fierce comets swept across our skies, and hurricanes of sleet and snow desolated Massachusetts and Long Island; but the chief alarm that brooded over men's minds was the consciousness that the earth beneath them was in commotion. From every part of the country news came to New York and Philadelphia that the land was being shaken by an earthquake.' left them to die; and hundreds who might have | It was an ominous year, a year of terror, when been saved by proper care perished unassisted. Robbers roamed through the deserted streets of Messina, and for a long time it was unsafe to venture within its walls. By the sudden death of so large a part of the population great changes took place in the distribution of property. Persons who had lived in poverty became suddenly heirs to large estates; whole families were swept away; and distant relations inherited fortunes of which they had never any expectation. The wealthy suffered oftener than the poor, and those who lived in hovels were more fortunate than the tenants of pal aces. The first shock occurred December 16, at about half past two o'clock in the morning. At Washington houses were shaken, and doors and windows rattled, men grew sick and giddy, and furniture trembled in the rooms. A great alarm arose, and it was feared that a more danCalabria rests upon a foundation of granite gerous shock must follow. At Richmond the rocks, covered with a deep soil, seamed with bells rang in the houses, and the people rose in fertilizing springs, and undulating with sandy terror. At Columbia, South Carolina, houses hills. It is supposed that the earthquake struck rocked and quivered; the State House shook the granite surface with a sudden blow; the to its foundations, and the plaster fell from its ground above crumbled and melted away; the walls. At Charleston a rumbling sound was sandy hills were riven and thrown down into heard like distant thunder, and the bell in St. the valleys; the buildings of the cities were Philip's steeple was rung by invisible hands. tossed into heaps together; and thus the de- In Savannah there were flashes of light and a struction was more complete than that of any subterranean roar. In Louisville four shocks other earthquake; for the houses were not only were observed; houses were vigorously shaken; thrown down, but the whole site of the city was chimneys fell, and life was in evident danger. broken up and displaced. The deep roar of the The earthquake extended over Ohio, MichiOfake seemed to roll onward from Messi-gan, and Illinois; the Indians told how they city was the granite foundations of the land, had seen the lakes boiling and foaming amidst Calabria is and Dolomieu believed that the prairies; and the fresh springs of Kentucky description. Its a passage through the cav- were tainted with sulphur. mous olive-trees, i across the Sicilian straits, and were laden with explosion had been occa1 Humboldt, Kosmos. f the volcano coming in 2 Istoria, etc., de' Trerwaters of the interior. epoca nel!' istoria d'Italiaalmost every part of the But the vigor of our earthquake seemed to expend itself in the low valley of the Mississippi. The bed of the river was violently dis 1 Mitchill, New York Lit. and Phil. Trans., i. p. 231 3 Dolomieu, Pink. Voysaken by an earthquake. et seq. turbed, and beat against the keels of passing of richly robed priests; the air was heavy with vessels; the water rose in wild tides or eddies; the scent of costly incense; the tall arches and trees and logs came up from the bottom of the well-wrought naves re-echoed to the song of stream; boats were tossed about as if on the choristers and the prayers of the devout; when ocean. On all sides the alluvial plain was in a moment the earthquake came with a roar shaken, cracked, and distorted; here rising like the sound of thousands of cannon. The several feet, and there sinking to an unusual terrified people saw the stone arches and pillars, depth; now opening into deep caverns, and the fretted roofs and towering steeples, hurled now rising into little hills. At New Madrid, upon them from above, and were all crushed a small town situated on a bend in the river, to death by the fall of the sacred buildings. families were roused from their sleep by the "I was there at the time the dreadful catasrocking of their houses and the falling chim- trophe happened," said a traveler, "and esneys, and fled to the fields for safety. A dull, caped by running from the house into a large sulphureous air brooded over the place. The court-yard in which nothing could fall on me, shocks came rapidly in succession; the land on where I remained until the danger was over. which the town was built sank twelve feet; and the citizens, afraid to venture back to their homes, remained all winter encamped upon the high ground. Along the prairies a constant undulation went on; lakes were raised into uplands; dry land became lakes; and