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Rachel hung back, afraid of the presen- asked with some anxiety, if its presence tation, and would have sent her maid into were inconvenient to Mr. Clare; and bethe room with the child if Colonel Keith ing assured of the contrary, said, "Then had not taken her in himself. Even yet while you are so kind as to watch over him, she was not dexterous in handling the I much prefer that things should remain in baby; her hands were both occupied, and their present state, than to bring him to a her attention absorbed, and she could not house like this. You do not object? speak, she felt it so mournful to show this frail motherless creature to a father far more like its grandfather, and already almost on the verge of the grave. She came up to Lord Keith, and held the child to him in silence. He said, "Thank you," and kissed not only the little one, but her own brow, and she kept the tears back with difficulty.

Colonel Keith gave her a chair and foot stool, and she sat with the baby on her lap, while very few words were spoken. It was the Colonel who asked her to take off the hood that hid the head and brow, and who chiefly hazarded opinions as to likeness and colour of eyes. Lord Keith looked earnestly and sadly, but hardly made any observation, except that it looked healthier than he had been led to expect. He was sure it owed much to Mrs. Keith's great care and kindness.

Rachel feared he would not be able to part with his little son, and began to mention the arrangements she had contemplated in case he wished to keep the child at Timber End. On this, Lord Keith

“Oh, no; I am so glad. I was only dreading the losing him. I thought Mrs. Menteith wished for him when he is old enough to travel."

"Colin!" said Lord Keith, looking up sharply, "will nothing make the Menteiths understand that I would rather put out the child to nurse in a Highland hut than in that Babel of a nursery of theirs?"

Colin smiled and said, "Isabel does not easily accept an answer she dislikes."

"But remember, both of you," continued Lord Keith, " that happen what may, this poor child is not to be in her charge. I've seen enough of her children left alone in perambulators in the sun. You will be in Edinburgh?" he added, turning to Rachel. "Yes, when Alick's leave ends."

"I shall return thither when this matter is over; I know I shall be better at home in Scotland, and if I winter in Edinburgh, may be we could make some arrangement for his being still under your eye."

Rachel went home more elevated than she had been for months past.

DEATH OF MR. SCHOOLCraft. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft died at Washington on Saturday last, in his seventy-first year. He was a native of Albany County and a graduate of Middlebury College; and as his father superintended a glass house in Massachusetts, he studied the art of glass-making, and in 1816 published the first part of a work on "Vitreology." His next work was "A view of the Lead Mines in Missouri," which was followed by a narrative of travel in the Ozark Mountains. In 1820 he explored the copper regions of Lake Superior, and published an account of the expedition. In 1821 Mr. Schoolcraft was appointed a secretary to an Indian Commission at Chicago, and the result was a book of "Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley."

In 1822 fairly commenced those relations of Mr. Schoolcraft which turned his attention to the affairs of our North American Indians, and induced him to strike out into a new literary path. He was appointed Indian agent on the north-western frontier. He married a lady, Miss Johnston, who, though the granddaughter of an

Indian chief, had been educated in Europe. He took up his abode at Sault St. Marie, and in 1828 was a member of the legislature of Michigan territory. He wrote about Indian history and poetry, and delivered lectures thereon. In 1832 he led the expedition which discovered the source of the Mississippi, for many years subsequently devoted his attention to Indian affairs.

In 1847 he began, under government patronage, his great work entitled "Historical and Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States." Of late years he had resided at Washington.

Mr. Schoolcraft, besides being an active explorer and a diligent antiquary, had devoted considerable attention to the more poetical aspects of aboriginal life. His "Indian Legends" are charmingly written, and have furnished Longfellow with the themes of several of his admired poems. By the death of Mr. Schoolcraft American literature has lost a shining light.N. Y. Evening Post, Dec. 14.

From the Saturday Review. ARMENIAN POPULAR SONGS.*

NOT the least interesting of the sights of Venice is the Convent of the Armenian Monks, on the island of San Lazzaro. It stands alone, a little removed from the city, and as the visitor approaches it in his gondola, its low dark-red buildings seem to rise abruptly from the lagoon before him. To the left shines the white dome of the Redentore, and the massive church and convent of San Giorgio Maggiore stand close by. Beyond the island stretches the sandy flat of the Lido, fringed with shrubs and bushes, over which may be seen from the convent roof the calm breath of the Adriatic, and the long hazy line of the Lombard shore, scantily dotted with trees, and broken here and there by a village campanile. Southward, the eye lingers along the blue serrated outline of the Euganean hills, and, looking back, it sees the Ducal Palace and the Piazetta, overtopped by the gleaming dome of St. Mark's.

