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revered survivors, and with them is rapidly perishing unrecorded and irretrievable.

How many prudent counsels, conceived in perplexed times; how many heart-stirring words, uttered when liberty was treason; how many brave and heroic deeds, performed when the halter, not the laurel, was the promised meed of patriotic daring,-are already lost and forgotten in the graves of their authors! How little do we,-although we have been permitted to hold converse with the venerable remnants of that day,-how little do we know of their dark and anxious hours; of their secret meditations; of the hurried and perilous events of the momentous struggle!

And while they are dropping around us like the leaves of autumn, while scarce a week passes that does not call away some member of the veteran ranks, already so sadly thinned, shall we make no effort to hand down the traditions of their day to our children; to pass the torch of liberty,—which we received in all the splendor of its first enkindling,-bright and flaming, to those who stand next us on the line; so that, when we shall come to be gathered to the dust where our fathers are laid, we may say to our sons and our grandsons, If we did not amass, we have not squandered your inheritance of glory?'

LESSON XXXI.

Passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge.
JEFFERSON.

THE passage of the Potomac, through the Blue Ridge, is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Potomac, seeking a passage also.. In the moment of their junction, they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea.

The first glance at this scene hurries our senses into the opinion, that this earth has been created in time; that the mountains were formed first; that the rivers began to flow afterwards; that, in this place particularly, they have been dammed up by the Blue Ridge of mountains, and have form

ed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that, continuing to rise, they have at length broken over at this spot, and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base.

The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the impression. But the distant finishing, which Nature has given to the picture, is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the foreground. It is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous.

For, the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach, and participate of the calm below. Here the eye ultimately composes itself; and that way, too, the road happens actually to lead.

You cross the Potomac above its junction, pass along its side through the base of the mountain for three miles, its terrible precipices hanging in fragments over you, and within about twenty miles reach Fredericktown, and the fine country round that.

This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic. Yet here, as in the neighborhood of the Natural Bridge, are people who have passed their lives within half a dozen miles, and have never been to survey these monuments of a war between rivers and mountains, which must have shaken the earth itself to its centre.

LESSON XXXII.

The Emigrant's Abode in Ohio.-FLINT.

In making remoter journeys from the town, beside the rivulets, and in the little bottoms not yet in cultivation, I discerned the smoke rising in the woods, and heard the strokes of the axe, the tinkling of bells, and the baying of dogs, and saw the newly-arrived emigrant either raising his log cabin, or just entered into possession.

It has afforded me more pleasing reflections, a happier train of associations, to contemplate these beginnings of social toil in the wide wilderness, than, in our more cultivated regions, to come in view of the most sumptuous mansion

Nothing can be more beautiful than these little bottoms, upon which these emigrants deposit, if I may so say, their household gods.

Springs burst forth in the intervals between the high and low grounds. The trees and shrubs are of the most beautiful kind. The brilliant red-bird is seen flitting among the shrubs, or perched on a tree, seems welcoming, in her mellow notes, the emigrant to his abode. Flocks of paroquets are glittering among the trees, and gray squirrels are skipping from branch to branch.

In the midst of these primeval scenes, the patient and laborious father fixes his family. In a few weeks they have reared a comfortable cabin and other outbuildings. Pass this place in two years, and you will see extensive fields of corn and wheat, a young and thrifty orchard, fruit trees of all kinds, the guarantee of present abundant subsistence, and of future luxury.

Pass it in ten years, and the log buildings will have disappeared. The shrubs and forest trees will be gone. The Arcadian aspect of humble and retired abundance and comfort will have given place to a brick house, with accompaniments like those that attend the same kind of house in the older countries.

By this time, the occupant, who came there, perhaps with a small sum of money, and moderate expectations, from humble life and with no more than a common school education, has been made, in succession, member of the assembly, justice of the peace, and finally county judge. I admit that the first residence among the trees affords the most agreeable picture to my mind; and that there is an inexpressible charm in the pastoral simplicity of those years, before pride and self-consequence have banished the repose of their Eden, and when you witness the first strugglings of social toil with the barren luxuriance of nature.

