Yet tranquil, now, that man of crime-
As if the balmy evening time
Softened his spirit-looked and lay,
Watching the rosy infant's play :
Though still, whene'er his eye by chance
Fell on the boy's, its lurid glance
Met that unclouded, joyous gaze,
As torches, that have burned all night,
Through some impure and godless rite,
Encounter morning's glorious rays.

But hark! the vesper call to prayer,
As slow the orb of day-light sets,
Is rising sweetly on the air,

From Syria's thousand minarets!
The boy has started from the bed
Of flowers, where he had laid his head,
And down upon the fragrant sod

Kneels, with his forehead to the south
Lisping the eternal name of God

From Purity's own cherub mouth;
And looking, while his hands and eyes
Are lifted to the glowing skies,
Like a stray babe of Paradise,
Just lighted on that flowery plain,

And seeking for its home again!

Oh! 'twas a sight-that heaven-that child

A scene, which might have well beguiled

Even haughty Eblis of a sigh

For glories lost, and peace gone by.

And how felt he, the wretched man
Reclining there-while memory ran
O'er many a year of guilt and strife,
Flew o'er the dark flood of his life,
Nor found one sunny resting-place,
Nor brought him back one branch of grace?
"There was a time," he said, in mild,
Heart-humbled tones, "thou blessed child,

When, young, and, haply, pure as thou,
I looked and prayed like thee; but now-"
He hung his head; each nobler aim,

And hope, and feeling, which had slept
From boyhood's hour, that instant came
Fresh o'er him, and he wept-he wept!

Blest tears of soul-felt penitence!
In whose benign, redeeming flow
Is felt the first, the only sense

Of guiltless joy that guilt can know.

*

And now behold him kneeling there,
By the child's side, in humble prayer,
While the same sun-beam shines upon
The guilty and the guiltless one,

And hymns of joy proclaim through heaven
The triumph of a soul forgiven.

LESSON LV.

Character and Decay of the North American Indians.STORY.

THERE is, in the fate of the unfortunate Indians, 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 melan

choly than their history? By a law of their nature, they seem destined to a slow, but sure extinction. 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 forever. 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 farthest Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi

and the lakes. 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 warm hopes of the future. The aged sat down; but they wept not. 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. 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. The wasting pestilence has not alone 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. 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 turn to take a last look of their They cast a last glance upon the graves

they heed him not. deserted villages.

of their fathers. They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans.

There is something in their hearts, which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterance; which has no aim nor 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. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know, and feel, that there is for them still one remove farther, not distant, nor unseen. It is to the general burial-ground

of their race.

Reason as we may, it is impossible not to read, in such a fate, much that we know not how to interpret; much of provocation to cruel deeds and deep resentments; much of apology for wrong and perfidy; much of pity mingling with indignation; much of doubt and misgiving as to the past; much of painful recollections; much of dark foreboding.

Philosophy may tell us, that conquest in other cases has adopted the conquered into its own bosom; and thus, at no distant period, given them the common privileges of subjects; but that the red men are incapable of such an assimilation. By their very nature and character, they can neither unite themselves with civil institutions, nor with safety be allowed to remain as distinct communities.

Policy may suggest, that their ferocious passions, their independent spirit, and their wandering life, disdain the restraints of society; that they will submit to superior force only while it chains them to the earth by its pressure. A wilderness is essential to their habits and pursuits. They can neither be tamed nor overawed. They subsist by war or hunting; and the game of the forest is relinquished only for the nobler game of man. The question, therefore, is necessarily reduced to the consideration, whether the country itself shall be abandoned by civilized man, or maintained by his sword as the right of the strongest.

It may be so; perhaps, in the wisdom of Providence, it must be so. I pretend not to comprehend, or solve, such weighty difficulties. But neither philosophy nor policy can.

shut out the feelings of nature. Humanity must continue to sigh at the constant sacrifices of this bold, but wasting race. And Religion, if she may not blush at the deed, must, as she sees the successive victims depart, cling to the altar with a drooping heart, and mourn over a destiny without hope and without example.

LESSON LVI.

Melancholy Fate of the Indians.-C. Sprague.

I VENERATE the pilgrim's cause,
Yet for the red man dare to plead:
We bow to Heaven's recorded laws,
He turned to nature for a creed;
Beneath the pillared dome,

We seek our God in prayer;

Through boundless woods he loved to roam,
And the Great Spirit worshipped there;
But one, one fellow-throb with us he felt;
To one divinity with us he knelt-
Freedom, the self-same freedom we adore,
Bade him defend his violated shore.

He saw the cloud, ordained to grow,
And burst upon his hills in wo;
He saw his people withering by,
Beneath the invader's evil eye ;

Strange feet were trampling on his fathers' bones;
At midnight hour, he woke to gaze

Upon his happy cabin's blaze,

And listen to his children's dying groans.
He saw, and, maddening at the sight,
Gave his bold bosom to the fight;
To tiger rage his soul was driven;
Mercy was not-nor sought nor given ;
The pale man from his lands must fly;
He would be free-or he would die.