caused to be neglected the all-important contingent which really involved the ultimate fate of this continent. The policy to which we have adverted was, with the Spanish and the French, the same. They had not to deal with the same races; but disregarding the lessons of all past experience, they both sought to mix their blood with that of the natives, and thus to absorb those people into the new society they were about to institute.

With our fathers, on the contrary, the opposite policy obtained. The Goths, the common ancestors of the inhabitants of Northwestern Europe, are the noblest branch of the Caucasian race. We are their children. It was the spirit of the Goth that guided the May Flower across the trackless ocean; the blood of the Goth that flowed at Bunker's Hill.'* Sternly did these men put far from them all thoughts of such mingling of the races: they saw and felt the native's inferiority, and they spurned that alliance by which, though the posterity of the Indians would be partially exalted in the human scale, yet their own must be equally abased. These opposite policies have now begun, each to produce its legitimate results. The mixed race, the 'Bois Brûlé,' which has sprung from the connexion of the French with the Northern Indians, is represented in all its nothingness, by the thriftless packmen of the Fur Companies; while the Spanish experiment with a different race has inflicted upon the world the miserable Mexican, and still farther south other hybrids, in no respect more promising. Contrasted with the result of these human adulterations, the proud and glorious experiment of our fathers stands nobly forth in bold and imposing reality. The descendants of those fathers are Goths still; and by maintaining the distinctive features of that branch of the Caucasian family, what may they not yet accomplish? In a brief half century these descendants have risen from dependent colonies to the rank and position of one of the first powers of the civilized world; and yet their career is but just now commenced. They have done this, not from fortuitous circumstances, but through that active and predominent energy which gives prompt reality to their sound and constantly matured resolves. This practice of resolves, and this predominent energy, are still as active and efficient as ever: their very essence is that progress which knows no cessation and brooks no delay.

Nothing is more certain than that we owe all we are as a nation, and all we can ever rationally hope to be, to the preservation of our race from that commingling with others which has multiplied degenerate thousands upon the earth, who can only live ignobly and ingloriously pass away. Before this policy of ours the inferior native will eventually disappear from the earth: and yet the French and Spanish result is no better, but rather worse. The hybrid fruits of that policy may prolong the blood of the weak side of their ancestry more years upon the earth; but these are doomed, like all of their kind, to live without just renown; and, in the economy of Nature, they must no less succumb at last to that Caucasian superiority

THE Goths in New-England:' a Discourse by the Hon. GEORGE P. MARSH, M. C.

which they can never even strive to equal; and so must finally pass away, leaving no memorial of greatness; no useful bequests to those who shall come after them. In either case then, the result must be the same in either the Caucasian Goth will find his energies constantly carrying him forward, steadily overcoming resistance in all the forms in which it may present; displacing tribe after tribe of each and all the inferior races, and substituting his own more perfectly organized society for that which he has caused to disappear, until he finally crowns his efforts in the universal possession and political dominion of the entire continent which he inhabits.

THE DEATH OF DE CHASTELAER.

AN AUTHENTIC HISTORICAL SKETCH.

FAIR Scotia's mountains, wild and blue,
That whisper to the listening skies,
And through their veil with rapture view
The domes of heaven beyond them rise:

Fair land, that long hath lain at rest,
Like bark becalmed upon the sea,
With sunbeams sleeping on thy breast,
Awake! I strike the lyre for thee!

Unhappy MARY! how thy sun

Was ever clouded o'er with gloom;
Thou wert a fated, stricken one,
From cradle to the tomb.

Like withered leaves, when storms are rife,

The few whose hearts were all thine own

Fell blasted from the tree of life,

And left thee in the world alone.

Each fragrant rose of flowery June
For mirror to thy cheek did fly,
But quickly held with grief commune,
And waned like tints from morning sky.

And he, the young, the fair and brave,
Who shared life's early joys with thee,
Was swept beneath Fate's rolling wave,
Like vessel 'neath a wintry sea.

