Το fearful even to those accustomed to such scenes. | The mighty work is finish'd, and at rest "Oh! that man should put an enemy within his mouth to steal away his brains.” The instrument of toil-this fetter'd hand! THE LAST MOMENTS OF "DEAR ISLE OF ALBION!" (Stanzas suggested to the author on his being asked, as a foreigner, if he liked England.) BY F. LOUIS JAQUEROD. BY ROSE ACTON. The early light comes stealing to my cell, My soul is peopled with wild thoughts, that rise To strip the Conqueror's wreath from off my brow- "WAVE RIDING.” BY MARION Ꮮ . SULLIVAN. There is a lovely scene on the Ohio, at its junction with the little Kanawha-a scene of fairy beauty, which shall yet glow upon the canvas, and awaken many a burst of admiration from those whose hearts are alive to nature's loveli ness. hurry. "Pull away, Bush," cries the impatient traveller, as he hears the bells ringing. Bush pulls away, but the motion of the craft is not accelerated, and the passenger, when he reaches the shore, must, by increased speed in walking, make up for the time he has spent in the ferry. The best view is from the middle of the river- There is the bluff of Kanawha and its pina position easily attained, as there are plenty of nacle of everlasting rock. The dog-wood, with skiffs and obliging boatmen, or good-natured its large snowy flowers, and the red-bud tree, school-boys, on each side. The former will row show well on the hill-side. There is a handyou steadily over for a fip. The latter take you some white house half way up the bluff, and for nothing, but linger to ride the steam-boat look, there is another on its very summit. Perwaves, or, in default of them, to rock the skiff infection of air and light must be there, but how a manner which, to the unaccustomed, appears exceedingly perilous. Here, then, we are in the river; not quite in the middle, but a little towards the Virginia shore, to avoid the strong current, with just oar enough to keep her from falling down stream. Look at that water-snake carrying his head so high-the ugliest of all ugly things. There is another following him. How malicious this one looks, as if he were meditating a sly bite! Strike at him with the oar. They have disappeared. It is between high and low water. We are at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the Virginia shore, and about a third more from the opposite. Just nine o'clock in the morning. The sun is shining bright, the mist has vanished, and there is not a cloud in the sky. Up stream lies what seems a tuft of beautiful trees and gay flowers, with feathery green vines hanging to the water's edge. It is Neale's Island. Farther up, it shows a nice substantial farm, with comfortable buildings and cheerful inhabitants, whose bright prospect of sky and water is never to be shut out by long piles of brick and stone masonry. Southward, on the Virginia shore, upon two broad terraces, with a back-ground of hill and forest, a lovely little city is rising, whose snowwhite dwellings, luxuriant gardens, and flowering trees form a beautiful landscape in our panoramic view. Is it not a lovely little city? Are you seeking for a home where there are elegance, good feeling, hospitality, and intelligence? This is the place. Throw out your anchor. Farther down opens the long vista of Kanawha-clear, deep, and blue. Those heavy elms overhanging its banks, how rich is their spring foliage! Yonder goes the ferry-skiff, with its freight of merry school-children, all bound for the academy. That black boy, I know him by the careless swing of his oar, is called Bush, shortened from Bushrod. Smart, good-natured and easy is Bush, but never in a could water be coaxed up so high? Down stream is the fair forsaken island, Blannerhasset, green, wild, and solitary. The western part is inhabited, but that is not visible from here. The head of the island is pic-nic ground, and hither, in the hot summer days, some skiffloads of curious strangers, or joyous schoolboys and girls, make the silent wilderness resound with their careless mirth, scaring the rabbits and terrapins to their hiding-places, and the birds to the very tree-tops. To the northward are the broad luxuriant terraces of Belpré. What smooth green fields! What wealth of red and white roses! What nice large, white houses, with magnificent elms and willows overhanging. Everything there looks so clean, comfortable, and Yankee. 