stroys one of the greatest supports of moral virtue. If we had no reverence for Him, we should neither love nor fear him; we should not bow before him in prayer; we should not obey his law; but we should disregard all his institutions. We may illustrate this by referring to a wayward son. While he respected the authority of his father, and honored his name, he was obedient and virtuous; but when he began to mingle with the wicked, and to hear parental authority ridiculed and opposed, his reverence for his father began to abate; and his law began to lose its restraining and guiding power. Thus profaneness makes us wicked by degrading God in our estimation, by heaping contempt upon his character, and making us despise his authority.

Sweet Merrimack! thy gentle stream
Is fit for better poet's theme,
For rich thy waves, and gentle, too,
As Rome's proud Tiber ever knew ;
And thy fair current's placid swell
Would flow in classic song as well
Yet on thy banks, so green, so sweet,
Where wood-nymphs dance, and naiads meet,
Even since creation's earliest dawn,

No son of song was ever born;
No muses' fairy feet e'er trod
Thy modest margin's verdant sod;
And mid Time's silent, feathery flight,
Like some coy maiden, pure as light,
Sequestered in some blest retreat,
Far from the city and the great,
Thy virgin waves the vales among
Have flowed neglected and unsung.

Yet as the sailor, raptured, hails
His native shores, his native vales,
Returning home, from many a day
Of tedious absence, far away

From her, whose charms alone control
The warm affections of his soul;
Thus, from life's stormy, troubled sea,
My heart returns to visit thee.

What though beside this gentle flood,
Bedewed with tears and wet with blood,
Profusely shed by iron Mars,

In wild Ambition's cruel wars,
No evergreen of glory waves
Among the fallen warriors' graves?
Here, bounteous spring profusely showers
A wilderness of sweets and flowers.
The stately oak of royal line,

The spreading elm, and towering pine,
Here, cast a purer, happier shade,

Than blood-stained laurels ever made.

Ne'er victor lords, nor conquered slaves,

Disgraced these banks,― disgraced these waves ;

But freedom, peace, and plenty, here,
Perpetual bless the passing year.

EXERCISE XCIX.

FIRST INTERVIEW OF CORTES WITH MONTEZUMA.

W. H. Prescott.

The Spaniards beheld the glittering retinue of the Emperor emerging from the great street which led them, as it still does, through the heart of the city. Amidst a crowd of Indian nobles, preceded by three officers of state, bearing golden wands, they saw the royal palanquin, blazing with burnished gold. It was borne on the shoulders of nobles; and over it a canopy of gaudy feather-work, powdered with jewels, and

fringed with silver, was supported by four attendants of the same rank. They were barefooted, and walked with a slow, measured pace, and with eyes bent on the ground.

When the train had come within a convenient distance, it halted; and Montezuma, descending from his litter, came forward, leaning on the arms of the lords of Tezcuco and Iztapalapan, his nephew and brother, both of whom had already been made known to the Spaniards. As the monarch advanced under the canopy, the obsequious attendants strewed the ground with cotton tapestry, that his imperial feet might not be contaminated by the rude soil. His subjects, of high and low degree, who lined the sides of the causeway, bent forward, with their eyes fastened on the ground, as he passed, and some of the humbler class prostrated themselves before him. Such was the homage paid to the Indian despot; showing that the slavish forms of oriental adulation were to be found among the rude inhabitants of the Western world.

Montezuma wore the girdle and ample square cloak of his nation. It was made of the finest cotton, with the embroidered ends gathered in a knot round his neck. His feet were defended by sandals, having soles of gold; and the leathern thongs which bound them to his ankles, were embossed with the same metal. Both the cloak and sandals were sprinkled with pearls and precious stones, among which the emerald and the chatchivitl, a green stone, of higher estimation than any other among the Aztecs,· were conspicuous. On his head, he wore no other ornament than a cluster of plumes, of the royal green, which floated down his back, the badge of military rather than of regal rank.

He was, at this time, about forty years of age. His person was tall and thin, but not ill-made. His hair, which was black and straight, was not very long; to wear it short, was considered unbecoming persons of rank. His beard was thin; his complexion somewhat paler, than is often found in his dusky, or rather copper-colored race. His features, though serious in their expression, did not wear the look of melancholy, indeed, of dejection, which characterizes his portrait, and which may well have settled on them at a later period. He moved with dignity; and his whole demeanor, tempered by an expression of benignity, not to have been anticipated from the reports circulated of his character, was worthy of a

great prince. Such is the portrait left to us of the celebrated Indian emperor, in this his first interview with the white men. The army halted, as he drew near. Cortes, dismounting, threw his reins to a page, and, supported by a few of the principal cavaliers, advanced to meet him. The interview must have been one of uncommon interest to both. In Montezuma, Cortes beheld the lord of the broad realms he had traversed, whose magnificence and power had been the burden of every tongue. In the Spaniard, on the other hand, the Aztec prince saw the strange being whose history seemed to be so mysteriously connected with his own; the predicted one of his oracles; whose achievements proclaimed him something more than human. But, whatever may have been the monarch's feelings, he so far suppressed them as to receive his guest with princely courtesy, and to express his satisfaction at personally seeing him in his capital. Cortes responded by the most profound expressions of respect, while he made ample acknowledgments for the substantial proofs which the Emperor had given the Spaniards of his munificence. He then hung round Montezuma's neck, a sparkling chain of colored crystal, accompanying this with a movement as if to embrace him, when he was restrained by the two Aztec lords, shocked at the menaced profanation of the sacred person of their master. After the interchange of these civilities, Montezuma appointed his brother to conduct the Spaniards to their residence in the capital; and again entering his litter, was borne off, amidst prostrate crowds, in the samę state in which he had come. The Spaniards quickly followed, and with colors flying and music playing, soon made their entrance into the southern quarter of Tenochtitlan.

Here, again, they found fresh cause for admiration, in the grandeur of the city, and the superior style of its architecture. The dwellings of the poorer class were, indeed, chiefly of reeds and mud. But the great avenue through which they were now marching, was lined with the houses of the nobles, who were encouraged by the Emperor to make the capital their residence. They were built of red porous stone, drawn from quarries in the neighborhood; and, though they rarely rose to a second story, often covered a large space of ground. The flat roofs were protected by stone parapets, so that every house was a fortress. Sometimes these roofs resembled par terres of flowers, so thickly were they covered with them

but more frequently these were cultivated in broad-terraced gardens, laid out between the edifices.

Occasionally, a great square or market-place intervened, surrounded by its porticoes of stone and stucco: or a pyramidal temple reared its colossal bulk, crowned with its tapering sanctuaries, and altars blazing with inextinguishable fires. The great street facing the southern causeway, unlike most others in the place, was wide, and extended some miles, in nearly a straight line, as before noticed, through the centre of the city. A spectator, standing at one end of it, as his eye ranged along the deep vista of temples, terraces, and gardens, might clearly discern the other, with the blue mountains in the distance, which, in the transparent atmosphere of the table-land, seemed almost in contact with the buildings.

Among the evils of intemperance, much importance is given to the poverty of which it is the cause. But this evil, great as it is, is yet light in comparison with the essential evil of intemperance, which I am so anxious to place distinctly before you. What matters it, that a man be poor, if he carry into his poverty the spirit, energy, reason, and virtues of a man? What matters it, that a man must, for a few years, live on bread and water? How many of the richest are reduced by disease to a worse condition than this? Honest, virtuous, noble-minded poverty, is comparatively a light evil. The ancient philosopher chose it, as the condition of virtue. It has been the lot of many a Christian.

The poverty of the intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar by having made himself a brute, is miserable indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe.