The Anglo-Saxon like all great races is of a composite origin; and its materials would almost seem to have been carefully selected with the view of producing a breed of singular energy, endurance and power. The Saxon hardihood, the Norman fire, the Teutonic phlegm, had long ago been molded, one would deem, for some great purpose, into one grand national stock; and to this race, when it had attained the fulness and perfection of its strength, was the conquest of America entrusted.

The original colonization of this country by the English, and the present system of internal colonization successfully prosecuted within the United States, from east to west, form a striking counterpart to the Gothic invasion of the Roman Empire, in the fifth century. The one was the irruption of barbarism upon an ancient civilization; the other, the triumph of civilization over an ancient barbarism. Each was, in a great degree, the work of the same race, and it would truly seem that the barbarian has begun to pay the debt which he has owed to humanity since the destruction of the Western Empire.

The civilized Goths, whose mission is now to contend with and humanize the wilderness of America, are the descendants of those Goths who for a time annihilated the ancient civilization of Europe; and the task of destruction which they so successfully accomplished, and which resulted, after all, in a great benefit to the human race, differed no less in its general nature from their present occupation. than did the instruments by which it was effected differ from those by which the conquest of America is in the course of accomplishment.

upon

The Roman state retained, in appearance, the same gigantic proportions which belonged to it, when it sat enthroned the whole civilized world. It was a vast, but a hollow shell; outwardly imposing, but inwardly rotten to the core, and with the first stroke of the sword of Alaric, it crumbled into dust. The Goth was but the embodiment of the doom which had long impended over the empire of the Cæsars. He was but the appointed actor in the last scene of that historic destiny which had ruled the state since Romulus first watched the vulture's flight from the Palatine.

For purposes, inscrutable then probably, but plain euough to every human intelligence at the present day, the civilization of Europe, after having reached and passed the highest possible point of refinement, was for the time annihilated. The Goth destroyed, but he did not rebuild. Beneath the foot-print of the barbarian's war-horse, the grass withered and never revived. It was but a type of the utter exhaustion of the soil; and after the tempest had lain waste every vestige of the extraordinary culture which had, as it were, drained and impoverished the land, it lay fallow for ages before it was again susceptible of cultivation.

The colonization of America was exactly the reverse of the picture. The race that had destroyed now came forward to civilize and humanize. The Goth of the fifth century, whose courser's hoof crushed every flower in his track, reappears in the seventeenth with his hand upon the ploughshare, and cities spring up like corn-blades in every furrow which he traces through the wilderness. His task is but just begun. He has but entered upon his sublime mission; and it is to be

expected that as many centuries as elapsed before the old world was ripened for his destroying scythe, are again to be told before he is to enjoy the perfected fruits of his present labors.

LESSON IV.

THE PILGRIMS.

How slow yon tiny vessel ploughs the main!
Amid the heavy billows now she seems
A toiling atom, then from wave to wave
Leaps madly, by the tempests lashed, or reels,
Half wrecked, through gulfs profound.

-Moons wax and wane,
But still that lonely traveler treads the deep,-
I see an ice-bound coast, toward which she steers
With such a tardy movement, that it seems
Stern Winter's hand hath turned her keel to stone,
And sealed his victory on her slippery shrouds.-
They land! They land!-

-Forth they come From their long prison,-hardy forms, that brave The world's unkindness,-men of hoary hair, And virgins of firm heart, and matrons gravė. Bleak Nature's desolation wraps them round, Eternal forests, and unyielding earth,

And savage men, who through the thickets peer With vengeful arrow.-What could lure their steps To this drear desert ?-Ask of him who left

His father's home to roam through Haran's wilds,
Distrusting not the Guide who called him forth,
Nor doubting, though a stranger, that his seed
Should be as Ocean's sands.-

But yon lone bark

Hath spread her parting sail.

They crowd the stand,

Those few, lone pilgrims.-Can ye scan the wo
That wrings their bosoms, as the last frail link
Binding to man, and habitable earth,

Is severed? Can ye tell what pangs were there,
What keen regrets, what sickness of the heart,
What yearnings o'er their forfeit land of birth,
Their distant dear ones?-

Long, with straining eyes
They watch the lessening speck.-Heard ye no shriek
Of anguish, when that bitter loneliness

Sank down into their bosoms?-No! they turn
Back to their dreary, famished huts, and pray!—
Pray, and the ills that haunt this transient life
Fade into air.-Up in each girded breast

There

sprang a rooted and mysterious strength,—
A loftiness, to face a world in arms,-
To strip the pomp from sceptres,-and to lay
Upon the sacred alter the warm blood

Of slain affections, when they rise between
The soul and God.-

And can ye deem it strange
That from their planting such a branch should bloom
As nations envy?-Would a germ, embalmed
With prayer's pure tear-drops, strike no deeper root
Than that which mad ambition's hand doth strew

Upon the winds, to reap the winds again?
Hid by its veil of waters from the hand
Of greedy Europe, their bold vine spread forth
In giant strength.-

Its early clusters, crushed

In England's wine-press, gave the tyrant host
A draught of deadly wine-O, ye who boast
In your free veins the blood of sires like these,
Lose not their lineaments.-Should Mammon cling
Too close around your heart,-or wealth beget
That bloated luxury which eats the core
From manly virtue, or the tempting world
Make faint the Christian purpose in your soul,
Turn ye to Plymouth's beach,-and on that rock
Kneel in their foot-prints, and renew the vow
They breathed to God.

LESSON V.

ANCIENT ROME-POMPEII.

"I REPOSED my weary pilgrim-limbs at last in Rome. Rome!-once the centre of the world, through which its destiny vibrated, like the crimson gush of man's existence in the human heart! How fallen now!how sad, how desolate, how weak, how ruined! Yet who can stand in the hallowed spot of Rome's ancient power and granduer, but with silent awe and wonder ! Rome is great and powerful still; but the pasteboard show of marshalled monks and gilded priests adds noth