And Love, while many a tear he| And oft, they say, she scans it o'er, shed,

In blushes flung the book away!

The index now alone remains,

Of all the pages spoiled by Plea

sure;

And though it bears some honey stains,
Yet Memory counts the leaf a

treasure!

And oft, by this memorial aided, Brings back the pages now no more, And thinks of lines that long have faded!

I know not if this tale be true,

But thus the simple facts are stated;
And I refer their truth to you,
Since Love and you are near related !

EPISTLE VII.

TO THOMAS HUME, ESQ., M.D.

FROM THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.

ΔΙΗΓΗΣΟΜΑΙ ΔΙΗΓΗΜΑΤΑ ΙΣΩΣ ΑΠΙΣΤΑ, ΚΟΙΝΩΝΑ ΩΝ ΠΕΠΟΝΘΑ ΟΥΚ ΕΧΩΝ.

Xenophont. Ephes. Ephesiuc. lib. 5,

'Tis evening now; the heats and cares of day

In twilight dews are calmly wept away.
The lover now, beneath the western star,
Sighs through the medium of his sweet segar,
And fills the ears of some consenting she

With puffs and vows, with smoke and constancy!
The weary statesman for repose hath fled
From halls of council to his negro's shed,
Where blest he woos some black Aspasia's grace,
And dreams of freedom in his slave's embrace !1

In fancy now beneath the twilight gloom,
Come, let me lead thee o'er this modern Rome !2
Where tribunes rule, where dusky Davi bow,
And what was Goose Creek once is Tiber now !3-
This famed metropolis, where Fancy sees
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees;
Which travelling fools and gazetteers adorn
With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn,
Though nought but wood and

they see,

Where streets should run, and sages ought to be!

And look, how soft in yonder radiant wave,
The dying sun prepares his golden grave !—

The 'black Aspasia' of the present of the United States, inter Avernales haud ignotissima nymphas,' has given rise to much pleasantry among the anti-democrat wits in America.

is to be, as it were, a second Rome.'-Weld's Travels, Letter iv.

3 A little stream runs through the city, which, with intolerable affectation, they have styled the Tiber. It was originally called Goose Creek.

2 On the original location of the ground now allotted for the seat of the Federal City (says To be under the necessity of going through Mr. Weld), the identical spot on which the a deep wood for one or two miles, perhaps, in Capitol now stands was called Rome. This order to see a next-door neighbour and in the anecdote is related by many as a certain prognos- same city, is a curious, and I believe, a novel cirLie of the future magnificence of this city. which cumstance,'-Weld, Letter iv.

Oh great Potowmac! oh you banks of shade!
You mighty scenes, in Nature's morning made,
While still, in rich magnificence of prime,
She poured her wonders, lavishly sublime,
Nor yet had learned to stoop, with humbler care,
From grand to soft, from wonderful to fair!

Say, where your towering hills, your boundless floods,
Your rich savannas and majestic woods,

Where bards should meditate and heroes rove,
And weman charm and man deserve her love!

Oh! was a world so bright but born to grace
Its own half-organized, half-minded racel
Of weak barbarians swarming o'er its breast,
Like vermin gendered on the lion's crest?
Were none but brutes to call that soil their home,
Where none but demi-gods should dare to roam ?
Or, worse, thou mighty world! oh! doubly worse,
Did Heaven design thy lordly land to nurse
The motley dregs of every distant clime,
Each blast of anarchy and taint of crime

Which Europe shakes from her perturbèd sphere,
In full malignity to rankle here?

But hush!-observe that little mount of pines,
Where the breeze murmurs and the fire-fly shines,
There let thy fancy raise, in bold relief,

The sculptured image of that veteran chief,2

Who lost the rebel's in the hero's name,

And stepped o'er prostrate loyalty to fame;

Beneath whose sword Columbia's patriot train

Cast off their monarch, that their mob might reign!

How shall we rank thee upon Glory's page?
Thou more than soldier and just less than sage
Too formed for peace to act a conqueror's part,
Too trained in camps to learn a statesman's art,
Nature designed thee for a hero's mould,
But, ere she cast thee, let the stuff grow cold!

!

While warmer souls command, nay, make their fate,
Thy fate made thee and forced thee to be great
Yet Fortune, who so oft, so blindly sheds
Her brightest halo round the weakest heads,
Found thee undazzled, tranquil as before,
Proud to be useful, scorning to be more;

The picture which Buffon and De Pauw have drawu of the American Indian, though very humiliating, is, as far as I can judge, much more correct than the flattering representations which Mr. Jefferson has given us. See the Notes on Virginia, where this gentleman endeavours to disprove in general the opinion maintained so strongly by some philosophers, that nature (as Mr. Jefferson expresses it) belittles her productions

in the western world. M. de Pauw attributes the imperfections of animal life in America to the ravages of a very recent deluge, from whose effects upon its soil and atmosphere it has not yet sufficiently recovered.-See his Recherches sur les Américains, part i. tom. i. p. 102.

