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My king is false, my hope betrayed! My father-oh! the worth, The glory, and the loveliness, are passed away from earth!

"I thought to stand where banners waved, my sire! beside thee yet!I would that there our kindred blood on Spain's free soil had met !— Thou wouldst have known my spirit, then;-for thee my fields

were won;

And thou hast perished in thy chains, as though thou hadst no son!"'

Then starting from the ground once more, he seized the monarch's rein,
Amidst the pale and wildered looks of all the courtier train;
And with a fierce, o'ermastering grasp, the rearing war-horse led,
And sternly set them face to face,-the king before the dead :-

"Came I not forth upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss?
-Be still, and gaze thou on, false king! and tell me what is this?
The voice, the glance, the heart I sought,-give answer, where are
they?

-If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold clay!

"Into these glassy eyes put light,—be still! keep down thine ire,— Bid these white lips a blessing speak,--this earth is not my sire:Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was shed,Thou canst not?-and a king!-his dust be mountains on thy head!"

He loosed the steed, his slack hand fell;-upon the silent face
He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sid
place:

His hope was crushed, his after-fate untold in martial strain :-
His banner led the spears no more, amidst the hills of Spain.

LESSON LVI.-WILLIAM KIEFT.-WASHINGTON IRVING.

Wilhelmus Kieft was in form, features, and character, the very reverse of Wouter Van Twiller, his renowned predecessor. He was of very respectable descent, his father being inspector of windmills, in the ancient town of Saardam; and our hero, we are told, made very curious 5 investigations into the nature and operations of those machines, when a boy, which is one reason why he afterwards came to be so ingenious a governor. His name,

according to the most ingenious etymologists, was a corruption of Kyver, that is to say, wrangler or scolder, and 10 expressed the hereditary disposition of his family; which, for nearly two centuries, had kept the windy town of Saardam in hot water, and produced more tartars and brimstones, than any ten families in the place;-and so

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truly did Wilhelmus Kieft inherit this family endowment that he had scarcely been a year in the discharge of his government, before he was universally known by the appellation of WILLIAM, THE TESTY.

He was a brisk, waspish, little old gentleman, who had dried and withered away, partly through the natural process of years, and partly from being parched and burnt up by his fiery soul; which blazed like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, constantly inciting him to most valorous 10 broils, altercations, and misadventures. I have heard it observed, by a profound and philosophical judge of human nature, that if a woman waxes fat, as she grows old, the tenure of her life is very precarious, but if happily she withers, she lives forever.-Such likewise was the case 15 with William, the Testy, who grew tougher in proportion as he dried. He was some such a little Dutchman, as we may now and then see stumping briskly about the streets of our city, in a broad-skirted coat, with huge buttons, an old-fashioned cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, 20 and a cane as high as his chin. His visage was broad, and his features sharp, his nose turned up with the most petulent curl; his cheeks were scorched into a dusky red, -doubtless in consequence of the neighborhood of two fierce little gray eyes, through which his torrid soul 25 beamed with tropical fervor. The corners of his mouth were curiously modelled into a kind of fretwork, not a little resembling the wrinkled proboscis of an irritable pug dog;-in a word, he was one of the most positive, restless, ugly, little men, that ever put himself in a passion about 30 nothing.

Such were the personal endowments of William, the Testy; but it was the sterling riches of his mind, that raised him to dignity and power. In his youth, he had passed, with great credit, through a celebrated academy at 35 the Hague, noted for producing finished scholars, with a despatch unequalled, except by certain of our American colleges. Here he skirmished very smartly, on the frontiers of several of the sciences, and made so gallant an inroad in the dead languages, as to bring off captive a 40 host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, together with divers pithy saws and apothegms, all which he constantly paraded in conversation and writing, with as much vain-glory as would a triumphant general of yore display the spoils of the countries he had ravaged.

It is in knowledge, as in swimming; he who ostentatiously sports and flounders on the surface, makes more noise and splashing, and attracts more attention, than the industrious pearl diver, who plunges in search of trea5 sures at the bottom. The "universal acquirements" of William Kieft were the subject of great marvel and admiration among his countrymen, he figured about at the Hague, with as much vain-glory, as does a profound Bonze at Pekin, who has mastered half the letters of the Chinese 10 alphabet; and, in a word, was unanimously pronounced a universal genius!-I have known many universal geniuses in my time; though, to speak my mind freely, I never knew one, who, for the ordinary purposes of life, was worth his weight in straw;-but, for the purposes of 15 government, a little sound judgment, and plain common sense, is worth all the sparkling genius that ever wrote : poetry, or invented theories.

LESSON LVII.-PALMYRA.-WILLIAM WARE.

Letter from a Roman nobleman, resident at Palmyra.

