Nothing can be more beautiful than these little bottoms, upon which these emigrants deposit, if I may so say, their household gods.

Springs burst forth in the intervals between the high and low grounds. The trees and shrubs are of the most beautiful kind. The brilliant red-bird as seen flitting among the shrubs, or perched on a tree, seems welcoming, in her mellow notes, the emigrant to his abode. Flocks of paroquets are glittering among the trees, and gray squirrels are skipping from branch to branch.

Pass

In the midst of these primeval scenes, the patient and laborious father fixes his family. In a few weeks they have reared a comfortable cabin and other outbuildings. this place in two years, and you will see extensive fields of corn and wheat, a young and thrifty orchard, fruit trees of all kinds, the guarantee of present abundant subsistence, and of future luxury.

Pass it in ten years, and the log buildings will have disappeared. The shrubs and forest trees will be gone. The Arcadian aspect of humble and retired abundance and comfort, will have given place to a brick house, with accompaniments like those that attend the same kind of house in the older countries.

By this time, the occupant, who came there, perhaps with a small sum of money, and moderate expectations, from humble life, and with no more than a common school education, has been made, in succession, member of the assembly, justice of the peace, and finally county judge. I admit that the first residence among the trees affords the most agreeable picture to my mind; and that there is an inexpressible charm in the pastoral simplicity of those years, before pride and self-consequence have banished the repose of their Eden, and when you witness the first strugglings of social toil, with the barren luxuriance of nature.

LESSON XXXIII.

Mont Blanc in the Gleam of Sunset.-GRISCOM.

We arrived, before sundown, at the village of St. Martin, where we were to stay for the night. The evening being remarkably fine, we crossed the Arve on a beautiful bridge,

and walked over to Salenche, a very considerable village, opposite to St. Martin, and ascended a hill to view the effect of the sun's declining light upon Mont Blanc. The scene was truly grand.

The broad range of the mountain was fully before us, of a pure and almost glowing white, apparently to its very base; and which, contrasted with the brown tints of the adjoining mountains, greatly heightened the novelty of the scene. We could scarcely avoid the conclusion, that this vast pile of snow was very near us, and yet its base was not less than fifteen, and its summit, probably, more than twenty miles from the place where we stood.

The varying rays of light produced by reflection from the snow, passing as the sun's rays declined, from a brilliant white through purple and pink, and ending in the gentle light, which the snow gives after the sun has set, afforded an exhibition in optics upon a scale of grandeur, which no other region in the world could probably excel.

Never in my life have my feelings been so powerfully affected by merely scenery, as they were in this day's excursion. The excitement, though attended by sensations awfully impressive, is nevertheless so finely attempered by the glow of novelty, incessantly mingled with astonishment and admiration, as to produce on the whole a feast of delight.

A few years ago, I stood upon Table Rock, and placed my cane in the descending flood of Niagara. Its tremendous roar almost entirely precluded conversation with the friend at my side; while its whirlwind of mist and foam, filled the air to a great distance around me. The rainbow sported in its bosom; the gulf below exhibited the wild fury of an immense boiling caldron; while the rapids above, for the space of nearly a mile, appeared like a mountain of billows, chafing and dashing against each other with thundering impetuosity, in their eager strife to gain the precipice, and take the awful leap.

In contemplating this scene, my imagination and my heart were filled with sublime and tender emotions. The soul seemed to be brought a step nearer to the presence of that incomprehensible Being, whose spirit dwelt in every feature of the cataract, and directed all its amazing energies. Yet in the scenery of this day, there was more of a pervading sense of awful and unlimited grandeur: mountain piled upon mountain in endless continuity throughout the whole extent, and crowned by the brightest effulgence of an evening sun, upon the everlasting snows of the highest pinnacle of Europe.

LESSON XXXIV.