* On a small hill near the Capitol, there is to be an equestrian statue of General Washington.

Less prompt at glory's than at duty's claim,-
Renown the meed, but self-applause the aim;
All thou hast been reflects less fame on thee,
Far less, than all thou hast forborne to be!
Now turn thine eye where faint the moonlight falls
On yonder dome-and in those princely halls,
If thou canst hate, as, oh! that soul must hate,
Which loves the virtuous and reveres the great,
If thou canst loathe and execrate with me
That Gallic garbage of philosophy,

That nauseous slaver of these frantic times,
With which false liberty dilutes her crimes.
If thou hast got, within thy free-born breast,
One pulse that beats more proudly than the re
With honest scorn for that inglorious sou'
Which creeps and winds beneath a mob's control,
Which courts the rabble's smile, the rabble's nod,
And makes, like Egypt, every beast its god'
There, in those walls-but, burning tongue, forbear!
Rank must be reverenced, even the rank that's there:
So here I pause-and now, my Hume! we part;
But oh! full oft in magic dreams of heart,
Thus let us meet, and mingle converse dear
By Thames at home, or by Potowmac here!

O'er lake and marsh, through fevers and through fogs,
'Midst bears and yankees, democrats and frogs,
Thy foot shall follow me, thy heart and eyes
With me shall wonder, and with me despise !1
While I, as oft, in witching thought shall rove
To thee, to friendship, and that land I love,
Where, like the air that fans her fields of green,
Her freedom spreads, unfevered and serene;
Where sovereign man can condescend to see
The throne and laws more sovereign still than he!

THE SNAKE.

1801.

My love and I, the other day,
Within a myrtle arbour lay,
When near us, from a rosy bed,
A little snake put forth its head.

1 In the ferment which the French Revolution excited among the democrats of America, and the licentious sympathy with which they shared in the wildest excesses of Jacobinism, we may find one source of that vulgarity of vice, that hostility to all the graces of life, which distinguishes the present demagogues of the United States, and has become, indeed, too generally the characteristic of their countrymen. But there is another cause of the corruption of private morals, which, encouraged as it is by the Government, and identi

fied with the interests of the community, seems to threaten the decay of all honest principle in America. I allude to those fraudulent violations of neutrality to which they are indebted for the most lucrative part of their commerce, and by which they have so long infringed and counteracted the maritime rights and advantages of this country. This unwarrantable trade is necessarily abetted by such a system of collusion, imposture, and perjury, as cannot fail to spread rapid contamination around it.

'See,' said the maid, with laughing eyes-
Yonder the fatal emblem lies!

Who could expect such hidden harm
Beneath the rose's velvet charm?"

Never did moral thought occur
In more unlucky hour than this;
For oh! I just was leading her
To talk of love and think of bliss.
I rose to kill the snake, but she

In pity prayed it might not be.

'No,' said the girl-and many a spark
Flashed from her eyelid, as she said it-
'Under the rose, or in the dark,

One might perhaps have cause to dread it;
But when its wicked eyes appear,

And when we know for what they wink so,

One must be very simple, dear,

To let it sting one-don't you think so?'

LINES

WRITTEN ON LEAVING PHILADELPHIA.

τηνδε την πολιν φίλως

Ειπων επαξια γαρ.-Sophocl. Cdip. Colon. v. 758.

ALONE by the Schuylkill a wanderer roved,
And bright were its flowery banks to his eye;
But far, very far were the friends that he loved,
And he gazed on its flowery banks with a sigh!

Oh Nature! though blessed and bright are thy rays,
O'er the brow of creation enchantingly thrown,
Yet faint are they all to the lustre that plays

In a smile from the heart that is dearly our own!

Nor long did the soul of the stranger remain

Unblest by the smile he had languished to meet;
Though scarce did he hope it would soothe him again,
Till the threshold of home had been kissed by his feet!

But the lays of his boyhood had stolen to their ear,

And they loved what they knew of so humble a name ;

And they told him, with flattery welcome and dear,
That they found in his heart something sweeter than fame!

Nor did woman-oh woman! whose form and whose soul
Are the spell and the light of each path we pursue;
Whether sunned in the tropics or chilled at the pole,
If woman be there, there is happiness too !—