If the gods, dear Marcus and Lucilia, came down to dwell upon earth, they could not but choose Palmyra for their seat, both on account of the general beauty of the city and its surrounding plains, and the exceeding sweet5 ness and serenity of its climate. It is a joy here only to sit still and live. The air, always loaded with perfume, seems to convey essential nutriment to those who breathe it; and its hue, especially when a morning or evening sun shines through it, is of that golden cast, which, as poets 10 feign, bathes the top of Olympus.

Never do we tremble here before blasts like those which from the Apennines sweep along the plains and cities of the Italian coast. No extremes of either heat or cold, are experienced in this happy spot. In winter, airs, which, in 15 other places, equally far to the north, would come bearing with them an icy coldness, are here tempered by the vast deserts of sand, which stretch away in every direction, and which, it is said, never wholly lose the heat treasured up during the fierce reign of the summer sun. And, in sum20 mer, the winds which, as they pass over the deserts, are indeed like the breath of a furnace, long before they reach the city change to a cool and refreshing breeze, by traversing, as they do, the vast tracts of cultivated ground, which,

as I have already told you, surround the capital, to a very great extent on every side.

Palmyra is the very heaven of the body. Every sense is fed to the full, with that which it chiefly covets. But 5 when I add to this, that its unrivalled position, in respect to a great inland traffic, has poured into the lap of its inhabitants a sudden and boundless flood of wealth, making every merchant a prince, you will truly suppose, that however heartily I extol it for its outward beauties, and 10 all the appliances of luxury, I do not conceive it very favorable in its influences upon the character of its population.

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Palmyrenes, charming as they are, are not Romans. They are enervated by riches, and the luxurious sensual 15 indulgences which they bring along, by necessity, in their train;—all their evil power being here increased by the voluptuous softness of the climate. I do not say, that all are so. All Rome cannot furnish a woman more truly Roman than Fausta, nor a man more worthy that 20 name than Gracchus. It is of the younger portion of the inhabitants I now speak. These are, without exception, effeminate. They love their country and their great queen; but they are not a defence, upon which in time of need to rely. Neither do I deny them courage. They 25 want something more vital still,-bodily strength and martial training. Were it not for this, I should almost fear for the issue of any encounter between Rome and Pal

myra.

But, as it is, notwithstanding the great achievements of 30 ́Odenatus and Zenobia, I cannot but deem the glory of this state to have risen to its highest point, and even to have passed it. You may think me to be hasty, in forming this opinion; but I am persuaded you will agree with me, when you shall have seen more at length the grounds 35 upon which I rest it, as they are laid down in my last letter to Portia.

LESSON LVIII.-BEAUTIES OF NATURE.-SAMUEL G. HOWE.

There is nothing in which the goodness of God is more apparent, than in the unsparing flood of beauty which he pours out upon all things around us. What is more striking than the fact, that this beautiful canopy of clouds 5 which curtain over our globe, when looked down upon from a mountain-top, or from a balloon, is like a leaden

lake, without beauty, or even color; it is like the dull canvass on the reverse of a beautiful picture; but from within, from where God meant man to see it, it is adorned, beautified, and variegated, in a manner inimi5 table by art.

Dainty people cross the seas, to be thrilled by the wild sketches of Salvator Rosa, or to languish over the soft tints of Guido; and the rich man beggars whole villages, to hang up in his gallery three square feet of the pencil10 work of Corregio; but God hangs up in the summer evening sky, for the poorest peasant boy, a picture whole leagues in extent, the tints of which would make Raphael throw down his pencil in despair; and when He gathers together the dark folds of the sky, to prepare the autumn 15 thunder storm, He heaves up the huge clouds into mountain masses, throws them into wild and sublime attitudes, colors them with the most lowering hues, and forms a picture which Michael Angelo, with all his genius, could not copy.

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The rich man adorns his cabinet with a few costly works, which hang unchanged for years, while the poor man's gallery is not only adorned with pictures that eclipse the chef d'œuvres of human genius, but they are continually changed, and every hour a new one is hung 25 up to his admiring gaze; for the firmament rolls on, and, like a great kaleidoscope, at every turn, presents a new and beautiful combination of light, and shade, and color. Let not its rich pictures roll away unheeded; let not its lessons be lost upon the young; but let them, in admiring 30 it, know that God's great hand is ever turning it, for the happiness of all his children.

LESSON LIX.-AN INTERESTING ADVENTURE.-WILLIAM J.

SNELLING.

I wandered far into the bare prairie, which was spread around me like an ocean of snow, the gentle undulations here and there having no small resemblance to the ground swell. When the sun took off his night-cap of mist, (for 5 the morning was cloudy,) the glare of the landscape, or rather snowscape, was absolutely painful to my eyes; but a small veil of green crape obviated that difficulty. Toward noon I was aware of a buffalo, at a long distance,

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