without reserve, Prime Lot of Niggers," "Horses," "Dogs," "Rewards for Runaways," "Bloodhounds.” The chief figure is the auctioneer, submitting to "public competition" the beautiful quadroon of the first sketch. While she covers her face with her hands, and is overwhelmed with her great grief, the auctioneer, doubtless an eloquent George Robins, spreads out her flowing tresses to the wind, and dilates upon her many fine points-calling upon bidders to be in time, as the "lot" is going positive-ly. Behind these is a ruffian dragging a mother from her child, and on whose face not the slightest shadow of human sympathy is visible. Indeed, all round, the moral result of the iniquitous traffic seems to have burnt itself into every line and feature of the countenances of these dealers in human blood. At a little distance to the front may be seen a wealthy planter and his two daughters, on horseback, surveying with a placid indifference a scene for which devils, if they did not tremble at it, would feel some touch of sympathy.

The third sketch, entitled "The Capture," represents a bloodhound and its masters on the track of some miserable runaways-husband, wife, and child. The dog is in the act of springing on the unfortunate woman, who, holding her little child aloft, bends in horror and despair over the dead body of her husband.

Lying there stark and stiff, the great emancipator, Death, has been before them, and the poor slave has obtained his freedom at last. Looking to the face of the animal and the countenances of his masters, it is hard to say which seems most the incarnation of ferocity. On both are written the deep lines of moral degradation; for we believe that dogs have characters as well as men, and that they, too, may be degraded by their companionship and work.

The following sketch, "The Rescue," represents the capture of a slaver. A crew of stalwart British tars have torn up her hatchways, through which the light of heaven and the light of freedom are poured upon the sweltering mass of negroes in the hold. Some are already rigid in death, some are struggling in their last agony, and others are gazing up from the depths of their floating sepulchre at the anxious, sympathising faces of their deliverers. One poor creature, less intent on his own release than the safety of his child, is in the act of handing it up to the rough but tender grasp of a British sailor, perhaps himself a father, and who is thinking of his own little ones in their happy home of freedom far away-"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." Oh! we could almost wish that some of the paltering white apologists of slavery had a month's cruise in that same hold! We think they

would leave it with their feelings and opinions considerably changed.

The last sketch of the series is entitled " Freedom," and represents an aged negro and his family in their tidy and comfortable dwelling, all engaged in reading or listening to the WORD. This we think the least

satisfactory sketch of the whole. It is somewhat stagey, and the idea is trite and obvious. But freedom and its innumerable blessings, while felt and enjoyed as facts, cannot in its wholeness be put into a picture any more than the winds of heaven; and, perhaps, as a finale to the sketches, and apart from an allegorical embodiment of the subject, the painter could not have done better than represent the emancipated sons and daughters of bondage, as occupied in the perusal and study of that Divine charter of man's spiritual liberty, which says:— "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Freedom, wrote old John Barbour 500 years ago, and nothing better has been said about it yet:—

"A! Fredome is a nobill thing!

Fredome mayse man to haiff liking!
Fredome all solace to man giffis :
He levys at ese that frely levys!
A noble hart may haiff nane ese
Na ellys nocht that may him plese,
Gyff fredome faillyth; for fre liking
Is yearnyt our all othir thing

Na he, that ay has levyt fre,
May nocht knaw weill the propyrte,
The angyr, na the wrechyt dome,
That is cowplyt to foule thyrldome.

But if he had assayed it,

Than all perquer he suld it wyt;
And suld think fredome mar to pryse

Than all the gold in warld that is."

HENRY GLASSFORD BELL'S "MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS."

THERE are certain scenes, events, and characters in history that are invested with the interest of a perennial fascination for all readers, high and low, learned and unlearned alike, and whose power to attract and rivet the minds of men, instead of diminishing, seems only to grow with the lapse of time. The annals of our own country, indeed, are full of the deeds and lives of remarkable or illustrious persons about whom it seems as if we could never know enough, and who, although they only live in books, have an existence more real than the men and women we meet with every day; and among all the famous personages whose careers have glorified or disgraced the pages of Scottish story, Mary Stewart stands forth pre-eminent. If a romancer had invented such an imaginary being, and traced ideally her strange and startling fortunes through all their rapid