unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your heads, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer: gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here the wigwam blaze beanied on the tender and helpless, the council-fire glared on the wise and daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here; and, when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace.

Here, too, they worshipped; and from many a dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in every thing around.

He beheld him in the star that sunk in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his mid-day throne; in the flower that snapped in the morn. ing breeze; in the lofty pine, that defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid warbler, that never left its native grove; in the fearless eagle, whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his foot; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious Source he bent, in humble, though blind adoration.

And all this has passed away; Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted, forever, from its face a whole peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant.

Here and there, a stricken few remain; but how unlike their hold untamed, untameable progenitors! The Indian,

From tglance, and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man, when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.

*Pron. ca-noo'.

† Pron, faw-kn.

As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever.

Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of person they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people.

LESSON XXIII.

The Grare a place of rest.—MACKENZIE.

THE grave is a place where the weary are at rest. How scothing is this sentiment, "The weary are at rest!" There is something in the expression which affects the heart with uncommon sensations, and produces a species of delight, where tranquillity is the principal ingredient. The sentiment itself is extensive, and implies many particulars: it implies, not only that we are delivered from the troubling of the wicked, as in the former clause, but from every trouble and every pain, to which life is subjected.

Those, only, who have themselves been tried in affliction, can feel the full force of this expression. Others may be pleased with the sentiment, and affected by sympathy. The distressed are, at once, pleased and comforted. To be delivered from trouble-to be relieved from power-to see oppression humbled*-to be freed from care and pain, from sickness and distress-to lie down as in a bed of security, in a long oblivion of our woes-to sleep, in peace, without the fear of interruption-how pleasing is the prospect! how full of consolation!

*Pron. um'-bl'd.

The ocean may roll its waves, the warring winds may join their forces, the thunders may shake the skies,* and the lightnings pass, swiftly, from cloud to cloud: but not the forces of the elements, combined, not the sounds of thunders, nor of many seas, though they were united into one peal, and directed to one point, can shake the security of the tomb.

The dead hear nothing of the tumult; they sleep soundly; they rest from their calamities upon beds of peace. Conducted to silent mansions, they cannot be troubled by the rudest assaults, nor awakened by the loudest clamour. The unfortunate, the oppressed, the broken-hearted, with those that have languished on beds of sickness, rest here together: they have forgot their distresses; every sorrow is hushed, and every pang extinguished.

Hence, in all nations, a set of names have arisen to convey the idea of death, congenial with these sentiments, and all of them expressive of supreme felicity and consolation How does the human mind, pressed by real or imagined calamities, delight to dwell upon that awful event which leads to deliverance, and to describe and solicit it with the fairest flowers of fancy!

It is called the harbour of rest, in whose deep bosom the disastered mariner, who had long sustained the assaults of adverse storms, moors his wearied vessel, never more to return to the tossings of the wasteful ocean. It is called the

land of peace, whither the friendless exile retires, beyond the reach of malice and injustice, and the cruelest arrows of fortune. It is called the hospitable house, where the weather-beaten traveller, faint with traversing pathless deserts, finds a welcome and secure repose.

There no cares molest, no passions distract, no enemies defame; there agonizing pain, and wounding infamy, and ruthless revenge, are no more; but profound peace, and calm passions, and security which is immoveable. "There the wicked cease from troubling; there the weary are at rest! There the prisoners rest together! they hear not the voice of the oppressor! The small and the great are there,

and the servant is free from his master!"

* Pron. skeiz.

+ Pron. nuth-ing.

LESSON XXIV.

On the custom of planting flowers on the graves of departed friends.-BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

To 'scape from chill misfortune's gloom,
From helpless age and joyless years;
To sleep where flowerets round us bloom;-
Can such a fate deserve our tears?

Since, in the tomb, our cares, our woes,
In dark oblivion buried lie,
Why paint that scene of calm repose
In figures painful to the eye?

To die-what is in death to fear?
"Twill decompose my lifeless frame!
A Power, unseen, still watches near,
To light it with a purer flame.

And, when anew that flame shall burn,
Perhaps the dust, that lies enshrined,
May rise, a woodbine, o'er my urn,

With verdant tendrils round it twined.

How would the gentle bosom beat,

That sighs at death's resistless power,
A faithful friend again to meet

Fresh blooming in a fragrant flower!

The love, that in my bosom glows,
Will live when I shall long be dead,
And, haply, tinge some budding rose
That blushes o'er my grassy bed.

O, thou who hast so long been dear,
When I shall cease to smile on thee,
I know that thou wilt linger here,
With pensive soul, to sigh for me,

Thy gentle hand will sweets bestow,
Transcending Eden's boasted bloom;
Each flower with brighter tinis shall glow
When Love and Beauty seek my tomb

And, when the rose-bud's virgin breath
With fragrance fills the morning air,
Imagine me released from death,
And all my soul reviving there.

LESSON XXV.

Thoughts of a young man in the prospect of death.HENRY K. WHITE.

SAD, solitary Thought, who keep'st thy vigils,
Thy solemn vigils, in the sick man's mind,
Communing lonely with his sinking soul,
And musing on the dubious glooms that lie
In dim obscurity before him,-thee,
Wrapped in thy dark magnificence, I call
At this still, midnight hour, this awful season,
When, on my bed, in wakeful restlessness,
I turn me, wearisome. While all, around,

All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness,

I only wake to watch the sickly taper

Which lights me to my tomb.-Yes, 'tis the hand
Of death I feel press heavy on my vitals,
Slow-sapping the warm current of existence.
My moments now are few.-The sand of life
Ebbs fastly to its finish.-Yet a little,
And the last fleeting particle will fall,
Silent, unseen, unnoticed, unlamented.
Come, then, sad Thought, and let us meditate,
While meditate we may.-There's left us now
But a small portion of what men call time,
To hold communion; for, even now, the knife,
The separating knife, I feel divide

The tender bond that binds my soul to earth.
Yes, I must die-I feel that I must die;

And though, to me, life has been dark and dreary,
Though hope, for me, has smiled but to deceive,
And disappointment marked me as her victim,
Yet do I feel my soul recoil within me,
As I contemplate the dim gulf of death,

The shuddering void, the awful blank-futurity.