On this island, in the early part of the last century, a little colony of fugitives from Turkish oppression found a resting-place and made themselves a home. Their leader, Mechitar, here closed in peace a restless and adventurous life. A native of Armenía, born in 1676, he spent his early years at home, devoting himself energetically to -study. But, after he had been ordained priest, he entered upon a most active career, commencing a struggle that did not terminate till many years had passed away. The Armenians were, and for the most part still remain, members of the Greek Communion, but Mechitar was soon led to reconcile himself with the Western Church, and, urged by an earnest desire to visit Rome, he set sail for Europe. But his hopes were frustrated. Stress of weather first stopped him on the way, and then a violent fever compelled him to relinquish his project. Obliged to return to the East, he set up a small establishment at Pera, where he gathered a few disciples around him. As their numbers increased, their home became too small for them, and they removed to the Morea, where the little congregation hoped to find a quiet abode, and where they commenced the task of publishing a series of Armenian works. But their peace was soon disturbed. A war broke out between Venice and the Porte, which ended in the complete subjugation of the Morea to Turkish rule. Mechitar and his

* Armenian Popular Songs. Translated into English by the Rev. Leo. M. Alishan, D.D., of the Mechitaristic Society. Venice.

brethren had considerable difficulty in effecting their escape, but, after many adventures and much suffering, they arrived at Venice. There they hoped to find a refuge, but an unexpected obstacle presented itself. By a law of the Senate, no new Society was allowed to establish itself within the city, and the fugitives were beginning to despair, when it was suggested that the outlying island of San Lazzaro might be given up to them. Accordingly, the offer was made and gladly accepted. This took place in the year 1717, and Mechitar lived to see his work prospering, and his congregation firmly established. He died in the year 1749, and since that time the institution has flourished under a series of abbots, and its members are still busily employed in the publication of Armenian records and the promulgation of Armenian literature.

During his stay in Venice, Byron was a frequent visitor at the convent, and he seemed to enjoy the change from the wild excitement of his life in the city to the peace and contentment he found within those walls. " By way of divertissement," he says in one of his letters, "I am studying daily, at an Armenian monastery, the Armenian language. I found that my mind wanted something craggy to break upon; and this, as the most difficult thing I could discover here for an amusement, I have chosen to torture me into attention." He goes on to say that four years previously the French instituted an Armenian Professorship at Paris; that twenty pupils appeared on the Monday, full of enthusiasm, but that on the Thursday fifteen out of the twenty succumbed in despair before the twenty-sixth letter of the alphabet. At all events Byron did not follow their example. He pursued his studies with zeal and perseverance, and left behind him a record of his industry in a translation of two apocryphal Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians. He also assisted his tutor, Dr. Pascal Aucher, in the compilation of a grammar, and wrote a preface to it, which was suppressed by the authorities on account of its savage abuse of the Turks.

The number of books printed every year at San Lazzaro is very great. An extensive series of classical Armenian authors has been for some time in progress, and many of the most popular European works have been translated and published for the use of Armenians. But, of all the publications which has issued from the Mechitarist press, the most interesting to an English reader is the collection of Armenian Popular Poetry It contains a numwhich is now before us.

ber of songs and ballads, composed at various periods between the thirteenth and the eighteenth century, taken from manuscripts in the library of San Lazzaro, the original text being accompanied by a literal English version. The editor, Father Alishan, who deserves great credit for the accuracy and spirit of his translation, dedicates it to the people of England, and for their benefit it is kept on sale at the convent; but we are inclined to think that they are not very intimately acquainted with it. It may, therefore, be worth while to give them some idea of its contents.

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A very melancholy air pervades the greater part of the book. None of the songs refer to the early period of Armenian history, when the country was prosperous and free; the glories of the past are mentioned only as a contrast to the humiliations of the present. The voice of a long-subjugated people is heard in many a doleful song," that is truly "a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong." Exiles driven far away from their native land are mourning over its ruin, and longing for the happy homes they are never to see again; weary travellers are calling on the birds of passage to bring them tidings of their country; bereaved mothers are weeping for sons who have been killed in foreign service, or daughters who have been carried off as the prize of some Turkish or Tartar prince. "Woe to you, poor Armenian people!" sing the emigrants driven out of Ciulfa, near Ararat, into Persia; "you are leaving the tombs of your parents, and abandoning to others your churches and houses. These beautiful fields, great towns, sweet waters, and well-built villages, to whom do you leave them? How happens it that you forget them? Oh that my eyes had been blind, poor Armenia, that so I might not see thee thus." The homesick pilgrim, wandering in distant lands, watches the crane flying overhead, and

says:

Crane, whence dost thou come? I listen for thy answer:

Crane, hast thou no news to give me from my country?

