for Logan,' may be made of the whole race, and find not a sympathizing reply.

Their actions may outlive, but their oratory we think must survive their fate. It contains many attributes of true eloquence. With a language too barren, and minds too free for the rules of rhetoric, they still attained a power of touching the feelings, and a sublimity of style which rival the highest productions of their more cultivated enemies. Expression apt and pointed - language strong and figurative-comparisons rich and bold-descriptions correct and picturesque-and gesture energetic and graceful, were the most striking peculiarities of their oratory. The latter orations, accurate mirrors of their character, their bravery, immoveable stoicism, and native grandeur, heightened as they are in impressiveness by the melancholy accompaniment of approaching extermination, will be as enduring as the swan-like music of Attic and Roman eloquence, which was the funeral song of the liberties of those republics.

TO THE DUST OF CAXTON.

DREAD pioneer of thought! source of the flood

Of musty tomes through which we wade or flounder-
Dust of the mighty founder of all types,

Now but the shattered type of their great founder -

Revisit thou the 'glimpses of the moon!'

That is, evolve, instanter, from thy narrow box!"
Rise, mouldering mummy, prick thy clay-stopped ears,
While I essay to prove thine art a paradox.

Now I'll suppose thee present, and begin
To argue pro. and con., the good and evil-
How much it has repressed or aided sin,

And strike a balance for or 'gainst the devil.

For though I will confess it hath achieved

High deeds against the Prince of pandemonium,
Who can deny its having salved his wounds,
With many a ream of flattering encomium?

Caxton, by thy great engine Error's tribe

Have been to countless myriads multiplied;
But it hath also forged Truth's two-edged sword,
By which all sophists are bemauled and stultified.

Voltaire, Paine, Gibbon, Mirabeau, have found
Means through its aid the living God to libel,

While through the gladdened earth the self same source
Hath sent their crushing conqueror- the Bible.

Upon the press hangs poised the moral world,
Of which it forms the intellectual lever-
Swaying it to and fro, with fearful sweep,
And oftimes putting nations in a fever.

It shaketh down a monarch from his throne,
Even as an earthquake topples down a steeple,
And on the site of despotism builds

A firmer fane, whose pillars are the people.

And deeds like these alone, immortal one!
Out-balance all the manifold abuses
Of thy great art, and make mankind forget
The trash that issues from its minor sluices.

A CHAPTER ON CHANGES, SCHOOL-KEEPING, ETC.

WHEREIN IS ILLUSTRATED THE TRUTH OF THE OLD ADAGE, A ROLLING STONE GATHERS NO MOSS.'

At

OMNIFICIENT-ay, gentle reader, that's the epithet peculiarly applicable to myself. I am literally an omnificient — a doer of all things in the whole category of human tasks, mental and manual. Until eighteen, it was my lot to form a practical familiarity with the soil of NewEngland, wielding the ax and the sickle upon its quiet hills, and like the peasant-bard of a similar land, magna componere parvis, solacing my toil the while by such idylls as boyhood may fashion to the idols of its first love. At that mercurial period, I began to feel the centrifugal mania so peculiar to the migratory sons of the pilgrims, and accordingly, leaving the plough to rest in mid furrow, I embarked on board a privateer bound to the Pacific. A sailor-boy is a factotum - all things to 'all hands'-called here, sent there, and damned every where. least I found it so; but I bore it martyrly, nevertheless — rejoicing even in that harsh opportunity to see the world and the world's wonders. Curiosity kept my spirits always on the wing, and enabled me, by a cheerful alacrity of obedience, to win my way at length into the good graces of all the crew. During our voyage, we fetched a girdle round the globe, not in the forty minutes' of merry Puck, but the forty months of the Farmers' Almanac,' in the lapse of which I saw the marvels of many lands and many seas, and gazed on strange forms and faces, and witnessed strange customs, and mingled in the commotion of warring elements, and the fiercer commotion of warring men. Satisfied with the perils and hardships of the sea, I doffed the tarpaulin, and donned the student's cassock, and after thridding the regular cycle of lectures, dissections, and hospital attendance, I took rooms in New-Orleans, as a practising physician. The horrors of the yellow fever soon encompassed me, and though the first too selfish fears prompted a recoil from impending danger, thanks to the mastery of our better nature, I remained true to the awful responsibility of my profession. With an energy and even recklessness for which I never could account, I threw myself into the fearful arena, and grappled unfalteringly with the appalling pestilence. Day after day, and night after night, found me ministering, often unaided, at the dainty couch of the dying planter, or the squalid pallet of his stricken slave, till the doomed of the destroyer were numbered, and his march of desolation stayed. Even now, after the lapse of years, that scene of horror is before me in all the distinctness of present perception. Once more I breathe the sultry atmosphere which shrouded the devoted city by day, and feel the chill mist which crept gloomily along its deserted streets by night, whose silence was ever broken, not by the hum of social voices, but the roar of alligators and other unquiet reptiles from the neighboring bayous. Again I hear the rumbling of the lonely hearse, as it wound its unknelled way to the frightful Golgotha, where the dead of all ages and conditions- rich and poor, bond and free were gathered to promiscuous burial. Again I behold the rose and the dimple pass from the cheek of beauty, and give place to that sudden emaciation, and that ghastly aspect as of incarnate mahogany, so peculiar to this terrific disease. Again I witness the muscular fulness of vigorous manhood shrink, in one brief

