The comparison might be continued in some other respects. The American Fall presents a plain, bold, and widely extended front, while the Canadian is sinuous, and bears deeper marks of the surges' wild career. In like manner the English government has been irregularly extended by the convulsions of time; enlarging its empire by every vicissitude, and swelling its resources even by calamity. Its institutions also have been essentially modified, almost revolutionized, during the long struggles for the emancipation of mind. On the other hand, ours exhibits the same unbroken and formidable outline by which it was originally bounded. Not a fragment has crumbled, but it has rather been rendered geographically complete. Relying upon no foreign possessions for its magnitude; upon no navy or army for its strength; it trusts the future to the guidance of the American mind; those mighty energies now unfolding in the sunny atmosphere of free institutions, and cultivating in that republican school which recognizes no degradation but ignorance, and no distinction save substantial and virtuous worth.

Leaving any farther comparisons, which are idle except as a mere matter of novelty, it may not be amiss to consider the pretension so often reiterated, that our institutions are levelling. What does this vague charge mean? Do they obstruct personal effort, or the pursuit of happiness, or the cultivation of the mind? Do they draw from the husbandman his earnings, from the artisan the fruits of his skill, from commerce its reward? No; so far from shackling man, the philosophy of all Americanism seems to be to open wide the gates to the field of human exertion; inviting every citizen freely to enter and reap according to his abilities; and emphatically to make the utmost of the powers which the Deity has bestowed. Where then is the prostrating tendency detected by the aristocrat in our institutions? It must be because they do not establish and sustain a Patrician race, exalted by territory, wealth, and prerogative. If this is the levelling into which such charges may be resolved, it has precisely a contrary effect, and is much more a matter of commendation than reproach. Republicanism does not seek the elevation of a few, but of all; and this principle is one of profound wisdom, guiding more directly to national greatness than any other political maxim, aside from its inherent justice to man. We have yet to learn that intellect and moral worth require the sustenance of hereditary wealth and place; while ignorance coupled with arrogance would merit contempt, no matter how it was habited. On the other side, aristocracies organized and sustained by law have in all ages, without doubt, produced more misery among men than all the desolations of faction, the rapacity of military commanders, and the tyranny of kings combined. We need no American mandarins to wrest by legitimatized oppression that free, unbroken spirit from the great mass of citizens which must constitute the energy of the nation. Our republic, however, does recognize an order of Patricians, though it rises high above the region of factitious distinctions. Taking the monument for its

emblem, the corner-stone of the order is virtue. The pedestal, intellect. The shaft, mental progress, and usefulness to man. The summit, grandeur, sublimity of character. It is composed of Franklins, Marshalls, WASHINGTONS, and the ascendancy of such Patricians is founded on the grateful appreciation of the people of eminent usefulness and exalted worth. If the Pisos, Antoniuses, and Scipios of Rome, together, with the swarming host of Europe's privileged characters shall fade even from the page of history, our WASHINGTON and FRANKLIN will live through the still lapse of ages,' with perpetual freshness in the minds of men. Such men need no commemorative column, sculptured with their deeds or lineage; and as Napoleon dated his patent of nobility from the battle of Monte Notte, so does theirs bear date with the commencement of their public usefulness.

Turning once more to the Falls of Niagara. Our national boundary divides it, assigning a part to the British empire, thus forming a natural but most remarkable division, the centre of a raging river and a mighty fall. We can all cordially approve the poetical exclamation of a distinguished Englishman:

MOHA W K.

A CLUSTER OF SONNETS TOUCHING THAT VALLEY.

BY H. W. ROCKWELL.

IV.

HARK! how the cool wind shakes this tent-like screen
Of thick and rustling leaves. No sultry heat
Flames 'mid this spicy air and twilight sweet,
Or steeps the fresh moss, shaded by the green
O'erhanging branches. Let the hot sun beat
Upon the haze-filmed forest-tops; for me,
Amid this hush, inviolate sanctity,

Where all that 's best and holiest seems to meet,
The noontide hours shall gently glide away

In quiet meditation. Thou, meanwhile,

That wearest 'mid thy banks through many a mile
Of wood and moorland the fierce beams of day,
Shall be the almoner of many a story,

Hallowed with daring deeds and ancient border-glory!

Utica, July, 1843.

A NOBLE race! but they are gone,

With their old forests wide and deep!'-BRYANT.

WHERE are the painted skiffs that rocked between
These clumps of willow? 'Neath this twinkling shade
Of waving bushes, which o'erhead have made
For the smooth waters a light emerald screen,
Thick with young leaves, and mingling stems, that lean
Mid briers and grass-tufts where the wren hath laid
Her speckled eggs — the shell-decked Indian maid
Sees her wild costume in the trembling green
No longer. Haply by this mossy cove

Of rocking silver she hath twined her locks
With daisies and wild-roses from the rocks;
Roses, the summer growth of this dark grove,

And dewy violets from the splintered blocks
Of yonder bluff, with vines and weeds inwove.

VI.