Fly not yet awhile; thou wilt soon find thy companions;

Crane, hast thou no news to give me from my country?

Hither have I come, I have left my fields and vineyards:

One of the poems describes the sorrow of an Armenian maiden of princely race, whose father has given her in marriage to a Tartar chief. Her nurse comes to tell her of her fate, and at first she cannot understand it, but after a time she burst into tears and calls on her attendants to join in her lamentations. "Come to me, weep for my misfortunes. Dark was the day on which I was born. Rise from thy tomb, my mother, and hear the sad tidings of thy daughter. My fate has so determined, and drives me forth into Tartary. O death, carry my soul away! O earth, open and swallow me up!" Then her maidens strive to console her, offering to bear her company in her exile, and the poem ends with the farewell of her aged nurse: "Sixty years have I sat at thy gate, and I have carried thy father and thy grandfather in my arms, but never have I known so great a sorrow. Wheresoever thou goest, always keep steadfast to thy fate. Forget not our Armenian nation, but always assist and protect it. Oh! God be with thee! Farewell!"

The grief of a mother who has lost her child is the subject of several ballads. She delights in finding pet names for the little one who has gone. He was her fragrant rose, her beautiful dove, her graceful antelope. "When he died," she cries, "my sun grew dim, the light of my eyes was obscured, the day became as the night. When this my peacock and lamb left me, my brain was turned; when my dearest little one flew, my mouth was hushed, my ear grew deaf. Yet let me thank God, who received him with the holy boys. O my God, receive the soul of my little one, and place him at rest in the bright heaven!"”

One of the most striking poems in the book is "The Lamentation of a Bishop, who, having planted a vineyard, and before it gave fruit, his last day coming, sings thus:".

Every morning at daybreak,

The nightingale sitting in my vineyard,
Sings sweetly to this my Rose,
"Rise and come from this vineyard."
Every morning at daybreak,
Gabriel says to my soul,

"Rise and come from this vineyard;
From this newly-built vineyard."

Vainly does the Bishop protest against the Often do I sigh, as though my life were end-lowed to stay yet a little longer in his vineHe implores that he may be al

ing: Crane, thy voice wakes echoes in my heart, stay

with me;

Crane, hast thou no news to give me from my country?

summons.

yard, for he has built a wall around it and hedged it in, and he has brought down to it cool waters from the mountains, and planted in it flowers and fruit-trees, roses and

hyacinths, pomegranates and almonds and nuts. Yet he has not gathered flowers there, nor has he tasted its fruits. But all his prayers are useless, and his lamentation concludes with his involuntary submission to the summons of the Angel of Death.

But the songs are not all in a minor key. Some of them are intended to be sung on the occasion of a marriage, and are full of gay imagery and sportive allusions. One of these commences with the address of the

bride to her home and her relations:

Little threshold be not thou shaken :
It is for me to tremble,
To bring lilies.

Little plank be not thou stirred. Little tree tremble not. Little leaf be not thou thrown down. Weep not father and mother; brother and sister weep not. It is for me to weep, to bring lilies.

To the father is given a cup of wine; to the mother a knitting-needle, to the brother a pair of boots, and to the little sister a stick of antimony.

Then the bridegroom enters, and a chorus is sung, in which the family are told to kneel at the altar, and the crane is summoned from the plain, and the duck from the lake, and the partridge from the hill, "to come, and sit, and observe." Then flowers are called for, and the gatherers are ordered to bring such as befit a bridegroom the balsam and the hyacinth, the fily and the rose. The festivities conclude with the passage of the bride across a little plank laid before the threshold, and the mother is told not to brush away the dust from it, but to keep it as it is, that she may see the traces of her daughter's steps, and remember her when she is far away. The birds which are invited to the marriage feast are great pets of the Armenians, especially the crane and the partridge. Both of them figure repeatedly in these poems, and the crane especially is welcomed by the children, on his return to them after the winter, with just such a joyous greeting as awaits the stork when he re-appears with the spring in many a country of Europe.

The collection also contains a few humorous pieces, of which part of the story of the Fox, the Wolf, and the Bear" may be taken as a specimen the quaint rendering of Father Alishan being preserved. It seems that once those three animals made peace, and became "uncles and nephews," the fox turning monk, and the wolf being declared the "pious economist,"

or housekeeper, of the party. They go out together to the chase, the proceeds of which are so unjustly divided by the wolf that the bear grows indignant and strikes out both his eyes. Then

The fox who saw it was very much frightened, And, pointing to a trap with cheese, said to the bear, "My uncle, I have built a fine convent, It is a retreat, a place of prayer."