LESSON XXXIII.

Mont Blanc in the Gleam of Sunset.-GRISCOM.

WE arrived, before sundown, at the village of St. Martin, where we were to stay for the night. The evening being remarkably fine, we crossed the Arve on a beautiful bridge,

and walked over to Salenche, a very considerable village, opposite to St. Martin, and ascended a hill to view the effect of the sun's declining light upon Mont Blanc. The scene was truly grand.

The broad range of the mountain was fully before us, of a pure and almost glowing white, apparently to its very base; and which, contrasted with the brown tints of the adjoining mountains, greatly heightened the novelty of the scene. We could scarcely avoid the conclusion, that this vast pile of snow was very near us, and yet its base was not less than fifteen, and its summit, probably, more than twenty miles from the place where we stood.

The varying rays of light produced by reflection from the snow, passing as the sun's rays declined, from a brilliant white through purple and pink, and ending in the gentle light, which the snow gives after the sun has set, afforded an exhibition in optics upon a scale of grandeur, which no other region in the world could probably excel.

Never in my life have my feelings been so powerfully affected by merely scenery, as they were in this day's excursion. The excitement, though attended by sensations awfully impressive, is nevertheless so finely attempered by the glow of novelty, incessantly mingled with astonishment and admiration, as to produce on the whole a feast of delight.

A few years ago, I stood upon Table Rock, and placed my cane in the descending flood of Niagara. Its tremendous roar almost entirely precluded conversation with the friend at my side; while its whirlwind of mist and foam, filled the air to a great distance around me. The rainbow sported in its bosom; the gulf below exhibited the wild fury of an immense boiling caldron; while the rapids above, for the space of nearly a mile, appeared like a mountain of billows, chafing and dashing against each other with thundering impetuosity, in their eager strife to gain the precipice, and take the awful leap.

In contemplating this scene, my imagination and my heart were filled with sublime and tender emotions. The soul seemed to be brought a step nearer to the presence of that incomprehensible Being, whose spirit dwelt in every feature of the cataract, and directed all its amazing energies. Yet in the scenery of this day there was more of a pervading sense of awful and unlimited grandeur: mountain piled upon mountain in endless continuity throughout the whole extent, and crowned by the brightest effulgence of an evening sun, upon the everlasting snows of the highest pinnacle of Europe.

LESSON XXXIV.

Passage of the Red Sea.-HEBer.

'MID the light spray their snorting camels stood,
Nor bathed a fetlock in the nauseous flood-
He comes their leader comes,-the man of God
O'er the wide waters lifts his mighty rod,
And onward treads-The circling waves retreat,
In hoarse, deep murmurs, from his holy feet;
And the chased surges, inly roaring, show
The hard wet sand and coral hills below.

With limbs that falter, and with hearts that swell,
Down, down they pass-a steep and slippery dell;
Around them rise, in pristine chaos hurled
The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world;
And flowers that blush beneath the ocean green,
And caves, the sea-calves' low-roofed haunt, are seen.
Down, safely down the narrow pass they tread;
The beetling waters storm above their head:
While far behind retires the sinking day,
And fades on Edom's hills its latest ray.

Yet not from Israel fled the friendly light,

Or dark to them, or cheerless came the night,
Still in their van, along that dreadful road,

Blazed broad and fierce, the brandished torch of God.
Its meteor glare a tenfold lustre gave

On the long mirror of the rosy wave:
While its blest beams a sunlike heat supply,
Warm every cheek and dance in every eye-
To them alone-for Misraim's wizard train
Invoke for light their monster-gods in vain:
Clouds heaped on clouds their struggling sight confine,
And tenfold darkness broods above their line.
Yet on they fare by reckless vengeance led,
And range unconscious through the ocean's bed.
Till midway now-that strange and fiery form

Showed his dread visage lightening through the storm;
With withering splendor blasted all their might,

And brake their chariot-wheels, and marred their coursers'

flight.

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