the majestic and awful warning," Decay! decay!" In short, as one of the greatest of our living writers magnificently expresses it, all that is most beautiful is " but one vast panorama of death."

But there are ruins far more melancholy to contemplate than the decayed palaces of our fathers-ruins more awful, more sublime-ruins of the mind-ruins of the heart.

The maniac, as he paces his dreary cell in the prison of a madhouse, presents to us a ruin more terrific, more grand than the wrecks of empires. The fierce passions, perverted from the use they were destined to fill, tearing in their fury "the wall of flesh" which imprisons them, furnish to the moralist a ruin not elsewhere to be found.

The victim of love and friendship despised, or ill requited--the prey of the demon Poverty, cast from luxury and ease, are ruins

too.

But what are we all-all mankind-but desolate and unseemly wrecks? Once happy and perfect, man was the friend of his Creator; how little yet remains of his pristine happiness and perfection! Who could trace, in the fallen and frail descendants of Adam, "half dirt, half deity," the sublime image of his heavenly Creator? No! once the pride of his Maker, he now lies on the surface of the moral world, a ruin as unsightly as the fallen temples of other times.

Thus does all Nature open her page to teach us how short-lived and frail we are, and points to the sky and the heaven above us, bidding us look thither, where, gaze as we will, we find all fair, all perfect, without a single ruin.

C. H. H.

LINES ON A CHILD MUSING.

CHILD of the sunny hair, and eye of light,
Doth life not glitter round thee, soft and bright?

Sorrow not yet hath cast her shadows there.

Do dreams of sadness cloud that brow so fair,

Or doth some vision woo thee thus to stay

Far from the greenwood bower, and childhood's play?
Wake, little dreamer, wake from fancy's sleep;

Why not for darker years those shadowy pleasures keep?

N. E.

THE MAIDEN'S BLUSH.

WITHIN a bower of roses, stood Eve, the beauteous mother of mankind; within one of Eden's bowers, that her own fair hands had planted, stood Eve, the tempted and the lost:-"Wo me!" she exclaimed, wo me, that I have brought sorrow upon earth! wo me, that through my sin the joys of Paradise are fled! Into a barren world, we wander hence-a world that yields no produce to weak hands of mine; and man must labour, while I, the author of his misery, look idly on. From the souls of my daughters all trace of Paradise shall fade-Eden, lovely Eden, oh that I could bear hence one thought of thee, one that might mock the advance of time, and sanctify the hearts of my daughters!" And the unhappy Eve hid her face in her white hands, while tears forced their way between her slender fingers, as she sighed in agony of spirit. In vain the tender flowers yielded in sympathy their fragrant incense; all unheard was the sigh of the pitying zephyr, as it passed that lovely bower. And Eve twined a chaplet of the fairest flowers, and bound them around her temples; these she would bear with her into the world, to remind her of the joys she had lost.

But the Spirit of the Rose looked with pity upon the sufferer, and, as a gleam of the departing sun over the green hills of summer, she stood, decked in beauty, by her side. "Weep not," whispered the spirit, "sweet mother of a beauteous race; weep not for delights that are no more; the memory of Eden not utterly shall fade! The soft breath of heaven shall kiss the garland on thy brow, and those flowers of Paradise shall cast their seed upon the earth, and arise in their beauty, to deck its barren waste. And the joy thou bewailest as fled, shall yet dwell concealed in the breasts of thy daughters;-if man be doomed for them to labour, theirs shall it be, smiling, to reward; theirs shall it be to share those lingering joys of Paradise with the soul that knoweth sympathy. And, lo! I bestow a boon upon thee, that shall descend to thy children, for evermore: hitherto hath happiness been equal, hitherto hath emotion been unknown; but in the world is sin and sorrow: behold, then, I will plant my blush within thy heart, and it shall be to thee as a remembrancer of Eden. If the rude tongue of sin offend thee, into thy cheek that monitor shall mount— then shall thy bosom swell with the memory of early innocence; if purest pleasure move thee, let my blush rise, while Eden lives again, and man beholds a Paradise in thee!"

And the words of the spirit were fulfilled, and the blushing rose became white. And Eve plucked one of the white roses to cherish in her bosom.

And Adam and Eve went forth from the Garden of Eden, and the world was waste. Then fell the fertile seeds from the chaplet Eve had woven, and flowers sprang up around her footsteps; her presence scattered still the delights of Paradise; joy then was at her heart she blushed, and recognised the spirit's boon.

