Great Spirit dwelt, in a home prepared for the brave, beyond the western skies. Braver men never lived; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage, and fortitude, and sagacity, and perseverance, beyond most of the human race. They shrank from no dangers, and they feared no hardships.

5. If they had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends, and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave.

b

6. But where are they? Where are the villages, and warriors, and youth; the sachems and the tribes; the hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No; nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which hath eaten into their heart-cores; a plague which the touch of the white man communicated; a poison which betrayed them into a lingering ruin.

7. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may now call their own. Already, the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable homes, the aged, the helpless, the women, and the warriors, "few and faint, yet fearless still."

8. The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or despatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans.

9. There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which

a Great Spirit; the name which the American Indians give to Deity. b Sachems Isa'chems) American Indian chiefs.

;

chokes all utterance; which has no aim or method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them; no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know and feel, that there is for them still one remove farther, not distant, nor unseen. It is to the general burial-ground of the race.

LESSON IX.

THE CHEROKEE'S LAMENT.

1. O, SOFT falls the dew, in the twilight descending,
And tall grows the shadowy hill on the plain;
And night o'er the far distant forest is bending,

Like the storm-spirit, dark, o'er the tremulous main;
But midnight enshrouds my lone heart in its dwelling,
A tumult of woe in my bosom is swelling,
And a tear, unbefitting the warrior, is telling

That Hope has abandoned the brave Cherokee!

2. Can a tree that is torn from its root by the fountain,
The pride of the valley, green-spreading and fair,
Can it flourish, removed to the rock of the mountain,
Unwarmed by the sun, and unwatered by care?
Though Vesper be kind her sweet dews in bestowing,
No life-giving brook in its shadow is flowing,
And when the chill winds of the desert are blowing,
So droops the transplanted and lone Cherokee!

3. Loved graves of my sires! have I left you forever?
How melted my heart when I bade you adieu!
Shall joy light the face of the Indian ? — ah, never!
While memory sad has the power to renew;
As flies the fleet deer when the bloodhound is started,
So fled winged Hope from the poor broken-hearted;

a Cherokee (Cher-o-kee' ;) one of a tribe of Indians recently living in Georgia, but now transferred to the Indian Territory. b Ves'per; the goddess of evening.

O, could she have turned, ere forever departed,
And beckoned, with smiles, to her sad Cherokee,

4. Great Spirit of Good, whose abode is the heaven, Whose wampum of peace is the bow in the sky, Wilt thou give to the wants of the clamorous raven,

Yet turn a deaf ear to my piteous cry?

O'er the ruins of home, o'er my heart's desolation,
No more shalt thou hear my unblest lamentation;
For death's dark encounter I make preparation;
He hears the last groan of the wild Cherokee!

LESSON X.

TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

MELLEN.

1. WAKE your harp's music! — louder, — higher,
And pour your strains along;

And smite again each quivering wire,

In all the pride of song!

Shout like those god-like men of old,
Who, daring storm and foe,

On this blest soil their anthem rolled,
Two hundred years ago!

2. From native shore by tempest driven,
They sought a purer sky,

And found, beneath a milder heaven,
The home of liberty!

An altar rose, and prayers; a ray
Broke on their night of woe,
The harbinger of Freedom's day,
Two hundred years ago!

3. They clung around that symbol, too,
Their refuge and their all,

Wam'pum; strings of shells, used as money by the Indians. England's shores.

b The Pilgrims

And swore while skies and waves were blue,
That altar should not fall.

They stood upon the red man's sod,
'Neath heaven's unpillared bow,
With home, a country, and a God,
Two hundred years ago!

5. They knelt them on the desert sand,' By waters cold and rude,

Alone upon the dreary strand

Of oceaned solitude!

6. The warrior's' red right arm was bared,
His
eyes flashed deep and wild;
Was there a foreign footstep dared
To seek his home and child?

The dark chiefs yelled alarm, and swore
The white man's blood should flow,

And his hewn bones should bleach their shore,
Two hundred years ago!

7. But lo! the warrior's eye grew dim,

His arm was left alone,

The still, black wilds which sheltered him,

No longer were his own!

■ The shore of Cape Cod.

b The aboriginal Indians.

Time fled, and on the hallowed ground

His highest pine lies low,

And cities swell where forests frowned
Two hundred years ago!

8. Oh! stay not to recount the tale;-
'T was bloody, and 't is past;
The firmest cheek might well grow pale,

To hear it to the last.

The God of heaven, who prospers us,

Could bid a nation grow,

And shield us from the red man's curse,
Two hundred years ago!

9. Come, then, great shades of glorious men,*
From your still glorious grave;

Look on your own proud land again,

O bravest of the brave!

We call you from each moldering tomb,
And each blue wave below,

To bless the world ye snatched from doom,
Two hundred years ago!

10. Then to your harps, yet louder, — higher,
And pour your strains along,

And smite again each quivering wire,

In all the pride of song!

Shout for those god-like men of old,
Who, daring storm and foe,

On this blest soil their anthem rolled,
Two hundred years ago!

LESSON XI.

WHAT YOUNG LADIES SHOULD READ.
MRS. SIGOURNEY.

1. A TASTE for reading is important to all intellectual beings. To our sex, it may be pronounced peculiarly necessary.

a Carver, Bradford, Winslow. &c.