hour, to the unearthly gauntness of a skeleton, while the mind yet remained sane and unscathed, amid the ruins of its shattered tenement. Again I listen to the merry catch of the dying creole, or the mournful Madre purissima of the expiring Spaniard, as it breaks the startling stillness of the deserted death-chamber. Again I bend my ear to the last behest of the calm New-Englander, who had wandered from the home of his childhood, to find a nameless grave by the father of rivers.' The scene through which I had just passed was too much for me; I shuddered at the thought of its recurrence, and speedily arranging my affairs, I left the practice of my profession to men of firmer nerves, and departed for New-York by way of the Ohio.

Disembarking at Cincinnati, I set off on foot to explore the caverns of Kentucky and Virginia. Travelling later than usual one evening, I lost my way in the midst of one of those extensive forests which still skirt many of the western cities. After wandering about for some time, on turning a precipitous ridge which obstructed my course, I came suddenly upon one of those singular gatherings of the church militant called camp-meetings. Before me stretched a grove of tall pines, beneath whose dark foliage, and in striking contrast with the same, were pitched numerous white tents, in a regular circle, embracing a level area of several acres in extent, entirely devoid of under-brush, and carpeted with the fallen tresses of the overhanging boughs. On one side of this enclosure, several feet from the ground, appeared a plain lodge, quadrangularly formed of rough boards nailed to the standing trees, with a pulpit in front, and benches around the sides for the elders and ministers who were to address the audience. From this spot to various points of the enclosure, stretched, in diverging lines, the straight boles of lofty pines felled for the occasion, across whose prostrate length, with the interspace of here and there a long-drawn aisle,' were laid the rude seats of those hardy worshippers. Innumerable lamps were suspended on all sides of the encampment, blending their flickering light with the glare of pine torches from the several tents where the evening's repast was in preparation; while millions of fire-flies shot like tiny meteors along the dark openings of the surrounding forests, and the eyes of the sleepless stars looked in as if to witness the devotions of that primeval temple.

·

As I paused to survey the wonderful scene, the wild howl of a wolf rang through the shuddering air, and a moment after, a fawn shot past me, and bounding into the enclosure, dropped down panting and exhausted in one of the open aisles. This singular incident was succeeded by a dead silence, which was presently interrupted by the voice of the reverend speaker, who had just finished the last discourse of the evening, and was about reading the concluding hymn. Welcome,' said the aged man, with compassionate emotion, welcome, poor weary and persecuted wanderer, to the refuge and the rest ye seek not here in vain! Ye did well to flee hither from thy ravenous pursuer, for thereby have thy days been lengthened, and ye shall yet range through the green places of the wilderness, where the hand of God bringeth forth the tender herb and the pleasant watercourse, even for creatures such as ye. Pilgrims of the world,' continued he, turning to his hushed auditory, shall the beasts that perish be wiser in their day and generation than ye, who were fashioned after the image of the All-wise? Flee to the fold of God! The wild

pigeon shrinks to her covert at the scream of the wood-hawk, and the
roe-buck bounds fleetly from the yell of the panther; while ye, who
are encompassed with many foes, having eyes, see not, and ears, hear
Wot ye not that ye, like
not, or heed not the voice of the prowler.
that poor panting hind, are hunted up and down in this dark wilderness
of the world? Flee to the fold of God! Doth not temptation haunt
your footsteps, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof?
Doth not remorse dart his fiery arrows into your bleeding hearts at
every turn? Doth not conscience smite ye with its avenging sword,
whenever ye turn a deaf ear to the warnings of the still small voice?
Do not the cares of the world, its vanity and
Flee to the fold of God!
vexation of spirit, surround ye, when ye rise up, and when ye lie
dream dreams? Flee to the fold of God! Is
down, yea,
and when ye
not death the ever-present shadow of your earthliness, and doth not the
-the mighty Nimrod of your priceless
prince of the power of the air
souls-track your guilty steps along this pilgrimage of sin? O flee,
then, fellow-sinners, flee to the fold of God, wherein ye shall surely
find a refuge and a rest!'

