Her buskins gemmed with morning dew,

Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung!-
The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known !
The oak-crowned Sisters, and their chaste-eyed
Queen,

Satyrs and sylvan boys, were seen,

Peeping from forth their alleys green;

Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear,

And Sport leaped up, and seized his beechen spear.

10. Last came Joy's ecstatic trial :—

He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addressed :
But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol,
Whose sweet, entrancing voice he loved the best.
They would have thought, who heard the strain,
They saw in Tempe's vale her native maids,
Amid the festal-sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing:
While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,
Love framed with mirth a gay fantastic round :
(Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound),
And he, amid his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air

repay,

Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings.

SLAVERY.

COLLINS.

[WILLIAM COWPER was born in 1731, and died in 1800.

He was a man of the purest character, and his poetry is marked by naturalness and moral purity. His best-known work is "The Task."]

1. OH for a lodge in some vast wilderness,

Some boundless contiguity of shade!

Where rumour of oppression and deceit,

Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more.

My ear is pained,

My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.

2. There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart;
It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed, as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not coloured like his own; and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.

3. Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him and tasks him and exacts his sweat
With stripes that mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.

4. Then what is man? And what man seeing this
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head to think himself a man ?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation, prized above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.

5. We have no slaves at home-then why abroad? And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free ;
They touch our country and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it, then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire; that where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

COWPER.

PART II.

THE PRAIRIE ON FIRE.

[J. FENIMORE COOPER, the most celebrated and the most voluminous of American novelists, was born 15th September, 1789, and died 14th September, 1851.]

THE sleep of the fugitives lasted for several hours. The trapper was the first to shake off its influence, as he had been the last to court its refreshment. Rising, just as the grey light of day began to brighten that portion of the studded vault which rested on the eastern margin of the plain, he summoned his companions from their warm lairs, and pointed out the necessity of their being once more on the alert.

"See, Middleton !" exclaimed Inez, in a sudden burst of youthful pleasure, that caused her for a moment to forget her situation, "how lovely is that sky! surely it contains a promise of happier times!"

"It is glorious!" returned her husband. "Glorious and heavenly is that streak of vivid red; and here is a still brighter crimson. Rarely have I seen a richer rising of the sun."

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Rising of the sun!" slowly repeated the old man, lifting his tall person from its seat with a deliberate and abstracted air, while he kept his eye riveted on the changing and certainly beautiful tints that were garnishing the vault of heaven. "Rising of the sun! -I like not such risings of the sun.- -Ah's me! the Indians have circumvented us. THE PRAIRIE IS ON FIRE!"

"Oh, dreadful!" cried Middleton, catching Inez to his bosom, under the instant impression of the imminence of their danger. "There is no time to lose, old man; each instant is a day. Let us fly!"

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I

"Whither?" demanded the trapper, motioning him, with calmness and dignity, to arrest his steps. "In this wilderness of grass and reeds, we are like a vessel in the broad lakes without a compass. A single step on the wrong course might prove the destruction of us all. It is seldom danger is so pressing that there is not time enough for reason to do its work, young officer; therefore, let us await its biddings."

"For my part," said Paul Hover, looking about him with an unequivocal expression of concern, "I acknowledge, that should this dry bed of weeds get fairly in a flame, a bee would have to make a flight higher than common to prevent his wings from being scorched. Therefore, old trapper, I agree with the captain, and say, MOUNT and RUN!"

"Ye are wrong, ye are wrong;-man is not a beast, to follow the gift of instinct, and to snuff up his knowledge by a taint in the air or a rumbling in the ground; but he must see, and reason, and then conclude. So, follow me a little to the left, where there is a rising in the ground whence we may make our reconnoitrings."

The old man waved his hand with authority, and led the way, without further parlance, to the spot he had indicated; followed by the whole of his alarmed companions. An eye less practised than that of the trapper might have failed in discovering the gentle elevation to which he alluded; and which looked on the surface of the meadow like a growth a little taller than common.

When they reached the place, however, the stunted grass itself announced the absence of that moisture which had fed the rank weeds of most of the plain, and furnished a clue to the evidence by which he had judged of the formation of the ground hidden beneath. Here a few minutes were lost in breaking down the tops of the surrounding herbage-which, notwithstanding the advantage of their position, rose even