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passed over them, have sunk into their graves, and every thing

but their names traveled into oblivion. The distinctive character of all these Western Indians, as well as their traditions relative to their ancient locations, prove beyond a doubt, that they have been for a long time located on the soil which they now possess; and in most respects, distinct and unlike those nations who formerly inhabited the Atlantic coast, and who, according to the erroneous opinion of a great part of the world, have fled to the West.

7. It is for these inoffensive and unoffending people, yet unvisited by the vices of civilized society, that I would proclaim to the world, that it is time, for the honor of our countryfor the honor of every citizen of the republic-and for the sake of humanity, that our government should raise her strong arm to save the remainder of them from the pestilence which is rapidly advancing upon them. My heart has sometimes. almost bled with pity while among them, and witnessing their innocent amusements, as I have contemplated the inevitable bane that was rapidly advancing upon them; without that check from the protecting arm of government, which alone can shield them from destruction.

8. What degree of happiness these sons of Nature may attain to in the world, in their own way; or in what proportion they may relish the pleasures of life, compared to the sum of happiness belonging to civilized society, has long been a subject of much doubt, and one which I can not undertake to decide. I have long looked with the eye of a critic, into the jovial faces of these sons of the forest, unfurrowed with cares,--where the agonizing feeling of poverty had never stamped distress upon the brow. I have watched the bold, intrepid step,-the proud, yet dignified deportment of Nature's man, in fearless freedom, with a soul unalloyed by mercenary lusts, too great to yield to laws or power except from God.

9. As these independent fellows are all joint-tenants of the soil, they are all rich, and none of the steepings of comparative poverity can strangle their just claims to renown. Who, I would ask, can look, without admiring, into a society where

peace and harmony prevail-where virtue is cherished-where rights are protected, and wrongs are redressed--with no laws, but the laws of honor, which are the supreme laws of the land? Trust to boasted virtues of civilized society for awhile, with all its intellectual refinements, to such a tribunal, and then write down the degradation of the "lawless savage," and our transcendent virtues.

LESSON XXXII.

EXPLANATORY NOTES.-1. THE PARTHENON was a temple sacred to Minerva, situated on the summit of the Acropolis or citadel of Athens, and thus elevated far above the surrounding edifices. In beauty and grandeur it surpassed all other buildings of the kind, and was enriched with the matchless sculptures from the hands of Phidias and his scholars. It is now much dilapidated.

2. THE COLISEUM was the greatest amphitheater that Roman magnificence ever built. It is said to have been capable of holding a hundred thousand persons. It now presents a gigantic ruin.

3. JUPITER OLYMPIUS was an ancient temple at Athens. The inside was nearly a half league in circumference. Here stood the wonderful statue of JUPITER, made of ivory and gold by the hands of Phidias.

DESCRIPTION OF THE RUINS AT BALBEC.

From the French of Lamartine.

1. WE rose with the sun whose first rays struck on the temples of Balbec, and gave to those mysterious ruins that éclat which his brilliant light ever throws over scenes which it illuminates. Soon we arrived, on the northern side, at the foot of the gigantic walls which surround those beautiful remains. A clear stream, flowing over a bed of granite, murmured around the enormous blocks of stone, fallen from the top of the wall, which obstructed its course. Beautiful sculptures were half concealed in the limpid stream. We passed the rivulet by an arch formed by these fallen remains, and' mounting a narrow breach, were soon lost in admiration of the scene which surrounded us.

2. At every step a fresh exclamation of surprise broke from our lips. Every one of the stones, of which that wall was composed, was from eight to ten feet in length, by five or six

in breadth, and as much in hight. They rest, without cement, one upon the other, and almost all bear the mark of Indian or Egyptian sculpture. At a single glance, you see that these enormous stones are not placed in their original site-that they are the precious remains of temples of still more remote antiquity, which were made use of to encircle this colony of Grecian and Roman citizens.

