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"Nay, Mary dear, 'twas but a joke,"
Her lover cried, "I meant no more;"
From Mary's eyes forgiveness broke
Her little flush of feeling o'er.
"I see "she cried-" you all believe
I durst not venture forth alone,
And make my way this fearful eve

To that same heap of mould'ring stone :
And there cast in a worsted ball,

And boldly cry, who holds below?
But, gallants, I will shame you all,
For by my life I'll surely go."
The sprightly Mary left her chair,
And ran to where her knitting lay,
And wound a ball of worsted there,
And snatch'd her cloak without delay.
In vain her young companions sought
To check her purpose, smiling gay
She darted forth as quick as thought,
And fearlessly she took her way.
'Twas then that William, with a smile,
His plan disclos'd-" if she should dare
To face, indeed, the ruin'd pile,

A nearer path shall bring me there.
Down the dark glen I mean to go,
While she pursues the way above,
And standing in the kiln below,

Her boasted courage I will prove."
The joke was humorous and good,
And all around approv'd the plan;
And William in a merry mood,
To put it into practice ran.
The wind had now subsided quite,
But in the gloomy sky were seen
Dark clouds, that veil'd the placid light
Of silent night's celestial queen.

Yet now and then as rolling by,

The clouds pass'd from her deep and slow,
A flood of light came down the sky,
And silver'd all the scene below.
Pursue we now the maiden's flight
Along the way that she is gone;
Behold her in the chequer'd light,
Like a fair phantom gliding on.
Yet, pausing, oft she stops to view
The moon its weary course to win,
Struggling through clouds of deepest hue,
Like Virtue in a world of sin!

Meanwhile young William bent his way
Along a path well known to him,
And by the moon's uncertain ray
*He reach'd the river deep and dim.

Yet not undanger'd did he pass

That rolling, dark, and troubled flood; He cross'd a board as false as glass, Which barely made his footing good.

His ruling star he ought to thank,

Which sav'd him from a watery grave;
One false step on that brittle plank
Had plung'd him in the fatal wave.
But he has reach'd the kiln-and soon
Conceal'd he stands beside the wall,
And sees full clearly in the moon
His Mary tossing down the ball.
He waits the time, when nearly wound,
To snatch its last ascending thread;

Which, when the startl'd Mary found,
Away she'd fly in sudden dread.
Then for the joke! along the dell,
With double speed, to hasten back,
And join the group, and hear her tell
Some story of a man in black.
He sees her shadow on the wall,
With timid haste and beating heart
She's winding up the magic ball;

But Mary-why that sudden start?
The thread is fast-'tis held below-

She turns to fly-yet trembling cries, "Who holds my ball a friend or foe?" "'Tis I!"-a hollow voice replies. Of wings she had but little need,

For off she flew without her cloak, While William, with redoubl'd speed, Ran laughing back to tell the joke. But Mary, when her loss she found,

Soon check'd her flight, and pausing then She listen'd-did she hear a sound Proceeding from the narrow glen?

'Twas like a voice imploring aid,

It mingl'd with the water's roar; "Oh! God of mercy," cried the maid,

"What cry was that?"-she heard no more. And nothing stirr'd save the deep stream,

That rushing foam'd and flash'd below,

Yet now again a fainter scream

And more remote-another?-no.

Mary knelt down, and then her eye

To Heav'n she rais'd in fervent pray'r;

"Oh, God! she cried, "hear yonder cry,

And save the wretch that's struggling there."

But while she linger'd timely aid
Might, if extended, life restore;

Quick at the thought the pitying maid
Flew even faster than before.
Meanwhile the group around the fire
Employ'd the time in laugh and song,
And when their mirth began to tire
They thought the lovers tarried long.
And many a joke, to raise their cheer,
They pass'd, but some their fears begin;
When footsteps quick arrest each ear,
And breathless Mary darted in!
She sank exhausted in a chair,

And plac'd her hands before her eyes,

Her deadly cheek and alter'd air

one drown'd,

Soon check'd the laugh about to rise.
Her young companions gather'd round,
And anxious ask'd the matter, when
Faintly she cried-"there's some
Oh hasten-hasten to the glen."
Fore-bodings now and dread surmise,
The party feel in silent woe.
"Why this delay ?" poor Mary cries,
"Where's William? he will fly I know.

My God, I do not see him here ;"
She cried and wildly gazed around;

No answer came to quell her fear,

And Mary dropp'd upon the ground.
Lights in the dell were seen to gleam,
Reflected from the rapid tide;
A broken plank came down the stream,
And on its wave a hat was spied.

