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rulers, who sought at the head of their armies adventures and dominions in foreign countries. They left their own states to plunge into the heart of Germany, Italy, or even Africa, without any other motive than their personal caprice. Almost all the wars of the 15th, and part of those of the 16th centuries are of this nature. interest-I do not speak of a legitimate interest --but what motive merely had France to desire that Charles the Eighth should possess the kingdom of Naples? This war was evidently not undertaken from any consideration of policy: the king believed he had personal claims on the kingdom of Naples, and, urged by personal ambition, and in order to satisfy his personal desires, he attempted the conquest of a distant state, which was no advantage to the territorial convenience of his own kingdom; which, on the contrary, compromised his exterior power and his internal repose. The same thing may be said of the expedition of Charles the Fifth into Africa. The last war of this kind was the expedition of Charles the Twelfth against Russia.-Guizot's Lectures on European Civilization, p. 447.

A HERO, NOT TO BE ADMIRED.

"Merciful Heaven! and for the fruition of an hour's drunkenness of glory, from which they must awaken with heaviness, pain, and terror, men consume a whole crop of their kind at one harvest-home! Shame upon those light ones who carol at the feast of blood! And worse upon those graver ones who nail upon their escutcheon the name of great. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for their admiration. Only some cause like that which scattered the mental fog of the Netherlands, and is preparing them for the fruits of freedom, can justify us in drawing the sword abroad."-Landor's Conversations.

OPIUM WAR IN CHINA.

O pium bellum!

"Our peaceable and moral government has not hesitated to plunge this country into a war the most iniquitous on record-a war with the least warlike nation of the earth, and therefore thought to be the most assailable-a war in defence of the opium traffic-a war to enforce the

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right of destroying the morals and health of the subjects of the emperor of China by inundating that country with a moral and physical poisona war to avenge the cause of smugglers against a government enforcing its own municipal lawsa war, in fine, which sacrifices the interests of legitimate commerce to contraband and felon traffic in a prohibited and pestilential poison."Morning Herald, 1840.

WAR UNENDURABLE, BUT FOR ITS DISGUISE.

"War, disguise it as we may under all its pride, pomp, and circumstance, is but a great wholesale executioner. Its horrors would be unendurable but for the dazzling Bengal light called glory that we cast on its deluge of blood and tears; but for the gorgeous flags we wavelike veils before its grim and ferocious features -and the triumphant clangor of martial music with which we drown its shrieks and groans. A battle is a butchery; it smells of the shambles. War is a brain-bespattering, wind-pipe slitting Who would care to see its murderous tools, however well polished or tastefully arranged?-Tour up the Rhine, p. 322.

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NAPOLEON AT A LOSS.

Captain Basil Hall, in his conversation with Napoleon Buonaparte at St. Helena, says: "Several circumstances respecting the Loo Choo people surprised him exceedingly; and I had the satisfaction of seeing him more than once completely perplexed, and unable to account for the phenomena which I related. Nothing struck him so much as their having no arms. • Point d'armes,' he exclaimed; 'c'est à dire point de canons: ils ont des fusils?' 'Not even muskets,' I replied. 6 Eh bien, donc, des lances, ou au moins des arcs and des flèches?' I

told him they had neither one nor the other. 'Then poniards?' 'None.' 'Mais,' said Buonaparte, clenching his fist, and raising his voice to a loud pitch, mais sans bat on?'

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"I could only reply that, as far as we had been able to discover, they had never had any wars, but had remained in a state of internal and external peace. No wars!' cried he, with a scornful and incredulous expression, as if the existence of any people without wars was a monstrous anomaly."

THE MILITARY SPIRIT A CURSE.

In a nation, as in an individual, self-estimation leads to irritable jealousy, unaccommodating and offensive haughtiness, selfishness, violence, injustice.

Its common direction is that of military glory; and, as far as such a principle is necessary to national defence and independence, it is indispensably requisite to a virtuous people. Far different has been in general its operation, as seen in the history of mankind; as seen in our Henrys and our Edwards. The kings and heroes of our land were transformed into destroyers and oppressors. not our wars in India and our war against China come under this sentence of condemnation?

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AN UNEQUAL WAR.

In the battles of Homer, the only difference between the gods and men is that the latter are killed, but the former are not. It was nearly so in the contests of the Spaniards under Cortez and the Mexicans. Bernal Duez says, in one