Among those records of the past which fill the soul of man with the keenest pain, and fix the darkest stain on the pages of human guilt;--on that blood-red sheet that exhibits the mutual rage, persecution, and burning of religious fanatics, I have found an account of a woman who was doomed to the stake in such a situation that in the midst of her sufferings in the flames, she became a _mother_. The book dropped from my hand as I read this dreadful story, and I regretted my relation to a race of beings, capable of such iron-hearted cruelty and infernal guilt. But this was in ENGLAND, and it was some consolation to my sickening heart to reflect that I was an AMERICAN. I felt a sort of national pride, and wrapped myself up in the delusion, in which too many are now slumbering, that such things belong exclusively to the Old World, and will never blacken the history of the New. How foolish are such national prejudices; how absurd and contrary to all experience, to suppose that _local_ circumstances will alter the moral nature of man. The lion loses not his ferocity by treading the soil or breathing the air of Massachusetts; and the founder of Providence can testify, that the pious settlers of New England caught the spirit of persecution as they were flying from its faggots and fire. Man is _man_, wherever you find him. By nature a tyrant, and ever glorying in the extension and display of his authority, every human being is either a pope or a Nero, and would become as offensive to God, and as dreadful to the human race as they were, if placed in the same circumstances. With the exception of those who are brought under the influence of the spirit of the gospel, this is universally true; and all the improvements of the arts and sciences and of civilization, are but so many refined inventions in the rebellion of earth against heaven. Christianity makes the only grand and radical difference among men. This brings all who heartily embrace it back to the authority of heaven, while all others are forcing themselves on to the perfection of a character as opposed to God and mutual happiness, as Beelzebub is to the Saviour of the world. I am now going to introduce a sketch which will evince the aptness of Americans in imitating the cruelties of Europe. "England _is_ what Athens _was_," says Phillips, and too soon, I fear will America rival England in those things which she professes to abhor. With how much reason I apprehend this, the following account, among others, will shew.