something like a foreboding of evil which she strove to overcome; but could not during the day quite bear up against her own thoughts, more especially as the threatened storm did at length set in. His labor done, the husband makes his three miles' way homeward, until his cottage coming into view, all its pleasant associations of spring, summer, and autumn, with its thousand family delights, rush on his heart:

There was a treasure hidden in his hat,

A plaything for his young ones. He had found
A dormouse nest,-the living ball coil'd round
For its long winter sleep; and all his thought,
As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of naught
But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes,

And graver Lizzy's quieter surprise,

When he should yield, by guess and kiss and prayer,
Hard won, the frozen captive to their care.

Out rushes his fondling dog Tinker, but no little faces greet him as wont at the threshold; and to his hurried question, "Are they come?—'twas no."

To throw his tools down, hastily unhook
The old crack'd lantern from its dusty nook,
And, while he lit it, speak a cheering word
That almost choked him, and was scarcely heard,
Was but a moment's act, and he was gone
To where a fearful foresight led him on.

A neighbor accompanies him; and they strike into the track which the children should have taken in their way back,-now calling aloud on them through the pitchy darkness, and now by the lantern-light scrutinizing "thicket, bole, and nook," till the dog, brushing past them with a bark, shows them that he is on their track:

"Hold the light

Low down-he's making for the water. Hark!

I know that whine-The old dog's found them, Mark.”
So speaking, breathlessly he hurried on

Toward the old crazy foot-bridge. It was gone!

And all his dull contracted light could show

Was the black, void, and dark swollen stream below.

"Yet there's life somewhere-more than Tinker's whine-
That's sure," said Mark. "So, let the lantern shine
Down yonder. There's the dog-and hark!"

"Oh, dear !"

And a low sob came faintly on the ear,
Mock'd by the sobbing gust. Down, quick as thought,
Into the stream leap'd Ambrose, where he caught
Fast hold of something-a dark huddled heap-
Half in the water, where 'twas scarce knee-deep
For a tall man, and half above it propp'd
By some old ragged side-piles that had stopt
Endways the broken plank when it gave way
With the two little ones that luckless day!

"My babes! my lambkins!" was the father's cry.
One little voice made answer, "Here am I?"-

"Twas Lizzy's. There she crouch'd, with face as white,
More ghastly, by the flickering lantern-light,

Than sheeted corpse. The pale blue lips drawn tight,

Wide parted, showing all the pearly teeth,
And eyes on some dark object underneath,
Wash'd by the turbid water, fix'd like stone,-
One arm and hand stretch'd out, and rigid grown,
Grasping, as in the death-gripe, Jenny's frock.
There she lay drown'd.

*

They lifted her from out her watery bed-
Its covering gone, the lovely little head
Hung like a broken snow-drop, all aside,

*

And one small hand. The mother's shawl was tied,
Leaving that free about the child's small form,
As was her last injunction-"fast and warm"-
Too well obey'd,-too fast! A fatal hold,
Affording to the scrag, by a thick fold
That caught and pinn'd her to the river's bed:
While through the reckless water overhead
Her life-breath bubbled up.

We pass over the cruel self-upbraidings of the mother:--

"She might have lived,

Struggling like Lizzy," was the thought that rived
The wretched mother's heart, when she knew all,
"But for my foolishness about that shawl,"-

a torture aggravated by the tones of the surviving child, who half deliriously kept on ejaculating,

"Who says I forgot?

Mother! indeed, indeed I kept fast hold,

And tied the shawl quite close-she can't be cold-
But she won't move we slept-I don't know how-
But I held on-and I'm so weary now-

And it's so dark and cold!-oh dear! oh dear!-
And she won't move-if daddy was but here!"

From their despair for the lost, the poor parents turned to their almost forlorn hope in the living, as

All night long from side to side she turn'd,
Piteously plaining like a wounded dove,

With now and then the murmur, "She won't move."
And lo! when morning, as in mockery, bright
Shone on that pillow,-passing strange the sight,-
The young head's raven hair was streak'd with white!

