defaced its beauty, and marred its proportions. Left in possession of its friends, already have they erected the majestic ranks of Corinthian columns, attracting the wonder of an admiring world. Already is it enriched with the tributes of science and the arts. To its spacious Courts is attracted the wealth of every land, and the spoils of every sea. Laden with treasures of barbaric gold and eastern gems, the Merchants from afar flock to its light. On us devolves the duty of advancing the destinies of our beloved country; of increasing the ascending pile by columns of surpassing strength and splendor, mingling her glories with the skies, blending her fame with all that is grand and august, extending the knowledge of her freedom and her faith to the oppressed and benighted of all nations; of adorning her columns with trophies of science won by peaceful conquest from ages far distant and climes remote; of defending from profanation her altars and her laws, and in preparing her sons to be as pre-eminent in moral and intellectual attainments, as they now are, in the blessings of good Government. Thus may our land become the glory of the whole earth. "Unbounded be her joy, and endless her increase; "Praise be in all her gates, and on her walls, and in her streets, "And in her spacious Courts, be heard Salvation." MISCELLANY. THE WRECK. BY MRS. HEMANS. ALL night the booming minute gun Look'd o'er the tide worn steep. Had veiled her topsails to the sand, And bowed her noble mast. The queenly ship!-brave hearts had striven And true ones died with her! We saw her mighty cable riven, Like floating gossamer! We saw her proud flag struck that morn, A star once o'er the seas For her pale arms a babe had pressed Yet not undone the clasp! Her very tresses had been flung To wrap the fair child's form, 1 Where still their wet, long streamers clung, And beautiful, midst that wild scene, In melancholy grace. Deep in her bosom lay his head, With half shut violet eye; He had known little of her dread, Oh, human love! whose yearning heart! So stamps upon thy mortal part, Its passionate adieu. Surely thou hast another lot, There is some home for thee, Where thou shalt rest, remembering not 112 JOURNEY FROM CANADA. No. 2. We had forgotten to mention a part of our fellow passengers who had escaped our notice until we arrived at Plattsburgh, where most of them landed. These were thirty or more steerage passengers, principally from the land of sweet Erin. A more motley group of men, women, and children, can be rarely met with, than were stowed together on the deck of that boat, near the bow. Yet though apparently destitute, and some of them sick, they seemed happy, and left the boat at midnight, in a strange land, friendless and poor, with light hearts and ardent expectations. They had so often been told of the happy condition of the Americans, that they did not doubt that plenty and happiness awaited them on its shores. When we awoke in the morning, we found ourselves fast approaching Crown point, and passed it about 7 o'clock in the morning. The lake here is not more than half a mile wide, and the situation of the military works, formerly erected on this point, is very commanding. The works seemed very entire, and could be easily traced as we passed them. We are not sufficiently versed in all the terms of military science to describe them, nor did it occur to us whether they indicated accurate knowledge in the engineer who planned them. A train of reflection of a different character was awakened, and we could not but look upon these grass grown ruins with emotions of the deepest interest. They seemed desolate, while they bore the marks of the industry and art of a generation now gone by. Imagination could re-people them with the nodding plume and the gleaming bayonet, but the calm bay around them, the smoke curling from the chimney of a cottage near them, the grass waving luxuriantly along the ramparts, broke at once the charm in which fancy would have bound the senses. The events in the early history of our country, connected with this spot, are too well known to warrant, even if we were disposed, a detail of them in this place. We may again repeat, that we aim no higher than to describe, in the same hasty manner in which we were carried in steam-boats and stages, the scenes and events which, at the expiration of several months, we happen to retain in our recollection. We left the steam boat at a landing place opposite Ticonderoga, and after crossing the lake in a batteau, we visited the ruins of that so celebrated fortress. We had seen the ruins from the lake for several miles, and they then appeared not unlike a cluster of chimnies. In passing to these, we crossed the old French lines, now distinctly visible, before which Lord Howe was killed, and Gen. Abercrombie's army defeated. They must have been very extensive, and the ditch surrounding them is still of considerable depth in many places. Passing onwards, we came to the ruins of the fort. Every thing seems to be in the