boured dreadfully, and rocked until the water came over the gunwale. All the crew were amazed; when it was discovered that there was a little white sugar-loaf hat on the mast-head; which was known at once for the hat of the Heer of the Dunderberg. Nobody, however, dared to climb to the mast-head and get rid of this terrible hat. The sloop continued labouring and rocking as if she would have rolled her mast overboard. She seemed in continual danger either of upsetting or of running on shore. In this way she drove quite through the Highlands, until she had passed Pollopel's Island; where, it is said, the jurisdiction of the Dunderberg potentate ceases. No sooner had she passed this bourne, than the little hat all at once spun up into the air like a top; whirled up all the clouds into a vortex; and hurried them back to the summit of the Dunderberg; while the sloop righted herself, and sailed on as quietly as if in a mill-pond. Nothing saved her from utter wreck but the fortunate circumstance of having a horseshoe nailed against the mast; a wise precaution against evil spirits, which has since been adopted by all the Dutch captains that navigate this haunted river.

W. IRVING.

THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW-ENGLAND.

THE settlement of New-England, by the colony which landed here on the twenty-second of December, sixteen hundred and twenty, although not the first European establishment in what now constitutes the United States, was yet so peculiar in its causes and character, and has been followed, and

must still be followed, by such consequences, as to give it a high claim to lasting commemoration.

On these causes and consequences, more than on its immediately attendant circumstances, its importance, as an historical event, depends. Great actions and striking occurrences, having excited a temporary admiration, often pass away and are forgotten, because they leave no lasting results, affecting the prosperity of communities. Such is frequently the fortune of the most brilliant military achievements.

Of the ten thousand battles which have been fought; of all the fields fertilized with carnage; of the banners which have been bathed in blood; of the warriors who have hoped that they had risen from the field of conquest to a glory as bright and as durable as the stars, how few that continue long to interest mankind! The victory of yesterday is reversed by the defeat of to-day; the star of military glory, rising like a meteor, like a meteor has fallen; disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and renown; victor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, and the world holds on its course, with the loss only of so many lives, and so much treasure.

But if this is frequently, or generally, the fortune of military achievements, it is not always so. There are enterprises, military as well as civil, that sometimes check the current of events, give a new turn to human affairs, and transmit their consequences through ages. We see their importance in their results, and call them great, because great things follow.

There have been battles which have fixed the fate of nations. These come down to us in history with a solid and permanent influence, not created

a display of glittering armour, the rush of ad

verse battalions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, the pursuit, and the victory; but by their effect in advancing or retarding human knowledge, in overthrowing or establishing despotism, in extending or destroying human happiness.

When the traveller pauses on the plains of Marathon, what are the emotions which strongly agitate his breast? What is that glorious recollection that thrills through his frame, and suffuses his eyes? Not, I imagine, that Grecian skill and Grecian valour were here most signally displayed; but that Greece herself was saved.

It is because to this spot, and to the event which has rendered it immortal, he refers all the succeeding glories of the republic. It is because, if that day had gone otherwise, Greece had perished. It is because he perceives that her philosophers and orators, her poets and painters, her sculptors and architects, her government and free institutions, point backward to Marathon; and that their future existence seems to have been suspended on the contingency, whether the Persian or Grecian banner should wave victorious in the beams of that day's setting sun.

And, as his imagination kindles at the retrospect, he is transported back to the interesting moment; he counts the fearful odds of the contending hosts; his interest for the result overwhelms him; he trembles as if it were still uncertain, and seems to doubt whether he may consider Socrates and Plato, Demosthenes, Sophocles, and Phidias, as secure, yet, to himself and to the world.

"If we conquer," said the Athenian commander on the morning of that decisive day,-"if we conquer, we shall make Athens the greatest city of Greece." A prophecy how well fulfilled!

"If God prosper us,"-might have been the more appropriate language of our fathers, when they landed upon this rock,-"If God prosper us, we shall here begin a work that shall last for ages; we shall plant here a new society, in the principles of the fullest liberty, and the purest religion; we shall subdue this wilderness which is before us; Iwe shall fill this region of the great continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole, with civilization and Christianity; the temples of the true God shall rise where now ascends the smoke of idolatrous sacrifice; fields and gardens, the flowers of summer, and the waving and golden harvests of autumn, shall extend over a thousand hills, and stretch along a thousand valleys, never yet, since the creation, reclaimed to the use of civilized man.

"We shall whiten this coast with the canvas of a prosperous commerce; we shall stud the long and winding shore with a hundred cities. That which we sow in weakness shall be raised in strength.

"From our sincere, but houseless worship, there shall spring splendid temples to record God's goodness; from the simplicity of our social union, there shall arise wise and politic constitutions of government, full of the liberty which we ourselves bring and breathe; from our zeal for learning, institutions shall spring, which shall scatter the light of knowledge throughout the land, and, in time, paying back what they have borrowed, shall contribute their part to the great aggregate of human knowledge; and our descendants, through all generations, shall look back to this spot, and this hour with unabated affection and regard."

WEBSTER.

COLLOQUIAL POWERS OF DR. FRANKLIN.

NEVER have I known such a fireside companion as he was. Great as he was, both as a statesman and a philosopher, he never shone in a light more winning than when he was seen in a domestic circle. It was once my good fortune to pass two or three weeks with him, at the house of a private gentleman, in the back part of Pennsylvania; and we were confined to the house during the whole of that time, by the unintermitting constancy and depth of the snows.

But confinement could never be felt where Franklin was an innfate. His cheerfulness and his colloquial powers spread around him a perpetual spring. When I speak, however, of his colloquial powers, I do not mean to awaken any notion analogous to that which Boswell has given us, when he so frequently mentions the colloquial powers of Dr. Johnson. The conversation of the latter continually reminds one of "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war."

It was, indeed, a perpetual contest for victory, or an arbitrary and despotic exaction of homage to his superior talents. It was strong, acute, prompt, splendid, and vociferous; as loud, stormy, and sublime, as those winds which he represents as shaking the Hebrides, and rocking the old castles that frowned upon the dark, rolling sea beneath. But one gets tired of storms, however sublime they may be, and longs for the more orderly current of nature.

Of Franklin no one ever became tired. There was no ambition of eloquence, no effort to shine, in any thing which came from him. There was nothing which made any demand either upon you