JAMES MONTGOMERY, 1771–1854.

JAMES MONTGOMERY, the author of The Wanderer of Switzerland, The West Indies, and other poems, was the son of a Moravian preacher, and was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, November 4, 1771. When seven years old, he was placed at a Moravian seminary at Fulneck, in Yorkshire. Here, among this people, remarkable for their ardor in religion, he received his education, and made commendable proficiency in the Greek, Latin, German, and French languages,

and in his English studies. He early evinced a taste for poetry; but his poetic wares did not meet with very ready sale in the market, and in 1792 he esta blished himself in Sheffield as an assistant in a newspaper office,-the Sheffield Register. Two years after, the publisher, Mr. Gales, being obliged to fly from England to avoid a prosecution, our author undertook the editorship and publication of the paper. He soon got himself into trouble, being prosecuted for printing a ballad, written by a clergyman of Belfast, in commemoration of the destruction of the Bastile, which was, in that period of great political agitation, interpreted into a seditious libel. He was convicted, and sentenced to a fine of twenty pounds and three months' imprisonment in York Castle.

On returning to his editorial duties, he abstained as much as possible from politics; but in January, 1795, he was tried for a second imputed political offence, a paragraph in his paper which reflected on the conduct of a magistrate in quelling a riot at Sheffield. He was again convicted, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, to pay a fine of thirty pounds, and to give security to keep the peace for two years. "All the persons," says the amiable poet, writing in 1840, "who were actively concerned in the prosecutions against me in 1794 and 1795, are dead, and, without exception, they died in peace with me. I believe I am quite correct in saying that from each of them distinctly, in the sequel, I received tokens of good will, and from several of them substantial proofs of kindness."

In the spring of 1797 he printed his Prison Amusements,-the production of his pen during his recent confinement. In 1805 he published The Ocean, and the next year The Wanderer of Switzerland, and other Poems, which, in spite of a very ill-natured criticism in the Edinburgh Review,1 soon rose into popularity, and completely established the reputation of the author as a poet. His next work was The West Indies, which appeared in 1809, written in honor of the abolition of the African slave-trade by the British legislature in 1807. In vigor and freedom of description, and in fine pathetic painting, this poem is much superior to any thing in his first volume. In 1812 appeared The World before the Flood, a poem in the English heroic couplet, consisting of ten short cantos, of which a writer in the Monthly Magazine justly remarked that "no man of taste or feeling can possibly read it without wishing to make others participate in the pleasure he has derived from it." He next published (1817) Thoughts on Wheels, directed against lotteries; and The Climbing-Boy's Soliloquies, to enlist the sympathies of the public in favor of the chimney-sweeps. In 1819 appeared Greenland, containing a sketch of the ancient Moravian church and its missions in Greenland. The only other long poem of Mr. Montgomery is The Pelican Island, describing the haunts of the pelican in the small islands on the coast of New Holland. Besides these, he has written a number of sacred lyrics, which rank among the best in the language.

1 The Edinburgh Review, twenty-eight years afterwards, thus speaks of Montgomery's poetry: Gradually with every successive production, the excrescences of our author's early style have been pruned away. Earnestness has succeeded to affectation; a manly simplicity of thought and reserve of expres sion, to the flowery exuberance and strained conceits of youth; overcharged and almost whining pathos has softened into a more chastened, natural, and unobtrusive tenderness; and a spirit of religion, profound and awe-inspiring, yet withal cheerful and cou

| solatory, forming a part of the man himself, pervades and informs all his works, till the poet, who seemed at one time too likely to prolong the absurdities of the Della Crusca School, has taken his place, not unworthily, among the classics of the nation.”—Edinburgh Review, Ixi. 473. In the sixth volume of the London Quarterly is a very severe notice of the early criticism of the Edinburgh,-critic cen suring critic.

