the children, who, hoping to reach in company some place of security, had all-and without resistance, apparently-fallen a sacrifice to the relentless fury of their pursuers. Immediately in the vicinity of the walls, and under them, the earth was concealed from the eye by the multitudes of the slain, and all objects were stained with the one hue of blood. Upon passing the gates, and entering within those walls which I had been accustomed to regard as embracing in their wide and graceful sweep the most beautiful city in the world, my eye met nought but black and smoking ruins, fallen houses and temples, the streets choked with piles of still blazing timbers and the half-burned bodies of the dead. As I penetrated farther into the heart of the city, and to its better-built and more spacious quarters, I found the destruction to be less, that the principal streets were standing, and many of the more distinguished structures. But everywhere-in the streets-upon the porticos of private and public dwellings-upon the steps and within the very walls of the temples of every faith -in all places, the most sacred as well as the most common, lay the mangled carcasses of the wretched inhabitants. None, apparently, had been spared. The aged were there, with their bald or silvered heads-little children and infants-women, the young, the beautiful, the good,-all were there, slaughtered in every imaginable way, and presenting to the eye spectacles of horror and of grief enough to break the heart and craze the brain. For one could not but go back to the day and the hour when they died, and suffer with these innocent thousands a part of what they suffered, when, the gates of the city giving way, the infuriated soldiery poured in, and, with death written in their faces and clamoring on their tongues, their quiet houses were invaded, and, resisting or unresisting, they all fell together, beneath the murderous knives of the savage foe. What shrieks then rent and filled the air-what prayers of agony went up to the gods for life to those whose ears on mercy's side were adders'—what piercing supplications that life might be taken and honor spared! The apartments of the rich and the noble presented the most harrowing spectacles, where the inmates, delicately nurtured and knowing of danger, evil, and wrong only by name and report, had first endured all that nature most abhors, and then there, where their souls had died, were slain by their brutal violators with every circumstance of most demoniac cruelty.

Oh, miserable condition of humanity! Why is it that to man have been given passions which he cannot tame, and which sink him below the brute? Why is it that a few ambitious are permitted by the Great Ruler, in the selfish pursuit of their own aggrandizement, to scatter in ruin, desolation, and death, whole kingdoms,-making misery and destruction the steps by which

they mount up to their seats of pride? O gentle doctrine of Christ!-doctrine of love and of peace,-when shall it be that I and all mankind shall know Thy truth, and the world smile with a new happiness under Thy life-giving reign!

JOHN G. C. BRAINARD, 1796-1828.

Thou art sleeping calmly, Brainard; but the fame denied thee when
Thy way was with the multitude- the living tide of men-

Is burning o'er thy sepulchre,-a holy light and strong;
And gifted ones are kneeling there, to breathe thy words of song,-
The beautiful and pure of soul.—the lights of Earth's cold bowers,
Are twining on thy funeral-stone a coronal of flowers!

Ay, freely hath the tear been given, and freely hath gone forth
The sigh of grief, that one like thee should pass away from Earth;
Yet those who mourn thee, mourn thee not like those to whom is given-
No soothing hope, no blissful thought, of parted friends in Heaven:
They feel that thou wast summon'd to the Christian's high reward,→
The everlasting joy of those whose trust is in the Lord!--J. G. WHITTIER.

JOHN GARDNER CALKINS BRAINARD, son of the Honorable J. G. Brainard, one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, was born in New London, on the 21st of October, 1796, and graduated at Yale College in 1815. On leaving college, he studied law, and commenced the practice of it at Middleton; but, the profession not being congenial to his tastes, he abandoned it, and, in 1822, undertook the editorial charge of the "Connecticut Mirror," at Hartford, which for five years he enriched with his beautiful poetical productions and chaste and elevated prose compositions. His pieces were extensively copied, often with very high encomium, and the influence his paper exerted over its readers could not but be purifying and elevating. But consumption had marked him for her own; and in less than five years he returned to his father's house, at New London, where, with calm and Christian resignation,' he expired on the 26th of September, 1828. In 1825, a volume of his poems was published in New York, mostly made up from the columns of his newspaper. After his death, a second edition appeared, in 1832, enlarged from the first, with the title of Literary Remains, accompanied by a just and feeling memoir by the poet Whittier, a kindred spirit, and one every way calculated to appreciate and illustrate his subject."

1 Just before his death, he remarked, "The plan of salvation in the gospel is all that I wish for: it fills me with wonder and gratitude, and makes the prospect of death not only peaceful but joyful.”

2 The sketch of Brainard's life in Kettell's "Specimens" was written by S. G. Goodrich. In 1842, a beautiful edition of his poems was published at Hartford, by Edward Hopkins, accompanied by a portrait, and by an admirable memoir written by Rev. Royal Robins, of Berlin, Connecticut.

THE FALL OF NIAGARA.1

The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain,
While I look upward to thee. It would seem
As if God pour'd thee from his "hollow hand,"
And hung his bow upon thine awful front;

And spoke in that loud voice, which seem'd to him
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake,
"The sound of many waters;" and had bade
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,

And notch His centuries in the eternal rocks.

That hear the question of that voice sublime?

Oh! what are all the notes that ever rung

From war's vain trumpet, by thy thundering side!
Yea, what is all the riot man can make

In his short life, to thy unceasing roar!