"T was evening, and the rising moon
Was peering through the silver'd trees,
And on the gorgeous flowers of June,

That bowed to greet the passing breeze:

The nightingale with joyous song
Soared gaily through the fragrant air,
And seraphs, as they passed along,

Oft paused to gaze on scene so fair.

Within a castle, worn and gray,

Sat Scotia's fair and peerless Queen, And turned her eye where sleeping lay The landscape 'neath its mantle green.

Her thoughts were distant, far away,
Upon the vine-wreathed hills of France,
Where blue the winding waters stray,
And in the sunlight leap and dance.

And then she thought of him who came With her athwart the furrowed main, Within whose breast a quenchless flame Her glance had lit, that ne'er could wane.

Then kneeling down, she prayed that HE Whose smile can soothe the tortured heart

Might set the weary captive free,

And bid his every grief depart.

O, never do the angels gaze

On earth, and sing so sweet a strain, As when a beauteous woman prays

For one who loves and loves in vain!

She paused; her tears fell fast and warm, Like rain-drops from the drooping flower, That trembles in the summer storm

Which clouds the golden noon-tide hour.

She heard a rustling by her side,

Her lover through the curtains crept,

And though with firmness oft denied,
Thus urged his suit, while MARY wept:

'Sweet Queen! sweet MARY! by the days We spent beside the winding Seine, By every fond endearing gaze

Of thine my memory loves to glean:

When hand in hand we used to stray
At eve, and through the western sky
Behold the colors bright and gay

Of angel's pinions soaring by:

By all the memories treasured up

In joyous youth's impassioned day, Like flowers to wreath life's bitter cup, I pray thee spurn me not away!'

She rose, majestic, firm and tall;

The WOMAN was no longer there; The moon-beams cast upon the wall Her queenly form and features fair.

CRIBBINGS OF LAURENCE STERN E.

IN AN EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR.

DEAR KNICK: A few days ago, I secured a prize in the book way; a copy of a work of which the title proceeds in this wise: 'Illustrations of STERNE, and other Essays and Verses: by JOHN FERRIAR, M. D.' It is comprised in two duodecimo volumes; and I never before had the good fortune to fall in with it. Its existence however was known to me, and I had formed an estimate of its value from the allusion made to it by Sir WALTER SCOTT, in his sketch of the life of Sterne :

'If we proceed to look more closely into the manner of composition which STERNE thought proper to adopt, we find a sure guide in the ingenious Doctor FERRIAR, of Manchester, who with the most singular patience has traced our author through the hidden sources whence he borrowed most of his learning, and many of his more striking and peculiar expressions.'

Surprised and gratified in the perusal, and anxious that others should participate in my enjoyment, I determined to make a few extracts for the KNICKERBOCKER; but upon turning to Scott's essay, I found that in his own masterly way he had judiciously selected the more interesting and striking parts from these volumes; and recollecting the universal familarity with Scott's writings, it seemed to me useless to bring them to your notice. Still I could not forbear gleaning here and there a something which had been omitted, perhaps wisely, and having done this, you are now presented with an account of these volumes, and a few extracts from them.

The first edition of the work, of which the second is now before me, was published in 1798, and from the remarks of the author on the effect produced in the public mind by the successive volumes of Tristram Shandy,' published from 1758 to '67, and by the 'Sentimental Journey,' published in 1768, it is to be presumed that he was their contemporary. In his advertisement to the first edition, the author says: A part of the comments on Sterne, which were published some years ago, has been incorporated with these Illustrations;' and in his first chapter he mentions having published some desultory remarks on the writings of Sterne many years ago.' Our author speaks understandingly, when he tells us of the perplexity' and 'admiration' which invaded the public on the appearance of the earlier volumes of Tristram Shandy,' singular as they were in style, quaint in humor, erudite as they proved their author, and indulging in allusions, which though not gross, were not usually found in writings intended to be perused by educated and refined persons.

.

The models from which Sterne had copied and the sources of much that he so successfully passed off as original, had been long neglected, and by the world at large forgotten; and with this advantage he enjoyed a reputation for originality to which he was by no means entitled. He had become familiar with the works of