Another pillar of the crumbling temple has fallen! Out of a clear and unclouded sky, without note of warning, the bolt has descended, and stricken from the place of eminence the most illustrious of the land. For the second time in the brief history of our government has this por tent occurred. An illuess, almost momentary, affording neither time for preparation nor foreboding, has hurried from our midst the President of the nation, and left a chasm which at this time can scarcely be filled in the organization of the Confederacy, while it has caused a vacancy which may not be satisfied in the hearts of his lamenting fellow-citizens. The funeral wail was barely hushed over the grave of Calhoun, when again the clock of time struck, and the successor of Calhoun was summoned to join the great Southerner in eternity: Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? another note upon the bells of time, and a third | tial admiration: a good man, who in the XIXth star is struck in its meridian from the Southern century was never blinded by the allurements heavens to rise again in bright companionship of power, place, fame, or gain, is a spectacle with them in another world. such as we may not shortly look upon again: a good man and a great man, whose heart was not merely untainted but unfluttered by the sudden attainment of the loftiest fame, and the unsolicited elevation to the highest place in the gift of the people. furnishes the noblest instance of human virtue which humanity can exhibit, and gilds the frailties of man with the pristine innocence which preceded his fall. Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice our peace was slain; The announcement of Gen. Taylor's death fell upon the whole country like the crash of doom. No thought, no apprehension of the approaching calamity was entertained: none were roused to the anticipation of grief: no heart was If we except Washington, the great examplar nerved for this coming sorrow: and the blow that which Gen. Taylor set before his eyes, there is fell upon all, equally unwarned and unprepared, perhaps no instance in the history of this or any stunned and stupified by the suddenness of the other country in which fame and power were shock. Not unprepared did it find him to whom won by means so legitimate and pure, and mainthe whisper of death was addressed. Calmly, tained by so undeviating a pursuit of duty withand quietly, and with grave but simple dignity out ulterior aim. Virtue was the simple instruhe bowed to the message of God. Like a sol- ment of his success, and the honors which were dier, obeying the order of his chief, he received the result were undreamt of until he was surthe mandate, and with firm but humble confi- prised by their accession. He sought to do his dence in the purity of his life and the integrity duty, and he only learnt from his admiring counof his intentions, without murmur, without ques- try that its performance was true greatness. He tion, he welcomed the decree. He had stood asked not for fame, but fame came herself to unmoved amid the storm of war: unshaken he woo him: and the laurel crown which she offered had passed through the shower of bullets and was shyly and half-reluctantly accepted to be the flash of swords: and when the spirit-stirring laid aside, and thought of no more. Power music of the battle-field was silent, the charmed beckoned him to her loftiest thrones: he heeded life which escaped the perils of the fight, sunk in not her call: no emotion of pride, or vanity, the tranquillity of peace; but he met death in or ambition was awakened in the heart which the stillness of his chamber with the same unos-beat only for duty. His fellow-citizens invotentatious courage with which he had expected it in the field of his fame. ked his guidance: he yielded to their prayer, as to the voice of those whom he was bound to From the humble commencement to the lofty obey: but it was without anxiety or avidity. He close of his fortunes, his career was marked by would not disobey the commands of his country: the same simple virtues which won unsought but he avowed his consciousness of incapacity honour, and achieved the greatness of which he for civil office, and his unwillingness to be the never thought. We have seen his early corres- servant of party, or the tool of political partisans. pondence with his superior officer, the late Col. If his desires were not fully realized, if the proGeorge Floyd of Kentucky, when the one was fessions made for him were not fulfilled, not on a lieutenant and the other a Captain on the In-him must the iniquity be charged. His election dian frontier: and these precious relics of nearly was the spontaneous act of the people: it was fifty years ago, reveal the same soundness and sobriety of judgment, the same firmness and decision, the same reverence for immediate duties, and the same absence of all art and pretension, which rivetted the affection of his soldiers, and secured the enthusiastic homage of his countrymen. From an abiding sense of duty he pur- The world is a harsh and dangerous school: sued the forward path of right: and neither the while it hardens man for action, it too often does desire of power, nor the dazzling lure of fame, so only by the admixture of a base alloy. This nor the irritation of