the dim candle that stood by his bedside, she beheld rather than heard the faint "God bless you, mother," that quivered on his lips. Something more he murmured, but she only indistinctly heard the words "humble hope," when a bright smile gleamed over his face, and with that celestial light upon his countenance, he died.

21. The childless widow looked upon him long and earnestly, ere she knelt down by the bedside to weep and pray; she could hardly believe that he was gone, so gentle had been the dreaded separation of body and soul; never had she seen the departing spirit exhale itself so peacefully from its tenement of clay. And it did not seem possible, in the nature of things, that her last and youngest should lie there a corpse, while she stood by, with her silver hair, bent figure, and wrinkled cheek, like one whose proper hour had long since come, and who had nothing more to do on earth.

22. But when she did realize he was dead, she uttered no shrieks, no bitter wailings of despair, for she felt that she had no cause; yet she wept when she felt her own loneliness, when she looked on his youth, and thought what he might have been to her old age. But at last her sobs grew less frequent, the voice of her prayer grew stronger, and the Spirit of God came upon her in peace and resignation.

23. She rose to look again upon the face of the departed, and to close the dull eye, where alone death looked ghastly. Then she gazed on the pale brow, so lately throbbing with pain, and now so calm; and the mouth, about which lingered the seraphic smile of dissolution; and she parted the fair locks on his forehead, till the chill of death struck to her fingers, and the struggle between the sickness of her heart, and the faith that endureth all things, became too strong to be borne: then she walked away, with a tottering step, to her own straw pallet, whispering fervently as she went, "My God! oh, forsake me not! help me yet a little longer to bear this sorrow!"

24. Towards the gray of the morning, a short and broken sleep, full of dreams, came upon each widow. But the visions of the one were of horror and dismay; scenes of blood and violence thickened round her; or she went through dark dungeons to visit some wretched prisoner, whose dimly-seen features were but too familiar, or she be held the tall gibbet start up before her eyes, in some wellknown spot, where her children sported round her; and in

each wild dream, one face and figure still haunted her, till she woke only to shriek and shudder, as consciousness of the dreadful reality rushed over her mind.

25. But peace waved her angel wings over the humble roof of the poor widow, though death was within her doors; the spirits of the departed came round her pillow, with bright and happy faces; the voices of those she loved rung in her ears, and her dreams were of Heaven and blessed things. She, too, woke to affliction tempered with hope and resignation; and great was the contrast between the sorrow which had that night fallen on the two dwellings.

LESSON CVII.

Antediluvian Occupations.

1. I HAVE Wondered, in former days, at the patience of the Antediluvian world; that they could endure a life almost millenary, with so little variety as seems to have fallen to their share. It is probable that they had much fewer employments than we.

2. Their affairs lay in a narrower compass; their libraries were indifferently furnished; philosophical researches were carried on with much less industry and acuteness of penetration; and fiddles, perhaps, were not even invented.

3. How, then, could seven or eight hundred years of life be supportable? I have asked this question formerly, and been at a loss to resolve it; but I think I can answer it now.

4. I will suppose myself born a thousand years before Noah was born or thought of. I rise with the sun; I worship; I prepare my breakfast; I swallow a bucket of goat'smilk, and a dozen of good sizable cakes.

5. I fasten a new string to my bow, and my youngest boy, a lad of about thirty years of age, having played with my arrows till he has stripped off all the feathers, I find myself obliged to repair them.

6. The morning is thus spent in preparing for the chase, and it has become necessary that I should dine-I dig up roots; I wash them; I boil them; I find them not done enough; I boil them again; my wife is angry; we dispute; we settle the point; but meantime the fire goes out, and must be kindled again.

7. All this is very amusing. I hunt; I bring home the prey; with the skin of it I mend an old coat, or I make a new one. By this time the day is far spent ; I feel myself fatigued, and retire to rest.

8. Thus, what with tilling the ground, and eating the fruit of it, hunting, and walking, and running, and mending old clothes, and sleeping, and rising again, I can suppose an inhabitant of the primeval world so occupied, as to sigh over the shortness of life, and to find, at the end of many centuries, that they had all slipped through his fingers, and were passed away like a shadow.

LESSON CVIII.

The Murderer.

[A part of the argument of the counsel for the Commonwealth, on the trial of Francis Knapp, charged with being accessory to the mur der of Joseph White, Esq., an aged citizen of Salem, Mass.]

Gentlemen of the Jury,

Though I could well have wished to shun this occasion, I have not felt at liberty to withhold my professional assistance, when it is supposed that I might be in some degree useful in investigating and discovering the truth respecting this most extraordinary murder. It has seemed to be a duty, incumbent on me, as on every other citizen, to do my best, and my utmost, to bring to light the perpetrators of this crime.

2. Against the prisoner at the bar, as an individual, I cannot have the slightest prejudice. I would not do him the smallest injury or injustice. But I do not affect to be indifferent to the discovery, and the punishment, of this deep guilt. I cheerfully share in the opprobrium, how much soever it may be, which is cast on those who feel and manifest an anxious concern, that all who had a part in planning, or a hand in executing, this deed of midnight assassination may be brought to answer for their enormous crime, at the bar of public justice.

In some

3. Gentlemen, it is a most extraordinary case. respects, it has hardly a precedent any where; certainly none in our New England history. This bloody drama exhibited no suddenly excited, ungovernable rage. The actors in it were not surprised by any lion-like temptation, springing

upon their virtue, and overcoming it, before resistance could begin. Nor did they do the deed to glut savage vengeance, or satiate long-settled and deadly hate.

4. It was a cool, calculating, money-making murder. It was all hire and salary, not revenge." It was the weighing of money against life; the counting out of so many pieces of silver against so many ounces of blood. An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mere pay. Truly, here is a new lesson for painters and poets.

5. Whosoever shall hereafter draw the portrait of Murder, if he will show it as it has been exhibited in one example, where such example was last to have been looked for, in the very bosom of our New England society, let him not give it the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with settled hate, and the blood-shot eye, emitting livid fires of malice.

6. Let him draw, rather, a decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon; a picture in repose rather than in action; not so much an example of human nature, in its depravity, and in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal nature, a fiend, in the ordinary display and developement of his character.

7. The deed was executed with a degree of self-possession and steadiness equal to the wickedness with which it was planned. The circumstances, now clearly in evidence, spread out the whole scene before us. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof,-a healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet;—the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace.

8. The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges without noise; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him.

9. The room was uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a

struggle, or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death!

10. It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard! To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it, as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder,-no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and

it is safe!

11. Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds every thing as in the splendor of noon,—such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection even by men.

12. True it is, generally speaking, "that murder will out." True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of Heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest cir cumstance into a blaze of discovery.

13. Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God or man.

14. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no assistance or sympathy, either from heaven or earth. The secret whien the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and like