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one of the schools of St. Paul's Congre- E. Pledge presided, and addresses were gational Chapel, Newcastle-on-Tyne, given by the different ministers and were invited to take tea in the chapel, friends, on the following subjects:--after which, the minister, the Rev." The Sunday School Teacher and his Alexander Reid, was called to the chair. Work ;""The Tract Distributor and Addresses followed, by Messrs. E. Ridley, his Work; " "Their Difficulties, EnJ. Langlands, W. Todd, J. Atkinson, couragements, and Rewards." The and the Chairman. The deacons and meeting excited an unusual interest their wives, with the teachers, were throughout the town. present. A pleasant and profitable. evening was spent, and, after the kind invitation given, it is hoped more of the parents may be led to the house of God to seek their own salvation and that of their children. A new and suitable tract was given to each individual on retiring.

DOWNHAM MARKET.

UNION CHAPEL SCHOOL, HUNTINGDON. ON Sunday, June 14th, the Annual Sermons were preached by the Rev. J. B. Pike, of Bourn. The large attendance and liberal collections, evinced an unusual interest in the school. On Monday evening, the annual tea meeting was held in the school room, about 150 persons sat down. After tea the chapel was opened for a public meeting, M. Foster, Esq., presided, and addresses were delivered by Mr. G. Reaney, of Regent's Park College, and the Rev. H. B. Robinson, of Soham; both of whom were formerly scholars. The the superinten

AN unknown friend sent to the Rev. E. Pledge, the pastor of the Baptist Church, the sum of £5., with which to provide a tea for all the Sunday school teachers and tract distributors in the town. A good tea was accordingly prepared in the school room. The ministers, late superintendent, teachers, and distributors present, num-dent of the Wesleyan school, and the bered 121. In the evening a public Rev. J. B. Pike, also took part in the meeting was held in the chapel, the Rev. proceedings.

Passing Events.

In our last number, page 384, the fact attack made by General Burnside on the was mentioned that the WARFARE IN positions occupied by General Lec, on VIRGINIA, which had been suspended the heights overlooking the town of since the failure of General Burnside's Fredericksburg. General Hooker appears attempted advance towards Richmond, to have crossed the river with 126,000 in December last, had recommenced, and infantry, most of his cavalry having that General Hooker, who had succeeded been employed in a raid that at once to the command, had crossed the Rappa- alarmed and damaged the enemy, though hannock. A fearful three days' indecisive it is now abundantly clear that they conflict had ensued, which ended as most of the other battles have done, in one of the armies retiring, while the other was too much exhausted to follow them.

would have rendered better aid to the Federal cause had they been retained to support the main attack on Lee.

Hooker showed himself a wise man in not repeating Burnside's tactics--an attack on the front of Lee's position. His design was to turn Lee's left flank

Since then the details have come to hand. If our readers will refer to our number for February, page 128, they will there find a graphic description of the by intercepting his communications,

and thus compel him to fight on the above Fredericksburg were retaken, plain below the heights of Fredericks- and Sedgwick's corps were compelled burg. For this purpose he marched to recross the river by Banks's Ford, several corps up the river, some of them about four miles above Fredericksburg. ascending twenty-five miles, and by a This re-crossing the river was a most well-concerted series of movements they disastrous operation, for the Confederate ultimately crossed, and were concentra- guns swept the bridge of boats. Hooker ted at or in advance of Chancellorsville, was more fortunate in putting the river a lone house about 12 miles to the south-between himself and the enemy. A west of Fredericksburg. Lee soon led writer for the New York Herald sums his army to the attack, and to General up the result in these pregnant words:— Stonewall Jackson was committed the" In our shattered columns, our deciduty of crushing Hooker's right. The mated batteries, our scattered trains, Germans who composed it gave way and the wards of our crowded hospitals, and fled, and the Federal army were we read the painful history of this nearly overwhelmed. It was only disaster-a history unprecedented in General Berry's advance that saved its character and humiliating to the them from a total rout. Their line was nation." driven back, and the fighting was re- The Confederates, however, sustained sumed on three successive days, until a heavy loss in the death of Stonewall Hooker was pressed back upon the fords that some of his corps had crossed by, his right flank resting upon the Rapidan, which falls into the Rappahannock, and his left upon the latter river. Here he entrenched himself, and the next night, managed to steal back across the river on bridges rendered noiseless with pine branches.

