XCVII.-THE INDIANS.

CHARLES SPrague.

[CHARLES SPRAGUE was born in Boston, October 26, 1791, and has constantly resided here. He made himself first known as a poet by several prize prologues at the openIng of theatres, which had a polish of numbers and a vigor of expression not often found in compositions of this class. In 1823 he was the successful competitor for a prize offered for the best ode to be recited at a Shakspeare pageant at the Boston Thestre. This is the most fervid and brilliant of all his poems, and has much of the lyric rush and glow. In 1829 he recited a poem called Curiosity, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, which is polished in its versification, and filled with carefully wrought and beautiful pictures. In 1830 he pronounced an ode at the centennial celebration of the settlement of Boston, (from which the following extract is taken,) which is a finished and animated performance. He has also written many smaller pieces, of much merit.

Mr. Sprague has written a fourth of July oration, and an address on intemperance, which are glowing and energetic productions.

Mr. Sprague presents an encouraging example of the union of practical busines habits with the tastes of a scholar and the sensibilities of a poet. He has been for many years cashier of a bank, and performs his prosaic duties with as much attentive ness and skill as if he had never written a line of verse.]

YET while, by life's endearments crowned,
To mark this day we gather round,
And to our nation's founders raise
The voice of gratitude and praise,

Shall not one line lament that lion race,

For us struck out from sweet creation's face?

Alas, alas for them!—those fated bands,

Whose monarch tread was on these broad, green lands.
Our fathers called them savage -

them, whose bread,

In the dark hour, those famished fathers fed.

We call them savage. O, be just!
Their outraged feelings scan;

A voice comes forth, -'tis from the dust,

The savage was a man!

Think ye he loved not?

Who stood by,

And in his toils took part?

Woman was there to bless his eye

The savage had a heart!

Think ye he prayed not? When on high
He heard the thunders roll,

What bade him look beyond the sky?
The savage had a soul!

I venerate the Pilgrim's cause,
Yet for the red man dare to plead ;
We bow to Heaven's recorded laws,
He turned to nature for a creed;
Beneath the pillared dome
We seek our God in prayer,

Through boundless woods he loved to roam,
And the Great Spirit worshipped there.
But one, one fellow throb with us he felt;
To one divinity with us he knelt ;
Freedom, the selfsame freedom we adore,
Bade him defend his violated shore,
He saw the cloud, ordained to grow
And burst upon his hills in woe;
He saw his people withering by,
Beneath the invader's evil eye;

Strange feet were trampling on his fathers' bones
At midnight hour he woke to gaze
Upon his happy cabin's blaze,

And listen to his children's dying groans.
He saw, and, maddening at the sight,
Gave his bold bosom to the fight;
To tiger rage his soul was driven;
Mercy was not, nor sought nor given;
The pale man from his lands must fly;
He would be free, or he would die.

their day is o'er,

Their fires are out from hill and shore;
No more for them the wild deer bounds;
The plough is on their hunting-grounds;
The pale man's axe rings through their woods,
The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods;

Their pleasant springs are dry;

Their children

look! by power oppressed.

Beyond the mountains of the west

Their children go-to die.

O, doubly lost! Oblivion's shadows close
Around their triumphs and their woes.
On other realms, whose suns have set,
Reflected radiance lingers yet;

There sage and bard have shed a light
That never shall go down in night;
There time-crowned columns stand on high,
To tell of them who cannot die ;

Even we, who then were nothing, kneel

In homage there, and join earth's general peal. But the doomed Indian leaves behind no trace, To save his own or serve another race;

With his frail breath his power has passed away; His deeds, his thoughts, are buried with his clay : Nor lofty pile nor glowing page

Shall link him to a future age,

Or give him with the past a rank;

His heraldry is but a broken bow,

His history but a tale of wrong and woe,
His very name must be a blank.

Cold, with the beast he slew he sleeps;
O'er him no filial spirit weeps;

No crowds throng round, no anthem notes ascend,

To bless his coming and embalm his end;
Even that he lived, is for his conqueror's tongue;

By foes alone his deathsong must be sung;

No chronicles but theirs shall tell

His mournful doom to future times;

May these upon his virtues dwell,
And in his fate forget his crimes.

