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"Man is the conservator—man the great destroyer; but the most fatal destruction—the destruction that continues to destroy—is when men stifle the inner life and slay the spirit of their fellow men. The historian of the Decline and Fall of Rome has declared that it was not the barbarians who destroyed the buildings of the Eternal City, but the Roman citizens themselves, whose polity was broken up, who lived in a place too big for them and who quarried among the grand edifices of their forefathers to provide for their mean dally purposes. So it is always; and no calamity is to be deeply apprehended for a people which does not strike a mortal blow at the national life of that people. The direst earthquakers (and no quarter of the globe has suffered more from these appalling disasters than the New World) leave but a slight scar behind. The most immense catastrophes of fire and flood, if the nation be but heartily alive, are soon smoothed over, and in a generation are not to be discerned except by an increase of beauty in the city and of fertility in the fields. The most cruel wards often invigorate: Rome rises only greater from the vital conflicts she endured at the hands of the unrivalled Carthaginian. Nay, even conquest will not efface the essential being of a nation; and many a people, compressed into narrower limits, or actually subjugated by a dominant race, have bided their time, drinking in the secret benefits of great reverses—have then raised their crests again and become a world-famous nation.

But the Spanish conquest, both of Peru and Mexico, was one of those fatal blows to the conquered of which the shock runs through national and social life, smiting the spinal cord of a people, and leaving leaving them in a death-like paralysis. The men in a nation so subdued are as helpless and burdened as animals would be who had lost their instinct. All that the nation has accomplished in art, through science, or in architecture, is submissively ceded to the elements; and no man lifts his hand to protect or restore any work of his own or of his forefathers which he had formerly delighted in. It is not an earthquake which has shaken these miserable men, but a new formation of their world that has overwhelmed them. All the old civilization—the record often of so much toil and blood and sorrow—is crushed forever into a confused heap of rude materials, the simplest meaning of which it will hereafter require great study to decipline; and the nation, if it survives in name, is but a relic, a warning and a sign, like some burnt-out star, drifting along, hideous and purposeless, amid the full and shining orbs which still remain to adorn and vivify the universe."

A 'Sucker' sends us the following account of an occurrence which took plate at Snathcwine (III.) not long ago. A jackass, valued at four hundred dollars, belonging to Mr. Bacon, was discovered by the engineer to be on the track only a short distance ahead of the train. All steam was put on to make the concussion as slight as possible: the jackass, running straight ahead, instead of being crushed to pieces, was caught on the cow-catcher, and carried some distance before the engineer could slacken the train enough to allow him to creep forward and push him off. He rolled down an embnkment some twenty feet, when a neighbor, observing what had happened, came over to see how thing were: and strange to say, he found the jackass alive, raised him up, and drove him homa, a half-mile distant. He was very stiff for about a week, and his chops were swelled so badly that he could not bray. Poor fellow! didn't he have an awful ride? The thing could not be done again in a thousand time trying. The rail-road agent came next day to pay for the animal, but found him 'alive and kicking,' but a 'sadder and wiser' jackass.

'One pleasant Sunday in Glasgow,' 'a stalwart Highland-man entered a drug store, or apothecary's shop, and said: 'Have ye any spirits, ar alcohol? All the shops are closed, and I canna get quaigh o' Glenlivat or Islay: I am sair thirsty. Canna ye gie me a wee drap o' somethin' warmin'?' It really seemed a hard case: and the good-hearted apothecary helped him to what he supposed to be an uncommonly stiff horn of pure spirits, or alcohol. The man drank it off; gave him one wild look; spread his two hands suddenly over the abdominal portion of his person, and immediately vacated the premises. The apothecary was startled: 'What was the matter with the man?' He took down the vessel from which he had poured the devouring fluid from which he had poured the devouring fluid, and found that he had given the man, by mistake, a bumper of aqua-fortis! He was frightened half to death! The man had left his hat behind him, and the apothecary, bare-headed, rushed out with it in his hand, his hair flying in the wind, and 'made hot pursuit' after the fugitive. But he was hopelessly gone. What a life of anxiety the poor fellow lived for some three months! He was afraid to open the daily newspapers, lest he should see recorded the mysterious death of his victim in the public streets. At length, however, his fears died away. Nothing was heard from the missing sufferer, until six months after the awful event: when, one pleasant Sunday morning. who should walk into his shop, but the 'dientical' individual himself! 'Have you got,' said he, to the astounded apothecary, 'have you got any more of that liquor you sold me the last time I was here? If you have, five me a horn. I never tasted anything like it. It went right to the spot! Why, it lasted me a fortnight. No reduction about that fluid!' But the apothecary contented himself this time, by giving his returned customer a glass of pure spirits, as being by much the safer drink of the two.