66 | Open'd, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy procession Follow'd the long-imprison'd, but patient, Aca dian farmers. Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their country, Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and way-worn, So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and their daughters. They were drawn up six deep," writes Mr. Bancroft, "and the young men, one hundred and sixty-one in number, were ordered to march first on board the vessel. They could leave their farms and cottages, the shady rocks on which they had reclined, their herds and their garners; but nature yearned within them, and they would not be separated from their parents. Yet of what avail was the frenzied despair of the unarmed youth? They had not one weapon; the bayonet drove them to obey; and they marched slowly and heavily from Fill our hearts this day with strength, and the chapel to the shore, between women and children, who, kneeling, prayed for blessings on their heads, they themselves weeping, and praying, and singing hymns. The seniors went next: the wives and children must wait till other transport vessels arrive." The spectacle is thus described in Evangeline : "Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth they hurried; and there on the sea-beach Piled in confusion lay the household goods of Foremost the young men came; and, raising 'Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible submission, and patience!' Then the old men, as they march'd, and the women that stood by the way-side Join'd in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine above them Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed. "Half-way down to the shore Evangeline waited in silence, Not overcome with grief, but strong in the hour of affliction, Calmly and sadly waited, until the procession approach'd her, And she beheld the face of Gabriel pale with emotion. Tears then fill'd her eyes, and, eagerly running to meet him, Clasp'd she his hands, and laid her head on his shoulder, and whisper'd, 'Gabriel! be of good cheer! for if we love one another, Echoing far o'er the fields came the roll of Nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mis drums from the churchyard. a sudden the church-doors chances may happen!' paused, for her father Thither the women and children throng'd. On Smiling she spake these words; then suddenly Saw she slowly advancing. Alas! how changed was his aspect! Gone was the glow from his cheek, and the fire from his eye, and his footstep Heavier seem'd with the weight of the weary heart in his bosom. But with a smile and a sigh she clasp'd his neck and embraced him, Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort avail'd not. Thus to the Gasperau's mouth moved on that mournful procession. "There disorder prevail'd, and the tumult and stir of embarking. Busily plied the freighted boats; and in the confusion Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers, too late, saw their children Left on the land, extending their arms, with wildest entreaties. So unto separate ships were Basil and Gabriel carried, While in despair on the shore Evangeline stood with her father. Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the twilight Deepen'd and darken'd around; and in haste the refluent ocean Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach Cover'd with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery sea-weed. Further back in the midst of the household goods and the wagons, Like to a gipsy camp, or a leaguer after a battle, All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near them, Lay encamp'd for the night the houseless Acadian farmers." "The embarkation of the inhabitants goes on but slowly," wrote Monckton from Fort Cumberland, near which he had burned three hamlets; "the most part of the wives of the men we have prisoners are gone off with their children, in hopes I would not send off their husbands without them." Their hope was vain. Near Annapolis, one hundred heads of families fled to the woods, and a party was detached on the hunt to bring them in. "Our soldiers hate them," wrote an officer on this occasion; "and if they can but find a pretext to kill them, they will." Did a prisoner seek to escape?-he was shot by the sentinel. Yet some fled to Quebec; more than three thousand had withdrawn to Miramichi and the region south of the Ristigouche; some found rest on the banks of the St. John's and its branches; some found a lair in their native forests; some were charitably sheltered VOL. VII.-8 | ACADIANS IN CHAINS. from the English in the wigwams of the savages. But seven thousand of these banished people were driven on board ships, and scattered among the English colonies, from New-Hampshire to Georgia alone; one thousand and twenty to South Carolina alone. They were cast ashore without resources; hating the poor-house as a shelter for their offspring, and abhorring the thought of selling themselves as laborers. Households, too, were separated; the colonial newspapers contained advertisements of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to reach and relieve their parents, of mothers mourning for their children." Poor wanderers! how they sighed for the pleasant villages whence they had been so cruelly driven out, and where they had so long dwelt so peacefully! But the hand that had expelled them was sternly raised to hinder them from returning. Their villages, from Annapolis to the isthmus, were laid waste. Their old homes were heaps of ruins. In one district as many as two hundred and fifty of their houses, and more than as many barns, were en- | surrendered, the fifteen hundred who retirely consumed. Their confiscated livestock, consisting of great numbers of horses, sheep, hogs, and horned cattle, were seized as spoils, and disposed of by the unscrupulous officials. "A beautiful and fertile tract of country was reduced to a solitude. There was left round the ashes of the cottages of the Acadians but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the hands that fed him. Thickets of foresttrees choked their orchards; the ocean broke over their neglected dikes, and desolated their meadows." The whole land was cast back into the wilderness, and, had the dispersed inhabitants gone back to it, they would have hardly recognized a spot within its boundaries. The exiles could not rest in their captivity; but relentless misfortune pursued them, by whatever way they sought after deliverance. Those sent to Georgia, drawn by a love for the spot where they were born, escaped to sea in boats, and went coasting on from harbor to harbor till they reached New England; but just as they would have set sail for their native fields, they were stopped by orders from Nova Scotia. Those who dwelt on the St. John's were once more driven out from their new homes. When Canada mained south of the Ristigouche were pursued by the scourges of unrelenting hatred. Those who dwelt in Pennsylvania presented an humble petition to the Earl of Loudoun, then the British commander-in-chief in America; and in return, his lordship, offended that the prayer