disappointment, nor the bit was not the case with him we deplore. There terness of injustice ever tempted him to swerve was little brilliancy in his character: but there to the right or to the left in his upright course. were all the noblest qualities which can dignify His was a character which we cannot look upon and adorn human nature, without the false glare but with love and his an example which we of those more dazzling properties which are frecannot contemplate without improvement. A quently but the lambent flames that play around good man must be always an object of reveren-putrescence. The humility, which worldly minds not facilitated by any whisper or devices for his own elevation. He was the free choice of the people: who with a noble impulse rendered homage to high excellence, without other thought than that of offering its highest suffrage to the virtue which it instinctively adored. rarely comprehend or appreciate, was singularly been a defeat. The reply of Gen. Taylor to characteristic of General Taylor, and in him it Santa Anna was as lofty and chivalrous as the was sublime: his gentleness of demeanor and last speech of Leonidas. Well did he deserve tenderness of heart relieved and set off his sterner to find undying honour on that field, when he lookqualities: his cordial and affectionate sympathy ed only for a soldier's grave with the honourable for his fellows, which were beautifully displayed inscription on his tomb: he died for his country in the Mexican campaign, were no result of mili-in discharge of a soldier's duty. tary policy, but sprung from the deep well of But a different fate was reserved for him. He human kindness in his heart: they had charac-survived the dangers of a desperate war to die terized him from his earliest days: he was equally in the arms of peace. We do not conceive that considerate and firm his coolness in danger Gen. Taylor's elevation to the Presidency added sprung from the perfect equilibrium of a self-sus-much either to his happiness or to his renown. tained, self-poised character: his intellect was He was a soldier, not a civilian: and in the new clear and unclouded, without being rapid: his trials and the new scenes with which he was patience was great; his endurance of all the not familiar, it was difficult for him to perceive hardships of military life was remarkable, and the real tendency of his measures, to learu either acccompanied at all times with cheerful hilarity: the wishes or the necessities of the people, or to he was without fear, but his courage was with-enforce his views without having them overruled out vanity or pride: when he had taken the po- in execution by those to whom they were consition which duty indicated, he calmly maintained fided. Moreover, a party was formed for him it, and was immovable as a rock in its preserva-even against his will, and it was difficult for his tion. When we consider the harmonious and felicitous union of these high and rare qualities. we cannot but deem him a good man, and we willingly think him a great one. plain sense and confiding temper to see the dangers which might lurk beneath the suggestions of his friends. The icy fingers of death have now snapped the cords which bound him: and when The glorious day of Buena Vista will render this or future generations may think upon his him immortal to all posterity, but that well fought memory, he will stand wholly severed and disfield was gained by the exercise of exactly the connected from any party and from all party same virtues which he had displayed in every movements. It will only be remembered that previous fight and in the whole tenor of his life."he bore his honours meekly;" that in his high The occasion was ampler, the result grander and office, he retained the purity, the integrity, the more important, but the presiding genius was the simplicity and the kindliness which characterized same. The opportunities, which might have him in his obscurity; and that he had a patriot's proved fatal, to any general of inferior temper, heart for the welfare of his whole country. In were more favorable: the light which was thrown this respect his death has perhaps been fortunate upon the action was brighter: the interest and for his fame. The acrimony of political warfare attention of his countrymen were more fully con- blights all that is scathed by its breath: now centrated upon it: but if that day had never Gen. Taylor, in the affections and charitable dawned General Taylor might have had less re- judgments of the people, will be estimated withnown, but he would not have had less title to re-out the distorted vision of party caprice. The It is not, however, this brilliant victory, clouds, which political dissension had spread though it has excited the admiration of the ablest around him, have already been lifted from his generals of the old world, and the universal pride fame: and as he descends into the tomb, he is of the American people, which attracts us so hailed as the Patriot President, the good man, much, as the bearing of the veteran conqueror. the gallant soldier, the hero of Buena Vista, the Abandoned, deserted, stripped of his best troops, sincere imitator of the virtues of Washington. coldly regarded by his government, without "re- But if in some respects his death may