ject. Crossing the Potomac into Virginia, with his horse, in a ferry-boat, the ferryman said, Major, I wish yon would lead your horse a little forward; which he immediately did, observing to the man, I am not a major, and you need not call me one. To this the ferryman replied, Well, kurnel, I ax pardon, and I'll not call you so no more.' Being arrived at the landingplace, he led his horse out of the boat, and said, 'My good friend, I am a very plain man; I am neither a colonel nor a major; I have no title at all, and I don't like them. How much have I to pay you? The ferryman looked at him, and said, 'You are the first white man I ever crossed this ferry that wa'n't jist nobody at all, and I swar I'll not charge you nothing.'"-Vol. i. P. 84.

Passing through Fincastle, our traveller came to the bank of the New River, at the time when America's sons were practically falsifying the first article of their declaration of independence. "All men are equal," says the theory; "All men are equal, except niggers," says the practice. Three hundred slaves, who had bivouacked the previous night in chains, were now hastening to cross the river, on their road to the sugar plantations of Louisiana, where the average of life for a sugar-mill slave is seven years. The utmost vigilance is required at such a place as that where our traveller met with the gang. The slave-driver knows well he has no mercy to expect, if his prisoner once gets the upper hand. The poor black, cheated and deluded as he is by fine promises, is too well aware of his future fate not to watch for every opportunity of escape. So long as the borders of the free states are within reach, the watch cannot be too strict, the flattery too gross, the stories of lands of plenty too high coloured. Gradually, as the bounds of the non-slave states are left behind, the danger of revolt diminishes, escape becomes useless where all are banded together to restore the prisoner as property." There is much misrepresentation on the case of slavery in America. It is useless to deny the cruelties of the slave-drivers, but it is unfair to charge those cruelties on many, very many, of the slave-holders of the south. Mr. Featherstonhaugh's remarks seem so just and pertinent that we extract them at length:

"All christian men must unite in the wish that slavery was extinguished in every part of the world; and from my personal knowledge of the sentiments of many of the leading gentlemen in the southern states, I am persuaded that they look to the ultimate abolition of slavery with satisfaction. Mr. Madison, the ex-President, with whom I have often conversed freely on this subject, has told me more than once, that he could not die in peace, if he believed that so great a disgrace to his country was not to be blotted out some day or other. He once informed me, that he had assembled all his slaves-and they were numerous and offered to manumit them immediately; but they instantly declined it, alleging that they had been born on his estate, had always been provided for by him with raiment and food, in sickness and in health, and if they were made free, they would have no home to go to, and no friend to protect and care for them. They preferred, therefore, to live and die as his slaves, who had always been a kind master to them. This, no doubt, is the situation of many humane right-thinking proprietors in the southern states; they have inherited valuable plantations, with the negroes born upon them, and these look up to their master as the only friend they have on earth. The most zealous, therefore, of the abolitionists of the free states, when they denounce slavery, and call for its immediate abolition, overlook the conditions upon which

alone it could be effected. They neither propose to provide a home for the slaves when they are manumitted, nor a compensation to their proprietors. Without slaves, the plantations would be worthless; there are no white men to cultivate them; the newly-freed and improvident negroes could not be made available, and there would be no purchasers to buy the land, and no tenants to rent it. The abolitionists, therefore, call upon the planters to bring ruin upon their families without helping the negro. In the mean time the abolitionists, not uniting in some great practical measure to effect the emancipation of all slaves at the national expense, suffer the evil to go on increasing. The negro population amounts now to about two millions; and the question, as to the southern states, will, with the tide of time, be a most appalling one, viz. whether the white or the black race is to predominate.

