5. And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face a whole peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant.

6. Here and there a stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamed, untamable progenitors! The Indian of falcon glance and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone, and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.

7. As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave which will settle over them forever.

CHARLES SPRAGUE.

XLVII.-NICHOLAS NICKLEBY SEEKING FOR A SITUATION.

MR. GREGSBURY in want of a secretary. NICHOLAS NICKLEBY in want of employment.

1. Nicholas. I brought this card, sir, from the general agency office, wishing to offer myself as your secretary. 2. Mr. Gregsbury. You have no connection with any of those rascally newspapers, have you?

3. N. I have no connection, I am sorry to say, with any thing at present.

4. Mr. G. Well, what can you do?

5. N. I suppose I can do what usually falls to the lot of other secretaries.

6. Mr. G. What's that?

7. N. A secretary's duties are rather hard to define, perhaps. They include, I presume, correspondence? 8. Mr. G. Good.

9. N. The arrangement of papers and documents. 10. Mr. G. Very good.

11. N. Occasionally, perhaps, the writing from your dictation, and possibly the copying of your speech for some public journal, when you have made one of more than usual importance.

12. Mr. G. Certainly. What else?

13. N. Really, I am not able at this moment to recapitulate any other duty of a secretary, beyond the general one of making himself as agreeable and useful to his employer as he can, consistently with his own respectability, and without overstepping that line of duties which he undertakes to perform, and which the designation of his office is usually understood to imply. 14. Mr. G. This is all very well, Mr.What is your name?

15. N. Nickleby.

16. Mr. G. This is all very well, Mr. Nickleby, and very proper so far as it goes,—but it does not go far enough. There are other duties, Mr. Nickleby, which a secretary to a parliamentary gentleman must never lose sight of. I should require to be "crammed," sir. 17. N. I beg your pardon,-what?

18. Mr. G. To be crammed, sir.

19. N. I beg your pardon again. May I ask what you mean?

20. Mr. G. My meaning, sir, is perfectly plain. My secretary would have to make himself master of the foreign policy of the world, as it is mirrored in the newspapers; to run his eye over all accounts of public meetings, all leading articles, and reports of the proceed ings of public bodies; and to make notes of any thing which appeared to him might be made a point of, in any little speech upon the question of some petition lying on the table, or any thing of that kind. Do you understand?

21. N. I think I do, sir.

22. Mr. G. Then it would be necessary for him to make himself acquainted, from day to day, with newspaper paragraphs on passing events, such as "Mysterious disappearances and supposed suicide of a pot-boy," or any thing of that sort, upon which I might found a question to the Secretary of State for the Home Department. Then he would have to copy the question and as much as I remembered of the answer (including a little compliment about my independence and good sense), and to send the manuscript, properly franked, to the local paper, with perhaps half a dozen lines as a leader, to the effect that I was always to be found in my place in parliament and never shrunk from the discharge of my responsible and arduous duties, and so forth, and so forth. You see? 23. N. Yes, I comprehend you.

24. Mr. G. Besides which, I should expect him, now and then, to go through a few figures in the printed tables, and to pick out a few results, so that I might come out pretty well on timber-duty questions and finance questions, and so on. And I should like him to get up a few little arguments about the disastrous effects of a return to cash payments and a metallic currency, with a touch, now and then, about the exportation of bullion, and the Emperor of Russia, and bank notes, and all that kind of thing,

which it is only necessary to talk fluently about, because nobody understands 'em. Do you take me?

25. N. I think I understand.

26. Mr. G. With regard to such questions as are not political, and which one can't be expected to care a screw about, beyond the natural care of not allowing inferior people to be as well off as ourselves—else where are our privileges? I should wish my secretary to get together a few little flourishing speeches of a patriotic cast. For instance, if any preposterous bill were brought forward for giving poor grubbing wretches of authors a right to their own property, I should like to say that I, for one, would never consent to opposing an insurmountable barrier to the diffusion of literature among the people - you understand? — that the creations of the pocket, being man's, might belong to one man or one family; but that the creations of the brain, being God's, ought, as a matter of course, to belong to the people at large; and if I was pleasantly disposed, I should like to make a joke about posterity, and say that those who wrote for posterity should be content to be rewarded by the approbation of posterity. It might take with the house, and could never do me any harm, because posterity can't be expected to know any thing about me or my jokes either. Don't you see?

27. N. I see that, sir.

28. Mr. G. You must always bear in mind, in such cases as this, where our interests are not affected, to put it very strong about the people, because it comes out very well at election time; and you could be as funny as you liked about the authors, because, I believe, the greater part of them live in lodgings, and are not voters. This is a hasty outline of the chief things you'd have to do, except waiting in the lobby every night, in case I forgot anything, and should want fresh cramming; and now

and then, during great debates, sitting in the front row of the gallery, and saying to the people about, "You see that gentleman with his hand to his face, and his arm twisted round the pillar? That's Mr. Gregsbury," with any other little eulogium that might strike you at the And for salary, I don't mind saying at once, in round numbers, to prevent any dissatisfaction-though it's more than I have been accustomed to give -- fifteen shillings a week, and find yourself. There!

moment.

29. N. Fifteen shillings a week is not much.

30. Mr. G. Not much!-fifteen shillings a week not much, young man! fifteen shillings a

31. N. Pray do not suppose that I quarrel with the sum; for I am not ashamed to confess that, whatever it may be in itself, to me it is a great deal. But the duties and responsibilities make the recompense small, and they are so very heavy that I fear to undertake them.

32. Mr. G. Do you decline to undertake them, sir? 33. N. I fear they are too great for my powers, however good my will may be.

34. Mr. G. That is as much as to say that you had rather not accept the place, and that you consider fifteen shillings a week too little. Do you decline it, sir? 35. N. I have no other alternative.

sir.

36. Mr. G. There's the door.

37. N. I am sorry I have troubled you unnecessarily,

38. Mr. G. I am sorry you have; begone!

CHARLES DICKENS.

We can expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness we can show, or any good that we can do to any fellow-being, let us not defer or neglect it, let us do it now, or the opportunity may slip from us; for we will not pass this way again.