tion seems to be only to attack the horse, yet the safety ch of the mother and of the children, depends on the presation of the animal. The danger raises its value; it ms entitled to claim for its preservation an extraordinary crifice.

As the mariner throws overboard his richest treasures to pease the raging waves, so here has necessity reached a ght, at which the emotions of the heart are dumb before dark commands of instinct; the latter alone suffers the happy woman to act in this distress. She seizes her second ld, whose bodily infirmities have often made it an object anxious care, whose cry even now offends her ear, and eatens to whet the appetite of the blood-thirsty monsters— è seizes it with an involuntary motion, and, before the ther is conscious of what she is doing, it is cast out,—and enough of the horrid tale!

The last cry of the victim still sounded in her ear, when è discovered that the troop, which had remained some nutes behind, again closely pressed on the sledge. The guish of her soul increases, for again the murder-breathing ms are at her side. Pressing the infant to her heaving som, she casts a look on her boy, four years old, who wds closer and closer to her knee:-" But, dear mother, m good, am not I? You will not throw me into the snow, e the bawler ?"—" And yet! and yet!" cried the wretched man, in the wild tumult of despair-" thou art good, but dis merciful!-Away!"-The dreadful deed was done. escape the furies that raged within her, the woman exed herself, with powerless lash, to accelerate the gallop of exhausted horse.

With the thick and gloomy forest before and behind her, the nearer and nearer tramping of her ravenous pursushe almost sinks under her anguish; only the recollection the infant that she holds in her arms-only the desire to eit, occupies her heart, and with difficulty enables it to r up. She did not venture to look behind her. All at e, two rough paws are laid on her shoulders, and the e-open, bloody jaws of an enormous wolf, hung over her d. It is the most ravenous beast of the troop, which, ing partly missed its leap at the sledge, is dragged along

ain seeking with its hinder legs for a resting able it to get wholly on to the frail vehicle. of the body of the monster draws the woman -her arms rise with the child: half torn from her, ned, it becomes the prey of the ravening beast, y carries it off into the forest. Exhausted, stunss, she drops the reins, and continues her journey, ether she is delivered from her pursuers. = the forest grows thinner, and an insulated farmnich a side road leads, appears at a moderate The horse, left to itself, follows this new path: rough an open gate; panting and foaming, it and amidst a circle of persons, who crowd round atured surprise, the unhappy woman recovers upefaction, to throw herself, with a loud scream and horror, into the arms of the nearest human appears to her as a guardian angel. All leave the mistress of the house the kitchen, the barn, the eldest son of the family, with his axe the wood which he has just cleft-to assist the woman; and, with a mixture of curiosity and n, by a hundred inquiries, the circumstances of r appearance. Refreshed by whatever can be the moment, the stranger gradually recovers the beech, and ability to give an intelligible account Iful trial which she has undergone.

nsibility, with which fear and distress had steeled begins to disappear; but new terrors seize her; seeks in vain a tear; she is on the brink of isery. But her narrative had also excited conngs in the bosoms of her auditors; though pity, ion, dismay and abhorrence, imposed alike on all voluntary silence. One, only, unable to comoverpowering emotions of his heart, advanced rest; it was the young man with the axe: his e pale with affright; his wildly-rolling eyes flashed fire. "What!" he exclaimed; "three childrenhildren! the sickly innocent, the imploring boy, uckling, all cast out by the mother to be devoured es!-Woman, thou art unworthy to live!" And,

the same instant, the uplifted steel descends, with resistless rce, on the skull of the wretched woman, who falls dead at s feet. The perpetrator then calmly wipes the blood off e murderous axe, and returns to his work.

The dreadful tale speedily came to the knowledge of the agistrates, who caused the uncalled avenger to be arrested id brought to trial. He was, of course, sentenced to the unishment ordained by the laws; but the sentence still anted the sanction of the emperor. Alexander caused all e circumstances of this crime, so extraordinary in the moes in which it originated, to be reported to him, in the ost careful and detailed manner. Here, or nowhere, he ought himself called on to exercise the godlike privilege of ercy, by commuting the sentence, passed on the criminal, to a condemnation to labor not very severe.

LESSON CXXVI.

Tymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouny.-COLERIDGE.

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course?-so long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovereign Blanc !
The Arvé and Arveiron, at thy base,
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But, when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.

O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshipped the Invisible alone

ke some sweet, beguiling melody,

, we know not we are listening to it,

e meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,h my life, and life's own secret joy,dilating soul, enrapt, transfused, mighty vision passing—there,

r natural form, swelled vast to heaven!

e, my soul! Not only passive praise
west; not alone these swelling tears,
anks and secret ecstasy. Awake,
sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
ales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
gling with the darkness all the night,
ited all night by troops of stars,

n they climb the sky, or when they sink,-
ion of the morning star at dawn,
earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
ld, wake! O wake! and utter praise!
nk thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
led thy countenance with rosy light?
ade thee parent of perpetual streams?

you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
lled you forth from night and utter death,
ark and icy caverns called you forth,
hose precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
shattered, and the same forever?
ave you your invulnerable life,

trength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
ing thunder, and eternal foam?

ho commanded-and the silence camelet the billows stiffen, and have rest?"

ce-falls! ye, that, from the mountain's brow,
■ enormous ravines slope amain—
ts, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,

And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?—
'God!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer; and let the ice-plains echo, "God!"

'God!" sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome vcice
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And, in their perilous fall, shall thunder, "God!"

Ye living flowers, that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats, sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Te lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!

Jtter forth "God!" and fill the hills with praise !

Thou, too, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breastThou, too, again, stupendous mountain! thou That,

-as I raise my head, awhile bowed low

In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,—
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,

To rise before me,-rise, O ever rise!

Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth.
Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
'Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God."