"The uncompromising obloquy which has been cast at the southern planters by their not too scrupulons adversaries, is therefore not deserved by them; and it is but fair to consider them as only indirectly responsible for such scenes as arise out of the revolting traffic which is carried on by these sordid, illiterate, and vulgar slave-drivers-men who can have nothing whatever in This land traffic, in fact, has grown out of the widecommon with the gentlemen of the southern states. spreading population of the United States, the annexation of Louisiana, and the increased cultivation of cotton and sugar. The fertile lowlands of that territory can only be worked by blacks, and are almost of illimitable extent. Hence, negroes have risen greatly in price, from 500 to 1,000 dollars, according to their capacity. Slaves being thus in demand, a detestable branch of business-where sometimes a great deal of money is made-has very naturally arisen in a country filled with speculators. The soil of Virginia has gradually become exhausted with repeated crops of tobacco and Indian corn; and when to this is added the constant subdivithe abolition of entails, it follows, of course, that many sion of property which has overtaken every family since of the small proprietors, in their efforts to keep up appearances, have become embarrassed in their circumstances, and, when they are pinched, are compelled to sell a negro or two. The wealthier proprietors, also, have frequently fractious and bad slaves, which, when they cannot be reclaimed, are either put into gaol, or into those depôts which exist in all the large towns, for removed. All this is very well known to the slavethe reception of slaves who are sold, until they can be driver, one of whose associates goes annually to the southwestern states, to make his contracts with those planters there who are in want of slaves for the next season. These fellows then scour the country, to make purchases. Those who are bought out of gaol, are always put in fetters, as well as any of those whom they may suspect of an intention to escape. The women and grown-up girls are usually sold into the cotton-growing states, the men and the boys to the rice and sugar plan tations. Persons with large capital are actively concerned in this trade, some of whom have amassed considerable fortunes. But, occasionally, these dealers in men are made to pay fearfully the penalty of their nefarious occupation. I was told, that only two or three months before I passed this way, a gang' had surprised their conductors, when off their guard, and had killed some of them with axes."--Vol. i. pp. 128-130.

THE STRUGGLE OF GENIUS WITH PAIN.. PAIN is not entirely synonymous with evil, but bodily pain seems less redeemed by good than almost any other kind of it. From the loss of fortune, of fame, or even of friends, philosophy pretends to draw a certain compensating benefit; but, in general, the permanent loss of health will bid defiance to her alchymy. It is

universal diminution, equally of our resources, and of our capacity to guide them; a penalty unmitigated, save by love of friends, which then first becomes truly precious to us; or by comforts brought from beyond this earthly sphere, from that serene Fountain of peace and hope, to which our weak philosophy cannot raise her wing. For all men, in itself, disease is misery; but chiefly for men of finer feelings and endowments, to whom, in return for such superiorities, it seems to be sent most frequently, and in its most distressing forms. It is cruel fate, for the poet to have the sunny land of his imagination, often the sole territory he is lord of, disfigured and darkened by the shades of pain; for one whose highest happiness is the exertion of his mental faculties, to have them chained and paralysed in the imprisonment of a distempered frame. With external activity, with palpable pursuits-above all, with a suitable placidity of nature, much, even in certain states of sickness, may be performed and enjoyed. But for him, whose heart is already over keen, whose world is of the mind, ideal-internal; when the mildew of lingering disease has struck that world, and begun to blacken and consume its beauty, nothing seems to remain but despondency, and bitterness, and desolate sorrow, felt and anticipated to the end.

Woe to him if his will likewise falter, if his resolution fail, and his spirit bend its neck to the yoke of this new enemy! Idleness and a disturbed imagination will gain the mastery of him, and let loose their thousand fiends to harass him-to torment him into madness. Alas! the bondage of Algiers is freedom compared with this of the sick man of genius, whose heart has fainted, and sunk beneath its load. His clay dwelling is changed into a gloomy prison; every nerve is become an avenue of disgust or anguish; and the soul sits within, in her melancholy loneliness, a prey to the spectres of despair, or stupified with excess of suffering, doomed as it were to a life in death, to a consciousness of agonized existence, without the consciousness of power, which should accompany it. Happily, death, or entire fatuity, at length puts an end to such scenes of ignoble misery; which, however, ignoble as they are, we ought to view with pity rather than contempt.