3. When we reached the summit of the breach, our eyes knew not to what object first to turn. On all sides were gates of marble, of prodigious hight and magnitude; windows or niches, fringed with the richest friezes; fallen pieces of cornices, of entablatures, or capitals, thick as the dust beneath our feet; magnificent vaulted roofs above our heads; everywhere a chaos of confused beauty, the remains of which lay scattered about, or piled on each other in endless variety. So prodigious was the accumulation of architectural remains, that it defies all attempts at classification, or conjecture of the kind of buildings, to which the greater part of them had belonged.

4. After passing through this scene of ruined magnificence, we reached an inner wall, which we also ascended; and from its summit the view of the interior was yet more splendid. Of much greater extent, far more richly decorated than the outer circle, it presented an immense platform, the level surface of which was frequently broken by the remains of still more elevated pavements, on which temples to the sun, the object of adoration at Balbec, had been erected. All around that platform was a series of lesser temples, or chapels, decorated with niches, admirably engraved, and loaded with sculptured ornaments, to a degree that appeared excessive to those who had seen the severe simplicity of the Parthenon' or the Coliseum.2

5. But how prodigious the accumulation of architectural riches in the middle of an eastern desert! Combine in imagination the temple of Jupiter Stator, and the Coliseum at Rome, of Jupiter Olympius', and the Acropolis at Athens, and you will yet fall short of that marvelous assemblage of admirable edifices and sculptures. Many of the temples rest on columns

seventy feet in hight, and seven feet in diameter, yet composed only of two or three blocks of stone, so perfectly joined together that to this day you can barely discern the lines of their junction. Silence is the only language which befits man when words are inadequate to convey his impressions. We remained mute with admiration, gazing on the eternal ruins.

6. The shades of night overtook us while we yet rested in amazement at the scene, by which we were surrounded. One by one they enveloped the columns in their obscurity, and added a mystery the more to that magical and mysterious work of time and man. We appeared, as compared with the gigantic mass and long duration of these monuments, as the swallows which nestle a season in the crevices of the capitals, without knowing by whom, or for whom, they have been constructed.

7. The thoughts, the wishes, which moved these masses, are to us unknown. The dust of marble which we tread beneath our feet, knows more of it than we; but it can not tell us what it has seen; and in a few ages the generations which shall come in their turn to visit our monuments, will ask, in like manner, wherefore we have built and engraved. The works of man survive his thought. Movement is the law of the human mind; the definite is the dream of his pride and his ignorance.

8. God is a limit which appears ever to recede as humanity approaches him; we are ever advancing, and never arrive. This great Divine Figure which man from his infancy is ever striving to reach, and to imprison in his structures raised by hands, forever enlarges and expands; it outsteps the narrow limits of temples, and leaves the altars to crumble into dust; and calls man to seek for it where alone it resides—in thought, in intelligence, in virtue, in nature, in infinity.

9. Thy glorious ruins, proudly I survey,

Trophies of firm resolve, of patriot might!

And in each trace of devastation's way,

Thy moldering ruins meet my wandering sight

LESSON XXXIII.

THE EFFECTS OF TIME.

SELLECK Osborne.

1. MOVED by a strange mysterious power,
That hastes along the rapid hour,

I touch the deep-toned string;
Even now I see his withered face,
Beneath yon tower's moldering base,
Where mossy vestments cling.

2. Dark rolled his cheerless eye around,
Severe his grisly visage frowned,
No locks his head arrayed;

He grasped a hero's antique bust,—
The marble crumbled into dust,

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And sunk amidst the shade!

3. Malignant triumph filled his eyes;
See, hapless mortals, see," he cries,
"How vain your idle schemes!
Beneath my grasp, the fairest form
Dissolves and mingles with the worm;
Thus vanish mortal dreams.

4. "The works of God and man I spoil;
The noblest proof of human toil
I treat as childish toys,--

I crush the noble and the brave;
Beauty I mar, and in the grave
I bury human joys."

5. "Hold! ruthless phantom, hold!" I cried;
"If thou canst mock the dreams of pride,
And meaner hopes devour,-

Virtue, beyond thy reach, shall bloom,
When other charms sink to the tomb,-
She scorns thy envious power."

6. On frosty wings the demon fled,
Howling, as o'er the wall he sped,

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