Down the lone heights now wind they together,
As the mountain-brooks flow to the vale,
And, now, as they group on the heather,

The keen scout delivers his tale:

5. The British - the tories are on us,
And now is the moment to prove

To the women whose virtues have won us,
That our virtues are worthy their love!
They have swept the vast valleys below us,
With fire, to the hills from the sea;

And here would they seek to o'erthrow us
In a realm which our eagle makes free!"

6. No war council suffered to trifle

With the hours devote to the deed;
Swift followed the grasp of the rifle,
Swift followed the bound to the steed;
And soon, to the eyes of our yeomen,
All panting with rage at the sight,
Gleamed the long wavy tents of the foeman,
As he lay in his camp on the height.

7. Grim dashed they away as they bounded,
The hunters to hem in the prey,
And with Deckard's long rifles surrounded,
Then the British rose fast to the fray;
And never, with arms of more vigor,

Did their bayonets press through the strife,
Where, with every swift pull of the trigger,
The sharp-shooters dashed out a life!

8. 'T was the meeting of eagles and lions; "T was the rushing of tempests and waves,Insolent triumph 'gainst patriot defiance, Born freemen 'gainst sycophant slaves;

Scotch Ferguson sounding his whistle,

As from danger to danger he flies,
Feels the moral that lies in Scotch thistle,
With its "touch me who dare!" and he dies!

9. An hour, and the battle is over;

The eagles are rending the prey;
The serpents seek flight into cover,

But the terror still stands in the way:
More dreadful the doom that on treason
Avenges the wrongs of the state;
And the oak-tree for many a season
Bears fruit for the vultures of fate!

W. G. Simms.

LESSON 86.

DESCRIPTION OF THE SUNRISE.

MUCH, however, as we are indebted to our observa

tories for elevating our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present even to the unaided sight, scenes of glory which words are too feeble to describe. I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Everything around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night; the sky was without a cloud, the winds were whist.

2. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral luster but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda vailed her newly

discovered glories from the naked eye, in the south; the steady Pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the north, to their sovereign.

3. Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn.

4. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began

his state.

5. I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, who, in the morning of the world, went up to the hill-tops of Central Asia, and, ignorant of the true. God, adored the most glorious work of His hand. But I am filled with amazement when I am told that in this enlightened age, and in the heart of the Christian world, there are persons who can witness this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the Creator, and yet say in their hearts, "there is no God."- Edward Everett.

LESSON 87.

LOVE OF BIRDS AND SQUIRRELS.

WILSON'S thrush comes every year to remind me of

that most poetic of ornithologists. He flits before me through the pine-walk like the very genius of solitude. A pair of pewees have built immemorially on a jutting brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house. Always on the same brick, and never more than a single pair, though two broods of five each are raised there every summer. How do they settle their claim to the homestead? By what right of primogeniture? Once, the children of a man employed about the place oölogized the nest, and the pewees left us for a year or two.

2. I felt towards those boys as the messmates of the Ancient Mariner did towards him after he had shot the albatross. But the pewees came back at last, and one of them is now on his wonted perch, so near my window that I can hear the click of his bill as he snaps a fly on the wing. . . . . The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morning; and, during the early summer, he preludes his matutinal ejaculation of pewee with a slender whistle, unheard at any other time. He saddens with the season, and, as summer declines, he changes his note to eheu, pewee! as if in lamentation. Had he been an Italian bird, Ovid would have had a plaintive tale to tell about him. He is so familiar as often to pursue a fly through the open window into my library.

3. There is something inexpressibly dear to me in these old friendships of a lifetime. There is scarce a tree of mine but has had, at some time or other, a happy homestead among its boughs, to which I cannot say,

Many light hearts and wings,

Which now be dead, lodged in thy living bowers."

4. My walk under the pines would lose half its sum

mer charm were I to miss that shy anchorite, the Wilson's thrush, nor hear in haying-time the metallic ring of his song, that justifies his rustic name of scythe-whet. I protect my game as jealously as an English squire. If any body had oölogized a certain cuckoo's nest I know of (I have a pair in my garden every year), it would have left me a sore place in my mind for weeks. I love to bring these aborigines back to the mansuetude they showed to the early voyagers, and before (forgive the involuntary pun) they had grown accustomed to man, and knew his savage ways. And they repay your kindness with a sweet familiarity too delicate ever to breed contempt. 5. I have made a Penn-treaty with them, preferring that to the Puritan way with the native, which converted them to a little Hebraism and a great deal of Medford rum. If they will not come near enough to me (as most of them will), I bring them close with an opera-glass,— a much better weapon than a gun. I would not, if I could, convert them from their pretty pagan ways.

6. The only one I sometimes have savage doubts about is the red squirrel. I think he oölogizes; I know he eats cherries, (we counted five of them at one time in a single tree, the stones pattering down like the sparse hail that preludes a storm,) and that he gnaws off the small end of pears to get at the seeds. He steals the corn from under the noses of my poultry. But what would you have? He will come down upon the limb of the tree I am lying under, till he is within a yard of me.

7. He and his mate will scurry up and down the great black walnut for my diversion, chattering like monkeys. Can I sign his death-warrant who has tolerated me about his grounds so long? Not I. Let them steal, and welcome. I am sure I should, had I the same bringing up and the same temptation. As for the birds, I do not believe there is one of them but does more good than harm; and of how many featherless bipeds can this be said. James Russell Lowell.