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A learned philosopher most wise and staid,
From all that thou hast had a chance to see,

Since Earth began. Here thou, too, oft hast played
With lightnings, glancing round thy rugged head.

LESSON CXXXIX.-THE NOVEL READER.-CHARLES SPRAGUE.

Look now, directed by yon candle's blaze,
Where the false shutter half its trust betrays,-
Mark that fair girl, reclining in her bed,

Its curtain round her polished shoulders spread:
Dark midnight reigns, the storm is up in power;
What keeps her waking in that dreary hour?
See where the volume on her pillow lies,-
Claims Radcliffe or Chapone those frequent sighs?
'Tis some wild legend,-now her kind eye fills,
And now cold terror every fibre chills;

Still she reads on,-in fiction's labyrinth lost,
Of tyrant fathers, and of true love crossed:
Of clanking fetters, low, mysterious groans,
Blood-crusted daggers, and uncoffined bones,
Pale, gliding ghosts, with fingers dropping gore,
And blue flames dancing round a dungeon door ;-
Still she reads on,-even though to read she fears,
And in each key-hole moan strange voices hears,
While every shadow that withdraws her look,
Glares in her face the goblin of her book;
Still o'er the leaves her craving eye is cast;
On all she feasts, yet hungers for the last;
Counts what remain, now sighs there are no more,
And now even those half tempted to skip o'er ;
At length, the bad all killed, the good all pleased,
Her thirsting curiosity appeased,

She shuts the dear, dear book, that made her weep,
Puts out the light, and turns away to sleep.

LESSON CXL.-MOUNTAINS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.-ISAAC HILL.

The highest mountains, within the known limits of the old thirteen United States, are the cluster in New Hampshire, called the White Mountains. These mountains are supposed to be older than any of the ranges of high 5 mountains in Europe. Mont Blanc, and Mont St. Bernard, may peer above them, and reach their tops beyond

the line of perpetual congelation; but Mount Washington had been thousands of years in existence, before the internal fires upheaved the European Alps.

The beauty and grandeur of scenery in Scotland, or 5 Switzerland, or any other country of Europe, cannot exceed that of this mountain region. What magnificent landscape will compare with the different views at the Notch ;-with the Silver Cascade, half a mile from its entrance, issuing from the mountain eight hundred feet 10 above the subjacent valley, passing over, almost perpendicularly, a series of rocks so little broken, as to preserve the appearance of a uniform current, and yet so far disturbed, as to be perfectly white ;-with the Flume, at no great distance, falling over three precipices, from the 15 height of two hundred and fifty feet, down the two first in a single current, and over the last in three, uniting again at the bottom in a basin, formed by the hand of Nature, perhaps by the wearing of the waters, in the rocks;—with the impending rocks, directly overhead on either side, to a vast 20 height, rent asunder by that Power which first upheaved the mountains, leaving barely space for the head stream of the Saco, and the road to pass ;-with the track of the awful avalanches, at no great distance, on either side, coming down from the height, throwing rocks, trees, and 25 earth across the defile, damming up the stream, and forcing it to seek new channels, and covering up or carrying away, clean to the surface of the hard rock, the long travelled road!

If the eye is not here sated, with the grandeur and 30 beauty of the stupendous works of the Almighty, and the changes he has wrought, let the traveller pass into the Franconia Notch, near the source of the Merrimack river, twenty miles southerly of the White Mountain Notch.

The Man of the Mountain has long been personated 35 and apostrophized; his covered head is the sure forerunner of the thunder shower or storm; and, in the world of fiction, he is made the main agent of the mountain genii, who bewilder and mislead the benighted traveller, and whose lodgment is in the rocky caverns, hitherto unfre40 quented by the human tread. The Profile is perched at the height of more than a thousand feet: the solid rock presents a side view or profile of the human face, every feature of which, in the due proportion, is conspicuous. It is no inanimate profile: it looks the living man, as if

his voice could reach to the proportionate distance of his greater size.

The mountain region of New Hampshire, has been denominated the Switzerland of America. Our scenery 5 is surpassed, in beauty, by no scenery on earth. Coming down from our mountains, I would direct your attention to our beautiful lakes. The eye never traced a more splendid prospect, than the view from Red Hill. The view from Mount Washington, shows the high moun10 tains around, as successive dark waves of the sea, at your feet, and all other objects, the villages and the sea, as more indistinct from their distance.

The view from Red Hill, an elevation of some twentyfive hundred feet, which is gained on horseback, brings 15 all objects distinctly to the naked eye. On the one hand, the Winnipiseogee lake, twenty-two miles in length, with its bays, and islands, and surrounding villages, and farms of parti-colored fields, spreads out like a field of glass, at the southeast. Loch Lomond, with all its splendor and 20 beauty, presents no scenery that is not equalled in the environs of the Winnipiseogee. Its suite of hills and mountains, serves as a contrast, to increase its splendor. We stand upon the higher of the three points of Red Hill, limited everywhere by regular circular lines, and elegant 25 in its figure beyond most other mountains. The autum

nal foliage, overspreading the ranges of mountains, in the season after vegetation has been arrested by the frosts, is a beauty in our scenery that has never been described by any inhabitant of Great Britain, because no such 30 scenery ever there existed.