Vain were the attempt to depict the scene which followed this thrilling peroration. The sighs, the sobs, the groans, the hysteric shrieks of terrified females, and indeed the convulsive shudder of the whole assemor memory, if he has ever bly, I leave to the reader's imagination witnessed a spectacle so thrilling. After the first burst of feeling had a little subsided, the tremulous yet not unmusical voice of the late speaker was heard, chanting that striking hymn:

eye every

'Stop, poor sinner! stop and think,

Before you farther go;

Will you sport upon the brink

Of everlasting wo?'

One listener after another joined in the rising strain, till presently ten thousand voices were blended in swelling symphony. I have listened to the midnight peal of the roused ocean, and trembled amid the thunders of Niagara; but never was my heart so hushed to breathlessness, as by the living chorus of that solemn anthem. The place, the scene, and the music of that vast choir, filling the midnight depths of the mute forest with echoes of terrible warning, were all calculated to make a vivid impression, even on a mind the most obdurate. I sunk down upon my bended knees, awe-struck and overpowered. It seemed to me that every and voice were directed to myself, in eager impetration to fly from the brink of the dread abyss to which hope never comes, that comes to all.' The services closed with the hymn, the worshippers slowly retired to their respective tents, and silence and sleep resumed their quiet empire; but there I remained, riveted to the earth, faint, moYet not alone, for the voice of a mysterious presence tionless, and alone. kept whispering in my ear, Flee to the fold of God!' and ever the monitory Stop!' of that thrilling hymn rung like a trump from heaven through the chambers of my smitten heart. I bowed myself to the earth, and there all night long, amid the gloom of that lonely forest, and the moan of its solemn pines, gazed on the phantoms of mis-spent hours, imploring light to my darkened spirit, energy to subdue its fiery passions, strength to unmask the specious vanities of the world, and wisdom to forego its momentary pleasures for the unimaginable cycle of

an eternal beatitude, till morning dawned upon my solemn vigil, and found me blest with that inward peace which seems the antepast of heaven.

At the close of the ensuing year, I entered upon the sublime duties of the ministry; but a keen sense of its awful responsibilities, heightened by a subsequent conviction of my unworthiness for the office, operating on a morbid despondency of mind inherited from my mother, compelled me at length to abandon the sacred calling for some other more appropriate to my imperfect nature. In the course of my theological studies, I had been led collaterally into those of civil jurisprudence, and chancing to read the life of Sir William Jones about this period, the moral grandeur of his almost faultless character influenced me to adopt the profession he had so highly adorned, and I entered on the requisite course of study without delay. Some few months subsequent to my admission to the bar, I was engaged as assistant advocate in the cause of a good old man, whose only daughter, young, innocent, and unsuspecting, the idol of his widowed heart, and the living image of her for whom that heart still bled, had been lured from his fond endearments, and afterward discarded, and abandoned to infamy by her fiendish betrayer. The wretch was but little older than herself; yet from early precocity in vice, he had already gathered to his soul the dark experience of grayhaired licentiousness.

Like all men of the world,' he had studied the gentler sex with long and patient assiduity-their keen sensibilities, their delicate tastes, and their passionate devotedness of affection-till, by a fiendish perspicacity of evil, he had scrutinized all their weaknesses, and explored those sunny avenues through which the blandishments of masked sen. suality seek entrance to the paradise of woman's love. If there is one crime for which Justice herself can find no adequate retribution, it is that of seduction-cold, calculating, crafty, and deliberate seduction. The knife of the assassin but anticipates the lingering stroke of the inevitable destroyer, hastening the chill of the grave upon this sensible warm being, and speeding the unshrived spirit to its last account; but the contamination of the betrayer falls like a hopeless leprosy upon soul and body, consigning the one to loathsomeness, and the other to a carking and protracted torture, for which earth has no solace but the numbness of dissipation, and which the hope of eternal forgiveness, bought by the bitter tears of contrition, can scarcely alleviate. The betrayer of friendship is haunted by the finger of scorn; the needy defaulter is visited by the dungeon, and the inappealable verdict of public reproach; but what should be the retribution of him who, by the gilded pretences of honorable love, wins the priceless treasure of a confiding heart, to gratify a fiendish vanity, or pamper a reckless and accursed sensuality! Educated in New-England, where this dark crime is almost unknown among the stern descendants of the sterner pilgrims, I entered into the bitter feelings of the distracted parent, with a yearning sympathy, and a resoluteness of purpose, which such a cause might well inspire. Alas! for my precipitate ardor, we were destined to be nonsuited; for when the trial came on, the defendant's counsel seized upon a flaw in the indictment, and his remorseless client was suffered to escape, notwithstanding the most damning proofs of his guilt, corroborated by the collateral evidence of a life of notorious licentiousness. Turning from the crowded