fountains of sand and water gushed from the riven soil.1 But this was all. No lives were lost; no lasting injury followed the great earthquake. New York and Philadelphia probably did not feel the shock. Its chief vigor was shown in the alluvial regions of the Mississippi, as if it were too feeble to shake the solid rock. The next year, January 23, 1812, the earthquake was felt anew. Richmond and Charleston were again shaken; Pittsburg felt a strong shock, and the people ran screaming from their tottering houses as if it were in Chili or Peru. The earth continued to tremble along the Mississippi at intervals until 1813. New Madrid seemed a centre of disturbance, and its people were often encamped in the woods; fissures six feet wide opened in the solid land; the river banks were constantly falling in; it is said that in some places the stream made for itself new openings, and that the earthquake gave a new direction to the Mississippi. At length, however, a guardian Providence stilled the fiery waves of the restless earth, and from that time the valley of the great river has rested in comparative peace. Meanwhile the earthquake, which had sported so gently with the cities of our dawning republic, had expended its fiercest rage on the lands of the south. On the 26th of March, 1812, Caracas fell to the earth smitten by a terrible shock. It was a beautiful city of Venezuela; its climate charming, its landscape rich with the wild luxuriance of the tropics, its streets lined with tall churches and houses, and its people wealthy and gay. They had no thought of danger. The air was soft, the sky clear, the sea flowed calm and low, and the gay people, clothed in their richest dress, had thronged to their forty churches to celebrate a solemn religious festival. There were gorgeous processions, noble music, and the chant 1 Mitchill, id., p. 292, 297, et seq., can not decide as to whether the earthquake was felt in Philadelphia. VOL. XXXVIII.-No. 226.-31 ויי The earthquake came from the east. On its first approach it appeared as though there was a discharge of thousands of cannon in the neighborhood of the unfortunate city; a moment afterward the ground rose nearly a foot and a half, and rolled in waves of about that height for two seconds. The earthquake altogether continued for a minute and a half, during which time it prostrated more than two-thirds of the houses, and rendered the rest uninhabitable; killed one-half of the inhabitants, and wounded many others. The boldest imagination and the most vigorous pen, it was said, could not paint the dismal scene. Words could not describe it; no intellect could grasp the awful idea. Amidst the crash of falling houses and churches was heard on all sides the cries: "My wife! My husband! My child! My sister! My brother! Where are they? They are dead! They have perished!" La Guayra, a neighboring city, perished at the same moment with Caracas. "When the first shock occurred," said a resident of the town, "I ran out of my house-a tall building of several stories-and in my amazement I turned round and beheld it rocking like a cradle, while the roaring of the earthquake, the screams of the people, and the crashing of perhaps a thousand buildings, made the scene horrible beyond description." Such are some of the traits of the earthquake in history: its fearful aspect, its unannounced approach, its inscrutable origin, its awful voice, the wide ruin it occasions, and its continuous shocks; the horrors of its tidal wave, the fury of its hurricane, have made it in every age the terror and the scourge of those lovely lands in which it delights to linger. Without it they would indeed be a terrestrial paradise, and with it they are Edens haunted by the demon. all the scent of the orange flowers and the perpetual glory of his gardens; not the charm of his dewy skies, the swift succession of his evergolden days, the glitter of his gentle stars; not the magnificence of his treasure-laden cities, nor the boundless wealth of his fertile clime, can ever take away from the Peruvian the consciousness that his dread destroyer is always Not 1 Mitchill, New York Lit. and Phil. Trans., i. p. 309. 