was made in French, seized their five principal men, who in their own land had been persons of dignity and substance, and shipped them to England, with the request that they might be consigned to service as common sailors on board of ships-of-war, and thus be kept from ever again becoming troublesome. No doubt existed of the king's approbation of these proceedings. "The Lords of Trade, more merciless than the savages and than the wilderness in winter, wished very much that every one of the Acadians should be driven out; and when it seemed that the work was done, congratulated the king that the zealous endeavors of Lawrence had been crowned with an entire success." Wherever they turned, or whatever they did, these despoiled and outcast people encountered nothing but calamity. In their abject desolation, it even seemed to them that their cause was rejected by the universe. "We have been true," said they, "to our re ligion, and true to ourselves, yet nature appears to consider us only as the objects of public vengeance." Their hard fate might well impress them with even that disheartening conviction; yet it was not nature's doing, but "man's inhumanity to man," which in so many other instances "has made countless thousands mourn." Theirs, truly, is as sad a story as it can readily fall to one's lot to read; and, as such, it cannot fail to excite interest and sympathy in all who can feel compassion for the desolate and oppressed. instrument maker in London down to the period when he withdrew from business into the dignified ease and retirement of private life, that, in the circle of those whom he loved, he might enjoy that social intercourse in which he so truly delighted. To the last he preserved not only the full command of his extraordinary intellect, but all the alacrity of spirit and the social gayety which had illuminated his happiest days. It has been said, that he had in his character the utmost abhorrence for all sorts of forwardness, parade, and pretension; that there was nothing of effort or impatience, any more than of pride or levity, in his demeanor; and that in the manners of no man could there have been a finer expression of reposing strength and of mild self-possession. We can easily conceive, therefore, with what By these deeds of violence, the French were extirpated from Acadia. Only a few in obscure nooks escaped; and the descendants of these till the present day retain the language, the manners, and the religion of their forefathers-a curiosity in the present social system of Nova Scotia. Such is the historical basis of Long-emotions Sir Walter Scott looked upon fellow's sweet poem of Evangeline, and one of the most affecting pages in American annals. WATT AND THE STEAM-ENGINE. THE HE name of WATT is inseparably associated with the application of steam to the highest and most practical ends. Though his parents were in a position to give him a comparatively liberal education, his delicate constitution interposed a serious obstacle to his progress. His attendance at school was very irregular, and sometimes he was absent for several successive months. But what he lost in the class, he more than made up in the chamber. His mind was intensely active, and his habits of inquisitiveness opened to him the stores of knowledge; nor could he turn away from any subject of inquiry till he had completely mastered it. He needed only to be prompted, and to him everything became the beginning of a new and devoted study. Mathematics and mechanics were his favorite pursuits; nor was his father backward in providing him with the necessary means for the prosecution of those little experiments in which in early life he was engaged. Such was his application to study, that he speedily made himself acquainted with every branch and department of science. It would be both interesting and instructive to sketch the life of this illustrious man from the time that he was engaged to a mathematical and nautical "the man whose genius discovered the means of multiplying our national resources to a degree, perhaps, even beyond his own stupendous powers of calculation and combination; bringing the treasures of the abyss to the summit of the earthgiving to the feeble arm of man the momentum of an Afrite-commanding manufactures to arise-affording means of dispensing with that time and tide which wait for no man—and of sailing without that wind which defied the commands and threats of Xerxes himself. This potent commander of the elements-this abridger of time and space-this magician, whose cloudy machinery has produced a change in the world, the effects of which, extraordinary as they are, are perhaps only beginning to be felt-was not only the most profound man of science, the most successful combiner of powers and calculator of numbers, as adapted to practical purposes was not only one of the most generally well-informed, but he was also one of the kindest of human beings." In his eightyfirst year, the alert, kind, benevolent old man—surrounded by a little band of northern literati-" had his attention at every one's question, his information at every one's command. His talents and fancy overflowed on every subject. One gentleman was a deep philologist; he talked with him on the origin of the alphabet, as if he had been coeval with Cadmus; another a celebrated critic-you would have said that the old man had studied political economy and belles-lettres all his life. Of science it is unnecessary to speak; it was his own distinguished walk." From his wide and varied attainments he was fitted to move in any circle; and there was no circle in which he was not received as one of the higher types of our humanity. Literary honors and distinctions were conferred upon him in profusion. Shortly before his death, he was elected a member of the National Institute of France; and in quitting the world, he left behind him a reputation as unlimited as the domain of science or the empire of civilization. But it is not so much with the character of the man that we have to do, as with his inventions; nor so much with the details of those inventions, as with their application and practical working. His discoveries may be full of interest, as the mere fruits of genius; but when we think of their influence on civilization, and science, and social happiness, we have a theme which challenges the highest efforts of eloquence, and which no force of eloquence can fully express. There is scarcely a boy that occupies a form in one of our common public schools that is not familiar with the steam-engine; but how few have reflected on the magnitude and the effects of its motive power? The expansive force of steam, in raising water or any other liquid body, by pressure, above its natural height, was known even before the Christian era. And though in France some few efforts were made to use steam for mechanical purposes; though about the middle of the seventeenth century the Marquis of Worcester constructed his semi-omnipotent engine, by which one volume of water rarefied by fire could drive up forty volumes of water; though thirty years afterward Savary exhibited to the Royal Society his model of an en |