defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid warbler, that never left his native grove; in the fearless eagle, whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his foot; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious source he bent, in humble, though blind adoration.

And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted, forever, from its face a whole peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant.

Here and there, a stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamed, untameable progenitors! The Indian, of falcon glance, and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man, when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.

As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon

hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever.

Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of person they belonged. They will live only in thẹ songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people.

LESSON XXXVIII.

THE CLOSING YEAR.

'Tis midnight's holy hour, and silence now Is brooding like a gentle spirit o'er

The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds
The bell's deep tones are swelling; 'tis the knell
Of the departed year. No funeral train
Is sweeping past, yet, on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest,
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred
As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud,
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand-
Young spring, bright summer, autumn's solemn form,
And winter with his aged locks—and breathe,

In mournful cadences, that come abroad

Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year

Gone from the earth forever.

'Tis a time

1

For memory and for tears. Within the deep
Still chambers of the heart, a spectre dim,

Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time,
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful

And holy visions that have passed away,

And left no shadow of their loveliness

On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts
The coffin-lid of hope, and joy, and love,
And, bending mournfully above the pale,

Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers

O'er what has passed to nothingness. The year

Has gone, and with it many a glorious throng

Of happy dreams. Its mark is on the brow,
Its shadows in each heart. In its swift course
It waved its sceptre o'er the beautiful:
And they are not. It laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man, and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous: and the tearful wail
Of stricken ones is heard where erst the

song And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er

The battle-plain, where sword, and spear, and shield
Flashed in the light of mid-day: and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and mould'ring skeleton. It came,
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air,

It heralded its millions to their home

In the dim land of dreams.

Remorseless Time!

Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe? what power

Can stay him in his silent course, or melt
His iron heart to pity! On, still on
He presses, and forever. The proud bird,
The condor of the Andes, that can soar
Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave
The fury of the northern hurricane,

And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home
Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down
To rest upon his mountain crag; but Time
Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness;
And Night's deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinion. Revolutions sweep
O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast.
Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink
Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles
Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back
To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear
To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow
Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise,
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations. Yet Time,

Time, the tomb builder, holds his fierce career,
Dark, stern, all-pitiless; and pauses not

- Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path,
To sit and muse, like other conquerors,
Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.

LESSON XXXIX.

DEATH OF NAPOLEON.

WILD was the night: yet a wilder night
Hung round the soldier's pillow;
In his bosom there waged a fiercer fight
Than the fight on the wrathful billow.

A few fond mourners were kneeling by,
The few that his stern heart cherished;
They knew, by his glazed and unearthly eye,
That life had nearly perished.

They knew by his awful and kingly look,
By the order hastily spoken,

That he dreamed of days when the nations shook,
And the nations' hosts were broken.

He dreamed that the Frenchman's sword still slew,
And triumphed the Frenchman's "eagle;"
And the struggling Austrian fled anew,
Like the hare before the beagle.

The bearded Russian he scourged again,
The Prussian's camp was routed,
And again, on the hills of haughty Spain,
His mighty armies shouted.

Again Marengo's field was won,
And Jena's bloody battle;

Again the world was overrun,
Made pale at his cannons' rattle.