2 New York Lit. and Phil. Trans., i. p. 313. near; and at the first tremor of the uncertain | sons come with their wonted regularity, and land the cities are filled with terror; the people fly to the fields; home, ease, and grandeur are abandoned and forgotten; the intellectual and the feeble-minded, the weak and the strong, tremble together, or when the danger is over burst into a wild mood of insane hilarity. Will the earthquake in all its terrors ever visit us? Will our cities ever be shorn of their prosperity, reduced to heaps of crumbling ruins, and made as desolate as deserted Messina? Must our teeming ports be swept by great tidal waves, while their gay and busy throngs are hurried far into the deep, and sea-monsters sport in their shattered mansions? Is New York ever to be humbled as was commercial Lisbon in the last century, or Pittsburg and Chicago tossed from their foundations like the wealthy cities of the Calabrian plain? Must San Francisco become a new Callao, and sink into a mound of sand beneath the raging waves of the treacherous Pacific? If we have ever for a moment entertained such fears, history at once reassures us. History, mother of science, points to the unchanging unity of nature. Man and his creations vary, fade, and die. Great empires fall before moral revolutions; wealthy cities sink into solitudes with the revulsions of commerce and the alterations in the course of trade; nations that were once strong in intellect and vigorous with the elements of progress have become the prey of savages and barbarians; and all that is human is liable to change. Not so the Divine work. The laws of nature are immutable. From age to age the monsoons have blown across the Indian seas, and the Gulf-stream pierced the Atlantic with its tepid wave; the stars rise and set as they did of old; the sea summer feeds us every year as it fed the Assyrians and the Greeks; the ocean keeps its appointed bounds; the tides ebb and flow with calm monotony; and the great sun, whether gas or fire, cloud or comet, is always the same to us. And hence history assures us that even the terrible earthquake is bound by the unchanging laws of nature to a single path, from which it is not permitted to diverge. And history marks out upon the map of the world where that path lies. It is one so nicely defined and delicately drawn as to produce the most striking distinctions; yet it is as clear as the Gulf-stream and regular as the monsoons. Rome and Naples, for example, lie close to the path of the earthquake, and have been subject to slight shocks for centuries, yet they are probably as safe as London or Paris; Messina lies above the path, and has been torn by frequent convulsions. It winds sinuously under the seas, visiting certain islands with disaster and wholly sparing others. It penetrates to the northern latitude of Niphon, Kamchatka, and the Arctic mountains; it reaches to Lower California. Yet San Francisco is as safe as Rome or Florence, and the North Pacific shore as the coast of England. History, in fact, assures us that ours is not one of the lands of the earthquake; that our exemption from its terrors is as certain as that the seasons will not vary or the summer fail to come; that maternal nature has sheltered us from the destroyer that we may enjoy her gifts at leisure and unfold her vast resources by incessant toil; and that He who holds the earthquake in check has ordained that we may do His work unimpeded by the perpetual horror that broods over other lands. One from all the rest I single, Not for brighter mouth or eyes, Not for being sweet and simple, Not for being sage and wise: With my whole full heart I loved him, And therein my secret lies. Cheeks as brown as sun could kiss them, All in careless homespun dressed, Eager for the romp or wrestle, Just a rustic with the rest: Who shall say what love is made of? 'Tis enough I loved him best. Haply, Effie loved me better- Stealing round me unaware; Haply, so did willful Annie, With the tender eyes and mouth, And the languors and the angers Of her birth-land of the South: Still my darling was my darling"I can love," I said, "for both." So I left the pleasure-places, Gayest, gladdest, best of allHedge-row mazes, lanes of daisies, Bluebirds' twitter, blackbirds' callFor the robbing of the crow's nest, For the games of race and ball. So I left my book of poems Lying in the hawthorn's shade, Milky flowers sometimes for hours Drifting down the page unread: "He has found a better poet; I will read with him," I said. Thus he led me, hither, thither, To his young heart's wild content, Where so surly, and so curly, With his black horns round him bent, Fed the ram that ruled the meadowFor where'er he called I went: Where the old oak, black and blasted, Trembled on his knotty knees, Where the nettle teased the cattle, Where the wild crab-apple trees Blushed with bitter fruit to mock us"Twas not I that was to please: Where the ox, with horn for pushing, First and last and best of all. When before the frowning master One day, when the lowering storm-cloud Like a swimmer, he lay down, Where a sudden notch before us Seemed the very air to fill: Pointing over to the shoulders Of the head-stones, white and high, Said I, in his bright face looking, "Think you you shall ever lie In among those weeping-willows?" "No!" he said, "I can not die!" "Can not die? my little darling, "Tis the way we all must go!" Then, the bold, bright spirit in him Setting all his cheek aglow, He repeated still the answer, "I shall never die, I know!" "Wait and think. On yonder hill-side Since we sat within the elm shade From my arms, so