6. Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers? Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes, enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did a shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this.

7. Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? was it hard labor and spare meals? was it disease? was it the tomahawk? was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea? was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible, that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope? Is it possible, that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious?

LESSON V.

THE PILGRIMS.

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

1. How slow yon tiny vessel plows the main !
Amid the heavy billows now she seems
A toiling atom; then from wave to wave
Leaps madly, by the tempests lashed, or reels,
Half wrecked, through gulfs profound.

2.

Moons wax and wane,
But still that lonely traveler treads the deep;

Tomahawk; an Indian hatchet.

3.

4.

6.

6.

I see an ice-bound coast, toward which she steers
With such a tardy movement, that it seems
Stern Winter's hand hath turned her keel to stone,
And sealed his victory on her slippery shrouds
They land! They land!

Forth they come

From their long prison, hardy forms, that brave
The world's unkindness, men of hoary hair,
And virgins of firm heart, and matrons grave.
Bleak Nature's desolation wraps them round,
Eternal forests, and unyielding earth,

And savage men who through the thickets peer
With vengeful arrow.

To this drear desert?

&

What could lure their steps

Ask of him who left

His father's home to roam through Haran's wilds,
Distrusting not the guide who called him forth,
Nor doubting, though a stranger, that his seed
Should be as ocean's sands.

But yon lone bark

They crowd the strand,

Hath spread her parting sail.

Those few, lone pilgrims. Can ye scan the woe
That wrings their bosoms, as the last frail link
Binding to man, and habitable earth,

Is severed? Can ye tell what

pangs were there, What keen regrets, what sickness of the heart, What yearnings o'er their forfeit land of birth, Their distant dear ones?

Long, with straining eyes

They watch the lessening speck. Hear ye no shriek Of anguish, when that bitter loneliness

Sank down into their bosoms? No! they turn

Back to their dreary, famished huts, and pray!

Pray, and the ills that haunt this transient life

Shrouds; ropes that support the masts of vessels. b Peer; to look narrowly Ha'ran; the place in which Abraham and his father dwelt.

7.

8

Fade into air. Up in each girded breast
There sprang a rooted and mysterious strength,
A loftiness to face a world in arms,

To strip the pomp from scepter and to lay
Upon the sacred altar the warm blood
Of slain affections, when they rise between
The soul and God.

And can ye deem it strange
That from their planting such a branch should bloom
As nations envy? Would a germ, embalmed
With prayer's pure tear-drops, strike no deeper root
Than that which mad ambition's hand doth strew
Upon the winds, to reap the winds again?
Hid by its veil of waters from the hand
Of greedy Europe, their bold vine spread forth
In giant strength. Its early clusters, crushed
In England's wine-press, gave the tyrant host
A draught of deadly wine.

O, ye who boast

In your free veins the blood of sires like these,
Lose not their lineaments. Should Mammon cling
Too close around your heart, or wealth beget
That bloated luxury which eats the core
From manly virtue, or the tempting world
Make faint the Christian purpose in your soul,
Turn ye to Plymouth's beach, and on that rock
Kneel in their foot-prints, and renew the vow
They breathed to God.

LESSON VI.

WESTWARD MOVEMENT OF CIVILIZATION.

MORLEY.

1. DECIDEDLY one of the most interesting points in the past history of the United States, is the striking illustration it has afforded of the great law of civilization, its movement from east to west. It was a direct and startling demonstration of

■ Mam'mon; the god of riches. Rock; the Ply nouth rock, where the pilgrima first landed.

the truth which history has long labored to indicate. The land upon which the sun of civilization first rose, we know not with certainty; but as far back as our vision can extend, we behold it shining upon the most eastern limits of the eastern hemisphere.

2. Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, we behold successively lighted up, as the majestic orb rolls over them; and as he advances still farther through his storied and mysterious zodiac, we behold the shadows of evening as surely stealing upon the lands which he leaves behind him.

3. Rome falls before the adventurous and destructive Goth; and for a moment the world seems darkened; but vast causes, new materials, conflicting elements, are silently at work to produce order out of apparent chaos, through the long eclipse of the dark ages; and when light is again restored, behold, the radiance which we first worshiped on the shores of the Indian Ocean has at last reached and illumined the whole coast of the Atlantic, while the most western states of Europe are rejoicing in its beams.

4. Here, it would seem, the sun's course was finished. The law which has hitherto visibly governed his career must be reversed; the world's western limit has been reached, and either his setting is at hand, or he must roll backward through his orbit. But it is not so. Just as we were about to doubt the universality of the law, which we believed indubitably and historically established, the world swings open upon its hinges, and reveals another world beyond the ocean, as vast and perfect as itself.

5. America starts into existence, the long-forgotten dream of the ancients is revived and realized, and the world's history is rounded into as complete a circle as its physical conformation. We have said that the exemplification of the westward march of culture was the most striking feature in the history of America. Connected with this, however, and hardly of less importance, is the illustration which it affords us of the

■ As-syr-i-a; an ancient country, now a part of Turkey in Asia. b The Goths were an ancient people, once occupying what is now Sweden.

manner in which the civilization of the world has been suc cessively entrusted to distinct races.

6. Throwing out at once all disquisition concerning the great races which have regularly made their appearance, and accomplished their mission in past ages, we turn our atten tion simply to the great race of the present time. This is indubitably, the Anglo-Saxon race.a We assume this without argument, because we believe that none of our readers will be desirous of holding us to the proof.

7. The Anglo-Saxon, like a.l great races, is of a composite origin; and its materials would almost seem to have been carefully selected with the view of producing a breed of singular energy, endurance, and power. The Saxon hardihood, the Norman' fire, the Teutonic phlegm, had long ago been molded, one would deem, for some great purpose, into one grand national stock; and to this race, when it had attained the fulness and perfection of its strength, was the conquest of America entrusted.

LESSON VII.

THE SAME SUBJECT, CONCLUDED.

MORLEY.

1 THE original coloni:ation of this country by the Eng lish, and the present system of internal colonization success fully prosecuted in the United States, from east to west, form a striking counterpart to the Gothic invasion of the Roman empire in the fifth century.

2. The one was the irruption of barbarism upon an ancient civilization; the other, the triumph of civilization over an ancient barbarism. Each was, in a great degree, the work of the same race; and it would truly seem that the barbarian has begun to pay the debt which he has owed to humanity since the destruction of the Western Empire.

■ Anglo-Saxon race; descendants of the Angli and Saxones, who united and con quered England in the fifth century. b Normans; the inhabitants of ancient Scandinavia, or Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Teutones; an ancient people, occupying a part of what is now called Denmark.