state in which they were left by the British army after the surrender of Burgoyne. The walls in some places are yet standing to the height of two stories, and the windows are plainly distinguishable. The beams and other parts of the fortress that were of wood, and not wholly consumed by the fire, remain charred and burned, still in their original shape and place. The chimnies are still nearly all entire. The fort was built of unhewed stone, laid in lime mortar, and the walls are in some places 20 or 30 feet high. Almost all the subterranean rooms are now but little more than cellars, or excavations in the earth, as their roofs have given way, and they are almost filled with rubbish. But one of these "bomb proofs," as we heard them called, remains entire. The covered way from the lake to the fort may be traced by the eye, but it is mostly filled with earth and grass and briars. This fort is fifteen miles from Crown point, and has a very commanding position. It is on a point of land considerably elevated above the surface of the lake, and extending a considerable distance into it, so that it completely commands the passage which is here so narrow that a bridge was thrown across it by the American army, and some of the piles on which it was built are still visible at low water. The situation is most beautiful. The lake stretching to the north and south, the sheltered bay beneath the fort at the south side of the point, into which the waters of Lake George are discharged, the mountains to the west, the nearest of which is Mount Defiance, and the wild and romantic scenery on the Vermont side of the lake, including Mount Independence, all combine to make it even without the associations connected with the spot, a most delightful place. Mount Defiance lies to the southwest of the fort, and rises to a very considerable height, perfectly commanding from any part of it, next the fort, that place and its defences. It is a very precipitous mountain, but is said not to be very difficult of access upon some parts of it. We were conducted to these ruius by the driver of a kind of stage coach that passes from lake George to Champlain, and we were not a little interested to hear from one in his station of life, so accurate a detail of the history of this spot. He pointed out the scene of every event connected with it, and was equally accurate in his dates and names. We had heard our fathers describe "Old Ti," as it was in their day, and had read in our childhood the story of Allen, and of its evacuation by St. Clair; and when we stood on this spot, it needed no great effort of imagination to carry ourselves back to the time when the war whoop of the savage was heard around it, or when the proud fleet of Burgoyne came down upon the quiet lake, bearing the chosen troops of Britain, to contend with the unskilled husbandmen of New England. We stood in the same area or court, where Ethan Allen entered and seized the fortress in, the name of "Jehovah and the Continental Congress," and though the flight of stairs by which he entered the commandant's room are gone, the whole scene is so accurately described in the narrative of that feat of romantic heroism, that the scene was distinctly before our eyes, in all its vividness of coloring. Indeed there is nothing here to break such reveries, into which the mind will unconsciously fall. There is no sound of industry or hum of business to strike the ear. We stand amidst ruins that tell of olden times, and have nothing modern to recal the fancy from its wanderings. Beneath the fort, the batteaux belonging to the British troops, and by them sunk when the fort was destroyed, we were told, may be seen still at low water. We shall not attempt to describe the works that remain here, since they have been fully described by tourists better qualified for the task. But it is a scene which would repay the lover of the picturesque, or the antiquary, for the toil he must undergo to visit it. The din and bustle of a camp, and the roar of artillery, have given place to a deathlike silence, and the squirrel makes its nest in the walls of its bastions, the toad has its hiding place in the caverns of that fortress, and the wild fox burrows among the bones of the brave men that have fallen there. Nor would we stop to tell its history, for it is connected with events too important in themselves ever to be forgotten by an American, whether we go back to the times when the French and the savages were desolating the defenceless English colonies, or in the later but still more important struggle that resulted in the Independence of America. We turned from it with a kind of regret. The ruins seemed to form a kind of personal and sensible tie between us and that generation of men, who acted in the scenes of that memorable spot. But we at length left it, and threading our way through the small trees and brush that are now growing within and around the old French lines, and lingering a moment near the spot where the gallant Howe fell, we returned to the place |