The bear extended his paw to take the cheese. The trap seized his neck on both sides. "Little fox, my nephew, why do not you help

me?

This is not a convent, nor a place of prayer."

The little fox seeing it was much pleased: He made a funeral service, and prayed for his soul.

"The misery thou didst bring on the wolf has seized thee,

In this retreat, this place of prayer.”

O justice, thou pleasest me much!
Whoever hurts his brother soon perishes;
The bear is obliged to fast in the trap,
It is his retreat, his place of prayer.

From the Spectator, 18th March.

ENGLISH OPINION ON THE INAUGURAL. On the 4th inst., the day of inaugurating his second term, President Lincoln read a short State paper, which for political weight, moral dignity, and unaffected solemnity has had no equal in our time. His presidency began, he says, with the effort of both parties to avoid war. "To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend the slave interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed the right to do no more than restrict the territorial enlargement of it." Both parties "read the same Bible and pray to the same God. Each invokes his aid against the other. The prayer of both cannot be answered, that of neither has been answered fully, for the Almighty has His own purposes." Mr. Lincoln goes on to confess for the North its partnership in the original guilt of slavery: 666 :- "Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come; but woe unto that man by whom the offence cometh!' If we shall suppose American slavery one of those offences which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that He gives to both

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of thought and feeling, the well-known paradox of the poet:

"Thy most dreaded instrument For working out a pure intent Is man arrayed for mutual slaughter: Yea, Carnage is thy daughter." There is no reason to doubt Mr. Lincoln's perfect sincerity; and his earnest belief in the doctrines which are held by the great majority of his countrymen will give additional weight to his warning voice.

From the Times, 17 March.

North and South this terrible war, as was due to those by whom the offence came, we shall not discern that there is any departure from those divine attributes which believers in the living God always ascribe to Him. Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if it be God's will that it continue until the wealth piled by bondsmen by 250 years' unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be repaid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice towards none, For the first time since the days of Gen. with charity for all, with firmness in the Jackson's immense popularity, an American right, as God gives us to see the right, let us President has been inaugurated for the secstrive on to finish the work we are in, to ond time. The circumstances under which bind up the nation's wounds, to care for Mr. Lincoln assumes office for another term those who shall have borne the battle, and of four years are so strange and impressive for their widows and orphans. And with all that they may justify an address full of a this let us strive after a just and lasting kind of Cromwellian diction, and breathing peace among ourselves and with all na- a spirit very different from the usual uneartions." No statesman ever uttered words nest utterances of successful politicians. stamped at once with the seal of so deep a This short inaugural speech reveals the diswisdom and so true a simplicity. The "vil-position and the opinions of the Federal lage attorney" of whom Sir G. C. Lewis and Magistrate more completely than many of many other wise men wrote with so much the verbose compositions which have proscorn in 1861, seems destined to be one of those "foolish things of the world" which are destined to confound the wise, one of those weak things which shall "confound the things which are mighty."

From the Saturday Review, 18th March.

If it had been composed by any other prominent American politician, it would have been boastful, confident, and menacing. The actual document is mournful, religious, and humble, and it expresses no sentiment of anger or unkindness even to the armed enemies of the Union. The President regards both combatants as the instruments and victims of a just retribution for a common crime. Four years ago, as he says, neither North nor South foresaw coming events, although an insoluble difficulty involved the necessity of war. Both accept the same fundamental faith and morality, and Mr. Lincoln declines to judge his adversaries, in the knowledge that he may himself be judged. His unshaken purpose of continuing the war until it ends in victory assumes the form of resigned submission to the inscrutable decrees of a superior Power. Mr. Lincoln has probably never read Wordsworth's poems, but mournful experience has taught him to reproduce, with remarkable identity

ceeded from his predecessors. We cannot but see that the President, placed in the most important position to which a statesman can aspire, invested with a power greater than that of most monarchs, fulfils the duties which destiny has imposed on him with firmness and conscientiousness, but without any feeling of exhilaration at success or sanguine anticipation of coming prosperity.

The brief allusion to the expectations of the two parties during the early days of the war shows what is passing through the mind of the Chief Magistrate when he looks back to four years of slaughter, and turns round to gaze into the black darkness which shrouds the future. All dreaded the war, all sought to avoid it. When the last inaugural address was delivered, secession was but half accomplished. Virginian officers attended President Lincoln for two months after his installation, and many of them left the Federal capital with unwilling hearts to fight in the cause to which they felt themselves bound. This war was not a thing that came suddenly or without deliberation. Everything that could be said for it or against it was freely uttered before the first great armies were in the field. President Buchanan thought it impossible to restrain the action of a State. On the other hand, there had never been wanting

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