closely clasping, ME MY ENEMY'S DAUGHTER. CHAPTER IX. LILLA WOULD SERVE ME. EANWHILE I am free to own that I liked the company of my pretty pagan; indeed it brightened life very much to me. When I was most lonely and unfriended these people had been strangely kind to me, and our common poverty and struggles made us-I was almost about to say unnaturally-certainly unusually familiar and friendly. Of course no young man of my age could ever be wholly indifferent to the company of a pretty and attractive girl; and I really grew quite fond of Lilla. I was not in the least in love with her; nor did she, I feel assured, ever think of me in the light of a possible lover; but we were very friendly and familiar, and indeed, in a sort of quiet, confident way, attached to each other. "Love? Nonsense! and we could call for you and take you with "Then I hope no friend of mine will fall in love with you.' "You ought to have told me all this before, Lilla. How do you know what agony you may A happy Bohe-be inflicting on my heart?" mian independence of public opinion emanci- I thought she would have laughed at this, but pated our movements. She and I generally she looked at me quite gravely, and even symwalked out together on Sundays in the desolate pathetically. suburbs, or across the swamp which was undergoing slow conversion into a park. Sometimes, as I came home in the evening after giving some music-lessons-or, for that matter, tuning a piano-I met her going toward town, and I turned back and walked with her. Much amazed I used to be at first by her close knowledge of the shortest way to get every where, and of every shop where the best things to eat, or wear, or drink were to be had at the lowest possible prices. Our talk was generally lively enough; but there were days when I became so saddened by my memories and my dull prospects that I really could not brighten; and then Lilla, in order to encourage me, told me all kinds of stories of her own occasional trials and distresses, as well as of people she had known, who, having been reduced to the very depths of despair, fell in with some lucky fortune, and were raised at once to high position and afflu ence. Most of those stories, to be sure, were told of young women reduced to serve in shops, whom some men of enormous wealth fell in love with and married; so that I could scarcely derive much encouragement from their application to my own personal condition. But it was easy to see with what a horizon fortune had bounded poor Lilla's earthly ambition. She had no genius for any work that did not directly conduce to personal adornment, and she had a very strong desire for wealth and ease. "My only chance," she said frankly one day, "is to marry somebody who has money. I am sick of this place and this life. If I married a rich green-grocer even, I should be far, far happier than I am. I should have a home for my mother, and a cart to drive about in on Sundays, when the green-grocer did not want it for his business; and then mother and I would leave him at home on the Sundays to smoke in the back-kitchen while we went out for a drive; "Ah, no!" she said, quietly; "you are safe enough-from me at least; I can see that." "Why, Miss Lyndon? Pray tell me.” "Don't ask me; but don't think me a fool. Have I not eyes? Can't I see that your heart is gone long ago in some disastrous way or other, and that you can't recover it; and don't you think I am sorry for you? Yes, as much as if you were my brother." "Ah, Lilla, you have far more heart than you would have me think. Not your eyes saw, but your heart." And we neither spoke any more on that subject. But I knew that under my pretty pagan's plump bosom there beat a heart which the love of lobster-salad, and the hopes of a rich husband, and all the duty of dodging duns, could not rob of its genial blood-warmth. Lilla had, like most London girls of her class and temperament, a passion for the theatre. She knew the ways of every theatre, and something about the private lives of all the actors and actresses, and who was married to whom, and who were not married at all, and who was in debt, and who made ever so much money in the year, and spent it or hoarded it, as the case might be. She pointed you out a small cigarshop, and told you it was kept by the father of Miss Vashner, the great tragic actress; she called your attention to a small coal-and-potato store, and told you it was there Mr. Wagstaffe, the great manager, began his career; she glanced at a beery, snuffy little man in the street, and whispered that he was the husband of the dashing Violet Schönbein, who played the male parts in the burlesques and pantomimes, and whose figure was the admiration of London. Her interest did not lie so much in the stately operahouses, or even the theatres where legitimate tragedy yet feebly protested its legitimacy and divine right, as in the small pleasant houses |