But important events had occurred at another part of the field. When Hooker marched to the right with his main army, he left Sedgwick with one corps opposite Fredericksburg. On the second day of the fighting, Lee's army having evacuated their entrenchments to attack Hooker at Charlottesville, Sedgwick crossed the river, and found little difficulty in driving out the few defenders that had been left, and taking possession of the heights above Fredericksburg. The next day, he was marching to join Hooker, when Lee despatched Longstreet-who is said to have brought up a corps by rail from beyond Richmond

Jackson, who was shot down in mistake by his own men, in returning from an advance which he and his staff had made towards the enemy. In the depth and reality of his religious convictions, he has been compared to Havelock; while for valour in the field and fortitude under danger, he leaves no superior. He was one of the characters that this tremendous struggle has called out, and as a leader of divi sion he always manifested a celerity and decision that remind us of our own Cromwell. Beloved by his men for continual acts of kindness, and pos sessing their love and confidence to an unexampled degree, in the death of General Jackson the Confederates have sustained a calamity which makes their victory dearly bought.

The contributions to the Sunday

to drive him back into the river. School Union COTTON DISTRICTS' RELIEF Hooker, it should be remarked, had FUND, now amount to £3,811 10s. 9d.

commissioned Stoneman and a cavalry

force to cut the line of rail, but Stoneman evidently failed in this. Longstreet

was very successful. The heights

AMELIA WILHELMINA SIEVEKING.*

AMELIA SIEVEKING was one of an order of women of which Protestantism, it must be admitted, has not produced too many; although again, we have no doubt that the freedom and the reserve of Protestantism prevents such a life, and especially in the large towns of England, from being marked. In the history of this distinguished lady, it is very interesting to notice how her character gradually matured and developed itself, until the time came when she could devote herself to the activities for which so many previous years seemed to be a preparation. She herself said once to some of her pupils, that if she were to publish her own history, it would be under the title of "A Happy Old Maid," and her object would be to prove that "true happiness is found even outside the Eldorado of matrimony." This was said in reply to some remarks upon the apparent dreariness and thorniness of her life. She had indeed many thorns and trials, but she professes that she has had so many roses, that a fear has come upon her when she thought of those words: "Through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom of God." She began life with many difficulties, for she lost early her mother and her father, who had just before lost the whole of his fortune. Her family connections had been of the highest in the city, but the young girl cheerfully betook herself to the work of earning money, and her only regret seems to have been that "it was something frightful to have toiled for a whole day, and to know at the end that the only thing I have accomplished is, that some one will possess an embroidered pillow-case, who would sleep just as well upon a plain one. All I want," says the young girl, "is to spend my strength upon things that have some worth and use in them." A small independence subsequently left her, satisfied all her wants, and placed her above the necessity for these early toils. Her face was not considered beautiful nor her figure handsome, but this seems to have given her very little concern; and when at the age of nearly seventy, the numbers thronged around her shrouded form in the open coffin, to look their last upon that clear face and beautiful brow, it may very safely be believed that it received a far higher

*Life of Amelia Wilhelmina Sieveking, from the German, edited with the Author's sanction by Catherine Winkworth. Longman & Co.

The Principles of Charitable Work, Love, Truth, and Order, as set forth in the writings of Amelia Wilhelmina Sieveking, Foundress of the Female Society for the Care of the Sick and Poor in Hamburg. Longman & Co.

