THE EMIGRANT.

THE emigrant from New England, as he leaves his native home for a residence in the west, experiences some strange and hardly definable feelings. His home has become endeared to him by the associations of childhood, of youth, and of manhood. There is the sloping hillside on which he gathered the violets of spring and the lilies of summer. There is the little brook, among whose shady bowers he spent many a summer hour. There is the woodland plain, over which he rambled in autumn, when the leaves were falling around him, and every wild flower had disappeared before the chilling frost. There is the old orchard, whose ripe fruits he had so often gathered up-the meadow all waving with grassthe pasture with its glades and dells all grown over with brakes and ferns. There is the old elm, planted perhaps by the hand of his grandfather, with its long branches overhanging the house; and there is the pine, planted by his own hand, with its evergreen tassels sighing to the wind. In the distance are the blue hills, which have formed the background of the landscape on which he has looked from infancy; and nearer are the silver lakes, from whose mirrowy surface he has so often seen reflected the sunlight of morning.

The old cottage in which he was born and nurtured, and which has also been thus far the nursery of his own little children, has charms for him, which the princely palace might not equal. Its image, with the scenery around it, is indelibly stamped on his soul. Let him

become a wanderer in distant lands-let new and startling scenes every-where meet him-let him make a new home wherever he may, the impress of his childhood's home will still lie too deep in his memory ever to be effaced. Wherever his waking thoughts may be, his dreams will still linger about this spot.

The emigrant, before he leaves this sacred spot, calls his children once more around him. Once more they kneel before the old family altar, and offer up their devotions to a protecting Providence. Then they walk together once more about the orchard and garden, instinctively bidding good-by to each floweret and shrub. Returning, they cast a "longing, lingering look" at their cottage halls, and close the doors to open them no more forever.

Slowly and sadly the emigrant proceeds on his weary way. From the topmost ridge of some long hill, he catches the last glance at his cottage home. The carriage stops. The family, little children and all, fix their eyes, full of tears, on that loved spot. There it is, in quiet, silent beauty, embowered in shrubbery, and rendered still more enchanting to the sight by the soft blue tinge which distance throws around it. A moment more— one other look, and the carriage moves on, and the cottage disappears forever.

Not yet, however, has every familiar scene gone from the emigrant's view. There is yet about him the scenery of his native state. These farms, these neat villages, these lakes, these crystal streams he has seen before. One by one, however, every familiar scene fades away, till the last hill of his native land sinks below the horizon. The whizzing steam car bears him on, and he stands on the summit of the Alleghanies. Here he stops again, to take one more look at the world he is leaving. He stands on the boundary line between the east and the

west. On the one side is the world which he has long known and admired-on the other is, to him, an "undiscovered country." He looks back, and there rushes on his soul the thrilling memory of the past-the memory of incidents, and scenes, and friends which he had long since lost in oblivion. Philosophers tell us that there is reason to believe our thoughts and feelings imperishable; that relics of sensation may exist for an indefinite time in a latent state, and may all be brought up whenever any stimulus, sufficiently exciting, acts on the mind; and that, therefore, there are occasions when there is brought before the mind the collective experience of its whole past existence. Such an occasion occurs to the emigrant, as he stands on the Alleghanies and looks back, over hill and dale, toward his native home. Scenes long since faded away-incidents long ago forgotten-friends long since followed to the grave-all come up before him as vivid and as bright as though the events had just occurred. His eyes swimming with the recollections of the past, he can look no longer. He closes them; but yet he sees painted on the living canvas of his soul the land of his birth, with its mountains and valleys, its lakes and streams, the cottage where he lived, with all its rural attractions, and the friends he had long known and loved.

Gathering up his energies, the emigrant opens his eyes and looks before him. At his feet he sees a range of hills, lower than that on which he stands, succeeded by another, lower still, and still another, continually diminishing as they recede, till far away, near the distant horizon, he sees spread out, in quiet beauty, tinged with the sunlight of evening, the illimitable plains of the west.

The emigrant's heart is glad. He winds his way down the mountain side, and presses on his journey. On the banks of the Scioto he again looks back. The last hill has faded away in the east. He looks forward and there

sees before him the fertile plains of western Ohio, of Indiana, and of Illinois. To him it appears one vast wilderness, without habitation or cultivated field--a dead level, varied by no elevation or depression, and enlivened by no rippling brook. Wending his way, however, westward, he perceives what he supposed a level plain to be an undulating surface, intersected by many a meandering stream, and covered with corn, wheat, grass, and forest trees in such abundance and magnitude as to defy all his former calculations of the productive powers of nature. Pursuing his way he reaches the Wabash, flowing through the most fertile valley ever wet with the dews of heaven, or warmed by the rays of the sun. Here there appears before him a variegated landscape of woodland and prairies, exhibiting a scene of beauty, to which, even in fair New England, his eye had never been accustomed. Still moving toward the setting sun, the emigrant soon finds himself on the interminable, tenantless, homeless, treeless prairie. Day after day he moves on, nor meets one human face, unless some traveler like himself may cross his path, and then all is loneliness again. The sense of loneliness is one that must oppress him, wherever he may make his journey through the interior of the great west. The dense and continuous forests, the prairies, and even the immense fields of corn, all tend to make him feel lost in the vastness of the scenes with which he is surrounded. He stands on the bluff and looks down on ten thousand acres of corn, all in one continuous field. He looks on the cultivated prairie, waving for miles with the golden wheat, all ready for the sickle. He goes into the forest, and the prodigious trees overwhelm him by their size, and make him dizzy by their hight. The calmness of the atmosphere, the stillness that every-where prevails, oppress him with emotions of sadness. He feels like the shepherd king of Palestine when he looked on the heav

ens in their grandeur, and then thought on the frailty of

man.

In some retired spot, surrounded by primeval beauty, the emigrant makes him another home. The forest is cleared away, and the fields grow green with corn. Soon the little white cottage, resembling, as much as possible, his former home, erects its modest front. Up its walls climb the woodbine, the jessamine, the eglantine, and the honeysuckle; and around it cluster the sweet-brier, the almond, the lilac, and the rose, exhibiting the same beauty, and emitting the same fragrance as those around his home on the Atlantic hill. His cottage halls now again echo with the merry laugh of childhood. Tiny hands gather up the dandelions of spring, and little feet bound over the decorated landscape. The little ones— rambling from nook to nook, and dell to dell, gathering wild flowers of every hue, walking hand in hand along the garden avenues, admiring the shrubbery and flowers, and listening to the mocking-bird, the sweetest of all songsters, and unknown in the north-earnestly inquire of their mother if she supposes their old place can be so pleasant. Then is the emigrant's heart glad. The cloud of sadness is dispelled from his soul. He is lonely no more. He meets not, it is true, the familiar faces of his old friends; but he is content with the society of his own household. He misses the excitement and the stirring scenes with which he was once surrounded; but he heeds it not-he learns to find sufficient interest and amusement at his own fireside. He dreams of his old home; but his new home has, in his waking hours, sufficient charms to remove the sadness of his dreams. He looks in vain for the church of his native village, with its spire pointing to the blue sky; but he still may worship with renewed zeal at his own family altar. The pealing organ he hears no more; but sweet voices around