We are musing with practical intent upon such things as become enlightened and well-disposed minds. We are thoroughly enjoying national repose, dwelling each man “safely under his own vine;” and we are doing, and anxious to do, the great, the civilizing work of peace. Alas! “All is vanity and vexation of spirit.” Our fondest hopes are broken up, and, in a moment of time, vanish away as a vision of the night when one awakes. A cry is heard abroad amongst us; it is no less than a cry of war—that hell-cry which despots love to raise, and which all godless and loveless spirits echo in sympathetic sinfulness! At the gates of science do we listen, in dread suspense, to hear the contradiction or confirmation of the evil tidings. Our worst suspicions are soon confirmed. In rapid successions does the magic whisper steal across the deep, and tell its brief but bloody tale, that ours have risen up against us in the far East; that many a bitter Shimei has come forth to curse our rule; that many a mutinous and rebel Sheba has blown the signal blast of insurrection; that men, women, and children, “bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh,” are being scattered abroad by a cruelly organized persecution, some seeking in hopeless flight a desert solitude, there to die unfriended and alone; others hastening to the nearest fastness, there to hold out, a scanty and surprised handful, against an armed and swarming adversary; and that, once more, numbers of our fellow-countrymen, together with their wives and little ones, have actually perished, if not by more hideous means, by the edge of the sword. A trembling for the present, and a fear for the future, take hold of us. With deepest anxiety do we turn, in this our moment of sharp distress and bewilderment, to our ruling representatives, bidding them do in our common name what seemed to them good under the circumstances of our emergency, and dismissing them to their onerous work with the benedictory prayer, that Almighty God would of his infinite goodness “be pleased to direct and prosper all their consultations to the advancement of his glory, the good of his Church, the safety, honour, and welfare of our Sovereign and her dominions.” So it was, I doubt not, that we, as a God-fearing people, prayed for our rulers when they were summoned to consider and prepare for the suppression of that Indian mutiny of 1857, whose simply detailed history is of itself, its plain, unvarnished, unembellished self, the most cruel and the most heart-rending tragedy that has ever been recorded! Of this enough.