INDIAN SUMMER IN NEW ENGLAND.

Ir is now the early advance of autumn. What can be more beautiful or more attractive than this season in New England? The sultry heat of summer has passed away, and a delicious coolness at evening succeeds the genial warmth of the day. The labors of the husbandman approach their natural termination, and he gladdens with the near prospect of his promised reward.

The earth swells with the increase of vegetation. The fields wave with their yellow and luxuriant harvests. The trees put forth the darkest foliage, half shading and half revealing their ripened fruits, to tempt the appetite of man, and proclaim the goodness of his Creator. Even in scenes of another sort, where Nature reigns alone in her own majesty, there is much to awaken religious enthusiasm.

As yet, the forests stand clothed in their dress of undecayed magnificence. The winds, that rustle through their tops, scarcely disturb the silence of the shades below. The mountains and the valleys glow in warm green, of lively russet. The rivulets flow on with a noiseless current, reflecting back the images of many a glossy insect, that dips his wings in their cooling waters. The mornings and evenings are still vocal with the notes of a thousand warblers, that plume their wings for a later flight.

Above all, the clear blue sky, the long and sunny calms, the scarcely whispering breezes, the brilliant sunsets, lit up with all the wondrous magnificence of light, and shade, and color, and slowly settling down into a pure and transparent twilight. These, these are days and scenes which even the cold cannot behold without emotion, but on which the meditative and pious gaze with profound admiration; for they breathe of holier and happier regions beyond the grave.

STORY.

LANGUAGE.

SOME words on LANGUAGE may be well applied;
And take them kindly, though they touch your pride.
* If we're taken young,

* *

We gain some freedom of the lips and tongue;
But school and college often try in vain

To break the padlock of our boyhood's chain;
One stubborn word will prove this axiom true;
No late-caught rustic can enunciate view.

A few brief stanzas may be well employed
To speak of errors we can all avoid.
Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope
The careless churl that speaks of soap for sōap;
Her edict exiles from her fair abode

The clownish voice that utters road for road;
Less stern to him who calls his cōat a coat,
And steers his bōat, believing it a boat.
She pardoned one, our classic city's boast,
Who said, at Cambridge, most instead of most,
But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot
To hear a teacher call a rõot a root.

Once more; speak clearly, if you speak at all;
Carve every word before you let it fall;
Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star,
Try over hard to roll the British R;

Do put your accents in the proper spot;

Don't,-let me beg you,

don't say, "How?" for "What?"

And, when you stick on conversation's burs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.

h 34, 340.

t 115.

HOLMES.

MANNERS.

THOUGH books on MANNERS are not out of print,
An honest tongue may drop a harmless hint.
Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet
To spin your wordy fabric in the street:
While you are emptying your colloquial pack,
The fiend Lumbago jumps upon his back.
Nor cloud his features with the unwelcome tale
Of how he looks, if haply thin and pale;
Health is a subject for his child, his wife,
And the rude office that insures his life.
Look in his face, to meet thy neighbor's soul,
Not on his garments, to detect a hole;
"How to observe," is what thy pages show,
Pride of thy sex, Miss Harriet Martineau !
O, what a precious book the one would be
That taught observers what they're not to see!
I tell in verse,
- 'twere better done in prose,
One curious trick that every body knows;
Once form this habit, and it's very strange
How long it sticks, how hard it is to change.
Two friendly people, both disposed to smile,
Who meet, like others, every little while,
Instead of passing with a pleasant bow,
And "How dy'e do?
"How's your
Impelled by feelings in their nature kind,
But slightly weak, and somewhat undefined,
Rush at each other, make a sudden stand,
Begin to talk, expatiate, and expand;

or

uncle now

Each looks quite radiant, seems extremely struck,
Their meeting so was such a piece of luck ;

Each thinks the other thinks he's greatly pleased

?

To screw the vice in which they both are squeezed;

So there they talk, in dust, or mud, or snow,
Both bored to death, and both afraid to go!
Your hat once lifted, do not hang your fire,
Nor, like slow Ajax, fighting still, retire;
When your old castor on your crown you clap,
Go off; you've mounted your percussion cap!

HOLMES.

ON THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

We know the opinions of Mr. Adams, and we know his character. He would commence with his accustomed directness and earnestness:

Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that, in the beginning, we aimed not at independence. But there's a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and, blinded to her own interest for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the declaration ?

Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life and his own honor? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair, is not he, our venerable colleague near you, are you not both already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but outlaws?

If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on, or to give up, the war? Do we mean to submit to the measures of parliament, Boston port bill and all? Do we mean

to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and our country and its rights trodden down in the dust? I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit.

Do we intend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by men, that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor, to Washington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of war, as well as the political hazards of the times, we promised to adhere to him, in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I know there is not a man here who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground.

For myself, having, twelve months ago, in this place, moved you that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces, raised, or to be raised, for defence of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him. The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And if the war must go on, why put off longer the declaration of independence?

That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. The nations will then treat with us, which they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects, in arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England herself will sooner treat for peace with us on the footing of independence, than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowledge that her whole conduct towards us has been a course of injustice and oppression.

Her pride will be less wounded by submitting to that course of things which now predestinates our independence, than by yielding the points in controversy to her rebellious. subjects. The former she would regard as the result of fortune; the latter she would feel as her own deep disgrace. Why, then, why, then, sir, do we not, as soon as possible,