THE COTTAGE GIRL.

A CHILD beside a hamlet's fount at play,
Her fair face laughing at the sunny day;
The cheerful girl her labour leaves a while,
To gaze on Heaven's and Earth's unsullied smile ;
Her happy dog looks on her dimpled cheeks,
And of his joy in his own language speaks;
A gush of waters, tremulously bright,
Kindling the air to gladness with their light;
And a soft gloom. beyond, of summer-trees,
Darkening the turf, and, shadowed o'er by these,
A low, dim, woodland cottage:—this was all!
What had the scene for memory to recall
With a fond look of love? What secret spell
With the heart's pictures bade its image dwell?
What but the spirit of the joyous child,
That freshly forth o'er stream and verdure smiled,
Casting upon the common things of earth
A brightness, born and gone with infant mirth!

F. H.

THE HOUR OF PRAYER.

BY MRS. HEMANS.

CHILD, amidst the flowers at play,
While the red light fades away;
Mother, with thine earnest eye,
Ever following silently;
Father, by the breeze of eve
Called thy harvest-work to leave ;·
Pray!-Ere yet the dark hours be,
Lift the heart and bend the knee.

Traveller, in the stranger's land,
Far from thine own household band;
Mourner, haunted by the tone
Of a voice from this world gone ;
Captive, in whose narrow cell
Sunshine hath not leave to dwell;
Sailor, on the darkening sea ;-
Lift the heart and bend the knee!

Warrior, that from battle won,

Breathest now at set of sun;
Woman, o'er the lowly slain,
Weeping on his burial-plain;
Ye that triumph, ye that sigh,
Kindred by one holy tie!

Heaven's first star alike ye see-
Lift the heart and bend the knee!

SONNET.

BY JOHN HOLLAND.

"WHO shall avenge the slave ?" I stood and cried :
"The earth, the earth!" the echoing sea replied:
I turned me to the ocean, but each wave

Declined to be the avenger of the slave.

"Who shall avenge the slave ?" my species cry

The winds, the floods, the lightnings of the sky :"
I turn'd to these, from them one echo ran-
"The right avenger of the slave, is man!".
Man was my fellow; in his sight I stood,
Wept, and besought him by the voice of blood :
Sternly he looked, as proud on earth he trod,
Then said, "The avenger of the slave is God !".

I looked in prayer towards heaven- -awhile 'twas still, And then methought God's voice replied" I WILL !”

SOME ACCOUNT

OF

THE ARMENIAN CHRISTIANS

AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

BY THE REV. ROBERT WALSH, LL.D.

Late Chaplain to the British Embassy at Constantinople.

ARMENIA, a country in Asia, lying to the North of Persia and Mesopotamia, and to the South of the Euxine and Caspian Seas, is celebrated from the earliest antiquity. The face of the region is very mountainous, and all the great rivers take their rise there: the Tigris and the Euphrates running South, and falling into the Persian Gulf, and the Phasis, Cyrus, and Araxes, running North, and falling into the Euxine and Caspian Seas, indicate that their sources must be in the highest land in the immense space which they traverse.

Hence it was that this

region was first uncovered by the waters of the Deluge, and the Ark, we are told, rested on Mount Ararat, the

highest mountain of Armenia.* In the histories of Greece and Rome, Armenia was the scene of many events. The Ten Thousand Greeks passed through it in their retreat from Persia; and Tigranes, king of Armenia, was the great ally of Mithridates, the powerful enemy of the Romans. It afterwards formed part of the Parthian monarchy, established by the Arsacidæ, on the decline of the Roman empire, and was finally subdued by the Turks, under Selim I., in the year 1515, and has ever since continued annexed, as a province, to the Turkish dominions.

On the subjugation of Armenia by the Turks, the country became greatly depopulated.' Numbers emigrated to different parts of the world, where, like the Jews, they continue at this day dispersed, and retain, like them, the characteristics which distinguish their original country; and they acquired a propensity for wandering about, and a commercial enterprise, which still mark them in the East, and which once distinguished them in the Western world. Cha Abbas, the celebrated Persian monarch, cotemporary with our Elizabeth, availed himself of the inroad of the Turks, and invited the fugitive Armenians

The Armenians believe that the Ark was miraculously preserved from decay, and still exists on the top of their mountain. Many attempts, they say, have been made to ascend to where it is; but the persons, when near the top, always found themselves by some supernatural means, again conveyed to the bottom.