This poem abounds in minute and delicate description of natural phenomena.-has great felicity of diction and expression,-and,

In 1825, Mr. Montgomery retired from the editorship of the Sheffield newspaper, which post he had filled for more than thirty years. On this occasion his friends and neighbors invited him to a public entertainment. "There the happy and grateful poet 'ran through the story of his life even from his boyish days,' when he came among them friendless and a stranger, from his retirement at Fulneck among the Moravian brethren, by whom he was educated in all but knowledge of the world. He spoke with pardonable pride of the success which had crowned his labors as an author. * 'I wrote neither to suit the manners, the taste, nor the temper of the age; but I appealed to universal principles, to unperishable affections, to primary elements of our common nature, found wherever man is found in civilized society, wherever his mind has been raised above barbarian ignorance, or his passions purified from brutal selfishness.""

In 1830 and 1831 our author was selected to deliver a course of lectures at the Royal Institution, on Poetry and General Literature. This he prepared for the press, and it appeared in 1833; and a more interesting and instructive work on general literature, in the same compass, can hardly be found. "A collected edition of his works, with autobiographical and illustrated matter, was issued in 1841, in four volumes,' and they are volumes of great value; for though he cannot be ranked among the first class of the poets of the nineteenth century for power or suggestiveness, yet his verse is always melodious, his descriptions are beautiful and picturesque, and a tone of generous and enlightened morality pervades all his writings. He was the enemy of the slave-trade and of every form of oppression, and the warm friend of every scheme of philanthropy and improvement. The pious and devotional feelings displayed in his early effusions grew with his growth, and form the staple of his poetry. In description, however, he is not less happy; and in his Greenland and Pelican Island there are passages of great beauty, evincing a refined taste and judgment in the selection of his materials. His late works have more vigor and variety than those by which he first became distinguished. Indeed, his fame was long confined to what is termed the religious world, till he showed, by his cultivation of different styles of poetry, that his depth and sincerity of feeling, the simplicity of his taste, and the picturesque beauty of his language, were not restricted to purely spiritual themes. Of his smaller poems we can scarcely speak too warmly. In their kind they are perhaps unrivalled, except by those of Moore. They are polished gems, touched and retouched with a loving and gifted hand. Many of them have become, and must continue to be, general favorites with the people, from their musical flow and their happy expression and imagery; while his sacred lyrics will ever be embalmed in the hearts of the Christian church, prized equally with the best effusions of Wesley or Cowper or Watts."

THE LOVE OF COUNTRY AND OF HOME.

There is a land, of every land the pride,
Beloved by heaven, o'er all the world beside;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons emparadise the night;

altogether, possesses more of the power and fertility of the master than any other of the author's works."-CHAMBERS's Cyc. Eng. Lit.

1 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of James

Montgomery, including Selections from his Cor
respondence, Remains in Prose and Verse, and
Conversations on Various Subjects, by John
Holland and James Everett, 4 vols.

A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth,
Time-tutor'd age, and love-exalted youth:
The wandering mariner, whose eye explores
The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,
Views not a realm so bountiful and fair,
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air;
In every clime the magnet of his soul,
Touch'd by remembrance, trembles to that pole;
For in this land of heaven's peculiar grace,
The heritage of nature's noblest race,
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest :
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,
While in his soften'd looks benignly blend
The sire, the son, the husband, father, friend:
Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife,
Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life;
In the clear heaven of her delightful eye,
An angel-guard of loves and graces lie;
Around her knees domestic duties meet,
And fireside pleasures gambol at her feet.

"Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?"
Art thou a man?-a patriot ?-look around;

Oh, thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,

That land THY COUNTRY, and that spot THY HOME!!
The West Indies.

NIGHT.

Night is the time for rest;

How sweet, when labors close,

To gather round an aching breast

The curtain of repose,

Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head

Upon our own delightful bed!

Night is the time for dreams;

The gay romance of life,

When truth that is, and truth that seems,

Blend in fantastic strife;

Ah! visions less beguiling far

Than waking dreams by daylight are!

Night is the time for toil;2

To plough the classic field,
Intent to find the buried spoil
Its wealthy furrows yield;