crated by a whole people, is the mest horrible that one can ear. Socrates, when he takes the poisoned cup, blesses him who weeps as he presents it; Jesus, in the midst of the most dreadful tortures, prays for his infuriated executioners.-Yes! if the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are wholly divine "

Recollections of Josiah Quincy, Jun.-J. QUINCY.

By the lapse of half a century, the actors in the scenes immediately preceding the American revolution begin to be placed in a light, and at a distance, favourable at once to right feelings and just criticism. In the possession of freedom, happiness, and prosperity, seldom if ever before equalled in the history of nations, the hearts of the American people naturally turn towards the memories of those, who, under Providence, were the instruments of obtaining these blessings. Curiosity awakens concerning their characters and motives. The desire grows daily more universal to repay, with a late and distant gratitude, their long neglected and often forgotten sacrifices and sufferings.

Among the men, whose character and political conduct had an acknowledged influence on the events of that period, was Josiah Quincy, Jun. The unanimous consent of his contemporaries has associated his name in an imperishable union with that of Otis, Adams, Hancock, Warren, and other distinguished men, whose talents and intrepidity influenced the events which led to the declaration of independence. This honour has been granted to him, notwithstanding his political path was, in every period of its short extent, interrupted by intense professional labours, and was terminated by death at the early age of thirty-one years.

The particular features of a life and character, capable, under such circumstances, of attaining so great a distinction, are objects of curiosity and interest. Those, who recollect him, speak of his eloquence, his genius, and his capacity for ntellectual labour; of the inextinguishable zeal and absorbing ardour of his exertions, whether directed to po

litical or professional objects; of the entireness with which he threw his soul into every cause in which he engaged;of the intrepidity of his spirit, and of his indignant sense of the wrongs of his country.

It is certain that he made a deep impression on his contemporaries. Those who remember the political debates in Faneuil Hall consequent on the stamp act, the Boston massacre, and the Boston port bill, have yet a vivid recollection of the pathos of his eloquence, the boldness of his invectives, and the impressive vehemence with which he arraigned the measures of the British ministry, inflaming the zeal and animating the resentment of an oppressed people.

The true Pride of Ancestry.-WEBSTER.

It is a noble faculty of our nature, which enables us to connect our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness, with what is distant in place or time; and, looking before and after, to hold communion at once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are, we are, nevertheless, not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or the future. Neither the point of time nor the spot of earth, in which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history, and in the future by hope and anticipation. By ascending to an association with our ancestors; by contemplating their example and studying their character; by partaking their sentiments, and imbibing their spirit; by accompanying them in their toils; by sympathizing in their sufferings, and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs,-we mingle our own existence with theirs, and seem to belong to their age. We become their contemporaries, live the lives which they lived, endure what they endured, and partake in the rewards which they enjoyed. And in like manner, by running along the line of future time; by contemplating the probable fortunes of those who are coming after us; by attempting something which may promote their happiness, and leave some not

dishonourable memorial of ourselves for their regard when we shall sleep with the fathers,—we protract our own earth. ly being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as well as all that is past, into the narrow compass of our earthly existence. As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and religious imagination, which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb which, amidst this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling which nature prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, to the contemplation of the myriads of fellow-beings, with which his goodness has peopled the infinite of space; so neither is it false or vain to consider ourselves as interested or connected with our whole race through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the past, the present, and the future, and terminating, at last, with the consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of God.

There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry, which nourishes only a weak pride; as there is also a care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low and grovelling vanity. But there is, also, a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the heart. Next to the sense of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly know what should bear with stronger obligation on a liberal and enlightened mind, than a consciousness of alliance with excellence which is departed; and a consciousness, too, that, in its acts and conduct, and even in its sentiments, it may be actively operating on the happiness of those who come after it. Poetry is found to have few stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or overwhelm the mind, than those in which it presents the moving and speaking image of the departed dead to the senses of the living. This belongs to poetry only because it is congenial to our nature. Poetry is, in this respect, but the handmaid of true philosophy and morality. It deals with us as human beings, naturally reverencing those

whose visible connexion with this state of being is severed, and who may yet exercise, we know not what sympathy with ourselves; and when it carries us forward, also, and shows us the long-continued result of all the good we do, in the prosperity of those who follow us, till it bears us from ourselves, and absorbs us in an intense interest for what shall happen to the generations after us, it speaks only in the language of our nature, and affects us with sentiments which belong to us as human beings.

A Slide in the White Mountains.-MRS. HALE.

ROBERT looked upward. Awful precipices, to the height of more than two thousand feet, rose above him. Near the highest pinnacle, and the very one over which Abamocho had been seated, the earth had been loosened by the violent rains. Some slight cause, perhaps the sudden bursting forth of a mountain spring, had given motion to the mass; and it was now moving forward, gathering fresh strength from its progress, uprooting the old trees, unbedding the ancient rocks, and all rolling onwards with a force and velocity no human barrier could oppose, no created power resist. One glance told Robert that Mary must perish; that he could not save her. "But I will die with her!" he exclaimed; and, shaking off the grasp of Mendowit as he would a feather, "Mary, oh, Mary!" he continued, rushing towards her. She uncovered her head, made an effort to rise, and articulated, "Robert!" as he caught and clasped her to his bosom. "Oh, Mary, must we die ?" he exclaimed. "We must, we must," she cried, as she gazed on the rolling mountain in agonizing horror; " why, why did you He replied not; but, leaning against the rock, pressed her closer to his heart; while she, clinging around his neck, burst into a passion of tears, and, laying her head on his bosom, sobbed like an infant. He bowed his face upon her cold, wet cheek, and breathed one cry for mercy; yet, even then, there was in the hearts of both lovers a feeling of wild joy in the thought that they should not be separated.

come

The mass came down, tearing, and crumbling, and sweep ing all before it! The whole mountain trembled, and the ground shook like an earthquake. The air was darkened by the shower of water, stones, and branches of trees, crushed and shivered to atoms, while the blast swept by like a whirlwind, and the crash and roar of the convulsion were far more appalling than the loudest thunder.

It might have been one minute, or twenty,-for neither of the lovers took note of time,-when, in the hush as of deathlike stillness that succeeded the uproar, Robert looked around, and saw the consuming storm had passed by. It had passed, covering the valley, farther than the eye could reach, with ruin. Masses of granite, and shivered trees, and mountain earth, were heaped high around, filling the bed of the Saco, and exhibiting an awful picture of the desolating track of the avalanche. Only one little spot had escaped its wrath, and there, safe, as if sheltered in the hollow of His hand, who notices the fall of a sparrow, and locked in each other's arms, were Robert and Mary! Beside them stood Mendowit; his gun firmly clenched, and his quick eye rolling around him like a maniac. He had followed Robert, though he did not intend it; probably impelled by that feeling which makes us loath to face danger alone; and thus had escaped.

The Twins.-TOKEN.

DUBING the period of the war of the revolution, there resided, in the western part of Massachusetts, a farmer by the name of Stedman. He was a man of substance, descended from a very respectable English family, well educated, distinguished for great firmness of character in general, and alike remarkable for inflexible integrity and steadfast loyalty to his king. Such was the reputation he sustained, that, even when the most violent antipathies against royalism swayed the community, it was still admitted on all hands, that farmer Stedman, though a tory, was honest in his opinions, and firmly believed them to be right.