CHEEKS olive-bright, o'er which the blaze of noon
Kindled a sweeter crimson; jetty braid,
And meek eyes where the summer heaven had made
Its bluest glory; speech, which like the tune
Of winds among the beechen boughs at noon,
Scattered soft music through the stooping shade;
She seemed some delicate Ariel' of the glade,
Whose life was one of sunshine. Fair, yet soon,
Too soon! that creature of fond romance passed
With the brief beauty of her gentle look,
Dark lock and wampum by the cool wind shook,
And all that I had deemed most sweet to last;
Yet not less fleetly have her race forsook
Those natural rights which once they held so fast.

H. W. R.

THE INNOCENCE OF A GALLEY-SLAVE.

BY THE BULWER OF FRANC.'

ABOUT two o'clock one morning in the month of September, 1828, the country houses situated on the banks of the Garonne, between Reole and Cadillac were steeped in that profound stillness to which the repose of the city is a stranger; and when, in the words of DELISLE, 'one sees only night and hears only silence.' A single villa standing alone in the middle of a park of moderate extent, seemed to form an exception to the general repose. From a window on the first floor, at the eastern angle of this building, streamed forth a gleam of light so faint that at a short distance it would be necessary to regard it very attentively to be certain of its existence. A lover of adventure, who would take the pains to scale the park-wall, climb the balcony, and then support himself on the outside of this window, might perchance deem himself sufficiently repaid for his trouble by the mysterious picture there displayed to his curiosity. Between two curtains of blue silk the eye might distinguish the interior of a sleeping apartment, furnished with elegance and taste, and dimly lighted by a night-lamp. Upon a bed in a recess of the room, a female in the flower of youth and of surpassing loveliness was lying in a slumber whose feverish agitation betrayed the presence of one of those tenacious emotions, which not even the temporary suspension of thought and sensation can interrupt. Near the bed, watched a man mute and motionless, with forehead pale and furrowed with the traces of old age. With head bent over the pillow, breathless, and apparently attempting to restrain with one hand the throbbings of his heart, he seemed to catch with sinister avidity the half-uttered words which a painful dream apparently forced from the lips of the sleeper.

'His name! she will not pronounce his name!' exclaimed the old man, after a vain effort to distinguish the broken sounds, and casting around him a look of impotent rage.

'Arthur!' murmured the fair sleeper, as if some fatal power had suddenly broken the last seal which still guarded the half-betrayed secret of her dreams.

'Arthur!' repeated the old man, starting as if this name had been a dagger ready to pierce his bosom; 'Arthur d'Aubian! and I refused to give credence to it. Arthur! blind fool that I have been!'

With a convulsive gesture he brushed away the moisture which stood upon his livid brow, and leaning over the bed, more hateful to him than a yawning sepulchre, he again put his ear close to the fresh and rosy mouth from whence issued these empoisoning words. 'I can go no farther!' murmured the young female, making an

effort to rise; 'thy life is in peril; mine is nothing; but thine- No, I can no more! He has suspicions; he will kill you!'

She uttered a stifled sob, trembled from head to foot, and suddenly, with a painful exertion, started to a sitting position. The old man, thinking she had awoke, glided behind the bed-curtains to conceal himself from her view; but without opening her eyes, she remained for some moments immovable in the position she had assumed. Gradually the changes in her countenance betokened those of her thoughts; the terror impressed upon her features gave place to an expression of contemplation, which in turn changed to one of anxious and profound attention. At length, as if the excitement of her nerves had reached the degree of intensity at which the phenomena of somnambulism commence, bending her head, as if to catch some distant sound, she suddenly arose, threw over her shoulders a night-robe, and gliding on tip-toe, cautiously approached the window.

'Midnight!' said she, in a low tone; there is not a drop of blood in my veins; the wall is so high! Should he fall! Hark! I hear him in the garden. How loudly he walks! It is the gravel they have put upon the paths. Oh! this is, this must be, the last time: I shall tell him so. This fear is worse than death!'

With a precision in her movements manifesting that internal clairvoyance, of which science has not yet offered us a satisfactory explanation, the somnambulist, whose eye-lids were still closed, extinguished the night-lamp and drew the bolt of the door. She then drew aside the curtains, and opened the window, without the slightest sound reaching the ears of her husband, who a few paces behind her followed this pantomime with looks of sullen fury. She next took from her work-box a long riband, which she unrolled from the window, until it might be supposed to touch the ground; a moment afterward she drew it in, and made a movement as if she were attaching the hook of a rope-ladder to the balcony. Then, breathless and palpitating, she withdrew into the interior of the chamber. Suddenly she opened her arms, and threw them around an imaginary being, murmuring in impassioned tones, My life! my life!' She embraced but empty space, and remained for some time as if confounded, with arms crossed upon her bosom.

6

'Arthur!' cried she at length, aloud, and rushed in a wild paroxysm of terror toward the balcony. The feeble hands of her husband found strength for the moment to hold her back.

́ I am terrified! I must not be terrified!' exclaimed she, in a low voice, as she struggled in his arms. The anxiety of the loving woman had now given place to the instinct peculiar to persons subject to somnambulism; who with an incomprehensible perception of their situation, dread above all things being suddenly awakened. But the paroxysm had been too violent for a peaceful termination. Those mysterious filaments by which the soul extends itself during the slumber of the organs which are its accustomed agents, were suddenly severed; as the chords of a harp are snapped by the contact of too rude a hand. The young woman awoke, and uttered