Passage of the Red Sea.-HEBER

'MID the light spray their snorting camels stood,
Nor bathed a fetlock in the nauseous flood-
He comes their leader comes,--the man of God
O'er the wide waters lifts his mighty rod,
And onward treads-The circling waves retreat,
In hoarse, deep murmurs, from his holy feet;
And the chased surges, inly roaring, show
The hard wet sand and coral hills below.

With limbs that falter, and with hearts that swell,
Down, down they pass a steep and slippery dell;
Around them rise, in pristine chaos hurled,
The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world;
And flowers that blush beneath the ocean green,
And caves, the sea-calves' low-roofed haunt, are seen.
Down, safely down the narrow pass they tread;
The beetling waters storm above their head:
While far behind retires the sinking day,
And fades on Edom's hills its latest ray.

Yet not from Israel fled the friendly light,

Or dark to them, or cheerless came the night,
Still in their van, along that dreadful road,

Blazed broad and fierce, the brandishel torch of God.
Its meteor glare a tenfold lustre gave

On the long mirror of the rosy wave.
While its blest beams a sunlike heat supply,
Warm every cheek and dance in every eye-
To them alone-for Misraim's wizard train
Invoke for light their monster-gods in vain:

Clouds heaped on clouds their struggling sight confine,
And tenfold darkness broods above their line.
Yet on they fare by reckless vengeance led,
And range unconscious through the ocean's bed.
Till midway now-that strange and fiery form

Showed his dread visage lightening through the storm;
With withering splendor blasted all their might,

And brake their chariot-wheels, and marred their coursers flight.

:

'Fly, Misraim, fly!' -The ravenous floods they see,
And, fiercer than the floods, the Deity.
'Fly, Misraim, fly!'-From Edom's coral strand
Again the prophet stretched his dreadful wand:-
With one wild crash the thundering waters sweep,
And all is waves-a dark and lonely deep-
Yet o'er these lonely waves such murmurs past,
As mortal wailing swelled the nightly blast.
And strange and sad.the whispering breezes bore
The groans of Egypt to Arabia's shore.

LESSON XXXV.

Belshazzar.-CROLY.

HOUR of an empire's overthrow!

The princes from the feast were gone— The idle flame was burning low— 'Twas midnight upon Babylon,

.

That night the feast was wild and high;
That night was Zion's God profaned;
The seal was set to blasphemy;

The last deep cup of wrath was drained.

'Mid jewelled roof and silken pall,
Belshazzar on his couch was flung;-
A burst of thunder shook the hall—
He heard-but was no mortal tongue!

'King of the east! the trumpet calls,
That calls thee to a tyrant's grave;
A curse is on thy palace walls-
A curse is on thy guardian wave.

'A surge is in Euphrates bed,
That never filled its bed before;-
A surge that, e'er the morn be red,
Shall load with death its haughty shore.

'Behold a tide of Persian steel-
A torrent of the Median car;-
Like flame their gory banners wheel;-
Rise, king, and arm thee for the war!'

Belshazzar gazed-the voice was past-
The lofty chamber filled with gloom-
But echoed on the sudden blast

The rushing of a mighty plume.

He listened-all again was still;
He heard no clarion's iron clang;
He heard the fountain's gushing rill-
The breeze that through the roses sang.

He slept;-in sleep wild murmurs came—
A visioned splendor fired the sky;
He heard Belshazzar's taunted name-
He heard again the prophet cry—

Sleep, Sultan! 't is thy final sleep;
Or wake, or sleep the guilty dies;
The wrongs of those who watch and
Around thee and thy nation, rise.'

He started:-'mid the battle's yell,

He saw the Persian rushing on;-
He saw the flames around him swell;
Thou 'rt ashes, King of Babylon!

weep,

LESSON XXXVI.

Christ in the Tempest.-WHITtier.

STORM On the midnight waters! The vast sky
Is stooping with the thunder. Cloud on cloud
Reels heavily in the darkness, like a shroud
Shook by some warning spirit from the high
And terrible wall of Heaven. The mighty wave
Tosses beneath its shadow, like the bold
Upheavings of a giant from the grave,
Which bound him prematurely to his cold