What pleas others' thoughts, where thoughts were so few ? ure in sympathy with others' feelings, when of necessity all feelings were so nearly the same ? What interest in conversation among such forgetful, dreamy, matter-of-fact, and listless creatures? What hope for the future? And so I might go on to speak of the tastes and faculties and pleasures closely bound to these which I have named, but that the urging farther this conception of a wise man's paradise would make the suggestion appear absurd; and I have not introduced it here to raise a smile. No! it is in sincere thankfulness that I contrast our happy world with such a paradise. I find that I am freed from any such cursing monotony, on the one hand, and on the other, that I may rely on a regularity of change, sufficient to enable me to profit by life's experience. With quite enough variety in my existence, I am, still, not launched on every new day or month without any ability to foresee in part what it may bring me. Winter does not surprise me unprepared, for I have met, and struggled with, and conquered his rigors before. My friend, the farmer, ploughs and sows in the way which last year's experience taught him; the merchant, of whom I buy, lays in his stores, I find; my landlord builds new dwellings; my sailor classmate arranges his voyage, all relying on the same experience. Nor is this all. This regularity has a deeper effect on our actions. The statesmen, who govern us, plan their codes and laws, in certain faith, that what has been will be; in my studies of nature, I investigate her laws of metamorphosis, certain that another summer will give me another opportunity to make my theoretical botany practical. I prescribe for my patients, I regulate their movements and their lives, with the same certainty in an established climate. And, more than this, I find that every inquiring mind not only supposes, and calculates on this regularity of natural movement, but examines it with a certain wonder, as he reflects upon it and asks whence it comes. The philanthropist looks at it with pleasure, for in such varying phases he finds room for the action of every variety of men. The studious philosopher tells me, that in this change he finds the all-governing principle of love, that, in all, it teaches him how there may be unity in variety. The warm-hearted worshipper turns with new ardor to his God; he finds in all this variety of beneficence new supports for the reason which accompanies his faith; and while he sees a type of man's existence in the decaying seed and the opening germ; in the verdure springing from the decay of the forest leaves; in the melting snow and the swelling river; in the tide ebbing only to flow again; he finds in the whole course of nature something more than a type; a sure proof of God's mercy; and that his providence is in all. Here is the point to which I have been looking; here is the thread of my New Year's Exhortation to Thanksgiving. Though, man knows that the existence of his mind and its powers is wholly independent of the material world around him, he finds that every detail in the movement of that material world is so arranged, that those powers have or may have full exercise, that they do not rust out, or lose their balance for want of use. Man, with the noblest mental abilities, with the loftiest spiritual hopes, is not placed in the perennial summer of the sun's centre, in the perennial spring-time of a fancied paradise, in the perennial winter of a distant planet, or in the deadening though ephemeral existence of a comet, whose summer's day and whose winter's night each compasses half of eternity; is not placed where mind and soul could not-live in vigor, but where, and where only, they could be exercised and strengthened. Man's mind, his soul, is not imprisoned, nor left to wander in a desert, or a jungle, or a tropical savannah, is not left without nature's beauties or with a single series of self-poisoned ones; but is free in the wonders. and changes and ever new delights of our dear, our beautiful world. Man, all fitted as he is for time, is not banished unprepared into an eternity. That man may be happy, that man may be strong, that man's soul may grow, that all his powers may be one day presented faultless before his Maker, does the world hang where it does in space, do its movements, and those of the sun which guides it, pass as they do in time. For this does the Creator watch them in the constant Now of his eternity. 1.4. Palfrey THE LATE ALDEN BRADFORD, ESQ. Mr. BRADFORD died in Boston, October 26th, aged seventy eight years He was a native of the town of Duxbury, in Plymouth county. He was graduated at Harvard college in 1786, being a member of the class illustrated by the names of Chief Justice Parker, Speaker Bigelow, John Lowell, President Harris, Senators Champlin and Thompson, and others, living and dead, who have rendered distinguished services in church and state. He was tutor at Cambridge two or three years, pursued theological studies under the direction of the venerable Dr. West of Dartmouth, and after receiving invitations to settle in some other places, was, in 1793, ordained to the pastoral charge of the Congregational Church in Wiscasset, Maine. After a diligent and acceptable ministry of eight years in this place, he was compelled by failing health to retire, and was soon after appointed Clerk of the Supreme Court for the county of Lincoln. In 1811, in consequence (if the memory of the writer is not in fault) of the passage of a law transferring the appointment of the clerks from the Judges to the Governor and Council, he was displaced by Governor Gerry, along with other