OR THE BLACK CASTLE OF OPIUM.

WHAT was formerly called Asia Minor, but now bears the name of Anatolia, is bounded on the north by the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the Black Sea; the Egean Sea on the west, the Mediterranean Sea on the south, and Asia Major on the east. Asia Minor now forms part of the Turkish Empire. In the days of the Apostles of our Lord it was under the government of the Roman Empire, and had previously belonged to the Grecian States.

The town of Kara Hissar is situate in Asia Minor, about 180 miles distant from Constantinople, nearly due south of that city, and about 200 miles east of Smyrna. The road from Smyrna and Constantinople, towards Armenia, Georgia, Persia, and the countries bordering on the river Euphrates, runs through Kara Hissar. This makes it a place of great mercantile importance. Numerous caravans, laden with the productions of various countries, pass through the town. Many of the houses

are built of stone; and the inhabitants are celebrated for the manufacture of saddles, bits, stirrups, fire-arms, sabres, woollen fabrics, and tapestry. Large quantities of white poppies are cultivated in this neighbourhood. The poppy plant attains to a great size in several parts of Asia. When the poppy-heads are nearly ripe, cuts are made therein, from which issues a juice which soon hardens, and is the well-known drug called opium. Laudanum, or tincture of opium, is made of opium and spirits of wine. The spirits of wine dissolves the opium. Opium is frequently employed, by medical men, with very great advantage to afflicted persons; but it is also used very improperly by many persons: when habitually taken it will very greatly injure the constitution, and a very small quantity will destroy life in a person unused to take opium. Indeed, it ought never to be taken without medical advice. Niebuhr states, that when he visited Kara Hissar, there was not less than twenty tons, or forty-four thousand eight hundred pounds weight of opium gathered there in one year.

The town is said to contain fifty thousand inhabitants, and ten mosques, or Mahommedan places of worship. A small stream of water runs through the town. Outside the town there are lofty rocks and high fruitful hills. The castle stands on the top of a steep rock, nearly 600 feet high. Niebuhr with difficulty got to the top of this rock. On its summit he found a wall and some round towers, within which were some old cannons and pieces of old armour. When war raged in this part of Asia, this citadel was a strong place of protection to those by whom it was possessed. Here, as generally is the case in the Turkish Empire, the religion of the false prophet is professed. The population of Asia Minor consists of persons from various countries, but chiefly of Turks, Greeks, and Armenians. Many of the Greeks and Armenians profess to be Christians; but, alas! they know little about Christianity. Most earnestly ought we to pray that the spiritual darkness which rests upon the subjects of the Turkish Empire may soon be dispelled, and that they

have the pure Gospel of Christ faithfully preached to them. Many Christian Churches were planted in Asia Minor in the days of the Apostles, but most of these Churches soon became corrupt. The addresses to the seven Churches, contained in the Revelation of St. John, afford proofs of this.

LETTERS TO THE YOUNG.

NO. XIII.—THE POETRY OF MILTON.

MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS, Every human being is vested by the Almighty with such a nature, and clothed with such attributes, that the calm and quiet contemplation of the meanest of our fellow-beings, is solemn and impressive. The conduct through life of each of our species has unbounded importance attached to it, arising from man's capacity for future happiness and misery. By wise and patient culture you may rise to glory, honour, immortality, and eternal life. But, alas! a very large majority of those who have lived before us, have chosen so to act that they have become beacons to warn us of danger, by their miserable example; instead of acting worthy of their Divinely-gifted nature, and thus to have beckoned us after them to the service of God, intelligence, goodness, and piety. rious exceptions to this remark. lives, works, and writings, stamp a peculiar importance on our common nature; throw a glory over humanity, and teach us how sublime a being man may become, by subordinating his lower to his higher nature, and seeking assimilation to the image of God. Such was John Milton, of whose poetry I have undertaken to write you this letter. I feel the greatness of the subject, and can scarcely divest my mind of the idea of its being presumptuous in Uncle Joseph to attempt the writing of a letter on such a theme. But, having read repeatedly some of the most able articles on Milton; having paid some attention to his life and writings; and having a profound reverence for his genius and

and highest summit of Happily there are gloThere are some whose

character; I perhaps may, by the assistance within my reach, write what may not be unworthy of your study. If there is not much of my own in this letter, I hope it will not be the less acceptable to you. I here give you a handful of flowers: to use the language of another, the flowers are not my own. Very little is mine, beside the string which ties them.

I shall endeavour, as far as my limited space will allow, to furnish you with some idea of the life and character of John Milton; the characteristics of his poetry; and the influence which the study of the poetry of Milton will have upon the cultivation and development of a susceptible mind. Some acquaintance with his life and character will prepare you for feeling an increased interest in his poetry. Indeed, an article on the poetry of Milton would be a very imperfect thing if it overlooked the life of the man himself. Sublime as are his written poems, his life was sublimer still. He early formed a very lofty idea of what a poet's life ought to be; and what was more difficult, he himself realized and embodied his own ideal of a true poet. His noble words on this subject are as follows:

"He that would not be frustrated of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and practice of all that is praiseworthy." He regarded poetic genius as one of God's highest and best gifts to men, involving its possessor in high and solemn responsibility. He thus expresses, in his own stately majestic language, his own views on the subject :-" These abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God rarely bestowed, but yet to some (though much abused) in every nation, and are of power, beside the office of the pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's Almightiness, and what he works,

and what he suffers to be wrought, with High Providence in his Church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms from justice and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is high and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtilties and reflexes of men's thoughts from within; all these, with a solid and tractable smoothness, to point out and describe." Milton thus magnified his office, and sought through his whole life, from its earliest dawn, so to improve his vast mental powers; so to fill and inform his capacious mind; and so to bring his whole soul into harmony with all that is high, pure, and magnanimously devout, as to prepare himself for what he ultimately so sublimely achieved by the blessing of God. His life was one of untiring diligence and calm trust in God. He was, indeed, human, and showed that he belonged to the family of Adam; but seldom has any one, if ever, lived on this earth, who has left a name so redolent of all that is lofty, pure, and divine, as John Milton.

His

He was born, my young friends, in the city of London, in Bread-street, on the 9th of December, 1608. parents were in easy and somewhat affluent circumstances. They were persons of moral worth, of intelligence, and of sound Christian and Protestant principles. For his Protestantism, his father had suffered the forfeiture of his patrimonial inheritance. He was a man of fine musical taste and genius. The parents gave young Milton a firstrate education; first under the tuition of a clergyman named John Young, afterwards in St. Paul's School, and in the Cambridge University. While only very young he manifested a quenchless desire for knowledge; and when not more than twelve years of age, he was in the habit of sitting up at his books and studies until midnight. He seems to have been as exemplary in his general conduct, as he was ardent in his thirst for knowledge. His poetic