If Mr. Jefferson thought a single point upon the Potomac, where that river breaks through the Blue Ridge, to be worth, to the European observer, a voyage across the Atlantic, will it be deemed extravagant, if I should say to 35 the inhabitants of a town or city of the United States, anywhere along the Atlantic Ocean, that the Notch of the White Hills, the Notch of the Franconia mountains, the Cascade, or the Flume, or the Face of the Old Man, or the view from Red Hill, one alone, or all together, are 40 worth ten times the expense and labor of a journey of one hundred, five hundred, or one thousand miles?

LESSON CXLI.-LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS.-HARRISON GRAY OTIS.

Among all the objects of mental association, ancient buildings and ruins affect us with the deepest and most vivid emotions. They were the works of beings like ourselves. While a mist, impervious to mortal view, 5 hangs over the future, all our fond imaginings of the things, which "eye hath not seen nor ear heard," in the eternity to come, are inevitably associated with the men, the events and things, which have gone to join the eternity that is past.

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When imagination has in vain essayed to rise beyond the stars, which "proclaim the story of their birth,” inquisitive to know the occupations and condition of the sages and heroes, whom we hope to join in a higher empyrean, she drops her weary wing, and is compelled to alight 15 among the fragments of "gorgeous palaces and cloudcapped towers," which cover their human ruins, and, by aid of these localities, to ruminate upon their virtues, and their faults, on their deeds in the cabinet, and in the field, and upon the revolutions of the successive ages in which 20 they lived. To this propensity may be traced the sublimated feelings of the man, who, familiar with the stories of Sesostris, the Pharaohs, and the Ptolemies, surveys the pyramids, not merely as stupendous fabrics of mechanical skill, but as monuments of the pride and ambitious folly 25 of kings, and of the debasement and oppression of the wretched myriads, by whose labors they were raised to the skies. To this must be referred the awe and contrition, which solemnize and melt the heart of the Christian, who looks into the holy sepulchre, and believes he sees 30 the place where the Lord was laid.

From this originate the musings of the scholar, who, amid the ruins of the Parthenon and the Acropolis, transports his imagination to the age of Pericles and Phidias ; -the reflections of all, not dead to sentiment, who 35 descend to the subterranean habitations of Pompeii,handle the utensils that once ministered to the wants, and the ornaments subservient to the luxury, of a polished city, behold the rut of wheels upon the pavement hidden for ages from human sight,-and realize the awful hour, 40 when the hum of industry, and the song of joy, the wailing of the infant, and the garrulity of age, were suddenly

and forever silenced by the fiery deluge, which buried the city, until accident and industry, after the lapse of nearly eighteen centuries, revealed its ruins to the curiosity and cupidity of the passing age.

LESSON CXLII.—THE REPRESENTATIVE.—Anonymous. [Mr. Sittingbourn, the representative, is seated at breakfast.] Enter Mist.

Mist. Sir, I ought to apologize for breaking in upon you, at what I dare say you consider an early hour of the morning; but I could not help it. I was prompted to it,moved to it, as I may say,-by reading your speech of 5 Tuesday night. Why, sir, you are going to vote for the appropriation of the funds of the Protestant Church, for the education of Roman Catholics!

Sittingbourn. Yes, yes; I think, and, what is more important, perhaps,-those with whom I act, think that 10 course advisable, and I—

Mist. "Advisable!" Sir, it is destructive ;-it is the beginning of all evil,-the very germ of ruin!

Sitt. Sir, I am pledged to my party.

Mist. I know nothing of party, sir,-I am no party 15 man; but you will be pleased to regulate your conduct by the feelings and instructions of your constituents; and I, for one, protest against the admission of a principle likely to overrun the country with Papists, and bring us to as bad a state as that to which our wretched ancestors 20 were reduced in the days of bloody Mary, or the more recent misrule of Charles the First. [Enter Cross.]

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Sitt. Well, Mr. Cross, what are your commands? We are all in the same boat; you may speak before your friend, Mr. Mist.

Cross. Well, sir, I am sure if you have no objection, I can have none; but I have come up upon an unpleasant business, in regard to your speech of Tuesday.

Mist. Ah! there it is.

Cross. I dare say we two sha'n't agree as to particu30 lars; but for my part, Mr. Sittingbourn, if you support that appropriation clause in the Irish Tithe Bill, I have done with you.

Sitt. How so? Why, Mr. Cross, you are, I believe, a Romanist. You, surely, can have none of the fears and 35 apprehensions which my friend, Mr. Mist, entertains as

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