emotions, and the peace of its scenes disposes every heart to sympathize with the sentiments which the preceding verses express. The appearance of the American woods in autumn is peculiar to this country. Mr. Tudor, in his Letters on the Eastern States, gives this description of it:

"The rich and mellow tints of the forest at that season of the year, have often furnished subjects for the painter and the poet in Europe; but the woods of Europe never exhibit the appearance of ours. Besides all the shades of brown and green, which the forests of Europe display in the decay of their foliage, the American woods in the same stage of vegetation put on "the most glaring and brilliant colours-bright yellow, scarlet, orange and purple-not merely on single leaves, but masses of whole trees have their foliage thus tinged."

the

"I do not know that it has ever been accounted for; but it may perhaps be owing to the frosts coming earlier here than in Europe, and falling on the leaves while the sap is yet copious, before they have begun to dry and fall off. However this may be, the colouring is wonderful--the walnut is turned to the brightest yellow, maole to scarlet, &c. Our trees put on this dress about the first of October." At this time of the year the effect of the atmosphere upon our scenery and upon the sensations of the beholder, induce sentiments of sober cheerfulness, and pure enjoyment of this breathing life, and this beautiful world, such as we never feel at other sea

sons.

Mr. Tudor observes that "the reader who has any relic of veneration for Pomona and the Hamadryads," (I hope my young readers are acquainted with Pomona and the Hamadryads) will take an interest in the history of certain celebrated trees of New-England, and he proceeds to enumerate the more remarkable of these.

"In Salem, (Mass.) there is a pear tree still producing fruit, that was planted by Governor Endicott in his garden in 1630, and which is now owned by his descendants. At Sagadahoc, in Maine, when the French had a

footing in 1689, there is an apple tree with some remains of life, amidst the ruins of their dwellings. The trunk is nearly the size of a hogshead, and entirely hollow. It was almost a century after before any apple trees were planted in the neighbouring country. In Hartford (Connecticut,) the oak yet stands, in which the Connecticut charter was secreted, during the disastrous administration of Andross, when all the New-England charters were taken away. Governor Andross went to Hartford to obtain the charter of Connecticut; when the Council were assembled with Andross in the evening, while the destined victim was lying on the table, the lights were suddenly extinguished, Captain Wadsworth seized the Charter and hid it in this tree, which even then, in 1692, was hollow with age. This tree forms an appropriate counterpart to the "royal oak" of England. The most celebrated of all our trees, however, was the Libertytree in Boston, which fell a sacrifice to party vengeance, and was cut down when the British troops got possession of the town. It was an elm of vast size, of which only the stump remains. Many transactions leading to the revolution took place beneath it. Trees in various places in this country and Europe, were named after it: in France at one time every municipality had one; but in that country they never flourished, and finally perished root and branch under Napoleon."

3

SONG OF THE STARS.

When the radiant morn of creation broke,
And the world in the smile of God awoke,

And the empty realms of darkness and death

Were moved through their depths by his mighty breath,
And orbs of beauty, and spheres of flame,

From the void abyss by myriads came,
In the joy of youth, as they darted away,
Through the widening wastes of space to play,
Their silver voices in chorus rung,

And this was the song the bright ones sung:

Away, away, through the wide, wide sky,
The fair blue fields that before us lie:
Each sun with the worlds that round us roll,
Each planet poised on her turning pole,
With her isles of green, and her clouds of white,
And her waters that lie like fluid light.

For the source of glory uncovers his face,
And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space;
And we drink, as we go, the luminous tides
In our ruddy air and our blooming sides;
Lo, yonder the living splendours play!
Away, on our joyous path away!

Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar,

In the infinite azure, star after star,

How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass!
How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass!

And the path of the gentle winds is seen,

Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean,

And see where the brighter day-beams pour,
How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower;
And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues,
Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews;
And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground,
With her shadowy cone, the night goes round.

Away, away!-in our blossoming bowers,
In the soft air wrapping those spheres of ours,
In the seas and fountains that shine with morn,
See, love is brooding, and life is born,
And breathing myriads are breaking from night,
To rejoice, like us, in motion and light.

Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres!
To weave the dance that measures the years.
Glide on in the glory and gladness sent
To the farthest wall of the firmament,
The boundless visible smile of him

To the vale of whose brow our lamps are dim.

RIZPAH.

And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord; and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of the harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley-harvest.

And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.

2 Samuel, xxi. 9, 10.

Hear what the desolate Rizpah said,

As on Gibean's rocks she watched the dead.
The sons of Michal before her lay,

And her own fair children, dearer than they;
By a death of shame they all had died,

And were stretched on the bare rock, side by side.
And Rizpah, once the loveliest of all

That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul,
All wasted with watching and famine now,
And scorched by the sun her haggard brow,
Sat, mournfully guarding their corpses there,
And murmured a strange and solemn air;
The low, heart-broken, and wailing strain
Of a mother that mourns her children slain.

I have made the crags my home, and spread
On their desert backs my sackcloth bed;
I have eaten the bitter herb of the rocks,
And drank the midnight dew in my locks;
I have wept till I could not weep, and the pain
Of my burning eyeballs went to my brain.
Seven blackened corpses before me lie,

In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky.
I have watched them through the burning day,
And driven the vulture and raven away;

And the cormorant wheeled in circles round,
Yet feared to alight on the guarded ground.
And, when the shadows of twilight came,
I have seen the hyena's eyes of flame,
And heard at my side his stealthy tread,
But aye at my shout the savage fled !
And I threw the lighted brand, to fright
The jackal and wolf that yelled in the night.

Ye were foully murdered, my hapless sons,
By the hands of wicked and cruel ones;
Ye fell in your fresh and blooming prime,
All innocent, for your father's crime.

He sinned-but he paid the price of his guilt,
When his blood by a nameless hand was spilt ;;
When he strove with the heathen host in vain,
And fell with the flower of his people slain,
And the sceptre his children's hands should sway,
From his injured lineage passed away.

But I hoped that the cottage roof would be
A safe retreat for my sons and me ;

And that while they ripened to manhood fast,
They should wean my thoughts from woes of the past:
And my bosom swelled with a mother's pride,

As they stood in their beauty and strength by my side,
Tall like their sire, with the princely grace
Of his stately form, and the bloom of his face.

Oh, what an hour for a mother's heart,
When the pitiless ruffians tore us apart!
When I clasped their knees and wept and prayed,
And struggled and shrieked to heaven for aid,
And clung to my sons with desperate strength,
Till the murderers loosed my hold at length,
And bore me breathless and faint aside,
In their iron arms, while my children died.
They died-and the mother that gave them birth
Is forbid to cover their bones with earth.