And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to HIM,
Who drown'd a world, and heap'd the waters far
Above its loftiest mountains?-a light wave,
That breaks, and whispers of its Maker's might.

EPITHALAMIUM.

I saw two clouds at morning,
Tinged with the rising sun;
And in the dawn they floated on,
And mingled into one:

I thought that morning cloud was blest,

It moved so sweetly to the west.

I saw two summer currents,

Flow smoothly to their meeting,

And join their course, with silent force,

In peace each other greeting:

Calm was their course through banks of green,
While dimpling eddies play'd between.

Such be your gentle motion,

Till life's last pulse shall beat;

Like summer's beam, and summer's stream,
Float on, in joy, to meet

A calmer sea, where storms shall cease-
A purer sky, where all is peace.

1 Be it remembered that this piece was thrown off in the inspiration of the moment, on a cold, stormy evening, when, feeble from disease, he could hardly drag his way to the office of his paper, and when the printer's boy came clamoring to him for "copy." He wrote the first verse, and told the boy to come in fifteen minutes for the rest. He did so, and the poet gave him the second. Of it, as a whole, Jared Sparks, in the twenty-second volume of the "North American Review," thus remarks:-"Among all the tributes of the Muses to that great wonder of nature, we do not remember any so comprehensive and forcible, and at the same time so graphically correct, as this."

ON A LATE LOSS.1

"He shall not float upon his watery bier
Unwept."

The breath of air that stirs the harp's soft string,
Floats on to join the whirlwind and the storm;
The drops of dew exhaled from flowers of spring,
Rise and assume the tempest's threatening form;
The first mild beam of morning's glorious sun,

Ere night, is sporting in the lightning's flash;
And the smooth stream, that flows in quiet on,
Moves but to aid the overwhelming dash
That wave and wind ean muster, when the might
Of earth, and air, and sea, and sky unite.

So science whisper'd in thy charmed ear,
And radiant learning beckon'd thee away.
The breeze was music to thee, and the clear
Beam of thy morning promised a bright day.
And they have wreck'd thee!-But there is a shore

Where storms are hush'd-where tempests never rage-
Where angry skies and blackening seas no more

With gusty strength their roaring warfare wage.

By thee its peaceful margent shall be trod-
Thy home is heaven, and thy friend is God.

LEATHER STOCKING.2

Far away from the hill-side, the lake, and the hamlet,
The rock, and the brook, and yon meadow so gay;
From the footpath that winds by the side of the streamlet;
From his hut, and the grave of his friend, far away-
He is gone where the footsteps of men never ventured,
Where the glooms of the wild-tangled forest are centred,
Where no beam of the sun or the sweet moon has entered,
No bloodhound has roused up the deer with his bay.

Light be the heart of the poor lonely wanderer;
Firm be his step through cach wearisome mile-
Far from the cruel man, far from the plunderer,
Far from the track of the mean and the vile.

1 Alexander Metcalf Fisher, Professor of Mathematics in Yale College, anxious to enlarge his knowledge in his favorite science, to which he had devoted his life, set sail for Europe in the packet-ship Albion, which was lost in a terrific storm off the coast of Ireland, April 22, 1822. But few of the passengers or crew were saved; and among the lost was the promising and gifted subject of these lines. See the fourth volume of the "New-Englander" for a fine memoir of Professor Fisher, by Professor Denison Olmsted.

2 These lines refer to the good wishes which Elizabeth, in Mr. Cooper's novel of "The Pioneers," seems to have manifested, in the last chapter, for the welfare of "Leather Stocking," when he signified, at the grave of the Indian, his determination to quit the settlements of men for the unexplored forests of the West, and when, whistling to his dogs, with his rifle on his shoulder, and his pack on his back, he left the village of Templeton.

And when death, with the last of its terrors, assails him,
And all but the last throb of memory fails him,
He'll think of the friend, far away, that bewails him,
And light up the cold touch of death with a smile.

And there shall the dew shed its sweetness and lustre;
There for his pall shall the oak-leaves be spread-
The sweet brier shall bloom, and the wild grape shall cluster;
And o'er him the leaves of the ivy be shed,

There shall they mix with the fern and the heather;
There shall the young eagle shed its first feather;
The wolves, with his wild dogs, shall lie there together,
And moan o'er the spot where the hunter is laid.

THE SEA-BIRD'S SONG.

On the deep is the mariner's danger,
On the deep is the mariner's death;
Who, to fear of the tempest a stranger,
Sees the last bubble burst of his breath?
'Tis the sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
Lone looker on despair;

The sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
The only witness there.

Who watches their course, who so mildly
Careen to the kiss of the breeze?
Who lists to their shrieks, who so wildly
Are clasp'd in the arms of the seas?
'Tis the sea-bird, &c.

Who hovers on high o'er the lover.
And her who has clung to his neck?
Whose wing is the wing that can cover
With its shadow the foundering wreck ?
'Tis the sea-bird, &c.

My eye in the light of the billow,
My wing on the wake of the wave,

I shall take to my breast, for a pillow,
The shroud of the fair and the brave.

I'm a sea-bird, &c.

My foot on the iceberg has lighted,

When hoarse the wild winds veer about;

My eye, when the bark is benighted,

Sees the lamp of the light-house go out.
I'm the sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
Lone looker on despair;

The sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
The only witness there.