this century, and has been deemed comparable only to Milton's Comus. It is still unapproached by any other fairy poem of the century in the almost human interest which its characters possess, and in the delicacy of its description.

Washington Irving found in the folk-lore of colonial days in the Catskills the materials for his Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle-prose idyls, which are written in a style singularly well adapted to the delineation of the legendary and the picturesque.

Interesting accounts of the religions of the Aztecs and the ancient Peruvians are to be found in William H. Prescott's Conquest of Mexico and Conquest of Peru. A novel entitled The Fair God, by General Lew Wallace, relates the overthrow of Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, by the Spanish invader Cortes, and presents a graphic picture of the days of Mexican idolatry. The Story of Mexico, a recent work by Susan Hale, is a valuable contribution to Spanish-American history.

AN INDIAN STORY.

(The Legend of Maquon.)

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

"I KNOW where the timid fawn abides
In the depths of the shaded dell,

Where the leaves are broad and the thicket hides,
With its many stems and its tangled sides,

From the eye of the hunter well.

"I know where the young May violet grows,

In its lone and lowly nook,

On the mossy bank, where the larch-tree throws
Its broad dark boughs, in solemn repose,

Far over the silent brook.

"And that timid fawn starts not with fear
When I steal to her secret bower,

And that young May violet to me is dear,
And I visit the silent streamlet near,

To look on the lovely flower."

Thus Maquon sings as he lightly walks

To the hunting-ground on the hills;

'Tis a song of his maid of the woods and rocks, With her bright black eyes and long black locks, And voice like the music of rills.

He goes to the chase-but evil eyes

Are at watch in the thicker shades;

For she was lovely that smiled on his sighs,
And he bore, from a hundred lovers, his prize,
The flower of the forest maids.

The boughs in the morning wind are stirred,
And the woods their song renew,

With the early carol of many a bird,

And the quickened tune of the streamlet heard
Where the hazels trickle with dew.

And Maquon has promised his dark-haired maid,
Ere eve shall redden the sky,

A good red deer from the forest shade,

That bounds with the herd through grove and glade,
At her cabin door shall lie.

The hollow woods, in the setting sun,
Ring shrill with the fire-bird's lay;

And Maquon's sylvan labors are done,

And his shafts are spent, but the spoil they won
He bears on his homeward way.

He stops near his bower-his eye perceives.
Strange traces along the ground;

At once to the earth his burden he heaves,

And breaks through the veil of boughs and leaves,

And gains its door with a bound.

But the vines are torn on its walls that leant,
And all from the young shrubs there,

By struggling hands have the leaves been rent,
And there hangs, on the sassafras broken and bent,
One tress of the well-known hair.

But where is she who at this calm hour
Ever watched his coming to see?

She is not at the door, nor yet in the bower.
He calls-but he only hears on the flower
The hum of the laden bee.

It is not a time for idle grief,
Nor a time for tears to flow;

The horror that freezes his limbs is brief-
He his war-axe and bow, and a sheaf
Of darts made sharp for the foe.

grasps

And he looks for the print of the ruffian's feet,
Where he bore the maiden away;

And he darts on the fatal path more fleet

Than the blast that hurries the

On the wild November day.

vapor

and sleet

'Twas early summer when Maquon's bride Was stolen away from his door;

But at length the maples in crimson are dyed,

And the grape is black on the cabin side-
And she smiles at his hearth once more.

But far in a pine-grove, dark and cold,
Where the yellow leaf falls not,

Nor the autumn shines in scarlet and gold,
There lies a hillock of fresh, dark mold,
In the deepest gloom of the spot.

And the Indian girls that pass that way

Point out the ravisher's grave;

"And how soon to the bower she loved," they say,

"Returned the maid that was borne away

From Maquon, the fond and the brave."

THE DEATH LAMENT OF THE NADOWESSIE CHIEFTAIN.

BY JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER.

(TRANSLATED BY EDGAR ALFRED BOWRING.)

SEE, he sitteth on his mat,

Sitteth there upright,

With the grace with which he sat
While he saw the light.

Where is now the sturdy gripe,
Where the breath sedate,
That so lately whiff'd the pipe
Toward the Spirit Great?

Where the bright and falcon eye,
That the reindeer's tread
On the waving grass could spy,
Thick with dewdrops spread?

Where the limbs that used to dart
Swifter through the snow
Than the twenty-member'd hart,
Than the mountain roe?

Where the arm that sturdily
Bent the deadly bow?
See, its life hath fleeted by;
See, it hangeth low!

Farewell gifts, then, hither bring,

Sound the death-note sad!

Bury him with everything

That can make him glad.

'Neath his head the hatchet hide,
That he boldly swung;

And the bear's-fat haunch beside,
For the road is long;

And the knife, well sharpened,

That, with slashes three,

Scalp and skin from foeman's head
Tore off skillfully;

And, to paint his body, place
Dyes within his hand.
Let him shine with ruddy grace
In the Spirit Land.

COMANCHE BOY.

BY FANNIE A. D. DARDEN.

SWEET child of the forest and prairie,
Say, where have thy dusky tribe gone?
Have they silently passed as the shadows.
That flit 'neath the cloud-veilèd moon?

Have they folded their tents 'neath the greenwood-
Have they gone to some far hunting-ground,

Where the buffalo roameth at pleasure,

And the fleet-footed dun deer is found?

Or on the red trail of the war-path

Do thy stern chieftains seek for the foe?
And the songs of their gay plumèd warriors,
Are they breathing out vengeance and woe?

They are gone to the land of the West Wind;
In the mountain's rock-caverns a home
They have found, where the voice of the torrent
Roars loud from its white bed of foam.

As the lingering rays of the sunset
O'er woodland and prairie are thrown,

As the soft, hazy Indian summer

Is a dream of the summer that's gone: