Rising and leaping, Eddying and whisking, Spouting and frisking, Turning and twisting, Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound; Receding and speeding, And shocking and rocking, And darting and parting, And threading and spreading, And dinning and spinning, And heaving and cleaving, And falling and brawling and sprawling, And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling, And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming, 12 [In the spring of 1805, a young gentleman named Charles Gough attempted to cross Helvellyn, a mountain in the northern part of England. It was just after a fall of snow had concealed the path, and rendered it dangerous. He perished in the attempt; but it could not be ascertained whether he was killed by a fall from a precipice or had died from hunger. Three months elapsed before the body was found, attended by a faithful dog, which he had with him at the time of the accident. Sir Walter Scott wrote a poem on the same circumstance.] A BARKING Sound the shepherd hears, A cry as of a dog or fox; He halts, and searches with his eyes Among the scattered rocks; And now at distance can discern The dog is not of mountain breed ; Its motions, too, are wild and shy, Nor is there any one in sight, All round, in hollow or on height; Nor shout nor whistle strikes his ear; What is the creature doing here? It was a cove, a huge recess, That keeps till June December's snow; A lofty precipice in front, A silent tarn below, Far in the bosom of Helvellyn, Pathway or cultivated land, From trace of human foot or hand. There sometimes doth a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer; The crags repeat the raven's croak, In symphony austere; Thither the rainbow comes; the cloud; Not free from boding thoughts, a while The shepherd stood; then makes his way Nor far had gone before he found From those abrupt and perilous rocks that place of fear! At length upon the shepherd's mind It breaks, and all is clear; He instantly recalled the name, And who he was and whence he came; On which the traveller passed this way. This dog had been through three months' space A dweller in that savage place. Yes, proof was plain that, since the day How nourished here through such long time, XLIV. - FEMALE HEROISM. C. F. HOFFMAN. UPON the banks of the River Elkhorn, in the State of Kentucky, there was once a stockade fort* to which the settlers from the adjacent country frequently resorted as a place of refuge from the savages. Its gallant defence by a handful of pioneers against the allied Indians of Ohio, led by two renegade white men, was one of the most desperate affairs in the Indian wars of the west. The enemy met together at the forks of the Scioto, and planned their attack in the deep forests, a hundred miles away from the scene where it was made. The pioneers had not the slightest idea of their approach, when in a moment a thousand rifles gleamed in the cornfields one summer's night. That very evening the garrison had chanced to gather under arms, to march to the relief of another station that was similarly invested. It was a fearful moment: an hour earlier, and the pioneers would have been cut off; an hour later, and their defenceless wives and daughters must have been butchered or carried into captivity, while their * Stockade fort, a fort defended by a line of posts, or stakes, set in the earth. + Pioneer, one who goes first into a new country. Renegade, an expression applied to a white man who had joined the Indians and adopted their manners and customs. § Fork, the point where two streams unite to form a third. |