see them seated amid the wonders of Nature, Art and Science, aloof from the traps of society's devils and robbers, rather than lining the brass-railed counters of countless haunts where every possible debauchery and crime are engendered. But while endless holidays and British Museums and National Galleries exist, on those days when the working poor have leisure, the devils and robbers must win. And these holidays are not

only a waste of time to the ill-directed indulgers in them; they all lead to the ale-house, where knots of men and women spend that for drink which should buy bread and raiment, and pay rent. Drink induces other excesses, until a condition of society is presented, vicious beyond parallel. Women, in England, drink hardly less than men, and both drink incessantly. The national gullet, among the lower classes, is like a continuous sponge saturated from morning till night with beer. On holidays the saturation is doubled. Nor is it confined very strictly to the lower classes. I have known the wife of a "respectable" tradesman, renting a large house in the best section of London, where I once lodged, beastly drunk on ale and porter three and four times a week. I have also seen women in still higher life, day after day in that dreamy, half stupefied state bordering on trance, pouring down their mugs of filthy beer, which they must and would have whether their children could read and write, or went in rags or not.

And half this custom is the fruit of Church and State holidays. But it swells the revenue grandly. Plenty of families have I known, where a shilling sterling per day was spent for vicious drink, but where, for the reason of poverty, a newspaper never was seen, and scarcely a Bible. If such is the case in the city of London, among people not absolutely in want, what is it in Cornwall, among the miners; around Birmingham, among the collieries; and about Manchester, among the factory operatives; where the population is not only dense, but destitute in a great measure? where schools for the children of the poor would be useless, because those children must labor from very necessity just as soon as they get the least strength and judgment, without ever after having a moment's release, except on the holiday and Sabbath, when they are glad to answer their ill-tutored senses, first, by delving into all the abandonments that have been familiar with and corrupting to their minds and hearts from the cradle.

Thank God! Americans have but few holidays. We as yet need no vicious show nor bait

to blind us to impositions practiced on us by State or Church. Thank God! as yet our women are nowhere driven by necessity nor custom to the fields, mines, or any out-door labor, where they would necessarily come in contact with the most depraved of the other sex, and in fine become depraved and depraving beyond all that man is susceptible of. As woman is pictured in the allegory, chosen by the devil as the fittest instrument of his machinations; and as woman, whenever she attempts, succeeds in playing second part to Satan super-admirably,— so do I conceive her to be, when she condescends, the most devilish of human spirits. And all who read this, would be thoroughly convinced of the truth of what I say, should they see society in its working-class forms, in some of the districts I have named. Filthy, profane and abandoned, the colliery women, and those about the iron mines, transcend all my fancies of pandemonium.

What can be expected from the offspring of such a mass of moral deformity and physical ugliness, which seems to delight in nothing but the grosser appetites? Even if there were not an iron heel upon their necks, a fataler steel is in their hearts; and they are as lost to shame and decency as they are dead to a sense of servility and degradation. Woman is the keystone of the social arch. Where she is enlightened and respected, the State must flourish; where she is cast down and debased, her generation will follow her. Thank God, I say, our women are a part of the thinking and moving power, having their sphere where familiarity cannot bring contempt, and where seclusion but heightens their grace and strength.

What England, and Britain, and all Europe most need to lift their masses from degrading bondage-bondage of vulgar habit and vicious custom-is the elevation of woman to a position of virtuous intelligence. While she sits in the shambles of debasement, her progeny will bear the terrible impress of her brutishness; and never, until the scarlet-colored trickery of kings and priests is cast down, will Europe boast of Roman mothers, whose children forever scorn the tinsel and the steel of tyrants.

he has sent some ardent competitor out of the list, and compelled him to wait a whole year for an opportunity to enter again. Thus, although everybody loved him for his goodness of heart, they also feared him as a judge; and hence it was not often that he had occasion to punish a delinquent, because they generally strove hard to please him, by paying strict regard to the customs of their ancestors.

Bertha Laun had arrived at that age when the affections of her sex turn instinctively in search of an object on which to fasten themselves; and with one so lovely as she, to say nothing of her desirable estate, it is not strange that there were many who ardently longed to become her accepted favorite. There can be but one winner, however, in such a contest there is no second prize-no subordinate place in the heart of a young woman where love has taken up its authoritative abode, and Bertha was not long in discovering the object which the little despot in her bosom pointed out. He was a modest young huntsman, with a free though small patrimony; and although others had frankly, and some presumingly, avowed their passion for her, he had only uttered his heart-pleadings through tender looks and gentle attentions. Frank Rosbach was just the youth to win the heart of a sensible maiden; he was gentle, courteous, and as brave a huntsman as ever bore a rifle in the Trall forest, and withal, comely to look upon, and of excellent speech.

Many rivals had he, but the most obdurate and potent of them all was Karl, who claimed to be the son of an ancient family at Reichenberg, whence he came often, and staid long at Tabor, for the purpose, as he said, of enjoying the fine hunting sports of the more southern forests. He was a man of unsocial and strange habits; heavy, black ringlets, hanging to the shoulders, shaded his swarthy features, and there was a severity in the gaze of his small, keen eye, which seemed rather to pierce, than to commune with the souls of those on whom it was bent. His very smile, if he smiled at all, was repulsive, and his laugh was loud, hoarse, and chilling to all who had not grown familiar with it from custom. The village maiden, as she met him on the road, held her breath until he had bid her good morrow and passed by; and the children, when he spoke to them, as he sometimes did, shrank from him with a strange fear. He was not the man, therefore, to win the love of a timid maiden; but he was a good huntsman, and an expert

rider; and he led the venturous youths in their bravest exploits through the forest. Where his horn sounded, there fled the game, and the hours of the beast were numbered when it came within the range of his sure weapon. Seemingly satisfied with the mere excitement of the chase, though he never brooked a rival in command, he never quarreled about a trophy, or disputed the right of another to a conquered boar or wolf; and then, when the chase was ended, none were more ready than he to join his comrades at the "wein halle" of the village, and drink health to the victors.

But it was only in the chase or the tavern that he endured companionship; and he was known to go forth frequently and spend whole nights alone in the darkest glens of the forest, where, it was asserted, none but the followers of that evil spirit, the "Wild Huntsman" himself, dared venture. This mysterious being first saw Bertha at one of the annual trial festivals, to which she had accompanied her father and the maidens of the village, and his rude soul, which never before seemed susceptible of tenderness, became at once fired with passion for her. His keen eyes gazed upon her, as though he would have devoured her with fascination, and when she encountered his fixed and piercing look, a cold shudder ran through her frame, like an unaccountable terror, and she averted her eyes to escape it. But turn where she would, she could not avoid it; for, though she saw it not, she felt that cold glare still upon her. It haunted her like a spectre; and even when the festival was ended, and the sports broken up, it followed her to the lone recess of her own little chamber. She strove to forget it, and set about her household duties, but whatever she touched, those ghostly eyes were between her and the object, and when she closed her own to shut out the vision, that steadfast look, which seemed now as a fiery glare, still clung to her brain; nor did her mind find relief from the phantom, until the hour of evening prayer.

On the following day, Karl came to the cottage to demand the hand of the maiden from her father. The old man would have answered the demand with a stern denial; but he bethought him that his daughter might perchance possess a deeper interest in the youth than he was aware of, and before he made answer, Bertha was summoned. In a moment, responding to her father's voice, she entered the apartment, but when her eyes fell