'Your eyes was like de clouds of night
Touched by de moon-beam's glow,
Your skin, almost a lily white,

Your soul, as pure as snow,
Your lips as sweet as sugar-cane,
When first de sap do flow;
But now I only tink wid pain
Of you, sweet Lucy Low.
O LUCY! LUCY Low! etc.

'Sad was de day de trader came,
De saddest day I know;
He bore you to a life of shame,
A life of shame and woe;

He made you what I cannot name,

My Lucy, pure as snow!

But though I grieve, I cannot blame
My poor, lost Lucy Low!

O LUCY! LUCY Low! etc.

'My breaking heart finds no relief,
My tears refuse to flow,

I'm wearing out my life wid grief
For my lost LUCY Low!

Oh! that you now was laid at rest
Below de winter's snow,

'T would still de trubble in your breast,

My poor lost LUCY Low!

O LUCY! LUCY Low! etc.

'O righteous LORD! wilt THOU look down
On such great wrong and woe,

Nor blast de wretches wid THY frown
Who gave de drefful blow

Dat broke two hearts, and stained a wife

As pure as any snow,

And steeped in sin the soul and life

Of my poor Lucy Low!

O LUCY! LUCY Low!

De gracious LORD will sure look down,

In mercy on your woe,

And blast de wretches wid His frown
Who wronged you, Lucy Low!'

Poor Lucy! The reader must not conclude that my darky acquaintance is an average specimen of his class. Far from it. Such instances of intelligence are very rare, and are never found except in the cities. There, constant intercourse with the whites renders the blacks shrewd and intelligent, but on the plantations the case is very different. The fact is, that over the whole South the plantation-slave is elevated but a little above the brute. Every avenue to knowledge is closed to him. His age, his origin, his country, his rights, are all unknown. There is his task, and he does it; there his food, and he eats it; but of the spirit within him, his destiny, the GOD who bends the blue sky above him, he knows nothing. An old negress, to whom I once read a few chapters from the BIBLE, telling her it was God's word, replied: "Yas, Massa, it am God's word to de white folks, but not to de black. If it war, dey could read it.' The physical condition of the slave is not the real evil of the

'Institution.' His moral and intellectual degradation, which is essential to its very existence, constitutes the true argument against it. It feeds the body, but starves the soul. It blinds the reason, and shuts the mind to truth. It degrades and brutalizes the whole being, and does it purposely. In that lies its strength, and in that, too, lurks the weakness which will one day topple down this giant wrong, with a crash that will shake the continent. Let us hope the direful upheaving, which is now felt throughout the Union, is the precursor of the earthquake that will bury it forever.

The sun was wheeling below the trees which skirted the western horizon, when we halted in the main road, abreast of one of those by-paths, which every traveller at the South recognizes as leading to some planter's house. Turning our horse's head, we pursued this path for a short distance, when emerging from the pine forest, over whose sandy barrens we had ridden all the day, a broad plantation lay spread out before us. On one side was a row of perhaps forty small but neat cabins; and on the other, at the distance of about a third of a mile, a huge building, which, from the piles of timber near it, I saw was a lumber-mill. Before us was a smooth causeway, extending on for a quarter of a mile, and shaded by large live-oaks and pines, whose moss fell in graceful drapery from the gnarled branches. This led to the mansion of the proprietor, a large antique structure, exhibiting the dingy appearance which all houses near the lowlands of the South derive from the climate, but with a generous, hospitable air about its wide doors and bulky windows, that seemed to invite the traveller to the rest and shelter within. I had stopped my horse, and was absorbed in contemplation of a scene as beautiful as it was new to me, when an old negro approached, and touching his hat, said: 'Massa send his complimens to de gemman, and happy to have him spend de night at Bucksville.'

'Bucksville!' I exclaimed, and where is the village?'

'Dis am it, massa; and it am eight miles and a hard road to de borough,' (meaning Conwayboro, a one-horse village at which I had designed to spend the night.) 'Will de gemman please ride up to de piazza?' continued the old negro.

'Yes, uncle, and thank you,' and in a moment I had received the cordial welcome of the host, an elderly gentleman, whose easy and polished manners reminded me of the times of our grandfathers in glorious New-England. A few minutes put me on a footing of friendly familiarity with him and his family, and I soon found myself in a circle of daughters and grand-children, and as much at home as if I had been a long-expected guest.

There the reader will please allow me to remain for the present.

THE KNIGHT AND THE DRAGON.

BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND.

but above i chapters

Massa, it a could read

WHEN I wandered in the land of Art,

'Mid the sharp-tipped dreams, where blue Madonnas
Sit like butterflies upon a sun-flower,

Framed in fragments of the Golden Ages,
Oft I noted that in all cathedrals,
Here or there amid grotesquest carving,
One quaint symbol never was forgotten
Soon or later, I was sure to find it
Lurking somewhere in entrellised columns ;
Peeping strangely through a gnarling impost,
Always came the strange Masonic symbol
Of a warrior, helmeted and sworded,
Fighting grimly with a devil-dragon.

II.

Good old priests have told me that the figure
Simply meant St. George-you know the story -
Great St. George, the fearful monster-killer.
Deeper heads will have it, 'tis a symbol,
Persian-old- the myth of Light and Darkness,
Ahriman and Ormusd fiercely fighting,
Ever fighting the great world-life battle.

And it is the fight of Light and Darkness,

The great fight of GoD against the devil :

The great fight of Tyranny and Freedom;

Truth and Right against foul Might and Falsehood:
Many a thousand years the two have battled-
Tell me, is it an unending struggle?

Ancient dragon, you are slowly dying!
Golden warrior, ever fairer, stronger!
Child of light, my great Prometheus-Balder,
Dear, and beautiful, and never-fading,

Rouse! for now the fire-drake makes him ready
For his maddest, fiercest, foulest struggle -
Rouse!

O countrymen! men of the North-land,
All around you twines the Southern dragon,
All your life is blent with subtle poison,
All your veins are fired with heat infernal,
From the loathsome devil's spume and breathing:
Strike, my warrior, strike him dead forever!

End the world-old strife between the oppressor

And the oppressed: press on, for you must conquer !

VIL.

Now the good knight frees him from the dragon,

Casts aside the ancient heavy armor,

Bathes him in the purest light of heaven,

In the intensest lucent-flowing spirit;

White, and beautiful, and lithe, and naked,

Oh! how golden-fair withouten armor!

True, it shielded him for many ages;
True, it guarded him against the dragon;
But it always was a heavy armor,

Girding, smothering, chafing unto bleeding

Those fair limbs of ivory-purest beauty:

Strange that thousands should have deemed that armor

Was his chiefest charm, and best worth keeping ;

Soul of beauty, rule this world forever!

THE ROUGH RHYMES OF REVOLUTION.

I HAVE a great sympathy for collectors. I am not collective myself— that is to say, I will not deny the possession of a half hundred weight of miscellaneieties of a curiositarian description which have stuck to me as I went along - but I don't collect. There are men who grow moustaches, and some who are too lazy to shave.

There are autographs. I have of them some few score of a very varied character. Goethe and Chang and Eng, Aldrich and Stoddard and P. T. Barnum; Messrs. Bunsen, Monod, D'Aubigné, and Lacordaire; Harriet Wilson, Aurora Konigsmarke, and Lola Montez. A note from Bayard Taylor in sixteen lines, every line in a different language, is there, and also manuscriptive notes or paragraphs from the hands of Hugh Fitz Hugh, who, taking a hint from Leigh Hunt's Indicator, intends to favor the world shortly with a Cannabis Indicator. Likewise from Charles A. Dana and Thackeray, from Bourcicault and Grisi and Ullman, and Sontag, and the Heinefetter, Taglioni and Grau, Delmonico, Jeremy Bentham and Count Gurowski. Then I have Helmine von Chezy, George Sand and Rose Terry—and take this opportunity to inform the publisher of the KNICKERBOCKER that I have just appropriated a nice little Harriet E. Prescott which he inadvertently left lying around loose, and which I prize even as one prizeth the priziest of treasures!

- oh! no.

Woe is me this is not the collection of which I should be speaking. Not exactly. In the beginning I had under hand a small collection of the kind which Cobbett once referred to when he wished to show how far human folly and waste-time could possibly go - I mean ballads political — in this case illustrative of the history of the United States. And very rough and rowdy ballads at that. Not the polished or interesting lyrics which gentlemen place in volumes These are of the kind of songs which are really sung! First among them is a Song of the Revolution, for which I return thanks to my solid and entertaining old friend, the Boston Saturday Express, and which it declares was poet-ized by Shubael Wheeler, a soldier of Captain Isaac Hodge's company of Rehoboth. It was written on the back of the musterroll of the company says the Express · and is to be found among the revolutionary rolls in the office of the Secretary of State. Rude as it is, there is more than one brave, hearty old verse in it, applicable to the present time.