to and fro in peace, uttering to each other their low, gentle notes, so caressing and so plaintive. It may have been that in the wild scenes of his turbulent career the wretched man had never known the force of solitude. He was now gradually overpowered by its mysterious influences pressing upon heart and mind. He felt himself to be alone with his Maker.

5. The works of the Holy One surrounded himthe pure heavens hanging over his guilty head, the sea stretching in silent grandeur far into the unseen distance. One object alone, bearing the mark of man, lay within range of his eye-that guilty craft, which, like an evil phantom, hovered in the offing,3 brooding sin. The sounds most familiar to him for years had been curse, and ribald jest, and brutal threat, and shriek of death. But now those little doves came hovering about him, uttering their guileless notes of tenderness and innocence. Far away, in his native woods, within sight of his father's roof, he had often listened in boyhood to other doves, whose notes, like these, were pure and sweet.

6. Home memories, long banished from his breast, returned. The image of his Christian mother stood before him. Those little doves, still uttering their low, pure, inoffensive note, seemed bearing to him the far-off echoes of every sacred word of devout faith, of pure precept, of generous feeling, which, in happier years, had reached his ear. A fearful consciousness of guilt came over the wretched man. His heart was utterly subdued. The stern pride of manhood gave way. A powerful tide of contrition swept away all evil barriers. Bitter tears of remorse fell upon the stone on which his head rested.

7. And that was to him the turning-point of life. He rose from the rock a penitent, firmly resolved to retrace his steps to return to better things. By the blessing of God the resolution was adhered to. He broke away from his evil courses, thrust temptation aside, returned to his native soil to lead a life of penitence and honest toil. Many years later, a stranger came to his cabin in the wild forests of the southern country, a man venerable in mjen, shrewd and kindly in countenance, wandering through the woods on pleasant errands of his own. The birds of that region were the stranger's object.

8. The inmate of the cabin had much to tell on this subject; and, gradually, as the two were thrown together in the solitude of the forest, the heart of the penitent opened to his companion. He avowed that he loved the birds of heaven; he had cause to love them the doves especially; they had been as friends to him; they had spoken to his heart in the most solemn hour of life. And then came that singular confession. The traveller was Audubon, the great ornithologist, who has left on record in his works this striking incident. In olden times what a beautiful ballad would have been written on such a theme fresh and wild as the breeze of the forest, sweet and plaintive as the note of the dove!

1 ÖR-NI-THŎL'O-GIST. One versed in | 3 ŎFF/ING. A part of the sea at a disornithology, the science which teaches

tance from the shore, where there is deep water.

color.

CII. CRESCENTIUS.

MISS LANDON.

[Letitia Elizabeth Landon was born in 1802. In 1838 she married Mr. George Maclean, and in a few months after died at Cape Coast Castle, on the coast of Africa, of which her husband was governor. Between 1821 and 1838 she wrote and published several volumes of poetry and three or four novels. Her poems, graceful and brilliant, were very popular at the time of their first appearance, but most of them are now but little read. The history of Crescentius, the hero of the following poem, is briefly told by Gibbon in the forty-ninth chapter of his history. "In the minority of Otho the Third, Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon yoke, and the consul Crescentius was the Brutus of the republic. From the condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the command of the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and formed a conspiracy for restoring the authority of the Greek emperors. In the fortress of St. Angelo he maintained an obstinate siege, till the unfortunate consul was betrayed by a promise of safety: his body was suspended on a gibbet, and his head was exposed on the battlements of the castle." This was A. D. 998.]

1. I LOOKED upon his brow: no sign
Of guilt or fear was there;

He stood as proud by that death-shrine
As even o'er despair

He had a power; in his eye

There was a quenchless energy,

A spirit that could dare

The deadliest form that death could take,
And dare it for the daring's sake.

2. He stood, the fetters on his hand,

He raised them haughtily;

And had that grasp been on the brand,
It could not wave on high

With freer pride than it waved now.
Around he looked with changeless brow
On many a torture nigh,-

The rack, the chain, the axe, the wheel,

And, worst of all, his own red steel.

3. I saw him once before he rode
Upon a coal-black steed,

And tens of thousands thronged the road.
And bade their warrior speed.

His helm, his breastplate were of gold.
And graved with many a dent that told
Of many a soldier deed;

The sun shone on his sparkling mail,
And danced his snow-plume on the gale.

4. But now he stood, chained and alone,
The headsman 1 by his side,

The plume, the helm, the charger gone;
The sword, that had defied
The mightiest, lay broken near,
And yet no sign or sound of fear
Came from that lip of pride.
And never king or conqueror's brow
Wore higher look than his did now.

5. He bent beneath the headsman's stroke
With an uncovered eye;

A wild shout from the numbers broke
Who thronged to see him die.

It was a people's loud acclaim 2-
The voice of anger and of shame;
A nation's funeral cry,

Rome's wail above her only son-
Her patriot, and her latest one.

¡ HEADS MAN. An executioner.

|2 AC-CLAIM'. Shout of praise; applause

CIII. THE YO SEMITE VALLEY.

REV. WAYLAND HOYT.

[Rev. Wayland Hoyt is a Baptist clergyman, and pastor of the Strong Place Church of Brooklyn, New York. The following description of the celebrated Yo Semite Valley of California is taken from a sermon delivered October 17, 1869.]

1. THE valley of the Yo Semite is a chasm between the two ranges of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, four thousand feet above the level of the sea. It is about one hundred and twenty miles eastward in a direct line from San Francisco. Having advanced by stage and steamboat to within about twenty-five miles of the valley, the visitor must then complete his journey on horseback. And so up and over a spur of the Sierra Nevada, you ride for twenty-five miles along a narrow forest trail, winding in and out between columns of pine trees rising from one hundred to two hundred and fifty feet in height. At length the ride is nearly finished, and you stop your horse upon a jutting1 rock, and look over into the mighty mountain gorge, the upper end of which forms the Yo Semite Valley, and through which the Merced River rushes, and roars, and plunges two thousand feet below you.

2. You are appalled and dizzied at the spectacle – the deep shadows falling on the gorges-the sheer rent between the mountains here and there large mountain birds, unterrified, wheeling in majestic flight the river dashing against the rocks, as though angry at the obstructions in its channel, and angrier still that with its utmost strength it cannot hurl them from its course. Then, entranced and yet appalled, you turn your horse and seek again the narrow trail.