Such are frequently the fruits of protracted sickness in men otherwise of estimable qualities and gifts, but whose sensibility exceeds their strength of mind. In Schiller, its worst effects were resisted by the only availing antidote; a strenuous determination to neglect them. His spirit was too vigorous and ardent to yield even in this emergency. He disdained to dwindle into a pining valetudinarian; in the midst of his infirmities, he persevered with unabated zeal in the great business of his life. As he partially recovered, he returned as strenuously as ever to his intellectual occupations; and often, in the glow of poetical conception, he almost forgot his maladies. By such resolute and manly conduct, he disarmed sickness of its cruellest power to wound his frame might be in pain, but his spirit retained its force, unextinguished, almost unimpeded. He did not lose his relish for the beautiful, the grand, or the good, in any of their shapes. He loved his friends as formerly, and wrote his finest and sublimest works when his health was gone. Perhaps no period of his life displayed more heroism than the present one.-Carlile's Life of Schiller.

AMONGST his irregularities, it must be reckoned that he (Rousseau) is sometimes moral, and moral in a very sublime strain. But the general spirit and tendency of his works is mischievous; and the more mischievous for this mixture: for, perfect depravity of sentiment is not reconcilable with eloquence; and the mind (though corruptible, not complexionally vicious) would reject, and throw off with disgust, a lesson of pure and unmixed evil. These writers make even virtue a pander to vice.-Burke.

Poetry.

[In Original Poetry, the Name, real or assumed, of the Author, is printed in Small Capitals under the title; in Selections, it is printed in Italics at the end.]

THE TWO GRIEFS.

NO. II. LAMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN.1

BY S. M.

I GIVE thee to thy parent dust,
Thou loved and wasted forin,

I murmur not, for God is just,
And I am but a worm;

I kneel upon thy grave, while prayer
Bursts from mine aching heart,
Ah, Saviour, reunite us, where
We cannot part!

Thou Merciful! My tears are balm,

My very grief is bliss;

How shall I thank Thee, for a calm
So deep and still as this?
The full assurance of my faith
Is built on Thy true word,

I know that there is life in death,
Life with the Lord.

Thou not condemnest that my tears, So fast, so bitter, flow

No, I may pour into Thine ears

The fulness of my woe;

I come as to a Friend, whose heart
Its humanness hath kept-
Who shall forbid my tears to start,
Since Jesus wept?

Thou know'st how hard it is to give
The love of years away,
Thou know'st 'tis bitterness to live,-
Yet not for death I
pray;

I pray for patience-strength to bear
The burthen Thou hast given,
And faith to cheer my fainting prayer
With thoughts of heaven.

Yet, if a rebel thought oppose
Thy Spirit's pure control,
Oh, charge it on my mighty woes,
Not on my feeble soul!

By Thee, my weakness strength shall win,
In Thee, my soul shall live,
My grief Thou pitiest, and my sin
Thou wilt forgive!

Oh Faith, lift up my drooping love!
Tell of the promised Home,
The union, earth's chill clouds above,
Where parting cannot come!
In hope I kneel, for strength I pray,
And peace is surely won,
As from my bleeding heart I say,
Thy will be done!

(1) The passage in Mrs. Hemans's Journal, which suggests the contrast between the feelings of a Christian and an educated Heathen, under the greatest of earthly afflictions, as a fit subject for poetry, is to be found among the extracts from her private memoranda, given in her Life, by her sister. Another of these memoranda suggested the poem in "German Ballads and Songs," (Fireside Library,) entitled "Odin's Sacrifice." The reader is requested to correct a misprint in "The Lament of the Heathen Sage;" to which, of course, the present little poem must be considered as a

companion. The last two lines of the third verse should have

stood thus:-

THE WIDOWER'S GARLAND.1

HERE rests a mother. But from her I turn, And from her grave.-Behold-upon that ridge, That, stretching boldly from the mountain side, Carries into the centre of the vale

Its rocks and woods-the cottage where she dwelt;
And where yet dwells her faithful partner, left
(Full eight years pa t) the solitary prop

Of many helpless children. I begin
With words that might be prelude to a tale
Of sorrow and dejection; but I feel

No sadness, when I think of what mine eyes
See daily in that happy family.