By hope and fear alternate led,

All night they search'd the gloomy tide; But never from his watery bed

Came William back to claim his bride.

There is a calm when grief o'erflows,
A refuge from the worst of woes;
It comes when pleasure's dream is o'er,
And Hope, the charmer, charms no more.
"Tis where the heart is wrung till dry,
And not a tear bedews the eye;
'Tis where we see the vacant gaze,
While not a smile the lip betrays.
'Tis there-behold that wand'ring maid,
Wreathing a melancholy braid
Of cypress mix'd-to mark her lot
With the blue flow'r, "forget me not."
Wasted and wan a blighted thing,
For her in vain the breath of spring
Shall waft its sweetness-can the flower,
That feels within a cankering power
Feed on its vital part, display
A freshness to the rising day?
Oh! no-it bends to its decree,
And needs must die upon the tree.

A vacant eye and wither'd brain,
Where reason has resign'd her reign,
And phantacy usurps her place;
A wasted form and pallid face,

That looks despair and breathes decay :
Are all now left of Mary Gray.

G. L. A.

ΑΝ

(New Mon. Dec.)

SOCIAL AND SAVAGE LIFE.-DANIEL BOON.

Nattachment to what is called civilized life, is considered to be interwoven with our existence; but perhaps it is not so much so as we in general suspect. Like an attachment to the locality where we spent our earliest years, the value which we feel for it arises less from its intrinsic superiority over savage life being properly estimated by us, than from the effect of habit. Local attachments we owe to accident, they relate to things, and therefore there can be no interchange of regard, no mutual tie between them and ourselves, beyond what may arise from fancy and the associations that they may recall. They offer us nothing like the affections we feel towards friends and relatives who receive our kind offices and render us theirs in exchange. Local attachments are experienced in their greatest intensity by those who live remote from large cities and great congregations of men. Inhabitants of mountainous districts, however unpolished in manners and less advanced in civilization than those

of plains, feel much stronger the charm that binds them to the scenes of their early life-the countryman much more than the citizen. Climate seems in this respect to make little distinction ; the Laplander, the Swiss, and the Negro whom we steal from among his native mangroves and his pestilential marshes to steep in slavery, are alike strongly sensible of its influence. In great capitals it is almost obliterated; the early habits of their inhabitants being singularly unpropitious to its operation. The endless change of objects, the soul-engrossing traffic, and the bustle and turmoil of London, for example, soon stifle every trace of the feeling, if the smallest portion of it exist at all among its natives. In truth, what local attachment, in the sense I allude to, can be experienced by him who was born and resided two or three years in Smithfield, lived two or three more in the purlieus of Fleet-street, or among the dirty alleys of Holborn, his residence for ever shifted as the calls of business might require? The local

attachment of a Londoner is a very general and indefinite thing, and perhaps only consists in his regard for the name of the city itself, and its high claims upon public estimation, and be cause he will have every thing with which he is connected, to be better than any other. His early removal into the shop or manufactory, his artificial mode of life, his associates, and the demoralization around, make him incapable of feeling any of the sensations experienced by the unsophisticated inhabitant of the country, who has spent his youth amid the charms of nature, gazed with a delight of which the Londoner is utterly ignorant, upon the blue stream, the craggy mountain, or the tufted wood, from the door of the tenement in which he was born, and which has sheltered his ancestors for ages-who has noted every tree in the landscape on which he has looked with fondness for years, and has completely identified with his own heart "the hill that lifts him to the storms:"-his neighbours, are all in his horizon of view; it is his little universe, and he would exchange it for no other. Thus, what may be called the highest congregated state of man, tends to obliterate local attachments, which will be found strongest in that state of society which approaches nearest to the simplicity of Nature.

It has been remarked, that those who have been educated in civilized society, if they have at any time been forced to quit it by some accidental circumstance, and mingled with the Indian tribes in the forests of America, adopting for any considerable time their mode of life, and ranging unrestrained through the vast domains which have never yet submitted to the plough, have found it extremely difficult to return again and yield obedience to its restraints and institutions. A Mr. Hunter has lately published a most interesting work, containing an account of his life and residence among the Indian tribes of North America, having been made captive by them, when an infant, in one of their attacks upon the White settlements. According to their custom, they adopted him into a family, and reared him up in their own