be deemserve to fall back on, without apparent hope, scan-ed fortunate for himself, it is all but fatal to bis tily supplied with munitions of war, or necessa- country. The angry dissensions and the fearful ries for his army, insulted by the unjust vote of schism, which were checked for a while by conCongress on his recent brilliant success, he await-fidence in him and his integrity, will now revive. ed the doom which he had reason to apprehend It would be too much to expect from political with the same cheerful tranquillity with which aspirants, that they should remember the warnhe would have anticipated certain victory. He ing, after the solemn pageant of death has passed had a duty to do, and he was satisfied to do it, by, and sacrifice either their ambitious hopes of without being solicitous of its result, or of the their sectional animosities to the manes of the applause of others. The victory of Buena Vista illustrious dead. What they refuse to their counwas as glorious as the day of Thermopyle, and try, they will hardly render to the shades of the it would have been scarcely less glorious if it had departed. The curtain has risen on the last act nown. of the drama. There is no longer the palliation | of mistake, or the hope which is bred of uncertainty. The great question must be speedily settled over the grave of Gen. Taylor, for weal or for woe. Heaven prosper the issue. In our melancholy task of doing honor to the good man who is gone, we cannot refrain from calling to mind the exquisite agonies to which that pure heart has been subjected during the brief term of his supremacy, by the harsh criticisms of the press and the bitter and malignaut judgments of Congressional orators. He had not been trained, by the long experience and reciprocation of calumny and vituperation, to estimate these things at their real worthlessness. But in his new trials, his tender and sensitive nature was subjected to the constant martyrdom which was inflicted without feeling and without thought, for the attainment of petty ends and personal aims. When we remember the services of General Taylor to his country-services beyond the reach of party question-and recollect the construction which was put upon his motives-and the ridicule which was showered out upon his character, conduct, and intellectwe cannot but deem it probable that those who TO PYRRHA. (Paraphrase from Horace.) BY J. A. TURNER. Oh! Pyrrha, nymph of pleasant caves Doth some lover, steeped in wine, He knows thee not, thou heartless one, Will ever mark thy constancy. Wretched they who know thee not BY THE REV. W. H. FOOTE. have indulged in such unjust denunciation are CORNSTALK, THE SHAWANEE CHIEF. not guiltless of his death. We fancy that in Gen. Taylor's last words there are indications of the hourly torment of his illustrious and unsought office. Can those, who have abused him, die with the same conscientious, manly, Christian avowal of a single eye to duty, which formed the last confession of the dying! His last words were the brief history of his life; for he, aloue among thousands, was one Quem non ambigui fasces, non mobile vulgus SONNET TO BRITAIN. BY THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. HALT! Shoulder arms! Recover! As you were! Right wheel! Eyes left! Attention! Stand at ease! O Britain! O my country! Words like these Have made thy name a terror and a fear To all the nations. Witness Ebro's banks, Assaye, Toulouse, Nivelle, and Waterloo, Where the grim despot muttered sauve qui peut! And Ney fed darkling.-Silence in the ranks! Inspired by these, amidst the iron crash Of armies in the centre of his troop The soldier stauds-unmovable not rashUntil the forces of the foeman droop; Then knocks the Frenchman to eternal smash, Pounding them into mummy. Shoulder, hoop! Bon Gaultier. There was a time when the name of Cornstalk thrilled every heart in West Virginia. Here and there among the mountains may be found an aged one, who remembers the terrors of Indian warfare as they raged on the rivers, and in the retired glens, west of the Blue Ridge, under that noted savage. Cornstalk was to the Indians of West Virginia, what Powhatan was to the tribes on the Sea Coast, the greatest and the last chief. At the time of his greatest power he lived west of the Ohio. His tribe, the Shawanees, built their towns on the Scioto and Muskingum. They had held part of the valley of the Shenandoah, but had retired at the approach of the whites. The first settlers in the valley found but few Indians, resident east of the Alleghany; and these few appeared the remains of once flourishing tribes, or as straggling companies from tribes farther West. A short time previous to the war of 1756, called Braddock's war, all the Indians disappeared from the Shenandoah, and for years never returned except for massacre or for plunder. The names of all the smaller tribes that were scattered over the country, from the Blue Ridge to the Ohio, cannot be gathered; and no historical fact of importance depends upon their preservation. There was a name applied to the collections of the tribes, but no one can tell whether it was generic, or from conquest, or confederacy, or the result of them all. The Regulars, and some companies of Militia from Eastern Indians called the Western, with whom the frontiers. The