-Bright garland form they for the pensive brow
Of their undrooping father's widowhood,
Those six fair daughters, budding yet-not one,
Not one of all the band, a full-blown flower.
Deprest, and desolate of soul, as once

That father was, and filled with anxious fear,
Now, by experience taught, he stands assured,
That God, who takes away, yet takes not half
Of what he seems to take; or gives it back
Not to our prayer, but far beyond our prayer;
He gives it-the boon produce of a soil
Which our endeavours have refused to till,
And hope hath never watered. The abode,
Whose grateful owner can attest these truths,
Even were the object nearer to our sight,
Would seem in no distinction to surpass
The rudest habitations. Ye might think
That it had sprung self-raised from earth, or grown
Out of the living rock, to be adorned
By nature only; but, if thither led,

Ye would discover then a studious work
Of many fancies, prompting many hands.
Brought from the woods, the honeysuckle twines
Around the porch, and seems, in that trim place,
A plant no longer wild; the cultured rose
There blossoms, strong in health, and will be soon
Roof-high; the wild pink crowns the garden-wall,
And with the flowers are intermingled stones
Sparry and bright, rough scatterings of the hills.
These ornaments, that fade not with the year,
A hardy girl continues to provide;
Who, mounting fearlessly the rocky heights,
Her father's prompt attendant, does for him
All that a boy could do, but with delight
More keen and prouder daring; yet hath she,
Within the garden, like the rest, a bed
For her own flowers and favourite herbs, a space,
By sacred charter, holden for her use.
-These, and whatever else the garden bears
Of fruit or flower, permission asked or not,

I freely gather; and my leisure draws

A not unfrequent pastime from the sight

Of the bees murmuring round their sheltered hives
In that enclosure; while the mountain rill,
That sparkling thrids the rocks, attunes his voice
To the pure course of human life which there
Flows on in solitude. But, when the gloom
Of night is falling round my steps, then most
This dwelling charms me; often I stop short,
(Who could refrain ?) and feed by stealth my sight
With prospect of the company within,

Laid open through the blazing window:-there
I see the eldest daughter at her wheel

Spinning amain, as if to overtake

The never-halting time; or, in her turn,
Teaching some novice of the sisterhood
That skill in this or other household work,
Which, from her father's honoured hand, herself,
While she was yet a little-one, had learned.
Mild man! he is not gay, but they are gay;
And the whole house seems filled with gaiety.

(1) See Engraving, page 97.

-Thrice happy, then, the mother may be deemed, The wife, from whose consolatory grave

I turned, that ye in mind might witness where, And how, her spirit yet survives on earth! Wordsworth.

Miscellaneous.

"I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own, but the string that ties them."--Montaigne.

HYDER ALI'S REVENGE.

WHEN. at length, Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men who either would sign no convention, or whom no treaty and no signature could bind, and who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible and predestinated criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave the whole Carnatich an everlasting monument of vengeance, and to put perpetual desolation as a barrier between him and those, against whom the faith, which holds the moral elements of the world together, was no protection. He became, at length, so confident of his force, so collected in his might, that he made no secret whatsoever of his dreadful resolution. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy and every rival, who buried their mutual animosities in their common detestation against the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding all the materials of fury, havock, and desolation, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatich. Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war, before known or heard of, were mercy to that new havock. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants, flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of function fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers, and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity, in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest, fled to the walled cities; but, escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine.-Burke.

THE greatest of modern philosophers (Bacon) declares that "he would rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without mind."-Stewart.

On rode the youth; and the founts and streams
Thus mingled a voice with his joyous dreams :-
"We have been thy playmates through many a day,
Wherefore thus leave us? oh, yet delay!

Listen but once to the sound of our mirth;
For thee 'tis a melody passing from earth!
Never again wilt thou find in its flow,

The peace it could once on thy heart bestow.

Under the arch by our mingling made,
Thou and thy brother have gaily play'd;
Ye may meet again where ye roved of yore,
But as ye have met there-oh, never more!"
On rode the youth; and, the boughs among,
Thus the wild birds o'er his pathway sung:-
"Wherefore so fast unto life away?
Thou art leaving for ever thy joy in our lay!
Thou wilt visit the scenes of thy childhood's glee,
With the breath of the world on thy spirit free;
Passion and sorrow its depths will have stirr'd,
And the singing of waters be vainly heard.

