catalogue of crime, may be traced to the gambling table, as the entering wedge to its perpetration.

This alarming evil, is as wide spread as our country. It is practised from the humblest water craft that floats on our canals-up to the majestic steamboat on our mighty rivers; from the lowest groggeries that curse the community, up to the most fashionable hotels that claim respectability-from the hod carrier in his bespattered rags, up to the honorable members of congress in their ruffles. Like a mighty maelstrom, its motion, at the outside, is scarcely perceptible, but soon increases to a fearful velocity; suddenly the awful centre is reached-the victim is lost in the vortex. terested friends may warn, the wife may entreat, with all the eloquence of tears; children may cling and cry for bread-once in the fatal snare, the victim of gamblers is seldom saved. He combines the deafness of the adder with the desperation of a maniac, and rushes on, regardless of danger-reckless of consequences.

In

To the fashionable of our country, who play cards and other games as an innocent amusement, we may trace the most aggravated injuries resulting from gambling. It is there that young men of talents, education, and wealth, take the degree of entered apprentice. The example of men in high life, men in public stations and responsible offices, has a powerful and corrupting influence on society, and does much to increase the evil, and forward, as well as sanction the highhanded robbery of fine dressed black legs. The gambling hells in our cities, tolerated and patronized, are a disgrace to any nation bearing a Christian name, and would be banished from a Pagan community.

Gambling assumes a great variety of forms, from the

flipping of a cent in the bar room for a glass of whiskey, up to the splendidly furnished faro bank room, where men are occasionally swindled to the tune of "ten thousand a year," and sometimes a much larger amount. In addition to these varieties, we have legalized lotteries and fancy stock brokers, and among those who manage them, professors of religion are not unfrequently found.

Thousands, who carefully shun the monster under any other form, pay a willing tribute to the tyrant, at the shrine of lotteries. Persons from all classes, throw their money into this vault of uncertainty, this whirlpool of speculation, with a less chance to regain it, than when at the detested faro bank. It is here that the poor man spends his last dollar-it is here that the rich often become poor, for a man has ten chances to be killed by lightning, where he has one to draw a capital prize. The ostensible objects of lotteries are always praiseworthy. Meeting houses, hospitals, seminaries of learning, internal improvement, some laudable enterprize, may always be found, first and foremost, in a lottery scheme-the most ingenious and most fatal gull trap, ever invented by man or devil.

Some, who are so fortunate as to escape all the gambling gins that have been referred to, get caught in the most refined, and not the least dangerous-the capstone of the climax-that makes awful sweeps among the upper ten thousand-STOCK GAMBLING. This system is as pernicious in principle as the others

-as dangerous to those few who have the means to sport in stocks, but, fortunately, the meshes of the net are so large, that the vast multitude of small fish are in no danger from this quarter. All the other seines will hold, even minnows.

Gaming covers in darkness, and often blots out all the nobler powers of the heart, paralyzes its sensibilities to human wo, severs the sacred ties that bind man to man, to woman, to family, to community, to morals, to religion, to social order, and to country. It transforms men to brutes, desperadoes, maniacs, misanthropists; and strips human nature of all its native dignity. The gamester forfeits the happiness of this life, and endures the penalties of sin in both worlds. His profession is the scavenger of avarice, haggard and filthy, badly fed, poorly clad, and worse paid.

Let me entreat all to shun the monster, under all his borrowed and deceptive forms. Remember, that gambling for amusement, is the wicket gate into the labyrinth, and when once in, you may find it difficult to get out. Ruin is marked, in blazing capitals, over the door of the gambler-his hell is the vestibule to that eternal hell, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. If you regard your own, and the happiness of your family and friends, and the salvation of your immortal soul, recoil from even the shadow of a shade, reflected by this heaven-daring, heart-breaking, soul-destroying, fashionable, but ruinous vice.

GENIUS.

THE man who can analyze Genius, and, as a chemist, in his laboratory, show, to a demonstration, its component parts, or, to speak comparatively, even penetrate its cuticle, or detect its oxygen, may next analyze the wind, put the thunder-cloud in his breeches pocket, and quaff lightning for a beverage. We may think, see, talk, and write upon the triumphant achieve

The

ments, the magic wonders, and untiring efforts of Genius; but what is Genius? that's the question-one that none but pedants will attempt to answer. thing, the moving cause, and the modus operandi, can no more be comprehended, and reduced to materiality, than the spirit that animates our bodies. Metaphysicians, Craniologists, and Physiologists; may put on their robes of mystery, arm each eye with a microscope, each finger with the acutest phrenological sensibility, and whet up all their mental powers to a razor edge, strain their imagination to its utmost tension, tax speculation one hundred per cent., and then call to their aid men who possess this quality, the combined force could not weave a web, and label it GENIUS, that would not be an insult to common sense. Genius is not only mental power, but its essence. The frosts of

Iceland cannot freeze it, the fogs of Holland cannot mildew it, the tropical sun cannot paralyze it, the potentates of the earth cannot crush it-in all countries and climes, it springs up spontaneously in various shades, but flourishes most luxuriantly, and with more beautiful symmetry and strength, when nurtured by intelligence and freedom, amidst the social institutions of a Republican form of government, and, next to that, under a limited monarchy. A single glance at the history of American and English Genius, compared with others of modern times, will convince an unbiassed mind, of the truth of this assertion. At one period, Genius exerted its greatest force to promote the science of letters, and revelled in classic lore. Latterly, it has put forth its noblest powers upon the mechanic arts, seized some of the mightiest elements of nature, and made them subservient to man. Mechanical Genius

has reduced time, distance, and weight; in a ratio, that has eclipsed the most visionary projects of its most zealous friends, that were the subject of ridicule not many years ago. The broad ocean, the mighty river, the wide-spread lake, the towering mountain; once formidable barriers to intercourse, are now rapidly passed by the aid of steam, consolidating our own country into a phalanx, and making the nations of the old world our neighbors. To what useful purposes the electric fluid, the atmosphere, the wind, and other elements will yet be converted by Genius; time only can develope. So versatile is this essence of mental power, that we can form no rules to pre-determine or fix its personal locality, its time of development, its measure of strength, or the extent of its orbit. Like a blazing meteor, it bursts suddenly upon us, as in the darkness of night, illuminates the world, and, like the lightning thunder-bolt, shivers every obstacle that stands in its way. Like the diamond, which differs from all other precious stones, by having the power of refracting and reflecting the prismatic colors; so Genius refracts and reflects the intellectual rays of mind, imparting fresh vigor, lustre, and force. The diamond can never shine, until divested of the rubbish of the quarry, by the hand of the lapidary. In the same manner, Genius must be divested of ignorance, before it can refract and reflect its rays, and the brighter it is polished by intelligence, the more powerfully and brilliantly will it dazzle. How important, then, that the quarry of mind be explored, that none of these precious jewels lie undiscovered in time of life, and be finally lost in death. Lacon has well observed-"A Newton or a Shakespeare, born among savages-savages had died."