6. If it flowed in her nature, here, here it might have delighted to beam out; here was space for its saving love: the true mother chastens, not destroys the child! but Britain, when she struck at us, struck at her own image, struck too at the immortal principles which her Lockes, her Miltons, and her Sydneys taught, and the fell blow severed us for ever, as a kindred nation! The crime is purely her own; and upon her, not us, be its consequences and its stain. RICHARD RUSH. LESSON CLX. Consumption. 1. There is a sweetness in woman's decay, 2. O! there is a sweetness in beauty's close, Has mantled her cheek with its heavenly dye, 3. And there is a blending of white and blue, Are pour'd from her full, o'erflowing horn, When the heaven-sick soul is stealing away. 5. And when her sun is low declining, And her cheek, like the Parian stone, is fair, In a deep and long imprinted kiss; Where the glassy vapour cheats his eyes, And the dove from the falcon seeks her nest, Or faint as the tones of an unstrung lute, PERCIVAL. LESSON CLXI. Diminution of the Indian Tribes. 1. There is, indeed, in the fate of these unfortunate beings, much to awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment; much which may be urged to excuse their own atrocities; much in their characters which betrays us into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history? By a law of their nature, they seem destined to a slow but sure extinction. 2. Every where, at the approach of the white man, they fade away. We hear the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of autumn, and they are gone for ever. They pass mournfully by us, and they return no more. Two centuries ago the smoke of their wigwams, and the fires of their councils rose in every valley from Hudson's Bay to the furtherest Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the Lakes. 3. The shouts of victory and the war-dance rung through the mountains and the glades. The thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled through the forests; and the hunter's trace, and the dark encampment startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to the songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with the warm hopes of the future. The aged sat down, but they wept not. Сс 4. They should soon be at rest in fairer regions, where the Great Spirit dwelt, in a home prepared for the brave, beyond the western skies. Braver men never lived; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage, and fortitude, and sagacity, and perseverance, beyond most of the human race. They shrunk from no dangers, and they feared no hardships. 5. If they had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave. But where are they? Where are the villages, and warriors, and youth? the sachems and the tribes? the hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. 6. The wasting pestilence has not done the mighty work. No, nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which hath eaten into their heart-cores- a plague, which the touch of the white man communicated— a poison, which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region, which they may now call their own. Already the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. 7. I see them leave their miserable homes, the aged, the helpless, the women, and the warriors, " few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or despatch, but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which passes speech. 8. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which choaks all utterance; which has no aim or method. It is courage, absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them-no, never. They know and feel that there is for them but one remove farther, not distant, nor unseen. It is to the general burialground of their race. STORY. LESSON CLXII. Industry Necessary to Form the Orator. 1. The history of the world is full of testimony to prove how much depends upon industry; not an eminent orator has lived, but is an example of it. Yet in contradiction to all this, the almost universal feeling appears to be, that industry can effect nothing, that eminence is the result of accident, and that every one must be content to remain just what he may happen to be. Thus multitudes, who come forward as teachers and guides, suffer themselves to be satisfied with the most indifferent attainments, and a miserable mediocrity, without so much as inquiring how they might rise higher, much less making any attempt to rise. 2. For any other art they would have served an apprenticeship, and would be ashamed to practice it in public before they had learned it. If any one would sing, he attends a master, and is drilled in the very elementary principles, and, only after the most laborious process, dares to exercise his voice in public. This he does, though he has scarce any thing to learn but the mechanical execution of what lies, in sensible forms, before his eye. But the ex tempore speaker, who is to invent as well as utter, to carry on an operation of the mind as well as to produce sound, enters upon the work without preparatory discipline, and then wonders that he fails! 3. If he were learning to play on the flute for public exhibition, what hours and days would he spend in giving facility to his fingers, and attaining the power of the sweetest and most impressive execution. If he were devoting himself to the organ, what months and years would he labour, that he might know its compass and be master of its keys, and be able to draw out, at will, all its various combinations of harmonious sound, and its full richness and delicacy of expression. 4. And yet he will fancy that the grandest, the most various, the most expressive of all instruments, which the ! |