withholds the desires of our hearts, with respect to the circumstances or events of this mortal life. May he teach us his will, and give us the experience of that peculiar happiness, which is found in doing it, and in submitting to it from the heart!

We cannot express the pleasure which we have felt in hearing from time to time, of the very comfortable state of health to which you have been mercifully restored, and which you have both generally enjoyed, since your visit to this city. May this blessing be long continued to you both, for your own comfort, and for the temporal and eternal benefit of many others; and especially of your dear children, and the children of friends, towards whom you are acting the part of the most affectionate and faithful parents.

Our Bible Society has succeeded much beyond my first expectations in its favour. I intend sending you a copy of the printed Report of its proceedings, during the first year of its existence. Our church is blessed with some desirable tokens of the presence and blessing of its glorious and gracious Lord and Head. The societies meeting in our house on Wednesday evening, have been uncommonly full, through the spring and summer, and the attention to the religious exercises on those occasions, has been close and solemn, and in many instances, especially of the young persons attending, the most tender and serious impressions have been manifested. Several of these, and among them, Miss S. H. with two or three other amiable young ladies, are expected to join the church on the next sacramental season. May these pleasing, refreshing drops, increase to an abundant shower of grace, and many more happy

individuals, partaking of its rich blessings, be added to the church, among such as shall be saved.

Thursday morning, 26th. Last evening, the society here was still larger than it has ever been before. The number must have amounted to but little short of two hundred persons, among whom were a considerable proportion of our Episcopal neighbours, and very many young persons, their parents' joy, and the rising hopes of the church. May the Lord bless them, and make them a seed to serve him, and honor them as the instruments of transmitting the blessings of his gospel to the generation which is to follow them!

You have no doubt, through the channel of the newspapers, received some information of the dreadful tornado, which passed through our city, on the 10th day of this month; which was, in the suddenness of its attack, the rapidity of its progress, and the destruction of life and property that marked its course, one of the most awful temporal calamities with which our city has ever been visited. The terrors of the scene far exceeded all the descriptive powers of language; and imagination itself would fain shrink from the contemplation of them. When we think of a multitude of the dwellings of men, perhaps an hundred or more, many of which were among the fairest and strongest in our city, assailed by the violence of this mighty whirlwind, and shaken in an instant into heaps of ruins, or shattered and damaged to a degree, but little short of destruction; when we think of a number of the inhabitants of these dwellings, exceeding at least haif a score, crushed, at the same instant, down to the shades of death; while others scarcely escaped with painful, if not dangerous and fatal fractures and wounds; and others again,

were rescued from the yawning jaws of destruction almost, if not entirely unhurt, as by miracles of mercy; and when we think of this destructive tornado, passing in a space of considerable breadth, say 60 or 70 yards, from one extremity of our city to another, almost with the rapidity of lightning, scarcely giving the alarm of its approach, before the desolation attending its progress was completed; our souls cannot but still shudder at the recollection of a scene so tremendous, so distressing in its circumstances and its consequences!

For a detailed account of this awful calamity, I refer you to the newspaper which accompanies this, the Times, of September 17th. This is stated to be a revised account, printed a week after the dreadful occurrence. It is, however, far from being very full, and in some instances, it is very incorrect. To you, however, who are so well acquainted in this city, the particulars included in this account, the best that has yet been published, will no doubt be very interesting; and probably, the editors of your papers, may not have thought it necessary to communicate such a detailed account in their papers; as not supposing, that in this form, it would command much of the attention of the public in your region, where only a few of their readers have any particular knowledge of Charleston, or its inhabitants. It is for this reason that I send the paper above mentioned, under the same cover with this.

On visiting Mr. R. and family, the day after the calamity, while in the survey of the very great injury done to his spacious and elegant mansion, and furniture, the eye could not fail deeply to affect the heart. It was at the same time peculiarly consolatory and gratifying, to hear the whole family uniting in expressions of the

warmest gratitude, to the adorable Preserver of men, who had given them, in the midst of the ruins with which they were surrounded, their own lives for a prey, without having suffered any material injury in their persons. Mrs. R. with the piety and humility, so well becoming her christian profession, and her exemplary liberality, in which she and her worthy husband have long been distinguished and honorable rivals, observed, "that probably this heavy stroke had been inflicted, as a correction and admonition, for the purpose of exciting them to make a better improvement of the possessions, with which a bountiful Providence had intrusted them, and to do more good with them in future, than they had heretofore done;" and they, one and all, concurred in expressing the hope, that the lives which the Lord had so remarkably made his care, would be more unreservedly devoted to him, and more faithfully employed in his service. As in all cases, so especially in such seasons and circumstances, how glorious, how amiable, does the religion of Jesus appear! And how secure and happy, are his genuine friends and followers, amidst "the war of elements and the crush of worlds!""

The article in the first column of the newspaper, which mentions the singular preservation of two young ladies, relates to the family of our friend, the hon. Judge D. One of those ladies was his married daughter, Mrs. G. who was daily looking out for the period of her confinement, which took place very soon after she was rescued from the ruins of the fallen chambers, with which she was for a time completely covered, and under which she was not discovered, by her astonished and distressed husband, and parents, and family, until she was enabled to speak, and begged them not to step

on her. She was not lying on the bed, but, baving gone out of her chamber into the drawing room, where most of the family were together, in order to inquire what was the cause of the alarm, which was at first supposed to be a dreadful fire, she had just entered her chamber again, at the N. E. corner of the house, when she met the glass of the windows, driven furiously all over the room, and hastened towards the head of the bed, for the purpose of sheltering herself with the pillows from the injury, which she apprehended from the fragments of glass, and of the broken sashes. The negro girl, about 15 or 16 years of age, who was killed by her side, had run under the bed at the same time, to avoid the same danger; and her sister Eliza, the next daughter younger than Miss C. had but just entered the chamber, when an immense stack of chimnies, containing five or six funnels, was precipitated through the roof of the house, bringing along with it the floor and ceiling of the garret, directly over this chamber, which, with the several persons, and all the articles in it, was immediately added to the falling mass, and the whole accumulated weight, descending to the floor of the room below, carried that also with all its contents, down to the cellar, which was used as a kitchen. of the lower room, one of the younger sons of the family had fled but a moment before, and in his fright and haste, fell over the sill of the door, where one of his feet was just grazed by some of the falling materials; and out of the kitchen cellar, an elderly black woman, the cook of the family, had run to see where the supposed fire was, and a negro fellow, who heard the ab above, had the presence of mind to jump out of

Out

ow, in the very instant before the place was