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homage than the face most according to the canons of beauty. The first half of the biographical volume is devoted to the account of the growth of her personal character, her mental difficulties and trials, her early efforts in nursing and teaching. And it is interesting to notice of such a woman, that she was not as some such usually are, narrow-minded. She wrought down the foundations of her faith sufficiently to have her orthodoxy impeached. She was interested in the great spirit of the age-was a hearty reader of Shakspeare, only remarking in him what all wise Christian readers have remarked, the absence of the pure moral Christian ideal in character, the want of a thoroughly noble type of humanity. Her brother had written from England cautioning her against the English Dissenters at Hamburg, which we are delighted to see brings from her the confession of the manifold blessings derived from learned men and pious artisans and their wives, in whom the life rather than the knowledge of the faith is to be found; and from Gossner, and Geibel, and Neander, with which illustrious and beautiful names we are glad to see she couples that of our excellent friend the Rev. Mr. Matthews, now of Boston, in Lincolnshire, then minister of Hamburg, pastor of the congregation against which her brother cautioned her. At last in 1831, the terror-inspiring spectre of the age, the cholera, swept over Europe and approached Hamburg, and Amelia Sieveking determined to consecrate herself to the work of nursing in the cholera hospital, placing herself at the disposal of the board of management. Thus she isolated herself from the entire outer world, excepting pieces of stray information which came in letters. Her letters were fumigated and again copied before they were sent to her friends. Here in attendance upon the dying and companionship with the dead, she passed those months until the pest retreated, when she returned home. But this circumstance was the turning-point in her life. Her usefulness was now of a more public character than it had hitherto been. She founded her sisterhood of mercy, obtaining the help of twelve other ladies, in 1832. In 1849 the sisterhood numbered seventy-three members, and besides its original object, had established an almshouse for nine poor families, and a children's hospital. She acted upon the motto of Hannah More, "Charity is the calling of a lady; the care of the poor is her profession." Her labours multiplied; she seems to have not only possessed a soul of intense Christian love, but an inborn spirit of organization; and her utter freedom from all exclusiveness and bigotry, and her power to see and to love Christ in the least of the brethren, has in it, to modern denominationalism, something truly provoking. Her love of Christ, however, seems to

have been the abiding present and incessant inspiration of all. Of herself we seldom have met with a life more realizing the idea of abstract beauty. She would materially interfere with many of our impressions. She came to England, and her remarks upon us are charming. She appreciates us to the full. She says, "At a certain. distance I can fully acknowledge and enjoy the real beauty of their lives; but if we lived both together, we should naturally offend each other." She suspects we should charge her with arrant heresy, and think her half lost if we saw how she spent her Sundays. She declares her utter inability to settle in England, for she says, "The number of their comforts' appear to me very uncomfortable, and in many cases quite a burden," the dependence upon trifling outward things was irksome to her. Then again she testifies, "It seems to me that though they value themselves so much upon their civil liberty, they make themselves, in what I think a most inconvenient way, the slaves of custom and fashion. The question whether a thing is genteel or not genteel is too prominent in all their social relations." We don't wonder that she was glad to get back to the city where, with all her marked individualities, she was almost worshipped. A life more unlike English usages it would be difficult to conceive-getting up at five o'clock in the morning, sometimes no food for twelve hours; holding that eating and drinking are mere matters of habit, and that one may limit oneself in them. She says, "To limit one's wants to the smallest compass, and to do everything for oneself without requiring help, seems to me fine and admirable." She had the good sense to perceive that some of her notions and habits were somewhat cynical. They did not however interfere with her useful relations in all circles of society. With the Queen of Denmark she was on the terms of intimate, it may be said, sisterly friendship; a frequent visitor at the palace, and an interesting and constant correspondent. Some of her letters to the queen are not more beautiful than they are wise, though some of us would regard them perhaps as too large-hearted and loving. Thus she says, "So even in looking on the hardened sinner, I willingly admit the hope that I may one day welcome in him a brother in Christ. Nor have I ever met with a human soul in which I could say that the Divine element of life, love, was altogether dead." In a passage too, which reminds us of some similar words in Baxter, she says, "I must confess that the difference between the bad and good seems to me more in degree than in kind, and because I venture to believe that I myself have a share in the mercy of God in Christ, I cannot despair of the salvation of any soul of man." Her intercourse with all orders of society led to the

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