Shawanees intimidated by this they were continually at enmity, Massawomecs, force concluded a treaty on the Muskingum, and and described them as powerful and extending delivered up their prisoners, which were numefrom the Blue Ridge to the great Lakes. The rous, to return to desolated houses and murdered tribes under this general name passed away, families. With this introduction Cornstalk passes some to the South, to the Catawbas, some to the unobserved for a number of years; till as the reregions west of the Ohio, where they formed the ward of his bravery and management, in 1774 he powerful confederacy that under Cornstalk gave appears at the head of the great Confederacy of Virginians the most bloody battle in the annals Virginia Indians, West of the Ohio, to resent the of Southern and Western Colonial warfare. encroachments of the whites, or "long knives" as the Western Indians called the Virginia troops, and stop the current of emigration to the West. About the time of the settlement of the valley of the Shenandoah, the head waters of the Potomac, including the beautiful Valley, were the scene All savages seem to us alike as the trees of of fierce contests between the Catawbas from the the distant forest. Here and there one unites southern river of that name, and the Delawares in his own person, all the excellencies, and befrom the river of the same name at the North. comes the favourable representative of the whole, It was becoming, notwithstanding its beautiful the image of savage greatness, the one grand prairies and rivers, like Kentucky, "a dark and character in which all others are lost to history bloody ground." All traditions of battles, and or observation. Cornstalk possessed all the elethere are many in this region, relate to contests ments of savage greatness, oratory, statesmanbetween these tribes and their allies. They were ship and heroism, with beauty of person and fierce and relentless, and their battles bloody and strength of frame. In appearance he was maand cruel. For many years the whites in the jestic, in manners easy and winning. Of his oralower part of the Valley were undisturbed by tory, Colonel Benjamin Wilson, Senr., an officer savage depredations, while the first settlements, in Duumore's army, in 1774, having heard the on the upper end, experienced a bloody re-grand speech to Dunmore in Camp Charlotte, ception. says "I have heard the first orators in Virginia, Cornstalk, like other savages, has no youth in Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, but never history. We know nothing of his early training, have I heard one whose powers of delivery surand suppose it differed nothing from the disci- passed those of Cornstalk on that occasion." pline of the tribe, in its early exercises. The Of his statesmanship and bravery there is ample first we know of him, he led an expedition in evidence both in the fact that he was chosen 1763 against the inhabitants of Greenbrier, head of the Confederacy, and in the manner he and exterminated the infant Settlements. These conducted the war of 1774, and particularly by were on Muddy Creek and the Levels. It was his directions of the battle at Point Pleasant. a time of peace and profound security. The The Indians had abandoned the country east savages were received as on a friendly visit; and of the Ohio, and the whites had followed their after being feasted murdered all the males but one, retreat to the rivers that fall into that beautiful who being a little distance from the house, when stream. The attempts to form settlements in the carnage began, took the alarm and fled. The Kentucky alarmed the whole savage race; and women and children were carried away into the preparations to lay off for the soldiers in Bradslavery, but few of them being murdered. Corn-dock's war their bounty lands near the City of stalk passed on to Jackson's river, in Bath, and Louisville on the falls, exasperated them to the found the families on their guard by the alarm highest degree. A Confederacy was formed of given by the fugitive from the Levels. As they which Cornstalk was made the head. The imfled to Augusta, Cornstalk passed on to Carr's mediate apparent cause of hostilities was found Creek in Rockbridge, and massacred or took in the plunderings and murders perpetrated on prisoners many families. In the course of the the frontiers. The savages were incensed by year, the depredations were extended to the encroachments; the whites were jealous of the neighborhood of Staunton, with great ferocity. Indians, and many of them not averse to an outThe war was not general, as in the year 1655 break; causes of complaint arose on both sides, and onward, when numerous bands of Indians from individual wrong and suffering; some tratraversed the upper end of the Shenandoah Val- ders gave offence and were murdered; retalialey, the pastures of the Roanoke; but was more tion produced more murders; and murders probloody, as the country was taken unawares by voked retaliation. Before the war of 1774 was the Shawanees, who stood foremost as enemies ended there was a general conviction, in West of the Virginians. Colonel Bouquet was or- Virginia, that the Governor was less ignorant of dered to Fort Pitt with a regiment of British the designs of the savages, than his efforts to |