The public and shameless sale of beautiful mulatto and quadroon girls has acquired a notoriety, from the incidents following the capture of the Pearl.  We extract the following from the speech of Hon. Horace Mann, one of the legal counsel for the defendants in that case.  He says:  “In that company of seventy-six persons, who attempted, in 1848, to escape from the District of Columbia in the schooner Pearl, and whose officers I assisted in defending, there were several young and healthy girls, who had those peculiar attractions of form and feature which connoisseurs prize so highly.  Elizabeth Russel was one of them.  She immediately fell into the slave-trader’s fangs, and was doomed for the New Orleans market.  The hearts of those that saw her were touched with pity for her fate.  They offered eighteen hundred dollars to redeem her; and some there were who offered to give, that would not have much left after the gift; but the fiend of a slave-trader was inexorable.  She was despatched to New Orleans; but, when about half way there, God had mercy on her, and smote her with death.  There were two girls named Edmundson in the same company.  When about to be sent to the same market, an older sister went to the shambles, to plead with the wretch who owned them, for the love of God, to spare his victims.  He bantered her, telling what fine dresses and fine furniture they would have.  ‘Yes,’ she said, ’that may do very well in this life, but what will become of them in the next?’ They too were sent to New Orleans; but were afterwards redeemed, at an enormous ransom, and brought back.”  Is it not plain, from this, that the histories of Emmeline and Cassy may have many counterparts?

Justice, too, obliges the author to state that the fairness of mind and generosity attributed to St. Clare are not without a parallel, as the following anecdote will show.  A few years since, a young southern gentleman was in Cincinnati, with a favorite servant, who had been his personal attendant from a boy.  The young man took advantage of this opportunity to secure his own freedom, and fled to the protection of a Quaker, who was quite noted in affairs of this kind.  The owner was exceedingly indignant.  He had always treated the slave with such indulgence, and his confidence in his affection was such, that he believed he must have been practised upon to induce him to revolt from him.  He visited the Quaker, in high anger; but, being possessed of uncommon candor and fairness, was soon quieted by his arguments and representations.  It was a side of the subject which he never had heard,—­never had thought on; and he immediately told the Quaker that, if his slave would, to his own face, say that it was his desire to be free, he would liberate him.  An interview was forthwith procured, and Nathan was asked by his young master whether he had ever had any reason to complain of his treatment, in any respect.

“No, Mas’r,” said Nathan; “you’ve always been good to me.”