--

And to her daughters hath that boon descended: still doth the blush on woman's cheek bring memories of purer Eden, and even now is it the maiden's pride to bear upon her bosom the white rose, sweet emblem-flower of purity; while the kindred rose that, as it grew not in that bower, retains its former hue, to this day men call "THE MAIDEN'S BLUSH."

ΗΑΙ.

LOVE'S EYES.

"MAIDEN with the mirthful eye,

And the tread of fairy;
Tripping now so gaily by,
Maiden, oh, be wary!

"Go not to the greenwood glen;
Lip-lent vows are faithless;
Fickle are the hearts of men.".
"Father, I go natheless!"

"Maiden with the tearful eye,
Whither now, my Mary?
Sorrow's step and sorrow's sigh,-
Ah! thou wert unwary!"

"Father, I went to the greenwood glen,

You advised, and I went there natheless,
But fickle and vain are the hearts of men,
And the vows of their lips are faithless!—

66

My Robie sat on the green grass-plat,
Where in circles dance elf and gay fairy;
As I bounded along I gave ear to his song,
'Twas in praise of-ah! not of his Mary!

"And so I have returned, and a lesson I've learned,
That man's lips and his heart run contrary!"
"Then in future be wise, answer only his eyes,

For they cannot mislead thee, my Mary!"

EVENING.

OH! at the silent hour, when o'er the deep

Falls the last sun-beam of departing day; When e'en the winds and waters seem to sleep, And nature into silence dies away;

When in the heavens the first star 'gins to peep,

And on the trees the day's last glimmerings play; Oh how I love to sit within my bower,

And watch the beauty of the twilight hour.

For then I think on happy days long past,

And memory o'er their ashes heaves a sigh—
Those happy days, alas! too bright to last,

Nor truly known their worth till long past by.
Thus memory opes her treasures deep and vast,
And thus the jaded spirit loves to fly
From earth's dark tumults, and the restless din
Of mirth to solitude, and look within.

What sees it there ?--perchance a dreary train
Of withered hopes and joys for ever gone,
Of scenes long past, recalled now but with pain,
And Love's soft visions, now for ever flown,
Of Friendship's voice we may not hear again;
Telling us sadly that we stand alone
Of all that we have been in by-gone years,
Till the heart droops-the eye grows dim with tears.

Yet love we still to commune with the heart,
However sad the task; love we to trace

Our by-gone years, as slowly from us part

The smiles of youth, and leave us in their place The wrinkles and the furrows, till we start

To find ourselves borne onward at a pace We know not, feel not, till on the heart's page We read the marks-the dreary marks of age.

Thus let me muse till life's sad dream be o'er,

And I shall share full many a dreamer's lot,
And launch my little bark from life's dark shore,
And glide away, unwept, unknown, forgot.
Yet oh! not all unmourned-may many pour
Their blessings on my head when I am not:
And may the widow's and the orphan's tear,
Fall on my grave, and consecrate my bier.

C. II. II.

RANDOM SKETCHES,

FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A TRAVELLER IN THE UNITED STATES.

No. VIII. THE INDIANS.

AMONG those who have honoured these sketches with an occasional perusal, many have expressed to me their wonder that I should not have, ere this, made some mention of the Aborigines of the United States, and devoted a paper to the description of the North American Indians. With every desire, therefore, to gratify the laudable curiosity of a few, and, at the same time, to present that which must be a matter of interest to many, if not to all, I enter upon the suggested topic, and shall endeavour to give as full an account as the hasty note-book of a tourist may furnish of the manners and characteristics of this singular, much misrepresented, and fast disappearing people.

Accustomed as Europeans have been to form their opinions of Indian character from the tales related by early settlers, the wars which have raged between the two races, and the present condition of the American tribes, it is scarcely possible that any other than a most unfavourable judgment should have been formed. At a period so remote as the present from the time when America was first visited by a civilized people, it is difficult to separate truth from misrepresentation, in the statements which have been handed down to us; yet all the facts which we can ascertain, fully prove that in no one instance were those who first landed received by the savages (for so custom denominated them, though the name is often much misapplied) in a hostile manner, but always with hospitality and kindness, which they repaid with the blackest treachery, and conduct unworthy of men whose boasted civilization and religion should have taught them better how to return the generous confidence which was reposed in them. Roused by such treatment to a sense of their own power and superiority, goaded by perpetual encroachment and insult to desperation, and maddened by the infringement of even the sanctities of his hearth, the poor Indian dared to raise his hand in defence of his country, his family, and his honour; and for this was branded as a murderer, a savage,