dresses of our mechanics and their families, or the delicate muslin robes of royalty.

Thus cotton brings distant regions of the world into communication; it widens the circle of human enterprise and knowledge; it rubs off some of the rust of national prejudice; it creates towns, and increases tenfold the population of those already created.

The little seed-pod of the cotton plant has made Manchester one of the wonders of the nineteenth century, and extended the commerce of Great Britain to nearly every region of the habitable globe.

On the discovery of America, the cotton manufacture was found to be in an advanced state in that country. Cortez sent presents to Charles V. of mantles of various colours, waistcoats, handkerchiefs, counterpanes, tapestries, and carpets, all of cotton. The rest of Europe received from Spain the cotton manufacture. The plant was grown at Valencia, and an extensive manufactory for sail-cloth and fustian was set up at Barcelona.

More than four-fifths of the cotton at present brought into Great Britain is from the southern part of the United States of America, where the cultivation of the plant is carried on to such an extent that it has been reckoned that the labourers and helpers, together with owners, overseers, and their families, dependent on the crop, amount to a million of persons.

The cotton now produced in the United States exceeds the production of the whole world in 1770; and this is to be attri buted in some degree to the good quality of American cotton, the low price of land, and the improvements introduced into the various processes, but more especially, perhaps, to the energy the American planters, and the enterprising character of the nation.

of

THE SLAVE'S DREAM.

BESIDE the ungathered rice he lay, his sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair was buried in the sand.
Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, he saw his native land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams the lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain once more a king he strode,
And heard the tinkling caravans descend the mountain-road.

He saw once more his dark-eyed queen among her children stand; They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks, they held him by the hand!

A tear burst from the sleeper's lids, and fell into the sand.

And then at furious speed he rode along the Niger's bank;
His bridle-reins were golden chains, and, with a martial clank,
At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel smiting his stal-
lion's flank.

Before him, like a blood-red flag, the bright flamingoes flew; From morn till night he followed their flight, o'er plains where the tamarind grew,

Till he saw the roof of Caffre huts, and the ocean rose to view.

At night he heard the lion roar, and the hyena scream,

And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds beside some hidden stream;

And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums, through the triumph of his dream.

The forests, with their myriad tongues, shouted of liberty;

And the blast of the desert cried aloud, with a voice so wild and free, That he started in his sleep and smiled at their tempestuous glee. He did not feel the driver's whip, nor the burning heat of day; For death had illumined the land of sleep, and his lifeless body lay A worn-out fetter, that the soul had broken and thrown away.

LONGFELLOW.

THE PRAIRIES.

BETWEEN the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains there is a vast extent of country, consisting of boundless plains of grass, called Prairies. The soil is very fertile, and the grass grows high; and when, from any small elevation, the traveller surveys the scene, and sees the grass waving in the wind throughout the whole expanse around him, he may well imagine himself in the midst of an ocean, only that the billows that roll over it are green instead of blue. These plains furnish food for countless thousands of buffaloes, elks, antelopes, and other animals that feed on herbage, the whole mass moving continually to and fro over the vast expanse as the seasons change and the state of the pasturage invites them to new fields.

Though they present a general level with respect to the whole country, the prairies are yet in themselves not flat, but exhibit a graceful waving surface, swelling and sinking with an easy slope, and a full, rounded outline. Hence, in the expressive language of the country, they are spoken of as the rolling prairies, the surface being said to resemble the long heavy swell of the ocean when its waves are subsiding to rest after the agitation of a storm.

The attraction of the prairie consists in its extent, its carpet of verdure and flowers, its undulating surface, its groves, and the fringe of timber by which it is surrounded. Of all these, the last is the most expressive feature; it is that which gives character to the landscape, which imparts the shape and marks the boundary of the plain. If the prairie be small, its greatest beauty consists in the vicinity of the surrounding margin of woodland, which resembles the shore of a lake indented with deep vistas like bays and inlets, and throwing out long points like capes and headlands; while occasionally these points approach so closely on either hand, that the traveller passes through a narrow avenue or strait, where the shadows of the woodland fall his path, upon then emerges again into another prairie. Where the plain is large, the forest outline is seen in the far perspective, like the dim shore

and

when beheld at a distance from the ocean.

The eye sometimes

roams over the green meadow without discovering a tree, a shrub, or any object in the immense expanse but the wilderness of grass and flowers; while at another time the prospect is enlivened by groves, which are seen interspersed like islands, or by a solitary tree which stands alone in the blooming desert.

"These are the gardens of the desert; these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name---
The Prairies...... Lo! they stretch

In airy undulations far away,

As if the Ocean, in his gentlest swell,

Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed
And motionless for ever. Motionless?
No-they are all unchained again. The clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges. Breezes of the south!

Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,
And pass the prairie-hawk, that, poised on high,

Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not-ye have played

Among the palms of Mexico and vines

Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks

That from the fountains of Sonora glide
Into the calm Pacific-have ye fanned

A nobler or a lovelier scene than this?

Man hath no part in all this glorious work:

The Hand that built the firmament hath heaved

And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes

With herbage, planted them with island groves,

And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor

For this magnificent temple of the sky—

With flowers whose glory and whose multitude

Rival the constellations! The great heavens

Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love—
A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,

Than that which bends above the eastern hills.
As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed,
Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides,
The hollow beating of his footsteps seems
A sacrilegious sound."

BRYANT.

THE PRAIRIE ON FIRE.

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 gray 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."

"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 rivetted 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 !"

"Whither?" demanded the trapper, motioning him, with calm