Thou wilt bear in our gladsome laugh no part-
What should it do for a burning heart?
Thou wilt bring to the banks of our freshest rill
Thirst which no fountain on earth may still!
Farewell!-when thou comest again to thine own,
Thou wilt miss from our music its loveliest tone!
Mournfully true is the tale we tell-
Yet on, fiery dreamer;-farewell, farewell!"

And a something of gloom on his spirit weigh'd,
As he caught the last sounds of his native shade;
But he knew not, till many a bright spell broke,
How deep were the oracles nature spoke!

From Poems by the late MRS. HEMANS,

Ir is not the custom of this country to advert to the offence for which a prisoner has been transported. Many reasons induce me to observe a profound silence on this point, whilst I detail the eventful scenes in the life of Lucy Cooper, after her arrival in Australia. The name of the village in England where she was born, and even that of her family, are concealed on the same account. Lucy Cooper was the name by which she chose to be distinguished here, and I have adopted it under the impression that the truth of my narrative, and the impressive lesson it conveys, will suffer no material diminution from the change.

It was early in the year 1836, that the Pyramus, a convict ship, from Deptford, dropped her anchor in Sydney Cove. The morning had been obscure and moist, and the light on the South Head was first perceived about three o'clock. Towards five, the bold promontories of Sydney Harbour, now distinctly visible in the daylight, and distant about a mile asunder, lowered on

either bow; the middle head, within them, appeared to terminate the shallow bay; when, suddenly, an opening to the southward presented a channel for the further progress of the ship, which almost immediately opened to the westward, and displayed the noble waters of this celebrated port. The pilot had already assumed the direction of the vessel, which he had boarded from his whale-boat manned by four stout New Zealanders. The rain had gradually increased, until it assumed the settled character with which it is observed to descend in these latitudes, frequently for three or four days together, whilst the women had been ordered below, as well to secure them from the weather, as to prevent their hindering the crew in the important duty of working the ship. To those unhappy prisoners, therefore, two hundred and twenty-seven in number, the magnificent scenery of the Australian shores afforded no other joy, than the poor consolation that their perils by sea were terminated, and the privations and discomfort of a five months' voyage about to be exchanged for miseries yet untried. Under the most favourable circumstances, females on board ship experience annoyances which are unknown to the other sex; and the amusements of which they are capable, are still fewer than those which break the monotony of a sea life to men. But, under the restrictions of a prison-ship, with a miserable diet, and a scanty provision of things of humblest necessity, together with poor clothing, and the crowded decks, it needed only the profligacy of more than two hundred bad women, confined together within the narrowest limits, for such a protracted period, to render the Pyramus a dreadful place of confinement and distress. It was with pleasure, therefore, that the women made preparations to go on shore. What little improvement in their costume their humble means afforded, was soon effected; and the prisoners were mustered and handed over to the authorities. A large proportion of the women were immediately assigned to private service; and, amongst the rest, Lucy Cooper was allotted to the family of a barrister of some eminence, who immediately sent to have her conveyed to his country house.

Although every sentiment of piety had been almost extinguished by a succession of events that, for eleven months, had crowded upon each other with painful and confused rapidity; and the abandoned wretches, by whom she was surrounded, omitted no occasion to ridicule and insult the least tendency to promote decency and order, still more any reverence for the laws of God or man; the force of early habit prevailed so far, that, when Lucy set her feet once more upon the "dry land," an involuntary murmur passed her lips, expressive of her thankfulness to God. The landing-place projects far into the -sea, being composed of massy stones, and affording a safe and easy footing. It leads to the northern extremity of the town, from whence the sea and land view are equally beautiful;' and here a man was waiting, with a dray and four bullocks, ready to receive his fellowservant, who was safely lodged among some packages of grocery, butcher-meat, and a basket of bread.

The slow pace of the bullocks, as they pursued their way down George Street, which is the principal street of Sydney, gave the stranger an opportunity of gazing at the rising opulence of this new capital. St. Philip's Church, the eldest born of the Church of England in the colony, was seen at the summit of a hill to the right, a few hundred yards removed from George Street; and still further on, to the left, the spire and church of