'Twas on as bright a day as this, that I was returning from a visit to that lovely green village, with a basket of fruit and flowers. The sun was going down in red and gold. The river, clear and still as a mirror, threw back a perfect copy of the sky and shore. I took my seat in the stern of the skiff: little Frank, my companion, was in the bows. "To the Virginia shore, George," said I to the boatman-a stout, fearless boy of thirteen years. We shot out from the bank; and as I noticed a smile in the corner of his eye, I turned my own up stream, and beheld one of those enormous locomotives of the western waters, which throw a whole river into a foam. His quick ear had caught the sound before she had rounded Neale's Island. She was bearing down with a tremendous rush, and a strong current. The river behind her was like a field of snow-drifts. "Pull in, George," cried I," or we shall be under her bows. Let her pass, and then we will ride the waves." George turned the skiff up stream for a few moments, when she went by like a runaway Niagara Falls. We plunged immediately into her wake; Frank and I grasping the gunwale, as bows came up, and stern went nearly under water. Instantly the bows sank, and the stern was in the air. "Hold fast there-trim the boat-lean forward as she goes down-backward when she comes up-steady now." Not a word of this was spoken, it was all instinctive action. We only laughed at the foam and fury of the waves, which would have swamped our little craft, if she had not been nicely trimmed. Our mirth was interrupted by a roaring and a jarring down stream, and looking about in that direction, we perceived another large steam-boat directly upon our track, while a third was coming rapidly down the river. "Pull away, George; we'll be run down." At this moment, the largest boat, which was just nearing the Virginia shore, wheeled suddenly round, as if an odour from an onion plantation had suddenly caught her olfactories, and now we were under her bows. Her fires gleamed redly upon us, and our little boatman, without the slightest indication of fear in his countenance, strained every muscle to extricate the skiff from the boiling mass of "direct waves and return waves," all mixed up and jumIf we bled together in unimaginable confusion. had been provided with four more oars, how we would have cut the waters, and left the steamers behind. Frank, though a mere child, could pull a strong oar; he had often rowed me across Kanawha; but we were compelled to sit still, and enjoy, with some mental trepidation, the high excitement of the scene. The three howling monsters of the river followed hard with their fiery eyes gleaming upon us. The waves dashed up-their snowy crests tinged by the crimson sky. The shores lined with spectators. George pulled with astonishing effect, and we reached the shore a few yards in advance of our pursuers, but how to land? The river was boiling like a caldron, the skiff was rising and falling too rapidly to permit our landing. The anxious watchers for our safety, now that we had reached the shore, forgot the still remaining difficulty, and turned their attention to the marvellous, and to me still unaccountable evolutions of the large boat. A strong ready arm might have aided us, and many an arm would cheerfully have done so, had any person noticed our dilemma. Oh, thought I, for a real live Yankee from the far north, his bright blue eyes moving in every direction, with so little effort as not to impart the slightest motion to his flaxen locks, and seeing at once every object before and around him. Few, besides Yankees, trouble themselves to attend to more than one thing at a time. "Poets of old did Argus prize, Not a moment was to be lost. Frank sprung high and dry upon the shore-I followed, with some misgivings, but escaped the waves. George threw his oars into the skiff, and fell down stream with the current. We were now at liberty to admire the full grandeur of the scene. No won der everybody was too much engrossed to attend to us after the real danger was past. The clear OLD JA MI E. BY GROVER SCARR. on the crag edge, while both of us took a survey of the scenery around. It is a glorious thing to inhale the fresh spring breezes on the mountain tops; to look far away and see nothing but mountain and moor, peak and precipice, rising one above another till the blue horizon closes in: such a sight had we that morning, with exception of several deep, rich, Old Jamie was a poor working man; yet though moving in so lowly a sphere, there were not many persons more respected than he was: indeed his virtues would have done honour to any station of life; his straight-forward and upright demeanour, founded as it was upon corresponding qualities of mind, would have graced a king; while, at the same time, a sweet mournfulness, which always shaded his aged counte-green valleys, stretching themselves immediately nance with a natural and unaffected modesty, entirely prevented that presumptuous forwardness sometimes attending such a character. Many an hour have I sat with Old Jamie, listening to his old stories, and to his interesting descriptions of the simple manners of our forefathers. Indeed, I could scarcely pass by on a cold winter night, when I saw the fire-light cheerfully gleaming through the cottage window, without calling to have half-an-hour's talk with my ancient friend. Sitting before a blazing peat fire, the smoke of which found egress through a wide open chimney, and