D. H. B.

BY CHARLES WEST THOMPSON.

Wo for a social system, wherein the individual and and not the lowest enact the governing and moulding the general good stand irreconcilably opponent ! power—wherein the want and anxiety and thraldom Without prevalent sickness the physician must and everlasting clash, which now so torment man's famish. But for quarrel and litigation the lawyer's life, shall no longer be, and the individual and the hearth fire must go out. On the existence of war's general weal shall be joined in indissoluble marriage. " butch r-work” the soldier's hopes are based. The Who, on this broad earth, yearns not for such a monopolist grows fat on the scarcity that makes social state? And, unless reason be a will-o'-the. others lean. The builder and an associated host are wisp and figures a lie, such a state is possible, and, lighted to wealth by the conflagration that lays through association, shall ere long exist! half a city in ashes. Everywhere the same disunity prevails, and the precept, “Love thy neighbor as thyself," is practically nullified by the very motive

EPHEMERA. powers of our social existence. The true man can remain such only by fleeing to the desert, or waging everlasting warfare with all influences about him.

" What shadows we are, what shadows we pursue." How is it the world deals, and ever hath dealt Well might weep the sentimental Persian, with that extraordinary virtue, the manifestation of Looking o'er his host of armed men, the Divine to man? Alas, for the dishonoring tale! When on Greece he made his wild incursion, Lo, the noble Athenian expiring of the hemlock in Whence so few might e'er return again. the malefactor's prison! Lo, a far higher than the

Well might weep he o'er those countless millions, Athenian writhing on the « accursed tree!" Ever

Dreaming of the future and the past, 'tis crucifixion the world exacts as penalty of him

As he gazed, amid the gold pavillions who would · show it a more excellent way." And

Round his throne, upon that crowd so vast ; what reception finds genius, that perpetual witness to a race ingulfed by sense of the immortal and in. Musing with subdued and solemn feelings, visible? Does the world hail its Avatar and rever

On the awful thoughts that filled his soul, ently listen to its utterances, as to the oracle's

One of those most terrible revealings responses? Alas, for the historic leaf that registers

That will sometimes o'er the spirit roll : its mortal fate! Society has no allotted place for

Thoughts, that of that multitude before him, him who, dowered with this divine attribute, sur.

Panting high for fame-athirst to striverenders himself wholly to its inspirations, speaks Ere old time had sped a century o'er him, out its unmodified suggestions, and treads, unques Not, perhaps, would one be left alive : tioning, the path it points out. Obstructions hedge him about, penury cramps and denies him both

That those hearts now bounding in the glory instruments and occasions, calumny and ridicule dog

Of existence, would be hushed and cold , him, neglect freezes or hate turns to gall his heart's

Not their very names preserved in story, ardent loves, and, with naked feet, he is constrained

Nor upon fame's chronicle enrolled : to tread a stony, thorny way. Even so deals the All to earth, their proper home departed; world with them commissioned of God as its pro Light heart, strong hand, all gone to kindred phets and teachers. No marvel, then, at the frequent In their vacant room a new race started, (clay ; perversion and sometimes deep de basement of genius. Careless of the millions passed away.

Want and fashion, and the broad, deep currents of immemorial opinion 'tis not given, save rarely, even

Well might weep he-well might we, in weeping, to this to resist and overcome. Blame not, then,

Make our offering at sorrow's callthat you witness Heaven's own subtle flame burn.

When we ponder how our days are creeping, ing on strange altars, or the temple vessels desecrated

Like the shadow on the mouldering wall ; by heathen orgies.

When we think how soon the sunbeam, setting, But the social order, that necessitates things like Will depart, and leave it all in shadethese—is it for us to acquiesce therein, or shall we And our very friends will be forgetting demand a reorganization ?

That the day-light o'er it ever played. Verily, we crave no impracticable, no irrational thing. We ask a society wherein all God's children

Life upon a swallow's wing is flying, shall be sufficiently fed, and clad, and housed

O’er the earth it sparkles and is gone ; wherein every individual shall find leisure, sphere,

All our days are but a lengthened dying

One dark hour before the eternal dawn. and means for the fit, harmonious unfolding of all his powers of body and spirit-wherein each shall Riches, glory, honor, fame, ambitionhave his true standing place and environment, and All as swiftly fly, as soon are fled ; may act his individual self freely and fully out Or, if gathered, mend they our condition ? wherein the highest shall be recognized as highest, What delight can these afford the dead ?

