so profound was its fall. There, the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not to follow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them, but she felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff. Steep, as the upright wall of a house, was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted with ivy, centuries old, long ago dead, and without a single green leaf, but with thousands of armthick stems, petrified into the rock, and covering it, as with a trellis. She bound her baby to her neck, and, with hands and feet, clung to the fearful ladder.

3. Turning round her head and looking down, lo! the whole population of the parish-so great was the multitude

on their knees! and, hush! the voice of psalms! a hymn, breathing the spirit of one united prayer! Sad and solemn was the strain, but nothing dirge-like, breathing not of death, but deliverance. Often had she sung that tune, perhaps the very words, but them she heard not -in her own hut, she and her mother; or, in the kirk, along with the congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the ribs of ivy, and, in sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to be saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed into a winged creature. Again her feet touched stones and earth, the psalm was hushed, but a +tremulous, sobbing voice was close beside her, and lo! a shegoat, with two little kids, at her feet! "Wild hights," thought she, "do these creatures climb, but the dam will lead down her kid by the easiest paths; for, oh! even in the brute creatures, what is the holy power of a mother's love!" and, turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping baby, and, for the first time, she wept.

4. Overhead, frowned the front of the precipice, never before touched by human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamed of scaling it, and the golden eagles knew that well in their instinct, as, before they built their aerie, they had brushed it with their wings. But all the rest of this part of the mountain-side, though scarred, and seamed, and +chasmed, was yet accessible; and more than one person in the parish had reached the bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it; and, ere the cautious mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, though among

dangers, that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, and then the head of another; and she knew that God had delivered her and her child, in safety, into the care of their fellow creatures.

5. Not a word was spoken, eyes said enough, she hushed her friends with her hands, and, with uplifted eyes, pointed to the guides lent to her by Heaven. Small, green *plats, where those creatures nibble the wild flowers, became now more frequent; trodden lines, almost as easy as sheeppaths, showed that the dam had not led her young into danger; and now, the brush-wood dwindled away into straggling shrubs, and the party stood on a little eminence above the stream, and forming part of the strath.

6. There had been trouble and agitation, much sobbing, and many tears, among the multitude, while the mother was scaling the cliffs; sublime was the shout that echoed afar, the moment she reached the aerie; then, had succeeded a silence, deep as death; in a little while, arose that hymning prayer, succeeded by mute supplication; the wildness of thankful and congratulatory joy, had next its sway; and now, that her salvation was sure, the great crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And for whose sake was all this alternation of agony? A poor, humble creature, unknown to many, even by name; one who had but few friends, nor wished for more; contented to work all day, here, there, any where, that she might be able to support her aged mother, and her little child; and who, on sabbath, took her seat in an obscure pew, set apart for *paupers, in the kirk!

7. "Fall back, and give her fresh air," said the old minister of the parish; and the circle of close faces widened around her, lying as in death. "Give me the bonnie bit bairn into my arms," cried first one mother, and then another; and it was tenderly handed around the circle of kisses, many of the snooded maidens bathing its face in tears. "There's na a scratch about the puir innocent, for the eagle you see maun hae stuck its talons into the lang claes, and the shawl. Blin', blin,' maun they be, who see not the finger o' God in this thing!"

8. Hannah started up from her swoon, and, looking

wildly around, cried, "Oh! the bird! the bird! the eagle! the eagle has carried off my bonnie wee Walter! is there nane to pursue?" A neighbor put her baby to her breast, and, shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, the sorely bewildered creature said, in a low voice, "Am I wauken? oh! tell me if I'am wauken? or if a' this be the wark o' a fever, and the delirium o' a dream?"

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2.

3.

CX. THE DEAD EAGLE.

Ir is a desolate eve;

Dim, cheerless is the scene my path around;
+Patters the rain; the breeze-stirr'd forests grieve;
And wails the scene with melancholy sound,
While at my feet, behold,

With vigorous talons tclinch'd, and bright eyes shut,
With proud, curv'd beak, and wiry †plumage bold,
Thou liest, dead eagle of the desert; but

Preserving yet, in look, thy tameless mood,

As if, though still'd by death, thy heart were unsubdued.

How cam'st thou to thy death?

Did +lapsing years o'ercome, and leave thee weak,
Or whirlwinds, on thy heaven-descending path,

Dash thee against the precipice's peak?

'Mid rack and floating cloud,

Did scythe-wing'd lightning flash fathwart thy brain,
And drive thee from thy elevation proud,

Down whirling, lifeless, to the dim-seen plain?
I know not, may not guess; but here alone

Lifeless thou liest, outstretch'd beside the desert stone.

A proud life hath been thine:

High on the herbless rock, thou 'wok'st to birth,
And, gazing down, saw far beneath thee shine
Outstretch'd, +horizon-girt, the map-like earth.
What rapture must have gush'd

Warm round thy heart, when first thy wings tessay'd,
+Adventurously, their heavenward flight, and rush'd
Up toward day's blazing eye-star, undismay'd,
Above thee, space's vacancy unfurl'd,

And, far receding down, the dim, material world!

How fast, how far, how long,

Thine hath it been, from cloud-vail'd taerie high To swoop, and still the woodlark's +lyric song, The leveret's gambols, and the lambkin's cry? The terror-stricken dove

+Cower'd down amid the oak-wood's tcentral shade, While +ferny glens below, and cliffs above,

To thy fierce shriek, tresponsive echo made, Carrying the wild alarm from vale to vale,

That thou, the forest king, wert out upon the gale!

When wooded glens were dark,

And o'er moist earth, glowed morning's rosy star, High o'er the scarce tinged clouds, 't was thine to mark The orient chariot of the sun afar:

And oh! how grand to soar

Beneath the full moon, on full pinion driven; To pierce the regions of gray cloud-land o'er, And drift amid the star-isled seas of heaven! Even like a courier, sent from earth to hold With space-dissever'd worlds, unaw'd, communion bold.

Dead king-bird of the waste!

And is thy +curbless span of freedom o'er? No more shall thine ascending form be traced? And shall the hunter of the hills no more

Hark to thy regal cry,

While soaring o'er the +stream-girt vales, thy form, Lessening, commingles with the azure sky,

Glimps'd 'mid the masses of the gathering storm, As if it were thy proud resolve to see,

Betwixt thee and dim earth, the +zig-zag lightnings flee?

A child of freedom thou,

Thy birth-right the tall cliff and sky beyond:

Thy feet were fetterless; thy fearless brow,
Ne'er quailing, tyrant man's dominion own'd.
But nature's general law

The slave and freeman must alike obey:

Pride reels; and Power, that kept a world in awe,

The dreadful summons hears; and where are they? Vanish'd, like night-dreams, from the sleeper's mind, Dust, 'mid dissolving day, or clouds before the wind!

1. Nor many generations ago, where you now sit, tencircled with all that exalts and tembellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here, lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your head, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his *dusky mate. Here, the wigwam-blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, and the council-fire glared on the wise and daring. Now, they dipped their noble limbs in your +sedgy lakes, and now, they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here, they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here; and when the tiger-strife was over, here, curled the smoke of peace.

2. Here, too, they worshiped; and from many a dark bosom went up a fervent prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of Nature knew not the God of Revelation, but the God of the +universe he acknowledged in every thing around. He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his mid-day throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine that defied a thousand whirl-winds; in the timid +warbler that never left its native grove; in the fearless eagle, whose untired +pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his feet; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious source he bent in humble, though blind adoration.

3. 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