wandering back a few hundred years to the time when fairies danced about the old oak tree by moonlight, and when witches could raise storms and spread desolation far and wide; we were then in our glory. Of all his old tales, however, there was none which interested me like the relation of some incidents in his own early life. The subject was a very delicate one, and he seldom, scarcely ever, alluded to it. It was pure accident, therefore, which caused him to relate them to ine himself. I will tell you how it happened. below us, or peeping smilingly round the corner of a rugged mountain, or over the top of a purple moor. There I sat, viewing the flowerspangled fields and wood-embowered lanes, the white-washed farm-house and comfortable village, with the venerable old church which stood apart amongst groves and meadows, by the side of a solitary stream; and listening to the song of the mountain torrents as they leaped down the hill sides, and to the voices of the birds as they rose in rich melody from the depths of the vale, mingled with the legendary ballad, sung by the peasant as he drove his team a-field; and then I looked to see what my companion was doing. He was leaning his arms on his knees as he sat, and looking earnestly towards the south-west; his countenance, always pensive, now wore an expression of the deepest anguish, and he silently wiped away a tear which rolled down his cheek. Seeing that I was observing him, "I was just looking at the hill above my native place, and on which I used to keep sheep in my younger days," said he. I guessed, too, at the thoughts which were passing through his mind; and from this beginning upheld the conversation about his early life, until I drew from him, while he was in the humour, the long-wished-for history of his first and last love. This, with what I collected from other sources, forms the substance of the following narrative. Taking a ramble, one beautiful spring morning, I began to cast a longing eye upon the big crags which skirt our valley to the north, and in a few minutes after I was panting up the hill-sides which led towards them. After passing several deep, woody glens and entangled shaws, through which the soft winds dallied with beds of violets He was born in one of the most out-of-theand clusters of primroses, with tall wood hya- way places of one of the most out-of-the-way cinths and snowy hawthorn blossoms, till they dales, just at the very head of it, where it was were loaded with perfume, and climbing on my so narrow that there was only room at the bothands and knees up a crag almost perpendicu- tom for a turbulent stream, and a highway, with larly steep, I threw myself down on the edge of a cottage on each side of it, at a short distance a steep precipice, amongst the wild thyme and from each other. To each of the cottages was short herbage which alone grew there, and en-attached a small parcel of land which had been joyed a moment of delicious rest. I had sunk into a slumber, with my head reclined on my crossed arms, and my face towards the ground, when I suddenly felt something like two feet gently patting my shoulder, something | snuffing about my ear, and a tongue very lovingly applied to my cheek. I looked up; it was a playful little cur, a particular friend of mine, belonging to Old Jamie, whom I perceived coming towards me. He had been on the hills a shepherding, and now seated himself by me reclaimed from the steep hill-sides, which closed upon the valley so abruptly, that you might pitch a stone from one side of it to the other with the greatest ease. One of these cottages was inhabited by Jamiethen a robust, handsome youth-and his widowed mother. It stood just at the foot of the hill, which sheltered its not very compact walls from the north and east winds. Notwithstanding its rather infirm condition, however, it usually wore an appearance of neatness and comfort. Its their very existence seemed to depend on each other. If ever her heart knew a sorrow, his words of love alone could soothe it. And when a frustration of some cherished plan caused him to betray symptoms of anger or impatience, her sweet embrace, with a glance of her soft blue eye, and a smile from her winning countenance, shaded as it was by luxuriant curls of brown hair, caused his heart to throb with a gentle low, yet carefully thatched roof, its leaded win-years advanced their attachment grew, until dows, surrounded by living wreaths of woodbine and sweetbriar, and its trim little flowergarden, inclosed by a low hawthorn hedge, were sufficient to indicate that decent, tidy sort of folk lived within nor were you disappointed on looking inside. Everything there was done with the most scrupulous nicety, from the sanding of the floor to the arranging of the plates and dishes in the frame against the wall, round which, here and there, were placed divers highly-emotion. prized pictures, some representing the cruel treatment of the "Children