BY RICHARD CHENEVIX FRENCH.

Chase no more the phantom of thy dreaming

FRANCE, 1834.
Weary is the hunt, the capture vain;
When thy arms embrace the golden seeming,

How long shall weary nations toil in blood,
It will vanish from thy grasp again.

How often roll the still returning stone

Up the sharp painful he ht, ere they will own, Trouble not thy heart with anxious carings, - That on the base of individual good, 'Thou art but a shadow-so are they ;

Of virtue, manners, and pure homes endued Let the things of heaven deserve thy darings, With household graces—that on this alone They alone will never pass away.

Shall social freedom stand, where these are gone,

There is a nation doomed to servitude ?
SONNETS.

0, suffering, toiling France, thy toil is vain!
The irreversible decree stands sure,

Where men are selfish, covetous of gain,
THE NOBLER CUNNING.

Heady and fierce, unholy and impure,

Their toil is lost, and fruitless all their pain ; Ulysses, sailing by the Sirens' isle,

They cannot build a work which shall endure. Sealed first his comrades' ears, then bade them fast Bind him with many a fetter to the mast, Least those sweet voices should their souls beguile,

WILD FLOWERS. And to their ruin flatter them, the while

How thick the wild-flowers blow about our feet, Their homeward bark was sailing swiftly past; Thick strewn and unregarded, which, if rare, And thus the peril they behind them cast,

We should take note how beautiful they were, Though chased by those weird voices many a mile.

How delicately wrought, of scent how sweet. But yet a nobler cunning Orpheus used :

And mercies which do every where us meet, No fetter he put on, nor stopped his ear,

Whose very commonness should win more praise, But ever, as he passed, sang high and clear

Do for that very cause less wonder raise, The blisses of the Gods, their holy joys,

And thus with slighter thankfulness we greet. And with diviner melody confused

Yet pause thou often on life's onward way, And marred earth's sweetest music to a noise.

Pause time enough to stoop and gather one

Of these sweet wild flowers-time enough to tell VESUVIUS.

Its beauty over-this when thou has done,

And marked it duly, then if thou canst lay
As when unto a mother, having chid,
Her child in anger, there have straight ensued,

It wet with thankful tears into thy bosom, well !
Repentings for her quick and angry mood,
Till she would fain see all its traces hid
Quite out of sight-even so has Nature bid

ALL MORTGAGED!
Fair flowers, that on the scarred earth she has
To blossom, and called up the taller wood (strew'd,
To cover what she ruined and undid.

To one born and bred in New England, the sentiOh! and her mood of anger did not last

ment must be inevitable, that it is a « free country.' More than an instant; but her work of peace, Restoring and repairing, comforting

The language of every-day life teems with that ca.

pital idea. It is the first idea that infancy is taught, The earth, her stricken child, will never cease ;

and the last one forgotten by old age. Freedom, For that was her strange work, and quickly past; To this her genial toil no end the years shall bring of costly water in the jewelry of our patriotism.

Liberty, Free Institutions, Free Soil, &c. are terms That her destroying fury was with noise

How pleasant it is to think- be it true or false And sudden uproar—but far otherwise,

that cold, hard-soiled, pure-skyed New England, is, With silent and with secret ministries,

indeed, a free land! that in her long struggle for Her skill in renovation she employs :

freedom, she expunged from her soil every crimson For Nature only loud, when she destroys,

spot, every lineament of human slavery, and severed Is silent when she fashions; she will crowd every ligament that connected her with that inhuThe work of her destruction, transient, loud, man institution! And so we thought. We got out Into an hour, and then long peace enjoys.

of our cradle with that idea. It was in our heart Yea, every power that fashions and upholds when we first looked up at the blue-sky, and listenWorks silently-all things, whose life is sure, ed to the little merry birds that were swimming in Their life is calm ; silent the light that moulds its bosom. It was in our heart, like thoughts of muAnd colors all things; and without debate

sic, when the spring winds came, and spring voices The stars, which are for ever to endure,

twittered in the tree tops; when the swallow and Assume their thrones and their unquestioned state. the lark and all the summer birds sang for joy, and

BY ELIHU

BURRITT.

