Matilda had not hitherto been given to deep thought, or strong feeling, for any one but her husband; but the new influences of circumstance, of late suspense and fear, of the hour, and of her present social position,--all combined to stimulate her to higher reflection than, as a light-hearted girl, she had been wont to encourage. She would fain have known which of the men had fallen,--what home was to be made desolate by the tidings that must soon be on their way. Were they to stun the young wife who, like herself, had----O, no! It was too dreadful to think of! Were they to smite the matron, who, ill her Irish cabin, daily told the little ones around her knee tales of the brave and tender father who was to come back and caress them one day? Were they to wither the aged parent, who prayed for his roving son, and looked for the return of the prodigal before he died; or the band of young kindred who watched with longing the glory of their elder brother, and would be struck dumb at this ignoble close of his envied service? Whoever it was, a life was gone! And how? Men of the same country, members of the same social state, had been made enemies by arbitrary laws. They had been trained to deceive and to defy one another when they should have wrought, side by side, to nourish life instead of to destroy it,--to strengthen peace instead of inflicting woe. He who made the human heart to yearn at the voice of kindliness, and to leap up at the tone of joy, thereby rebukes the system which gives birth to mutual curses, and flings sorrows into many homes;--He who gradually discloses to the roused human ear the music of His name, does it for other purposes than to have it taken upon human lips in mockery as a pass-word to the meanest frauds;--He who made yon glittering sea a broad path by which his children might pass to and fro, so that the full may bear bread to the hungry, and the skilful send clothing to the naked, must pity the perverseness by which such mutual aid is declined, or yielded only at the expense of crime--artificial crime, which brings on natural, as its sure consequence;--He who scatters his bounties over the earth with impartial hand, his snow and sunshine, his fruits and gems;--He who lets loose his herds on the plains of the tropics, and calls the fishy tribes into the depths of Polar seas;--He who breathes upon the cornfields, and they wave; who whispers among the pine-forests of the North, and they bow before him,--thus works that men may impart and enjoy; and yet man will not impart, and forbids his fellow-man to enjoy;--He who in still small voice says to the Hindoo beneath the palm-tree, "Get thee a home;" who visits the broken sleep of the toil-worn artizan to bid him get food and rest; who comes in the chill wind to the shivering boor to warn him to provide apparel; who scares the crouching Arab with thunders among the caverned rocks, and the Greenlander with tempests on the icy sea, and