mode of life. He wandered with them across the vast territory of the Missouri to the Pacific Ocean, and back again to the western states of America. He made his escape from them to one of the American cities, where he attracted much notice. This gentleman has stated to his intimate friends, that, particularly since he has been initiated into the forms of polished life. he has felt an almost irresistible inclination to return and join again his former associates; every thing seeming beyond measure cramped and restrained when contrasted with the liberty and ease of his former mode of life. Mr. Hunter's work contains much interesting matter for the consideration of the philosopher, and indeed of all who make the history of the human mind their study. It discloses many traits of Indian character, which must tend to raise rather than depress them in the scale of being. The fondness of the savage for ranging the forest and leading the life of a hunter, arises from the same love of liberty which is engrafted in the nature of civilized man, and is diminished, but never utterly annihilated, in the bosom of the citizen. Every attempt which has been made in Canada to amalgamate the aboriginal inhabitants with Europeans has failed. A chief here and there has been found, after long intercourse, to join occasionally the colonial society, and conduct himself in a very superior manner, so as to demonstrate that he was able, if he pleased, to support the artificial accomplishments of those whom he visited; but soon afterwards he has resumed his Indian habiliments, and rejoined his countrymen in the forest, with a delight that seemed to have derived a higher value from the contrast it af forded him to the manners he had just quitted. The village of Jeune Loretto in Canada is entirely an Indian residence; but though every method has been taken to make them adopt European customs, even with the children, who have been instructed in reading and writing, the effort has appeared insurmountable. By the aid of the strong liquors and diseases imported from Europe, they will by and by become extinct, owing to the rapid dimi

nution of their population, but they will never disappear by being blended with those who have conveyed to them these baleful plagues. The stream of Indian life will be dried up, pure to its last dregs, without commingling its waters and repairing its diminution from foreign sources. Yet these Indians have the sagacity to discover that knowledge is strength, and to shelter themselves under our protection, some of them even tilling small plots of ground after the mode they have learnt from us. But nothing can obliterate their affection for their own mode of life. After all, considering them abstractedly from the part they constitute towards the whole body politic, a considerable portion of the inhabitants of every civilized state have little of which to boast over the Aborigines of Canada, either in the employments in which they spend their time, the moral innocence of their lives, or the elevation of their pursuits. The free Indian has the advantage in many high and romantic qualities; he is brave, content, and independent, while the former cannot be said to be either.

But there may sometimes be motives for the freedom of the woods and forests being adopted by civilized men. The injustice and oppression that man often receives from his fellow, from bad laws, or from the shafts of calumny, may appear in themselves sufficiently strong to justify him in adopt ing the simplicity and uncontrolled state of natural life. To men of particular dispositions, of high spirit, and keen feelings, whose minds have been deeply wounded, a life spent apart from scenes which they cannot contemplate without pain, has been felt to be grateful. They have determined that the social compact is dissolved: that the boasted protection which was held out as the price of restraint, and for which freedom and property were sacrificed, was no longer a shield over them. They hear statesmen talk of citizenship, and the duty of every man to bear evil and injustice, and even to sacrifice himself for the sake of the community-that the bundle must not be weakened by abstracting a single stick. They hear lawyers boast of

the excellency of laws that bar that exercise of his free will which inclines him to withdraw from their power, and declaring that his fealty, arising from the accidental circumstance of birth, can never be violated under any pretence;

that he must bear every evil life can inflict, but has no right to withdraw himself from that society which has a paramount claim on him and his. He considers, reflects, and at last presumes to differ from these very politic and sophistical principles. What is society to him? has he power over his own property, and shall he have none over a choice of country? Shall he not resign that which in his feelings is guilty of injustice towards him, and endeavour to spend the remainder of life in the mode most congenial and soothing to a wounded spirit? He demurs a moment, forms his resolution, rushes into the woods, and becomes a hunter for the rest of his days, far removed from the footsteps of civilized man. Who can blame such an individual, or with justice contend that he has no moral right thus to dispose of himself? Who can blame him for not submitting to a state of life full of disgust, and that would drench the remainder of his days in suffering?

Such was, in all probability, the reasoning of Colonel Daniel Boon,*

*The passage alluded to, by Lord Byron is a follows:

of all men, saving Sylla, the manslayer,

Who passes for in life and death most lucky, of the great names which in our faces stare,

The General Boon, backwoodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest among mortals any where;

For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he

Enjoy'd the lonely, vigorous, harmless days

Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.

Crime came not near him—she is not the child

Of solitude; health shrank not from him—for

Her home is in the rarely-trodden wild,

Where if men seek her not, and death be more

Their choice than life, forgive them, as beguiled

By habit to what their own hearts abhorIn cities caged. The present case in point I Cite is, that Boon lived hunting up to ninety;

And what's still stranger, left behind a name

For which men vainly decimate the throng, Not only famous, but of that good fame,

Without which glory's but a tavern song

Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame,

Which hate nor envy ere could tinge with wrong

An active hermit, even in age the child of nature, or the Man of Ross run wild.

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