the meadow-stream chimed in its silvery treble, | ada. Canada and heaven, he said, were the only two destly singing to the daisies. When every thing was places that the slave sighed for, and he tied up his alive with the rapture of freedom, we thought, clouted shoes to go. He laid his hand on the latch, among other bright and boyish vagaries, that this and his eyes asked if he might go. We knew what land was free-free as the air; otherwise we would was in his heart, and he what was in our own, when never have slid down hill on it, or rolled up a snow- the children came near and asked their parents why fort, or have done any thing of the kind by way of the negro boy might not live in Massachussetts, and sport. And we were told that it was free. Old men why he should go so far to find a home. And we that wore queues and hobbled about on crutches, came looked in each other's faces and said not a word, for and set by our father's fireside, and showed great our hearts were troubled at their questions. scars on their flesh, and told how much it had cost Some one asked for « the bond," and it was read; to make this land free. And on a hot summer day and there, among great swelling words about liberty, of every year,

the people stuck up a long pole in the we found it written, that there was not an acre nor middle of the village green; and they tied to the an inch of ground within the limits of the great top a large piece of ped cloth ; and they rung American Republic which was not mortgaged to the bell in the steeple; and they shot off a hollow slavery. And when the reader came to that passage log of cast iron ; and the hills and woods trembled in the bond, his voice fell, lest the children should at the noise, and father said, and every body said, it hear it, and ask more questions. He passed the inwas because this land was free. It was our boyhood's strument around, and he saw it written,—-* too fair. thought, and of all our young fancies, we loved it ly writ"—that there was not a foot of soil in New best; for there was an element of religion in it. We England—not a spot consecrated to learning, liber. have clung fondly to the patriotic illusion, and ty, or religion—not a square inch on Bunker Hill, or should have hugged it to our bosom through life, but any other hill, nor cleft, or cavern in her mountain for an incident that suddenly broke up the dream. sides, nor nook in her dells, or lair in her forests, nor

While meditating one Sabbath evening, a few years a hearth, nor a cabin door, which did not bear the ago, upon the blessings of this free, gospel land, and bloody endorsement in favor of slavery.

" It was with the liberty wherewith God here sets his child in the bond”—the bond of our union, “ordained to ren free, a neighbour opened the door, and whispered establish justice, promote the general welfare and secautiously in our ear, that a young, sable fugitive cure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our from Slavery had knocked at his door, and he had posterity;"' it was in that anomalous instrument, that given him a place by his fire. " A slave in New the slave hunter and his hounds might seize upon his England !” exclaimed we as we took down our hat : trembling victim on the holiest spot of this land of " is it possible that slaves can breathe here and not the free. be free!”

It was a bright night. The heavens were full of There were many of us that gathered around that eyes looking down upon the earth; and we wished young man ; and few of us all had ever seen a slave. that they were closed for an hour ; that the clouds There were mothers in the group that had sons of would come over the moon; for the man-hunters had the same age as that of the boy; and tears came into come. They had tracked the young fugitive, and their eyes when he spoke of his widowed slave mo were lying in wait to seize him even on the hearth ther; and there were young sisters with Sunday- of a freeman. We never shall forget that hour. We school books in their hands, that surrounded him had attired the young slave in a female garb, and put and looked in his face with strange and tearful earn his hand within the arm of one of our number. A estness, as he spoke of the sister he had left in bond passing cloud obscured the moon, and the two isage, He had been "hunted like a partridge upon the sued into the street. Softly and silently we followmountains,' and his voice trembled as he spoke. His ed them at a distance, and our hearts were heavy pursuers had tracked him from one place to another; within us, that Massachusetts had no law that could they were even now hard at his heels; his feet were extend protection to that young human being, or perbruised and swollen from the chase; he was faint mit him to be protected without law. It was a and weary, and he looked around upon us imploring- strange feeling to walk the streets of Worcester, as ly for protection. Starting at every sound from if treading on enemies' ground; to avoid the houses without, he told with a tremulous voice, the story of and faces of our neighbours and friends, as if they his captivity, and re-capture, for thrice had he fled were all slaveholders, and in pursuit of the fugitive; from slavery, and twice had he been delivered up to as if here, in the heart of the Old Bay State, there his pursuers.

He was checkered over with the was something felonious in that deed of mercy that marks of the scourge, for his master had prescribed would obliterate the track of the innocent image of a hundred lashes to cure him his passion for free. God flying for life and liberty before his relentless dom. A worse fate awaited him if he failed in his pursuer. We passed close by the old Burial Ground, third attempt to be free; and he walked to the where slumbered many a hero of Seventy Six. window and softly asked the nearest way to Can. There, within a stone's throw, was the grave of