LESSON CXXIV.

Night,-a Field of Battle.-SHELLEY.

How beautiful this night! The balmiest sigh, Which vernal zephyrs breathe in Evening's ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude,

That wraps this moveless scene.

Heaven's ebon vault,

Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy, which love had spread
To curtain the sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,
So stainless, that their white and glittering spires
Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
So idly, that rapt Fancy deemeth it

A metaphor of peace;-all forin a scene,
Where musing Solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;
Where Silence, undisturbed, might watch alone,
So cold, so bright, so still!

The orb of day,

In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field,
Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath
Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve
Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day;
And Vesper's image on the western main
Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes:
Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass,
Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar
Of distant thunder mutters awfully;
Tempest unfolds its pinions o'er the gloom
That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend,
With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;
The torn deep yawns-the vessel finds a grave
Beneath its jagged gulf.

Ah! whence yon glare

That fires the arch of heaven ?-that dark red smoke
Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched
In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow
Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round!
Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening peals,
In countless echoes, through the mountains ring.
Startling pale Midnight on her starry throne!
Now swells the intermingling din; the jar,
Frequent and frightful, of the bursting bomb;
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,
The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men
Inebriate with rage! Loud, and more loud,
The discord grows, till pale Death shuts the scene,
And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws
His cold and bloody shroud.
Of all the men,
Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there,
In proud and vigorous health-of all the hearts,
That beat with anxious life at sunset there-
How few survive! how few are beating now!
All is deep silence, like the fearful calm
That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause;
Save when the frantic wail of widowed love
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan
With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay
Wrapt round its struggling powers.

The gray morn

Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke Before the icy wind slow rolls away,

And the bright beams of frosty morning dance
Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood,
Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,

And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path
Of the outsallying victors: far behind,

Black ashes note where their proud city stood.

Within yon forest is a gloomy glen—

Each tree which guards its darkness from the day,
Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.

LESSON CXXV.

The Uncalled Avenger.-LONDON MUSEUM.

THE return of the victorious Russian army, which had conquered Finland, was attended with a circumstance which, it is true, has at all times been usual in the train of large armies, but which naturally took place to a much greater extent, in these high northern latitudes, where the hand of man has so imperfectly subdued the original savageness of the soil. Whole droves of famished bears and wolves followed the troops, on their return to the south, to feed on the chance prey afforded by the carcasses of the artillery and baggage horses that dropped on the road. In consequence of this, the province of Esthonia, to which several regiments directed their march, was so overrun with these animals, as greatly to endanger the safety of travellers.

In a single circle of the government, no less than forty per sons, of different ages, were enumerated, who had been devoured during the winter by these ravenous beasts. It became hazardous to venture alone and unarmed into the uninhabited parts of the country; nevertheless, an Esthonian countrywoman boldly undertook a journey to a distant relation, not only without any male companion, but with three children, the youngest of which was still an infant. A light sledge, drawn by one horse, received the little party; the way was narrow, but well beaten; the snow, on each side, deep and impassable; and to turn back, without danger of sticking fast, not to be thought of.

The first half of the journey was passed without accident. The road now ran along the skirts of a pine forest, when the traveller suddenly perceived a suspicious noise behind her. Casting back a look of alarm, she saw a troop of wolves trotting along the road, the number of which her fears hindered her from estimating. To escape by flight is her first thought; and, with unsparing whip, she urges into a gallop the horse, which itself snuffs the danger. Soon a couple of the strongest and most hungry of the beasts appear at her side, and seem disposed to stop the way. Though their in

tention seems to be only to attack the horse, yet the safety both of the mother and of the children, depends on the preservation of the animal. The danger raises its value; it seems entitled to claim for its preservation an extraordinary sacrifice.

As the mariner throws overboard his richest treasures to appease the raging waves, so here has necessity reached a height, at which the emotions of the heart are dumb before the dark commands of instinct; the latter alone suffers the unhappy woman to act in this distress. She seizes her second child, whose bodily infirmities have often made it an object of anxious care, whose cry even now offends her ear, and threatens to whet the appetite of the blood-thirsty monsters— she seizes it with an involuntary motion, and, before the mother is conscious of what she is doing, it is cast out,—and -enough of the horrid tale!

The last cry of the victim still sounded in her ear, when she discovered that the troop, which had remained some minutes behind, again closely pressed on the sledge. The anguish of her soul increases, for again the murder-breathing forms are at her side. Pressing the infant to her heaving bosom, she casts a look on her boy, four years old, who crowds closer and closer to her knee:-" But, dear mother, I am good, am not I? You will not throw me into the snow, like the bawler ?"—" And yet! and yet!" cried the wretched woman, in the wild tumult of despair-" thou art good, but God is merciful!—Away!"—The dreadful deed was done. To escape the furies that raged within her, the woman exerted herself, with powerless lash, to accelerate the gallop of the exhausted horse.

With the thick and gloomy forest before and behind her, and the nearer and nearer tramping of her ravenous pursuers, she almost sinks under her anguish; only the recollection of the infant that she holds in her arms-only the desire to save it, occupies her heart, and with difficulty enables it to bear up. She did not venture to look behind her. All at once, two rough paws are laid on her shoulders, and the wide-open, bloody jaws of an enormous wolf, hung over her head. It is the most ravenous beast of the troop, which, having partly missed its leap at the sledge, is dragged along

with it, in vain seeking with its hinder legs for a resting place, to enable it to get wholly on to the frail vehicle. The weight of the body of the monster draws the woman backwards her arms rise with the child: half torn from her, half abandoned, it becomes the prey of the ravening beast, which hastily carries it off into the forest. Exhausted, stunned, senseless, she drops the reins, and continues her journey, ignorant whether she is delivered from her pursuers. Meantime the forest grows thinner, and an insulated farmhouse, to which a side road leads, appears at a moderate distance. The horse, left to itself, follows this new path: it enters through an open gate; panting and foaming, it stands still; and amidst a circle of persons, who crowd round with good-natured surprise, the unhappy woman recovers from her stupefaction, to throw herself, with a loud scream of anguish and horror, into the arms of the nearest human being, who appears to her as a guardian angel. All leave their work-the mistress of the house the kitchen, the thresher the barn, the eldest son of the family, with his axe in his hand, the wood which he has just cleft-to assist the unfortunate woman; and, with a mixture of curiosity and pity, to learn, by a hundred inquiries, the circumstances of her singular appearance. Refreshed by whatever can be procured at the moment, the stranger gradually recovers the power of speech, and ability to give an intelligible account of the dreadful trial which she has undergone.

The insensibility, with which fear and distress had steeled her heart, begins to disappear; but new terrors seize her; the dry eye seeks in vain a tear; she is on the brink of boundless misery. But her narrative had also excited conflicting feelings in the bosoms of her auditors; though pity, commiseration, dismay and abhorrence, imposed alike on all the same involuntary silence. One, only, unable to command the overpowering emotions of his heart, advanced before the rest; it was the young man with the axe: his cheeks were pale with affright; his wildly-rolling eyes flashed ill-omened fire. "What!" he exclaimed; "three childrenthy own children! the sickly innocent, the imploring boy, the infant suckling, all cast out by the mother to be devoured by the wolves!-Woman, thou art unworthy to live!" And,