construction on the instrument of neutrality, denominating it a bond of allegiance to the king, and called upon all who had signed it to take up arms against the rebels! threatening to treat as deserters, those who refused! This fraudulent proceeding in Lord Cornwallis roused the indignation of every honorable and honest man.

Colonel Haynes now being compelled, in violation of the most solemn compact, to take up arms, resolved that the invaders of his native country should be the objects of his vengeance. He withdrew from the British, and was invested with a command in the continental service; but it was soon his hard fortune to be captured by the enemy, and carried into Charleston.

Lord Rawdon, the commandant, immediately ordered him to be loaded with irons, and after a sort of mock trial, he was sentenced to be hung! This sentence seized all classes of people with horror and dismay. A petition, headed by the British governor Bull, and signed by a number of royalists, was presented in his behalf, but was totally disregarded.

The ladies of Charleston, both Whigs and Tories, now united in a petition to Lord Rawdon, couched in the most eloquent and moving language, praying that the valuable life of Colonel Haynes might be spared; but this also was treated with neglect. It was next proposed that Colonel Haynes's children (the mother had recently deceased) should, in their mourning habiliments, be presented, to plead for the life of their only surviving parent.

Being introduced into his presence, they fell on their knees, and, with clasped hands and weeping eyes, they lisped their father's name, and plead most earnestly for his life, but in vain; the unfeeling man was still inexorable! His son, a youth of thirteen, was permitted to stay with his father in prison, who, beholding his only parent loaded with irons and con

demned to die, was overwhelmed with grief and sor

row.

"Why, my son," said he, "will you thus break your father's heart with unavailing sorrow? Have I not often told you that we came into this world to prepare for a better? For that better life, my dear boy, your father is prepared. Instead, then, of weeping, rejoice with me, my son, that my troubles are so near an end. To-morrow, I set out for immortality. You will accompany me to the place of my execution; and, when I am dead, take and bury me by the side of your mother."

The youth here fell on his father's neck, crying, "O my father! my father! I will die with you! I will die with you!" Colonel Haynes would have returned the strong embrace of his son, but, alas! his hands were confined with irons. "Live, my son," said he, "live to honor God by a good life, live to serve your country, and live to take care of your little sisters and brother!"

The next morning, Colonel Haynes was conducted to the place of execution. His son accompanied him. As soon as they came in sight of the gallows, the father strenghtened himself and said "Now, my son, show yourself a man! That tree is the boundary of my life, and of all my life's sorrows. Beyond that, the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Don't lay too much to heart our separation from you; it will be but short. It was but lately your dear mother died. To-day, I die; and you, my son, though but young, must shortly follow us. Yes, my father, replied the broken hearted youth, I shall shortly follow you; for, indeed, I feel that I cannot live long."

On seeing, therefore, his father in the hands of the executioner, and then struggling in the halter, he stood like one transfixed and motionless with horror. Till then, he had wept incessantly; but, as soon as he

saw that sight, the fountain of his tears was stanched, and he never wept more. He died insane; and, in his last moments, often called on the name of his father, in terms that wrung tears from the hardest

hearts.

LESSON ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTIETH.

Tears of Scotland.

Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!
Thy sons, for valor long renowned,
Lie slaughtered on their native ground;
Thy hospitable roofs no more
Invite the stranger to the door;
In smoky ruins sunk they lie,
The monuments of cruelty.

The wretched owner sees, afar,
His all become the prey of war;
Bethinks him of his babes and wife,
Then smites his breast, and curses life.
Thy swains are famished on the rocks
Where once they fed their wanton flocks;
Thy ravished virgins shriek in vain;
Thy infants perish on the plain.

What boots it then, in ev'ry clime,
Through the wide-spreading waste of time,
Thy martial glory, crowned with praise,
Still shows with undiminished blaze-
Thy towering spirit now is broke,
Thy neck is bended to the yoke:
What foreign arms could never quell,
By civil rage and rancor fell.

LESSON ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIRST.

Massacre of Miss M'Crea.

It seems that this unfortunate young lady was betrothed to a Mr. Jones, an American refugee, who was with Burgoyne's army: and, being anxious to obtain possession of his expected bride, he despatched a party of Indians to escort her to the British army. Where were his affection and gallantry, that he did not go himself, or, at least, that he did not accompany his savage emissaries!

Sorely against the wishes and remonstrances of her friends, she committed herself to the care of fiends;strange infatuation in her lover, to solicit such a confidence! stranger presumption in her, to yield to his wishes! what treatment had she not a right to expect!

The party set forward, and she on horseback; they had proceeded not more than half a mile from Fort Edward, when they arrived at a spring, and halted to drink. The impatient lover had, in the meantime, despatched a second party of Indians, on the same errand; they came, at the unfortunate moment, to the same spring, and a collision immediately ensued,. as to the promised reward.

Both parties were now attacked by the whites; and, at the end of the conflict, the unhappy young woman was found tomahawked, scalped, and (as is said) tied fast to a pine-tree just by the spring. Tradition reports, that the Indians divided the scalp, and that each party carried half of it to the agonized lover.

This beautiful spring still flows, limpid and cool, from a bank near the road side. The tree, which is a large and ancient pine, "fit for the mast of some tall admiral," is wounded, in many places, by the balls of the whites, fired at the Indians; they have been dug out as far as they could be reached, but others still remain in this ancient tree, which seems a striking

emblem of wounded innocence, and the trunk, twisted off at a considerable elevation by some violent wind, that has left only a few mutilated branches, is a hap py, although painful memorial of the fate of Jenne M'Crea.

Her name is inscribed on the tree, with the date 1777; and no traveller passes this spot, without spending a plaintive moment in contemplating the untimely fate of youth and loveliness. Persons are still living who were acquainted with Miss M'Crea, and with her family.

The murder of this interesting young lady, occurring as it did, at the moment when General Burgoyne, whose army was then at Fort Anne, was bringing with him to the invasion of the American states, hordes of savages, whose known and established mode of warfare was that of promiscuous massacre, electrified the whole continent, and, indeed, the civilized world, producing a universal burst of horror and indignation. General Gates did not fail to profit by the circumstance; and, in a severe, but too personal remonstrance, which he addressed to General Burgoyne, charged him with the guilt of the murder, and with that of many other similar atrocities.

His real guilt, or that of his government, was, in employing the savages at all in the war; in other respects, he appears to have had no concern with the transaction. In his reply to General Gates, he thus vindicates himself: "In regard to Miss M'Crea, her fall wanted not the tragic display you have labored to give it, to make it as sincerely lamented and abhorred by me, as it can be by the tenderest of her friends. The fact was no premeditated barbarity.

"On the contrary, two chiefs who had brought her off for the purpose of security, not of violence to her person, disputed which should be her guard; and, in a fit of savage passion in one from whose hands she was snatched, the unhappy woman became the victim