in the Wood," another the "Stoning of St. Stephen;" while one, according to accounts, was supposed to be a portrait of "good King George," of whom the old woman never spoke but with an air of the deepest reverence. It was during the sweet spring-time, when the wild roses were budding, that young Jamie found, to his great mortification, that his marriage would have to be put off for many months, on account of his having to transact some business for his master in one of our northern towns, which would require his absence for that space of time. It was in a little glen in the hillside-a favourite resort with them-that they met to take a final parting. The hawthorn blossoms and wild roses hung in rich wreaths overhead, and the violet, primrose, cowslip, and harebell grew in wild profusion on every bank; while the moon sweetly shone upon the trees, and reflected itself in the crystal stream which glided past them. Here they talked over their weighty affairs-the chances of their meeting again at an early period-of their being married before the spring came again; while every time the maiden expressed a fear for his safety (of his constancy The other cottage stood on the opposite side of the road, just on the edge of a low precipice which hung over the water. It was in a much more exposed situation than the other; yet it wore the same neat and orderly appearance. In this lived John Redford, and his family of five children. John was rather past middle age, of a serious and religious turn of mind, and having, moreover, a thorough knowledge of his occupation, was much valued by his master, he acting as shepherd for a neighbouring rich farmer. He had been like a parent to Jamie, for he having lost his father while very young, would have been turned adrift with his aged mother upon the wide world, had not John Redford | she had no doubt) he folded her more fondly to declared that, if a little assistance were granted the youth for a year or two, which he himself would supply gratis, he would be fully able to fill the place of his deceased father, who, during his lifetime, had also acted as shepherd to the rich farmer mentioned above. As might be expected, a firm and lasting friendship grew up between these simple families, who seemed to live in a little world of their own, and to be all in all to each other; for they did not often see much more of the wide world than the very inconsiderable portion which they viewed from the hill tops. Their union was, however, about to be drawn still closer, by the marriage of the young shepherd with the daughter of his friend, which was expected to take place in a short time at the date of the commencement of our story; indeed, such an event could not but be expected to take place, for few men could resist the captivations of Mary Redford. I shall not attempt to give any description of her person. Anything that I could say would give but an imperfect idea of her charms. She was one of those "winsome wee things," those sweet and bewitching little creatures, which run away with a man's heart before he knows that he is in the least danger. The attachment of the young people had grown up they knew not how: they could give no date to its commencement, for they had known each other from their earliest years. They had wandered together in their sunny childhood, through primrose-spangled dells, and gathered blackberries on the purple heath. As his breast, and kissed her ruby lips over and over again. With great reluctance, they at length parted at her father's door; and the next morning he bade his mother farewell, and hied him up the hill, in order to cross the moor, determining not to cast behind a single look upon the cottage in which his beloved was. He had given himself credit for more resolu tion than he possessed. "Surely I may take a single look," thought he; and he did look, and who should he behold but Mary herself standing at her cottage-door? It was early in the morning, and she had risen before her usual time. He stood irresolute. "I wish,” said he, “that I could speak to her once again." Mary had, undoubtedly, been wishing something like the same; therefore, when he beckoned for her to come, she did not give a second thought upon the subject, but caught her hat, and bounded up the hill towards him. Seeing her nearly exhausted, he advanced to meet her; and caught her in his arms till she recovered her breath. But reclining on his breast, and listening to his words of love, were in no way conducive to that end; she therefore wished him to proceed, as she intended to "set" him a short distance. They walked hand-in-hand up the mountain and across the moor, until the rising sun reminded her that she must return. They parted, once more; but each turned, ever and anon, and motioned to the other. At length he came to the edge of a hill, down which he was to descend; he turned and waved his hat; she did the same-in another moment he was out of |