prominent adherents of the Federal school of politics. A very effective paper, which he soon after published, on the political aspects of the times, procured for its author a high reputation, and on the restoration of his party to power, the next year, he was appointed to the office of Secretary of the Commonwealth. The important duties of this honorable place he continued to discharge with characteristic zeal and assiduity, and apparently to the satisfaction of all parties, for twelve years, at the end of which time he was superseded, on the accession of a government of the adverse political creed. He then removed to New Bedford, and, as a Justice of the Peace, was engaged for some years in duties of the class which, since the institution of the Police Court, have devolved upon that tribunal. In 1836 he received a commission as Notary Public, and since that time has been an inhabitant of this city. Mr. Bradford's natural bent of mind, confirmed by the circumstances of his early years, created a taste for literary pursuits, which never forsook him, and which he always found opportunities to gratify, amidst the engagements of a busy life. Numerous publications, in the departments of history and theology, attest his steady diligence. Descended from different families of the Pilgrims, and himself the representative of the second Governor of the Old Colony, (the first, whose administration was long enough to leave an impress on the infant state,) the deeds and characters of those venerable men were always to him a subject of intensely interesting inquiry, and few men have acquired a more familiar acquaintance with our early history. His theological works, manifesting themselves uniformly as the fruits of candid, inquisitive, and upright investigation, and betokening the action of a kind and Christian spirit, would have attracted more attention, had they appeared at that different period of theological inquiry in this country, when their author's opinions were formed. Among the most important of the productions of his pen were a History of Massachusetts from 1764 to 1820, a History of the Federal Government from 1789 to 1839, a Biographical Dictionary of the New England worthies, a Popular Commentary upon the Four Gospels, and a Life of Dr. Jonathan Mayhew; besides which he is understood to have left in manuscript a Chronology of New England, from the time of its discovery to 1820, and copious additions to his History of Massachusetts, prepared with a view to a new edition. Mr. Bradford was a Doctor of Laws, President of the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, and a Fellow of the Historical and Antiquarian Societies of Massachusetts, and of various other associations for similar objects throughout the country. He has well deserved to be held in honorable and grateful remembrance. He was a man of sterling and independent honesty, in speculation, in purpose, and in act. He passed cheerfully through life, amid some circumstances of trial and discouragement, attended by the good angel of an inflexible and buoyant trust in God. He had a generous and hearty public spirit. His tastes were only for useful and liberal pursuits. His activity was indefatigable; there was no more danger of his mind being permitted to rust on the eve of four-score, than in the bloom of life. He was perfectly candid and tolerant ; he readily allowed every rightful claim of others, and made no parade of his own; and in his preferences of sect and party, there was no alloy of narrowness or ill-will. It was a pleasure to him to do a service to friend or stranger. He had the kindest affections, an eminently social disposition, and a tenderness of sensibility which is rarely seen to outlast so much experience. He lived the happy life of one whose aims and feelings are righteous, elevated, pure, and Christian, and he died happy in the full, though unostentatious enjoyment of an intelligent believer's hope. P. C NOTICES OF BOOKS. The influence of Scientific Discovery and Invention on social and By JOB "THE Gospel of Arkwright," to use the peculiar phraseology of that most peculiar being Thomas Carlyle, is proving itself to be more of a gospel, than many seem to know of; it preaches glad tidings to man, by universalizing civilization and knowledge, by cheapening the commodities of life, by bettering the situation of the poor generally, by equalizing the condition of man, and preparing the human mind for the reception of high moral and spiritual truths; and we are glad that it has found so able an interpreter in our friend the Chief Justice of RhodeIsland. The address before us is something better than a highly finished literary performance; it is the work of a thinker and a philosopher, and the eloquence of thought is well sustained by the force and beauty of language in which it is clothed. We knew the author before only as a poet, and save a few official papers from his pen, especially during the late troublous times, in our sister State, his "Whatcheer," with Roger Williams for its hero, which was reviewed and lauded in England, is the only thing of the Judge's we have read. In that, however, we found not only much sweet verse and many highly poetical passages, but also a depth of thought, a spirituality of feeling, and an ardent love of" the largest liberty," though the work is of too quiet and serene a character to be popular in an excitement-loving community like ours. After we had perused, this B K oration, we felt that our Rhode Island brethren have good reason to regard the Judge as intellectually their strongest man, and that they may well be proud of him. VOL. XXXV. 3D S. VOL. XVII. NO. III. 48 |