[EDWARɔ EVERETT was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1794, was graduated at Harvard College in 1811, and settled over the church in Brattle Street, in Boston, as successor to Mr. Buckminster, in 1813. In 1815 he was appointed professor of Greek literature in Harvard College, and immediately proceeded to Europe, with a view of making an ample preparation for the duties of his new position. He remained in Europe about four and a half years, during which period he went through an extensive course both of travel and study. Upon his return, he assumed the duties of bia professorship, and also those of editor of the North American Review, and continued in the discharge of both till his election to the House of Representatives, in 1825. He remained in Congress till 1835, in which year he was chosen governor of Massachusetts, and reëlected for four successive years. In 1841 he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to the court of London, and discharged the duties of that post till 1845. Upon his return to America, he was chosen president of Harvard College, and held that office till 1849. He was secretary of state for a short period, at the close of Mr. Fillmore's administration, and in 1853 was chosen to the Senate of the United States by the legislature of Massachusetts, but resigned his place the next year on account of ill health, and has since resided as a private citizen in Boston.

The variety of Mr. Everett's life and employments is but a type of the versatility of his powers and the wide range of his cultivation. He is one of the most finished men of our time. His works consist mainly of occasional discourses, speeches, and of contributions to the North American Review; the last of which are very numerous, and deal with a great diversity of subjects, including Greek and German literature, the fine arts, politics, political economy, history, and American literature. His orations and speeches have been published in two large octavo volumes. His style is rich and glowing, but always under the control of sound judgment and good taste. His learning and scholarship are never needlessly obtruded: they are woven into the web of his discourse, and not embossed upon its surface. He writes under the inspiration of a generous and comprehensive patriotism, and his speeches are eminently suited to create and sustain a just and high-toned national sentiment. Whatever he does is done well; and his brilliant natural powers have through life been trained and aided by those habits of vigorous industry which are falsely supposed by many to be found only in connection with dulness and mediocrity.

The following extract is from a discourse on American literature, pronounced before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, in August, 1824.]

THE rapid march of the population westward has been attended by circumstances in some degree novel in the history of the human mind. It is a fact, somewhat difficult of explanation, that the refinement of the ancient nations seemed comparatively devoid of an elastic and expansive principle With the exception of the colonies in Asia Minor, the arts of Greece were enchained to her islands and her coasts; they did not penetrate far into the interior, at least not in every

direction. The language and literature of Athens were as much unknown to the north of Pindus, at a distance of two hundred miles from the capital of Grecian refinement, as they were in Scythia. Thrace, whose mountain tops may almost be seen from the porch of the temple of Minerva, at Sunium, was the proverbial abode of barbarism. Though the colonies of Greece were scattered on the coasts of Asia, of Italy, of France, of Spain, and of Africa, no extension of their population far inward took place, and the arts did not penetrate beyond the walls of the cities where they were cultivated.

How different is the picture of the diffusion of the arts and improvements of civilization, from the coast to the interior of America! Population advances westward, with a rapidity which numbers may describe, indeed, but cannot represent with any vivacity to the mind. The wilderness, which one year is impassable, is traversed the next by the caravans of industrious emigrants, carrying with them the language, the institutions, and the arts of civilized life. It is not the irruption of wild barbarians, sent to inflict the wrath of God on a degenerate empire; it is not the inroad of disciplined banditti, put in motion by reasons of state or court intrigue. It is the human family, led on by Providence to possess its broad patrimony. The states and nations which are springing up in the valley of the Missouri are bound to us by the dearest ties of a common language, a common government, and a common descent.

Before New England can look with coldness on their rising myriads, she must forget that some of the best of her own blood is beating in their veins; that her hardy children, with their axes on their shoulders, have been among the pioneers in this march of humanity; that, young as she is, she has become the mother of populous states. What generous mind would sacrifice to a selfish preservation of local preponderance the delight of beholding civilized nations rising up in the desert, and the language, the manners, the principles in which he has been reared, carried, with his household gods,