Of waves, in many a sinuous braid,
That o'er the sunny channel played,
With motion ever gay;

"'Twas I to these the magic gave,
That made thy heart a willing slave,

To gentle Nature bend,

And taught thee how, with tree and flower,
And whispering gale, and dropping shower,
In converse sweet to pass the hour,
As with an early friend;

"That 'mid the noontide, sunny haze
Did in thy languid bosom raise

The raptures of the boy,

When, waked as if to second birth,

Thy soul through every pore looked forth,
And gazed upon the beauteous earth
With myriad eyes of joy ;

"That made thy heart, like His above,
To flow with universal love

For every living thing.

And, O, if I, with ray divine,

Thus tempering, did thy soul refine,
Then let thy gentle heart be mine,
And bless the Sylph of Spring."

SONNET

OF A FALLING GROUP IN THE LAST JUDGMENT OF MICHAEL ANGELO ☛ THE

SISTINE CHAPEL.

How vast, how dread, o'erwhelming, is the thought

Of

space interminable! to the soul

A circling weight that crushes into nought
Her mighty faculties! a wondrous whole,
Without or parts, beginning, or an end!
How fearful, then, on desperate wings to send
The fancy e'en amid the waste profound!
Yet, born as if all daring to astound,

Thy giant hand, O Angelo, hath hurled
E'en human forms, with all their mortal weight,
Down the dread void, — fall endless as their fate!
Already now they seem from world to world
For ages thrown; yet doomed, another past,
Another still to reach, nor e'er to reach the last.

AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN.

ALL hail, thou noble land,

Our fathers' native soil;
O, stretch thy mighty hand,
Gigantic grown by toil,

O'er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore !
For thou with magic might

Canst reach to where the light
Of Phoebus travels bright
The world o'er !

The genius of our clime,

From his pine-embattled steep,
Shall hail the guest sublime;

While the Tritons of the deep

With their conchs the kindred league shall proclaim
Then let the world combine,

O'er the main our naval line
Like the milky-way shall shine
Bright in fame.

Though ages long have passed

Since our fathers left their home,

Their pilot in the blast,

O'er untravelled seas to roam,

Yet lives the blood of England in our veins ;
And shall we not proclaim

That blood of honest fame

Which no tyranny can tame
By its chains?

While the language free and bold

Which the Bard of Avon sung,

While the manners, while the arts,

That mould a nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts,
Between let Ocean roll,

Our joint communion breaking with the sun:
Yet still from either beach

The voice of blood shall reach,

More audible than speech,

"We are One."

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.

After encoun

John James Audubon, the son of an admiral in the French navy, was born on a plantation in Louisiana, May 4, 1780. Nature had destined him to be her enthusiastic student and interpreter. He was passionately fond of birds from his infancy, and began to draw and color at a very early age. He was sent to France to be educated, and passed some time in the studio of the eminent painter David. He returned to America, and lived in Pennsylvania, and afterwards in Kentucky, supporting himself by trade, but devoting most of his time, and all his thoughts, to the prosecution of his favorite studies. tering difficulties, and meeting with accidents enough to have checked the enthusiasm of ordinary men, his great work was accomplished. His Birds of America is a monument of genius and industry; the designs are exquisite, every bird appearing with its native surroundings. Nor are they merely correct in form and color; on the contrary, they are shown in characteristic attitudes or in natural motion, and every figure is instinct with life. The letter-press descriptions mostly concern us. They are simply perfect, equally removed from the insipidity of a so-called "popular" style and from the scientific dryness that usually marks the mere naturalist. His own personal adventures are modestly told, and give a rare charm to the work. It will readily be imagined that it is very difficult to make selections that will do justice to such an author. Scattered through his volumes are many touches of nature, and hints of scenery that are inimitable - especially because they are the unconscious utterances of a soul highly susceptible to beauty, and without the least vain desire of parading its emotions. The extract here given is by no means the best specimen of the author's powers, but it was chosen mainly because it contains a vivid description of a marvellous fact in nature.

THE PASSENGER PIGEON.

THE passenger pigeon, or, as it is usually named in America, the wild pigeon, moves with extreme rapidity, propelling itself by quickly

repeated flaps of the wings, which it brings more or less near to the body, according to the degree of velocity which is required..

Their great power of flight enables them to survey and pass over an astonishing extent of country in a very short time. This is proved by facts well known in America. Thus pigeons have been killed in the neighborhood of New York, with their crops full of rice, which they must have collected in the fields of Georgia and Carolina, these districts being the nearest in which they could possibly have procured a supply of that kind of food. As their power of digestion is so great that they will decompose food entirely in twelve hours, they must in this case have travelled between three hundred and four hundred miles in six hours, which shows their speed to be, at an average, about one mile in a minute. A velocity such as this would enable one of these birds, were it so inclined, to visit the European continent in less than three days.

The multitudes of wild pigeons in our woods are astonishing. Indeed, after having viewed them so often, and under so many circumstances, I even now feel inclined to pause, and assure myself that what I am going to relate is fact. Yet I have seen it all, and that, too, in the company of persons who, like myself, were struck with amazement.

In the autumn of 1813 I left my house at Henderson, on the banks of the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing over the Barrens, a few miles beyond Hardensburg, I observed the pigeons flying from north-east to south-west, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever seen them before, and feeling an inclination to count the flocks that might pass within the reach of my eye in one hour, I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time, finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that one hundred and sixty-three had been made in twenty-one minutes. I travelled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with pigeons; the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.

Whilst waiting for dinner at Young's inn, at the confluence of Salt River with the Ohio, I saw, at my leisure, immense legions still going by, with a front reaching far beyond the Ohio on the west, and the beech wood forests directly on the east of me. Not a single bird alighted, for not a nut or acorn was that year to be seen in the neigh

borhood. They consequently flew so high, that different trials to reach them with a capital rifle proved ineffectual; nor did the reports disturb them in the least. I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions, when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear of a flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, pressing upon each other towards the centre. In these almost solid masses, they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and, when high, were seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent.

Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburg fifty-five miles. The pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession. The people were all in arms. The banks of the Ohio were crowded with men and boys, incessantly shooting at the pilgrims, which there flew lower as they passed the river. Multitudes were thus destroyed. For a week or more, the population fed on no other flesh than that of pigeons, and talked of nothing but pigeons. The atmosphere, during this time, was strongly impregnated with the peculiar odor which emanates from the species.

As soon as the pigeons discover a sufficiency of food to entice them to alight, they fly round in circles, reviewing the country below. During their evolutions, on such occasions, the dense mass which they form exhibits a beautiful appearance, as it changes its direction, now displaying a glistening sheet of azure, when the backs of the birds come simultaneously into view, and anon suddenly presenting a mass of rich, deep purple. They then pass lower, over the woods, and for a moment are lost among the foliage, but again emerge, and are seen gliding aloft. They now alight; but the next moment, as if suddenly alarmed, they take to wing, producing by the flappings of their wings a noise like the roar of distant thunder, and sweep through the forests to see if danger is near. Hunger, however, soon brings them to the ground. When alighted, they are seen industriously throwing up the withered leaves in quest of the fallen mast. The rear ranks are continually rising, passing over the main body, and alighting in front, in such rapid succession, that the whole flock seems still on wing. The quantity of ground thus swept is astonishing; and so completely has it been cleared, that the gleaner who might follow in their rear would find his labor completely lost.