the United States,inter Avernales haud ignotissima nymphas has given rise to much pleasantry among the anti-democrat wits in America. 2 "On the original location of the ground now allotted for the seat of the Federal City, (says Mr. Weld,) the identical spot on which the capitol now stands was called Rome. This anecdote is related by many as a certain prognostic of the future magnificence of this city, which is to be, as it were, a second Rome."-Weld's Travels, letter iv. 3 A little stream runs through the city, which, with in tolerable affectation, they have styled the Tiber. It was originally called Goose-Creek. 4 "To be under the necessity of going through a deep wood for one or two miles, perhaps, in order to see a next-door neighbor, and in the same city, is a curious and, I believe, a novel circumstance."- Weld, letter iv. In fancy now, beneath the twilight gloom, Come, let me lead thee o'er this "second Rone! Where tribunes rule, where dusky Davi bow, And what was Goose-Creek once is Tiber now: This embryo capital, where Fancy sees Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees; Which second-sighted seers, ev'n now, adorn With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn, Though naught but woods and Jn they Where streets should run and sages ought to be. And look, how calmly in yon radiant wave, The dying sun prepares his golden grave. Oh righty river! oh ye banks of shade! Ye matchless scenes, in nature's morning made, While still, in all th' exuberance of prime, She pour'd her wonders, lavishly sublime, Nor yet had learn'd to stoop, with humbler care, From grand to soft, from wonderful to fair;Say, were your towering hills, your boundless flo Your rich savannas and majestic woods, Where bards should meditate and heroes rove, And woman charm, and man deserve her love,Oh say, was world so bright, but born to grace Its own half-organized, half-minded race Of weak barbarians, swarming o'er its breast, Like vermin gender'd on the lion's crest? Were none but brutes to call that soil their home Where none but demigods should dare to roam? Or worse, thou wondrous world! oh! doubly w Did heaven design thy lordly land to nurse The motley dregs of every distant clime, Each blast of anarchy and taint of crime Which Europe shakes from her perturbed spher In full malignity to rankle here? humility of its present possessor, who inhabits but a c of the mansion himself, and abandons the rest to a st uncleanly desolation, which those who are not philoso cannot look at without regret. This grand edifice is e cled by a very rude paling, through which a common i stile introduces the visiters of the first man in America. respect to all that is within the house, I shall imitate the dent forbearance of Herodotus, and say, ra de ev aropp The private buildings exhibit the same characteristi play of arrogant speculation and premature ruin; an few ranges of houses which were begun some years ago remained so long waste and unfinished, that they are for the most part dilapidated. The picture which Buffon and De Pauw have draw the American Indian, though very humiliating, is, as fa can judge, much more correct than the flattering repres tions which Mr. Jefferson has given us. See the Not Virginia, where this gentleman endeavors to disprove in The Federal City (if it must be called a city) has not been much increased since Mr. Weld visited it. Most of the pub-eral the opinion maintained so strongly by some philosop lic buildings, which were then in some degree of forwardness, have been since utterly suspended. The hotel is already a ruin; a great part of its roof has fallen in, and the rooms are left to be occupied gratuitously by the miserable Scotch and Irish emigrants. The President's house, a very noble structure, is by no means suited to the philosophical that nature (as Mr. Jefferson expresses it) be-littles he ductions in the western world. M. de Pauw attribute imperfection of animal life in America to the ravages very recent deluge, from whose effects upon its soil a mosphere it has not yet sufficiently recovered.-Reche sur les Américains, part i. tom. i. p. 102. But hold,-observe yon little mount of pines, How shall we rank thee upon glory's page? There, in those walls-but, burning tongue, forbear! So here I pause-and now, dear Hume, we part: Midst bears and yankees, democrats and frogs, While loftier souls command, nay, make their And sovereign man can condescend to see fate, Thy fate made thee and forced thee to be great. Yet Fortune, who so oft, so blindly sheds Her brightest halo round the weakest heads, For thine's a name all nations claim their own; The throne and laws more sovereign still than he. LINES WRITTEN ON LEAVING PHILADELPHIA. Τηνδε την πολιν φίλως SOPHOCL. Edip. Colon. v. 768. ALONE by the Schuylkill a wanderer roved, Now look, my friend, where faint the moonlight Oh Nature, though blessed and bright are thy rays, falls On yonder dome, and, in those princely halls,— O'er the brow of creation enchantingly thrown, Nor long did the soul of the stranger remain Till the threshold of home had been press'd by his But the lays of his boyhood had stol'n to their ear, name; 1 On a small hill near the capitol there is to be an eques- private morals, which, encouraged as it is by the government, trian statue of General Washington. * In the ferment which the French revolution excited among the democrats of America, and the licentious sympathy with which they shared in the wildest excesses of jacotinism, we may find one source of that vulgarity of vice, that hostility to all the graces of life, which distinguishes the present demagogues of the United States, and has become indeed too generally the characteristic of their countrymen But there is another cause of the corruption of and identified with the interests of the community, seems to threaten the decay of all honest principle in America. I allude to those fraudulent violations of neutrality to which they are indebted for the most lucrative part of their commerce, and by which they have so long infringed and counteracted the maritime rights and advantages of this country. This unwarrantable trade is necessarily abetted by such a system of collusion, imposture, and perjury, as cannot fail to spread rapid contamination around it. And they told him, with flattery welcome and dear, That they found in his heart something better than fame. Nor did woman-oh woman! whose form and whose soul Are the spell and the light of each path we pur sue; Whether sunn'd in the tropics or chill'd at the pole, If woman be there, there is happiness too: Nor did she her enamoring magic deny, That magic his heart had relinquish'd so long,— Like eyes he had loved was her eloquent eye, Like them did it soften and weep at his song. Oh, bless'd be the tear, and in memory oft May its sparkle be shed o'er the wanderer's dream; Thrice bless'd be that eye, and may passion as soft, As free from a pang, ever mellow its beam! The stranger is gone-but he will not forget, When at home he shall talk of the toils he has known, To tell, with a sigh, what endearments he met, Rushing, alike untired and wild, Through shades that frown'd and flowers the smiled, Flying by every green recess That woo'd him to its calm caress, One only prayer I dare to make, As onward thus my course I take ;— Oh, be my falls as bright as thine! May heaven's relenting rainbow shine Upon the mist that circles me, As soft as now it hangs o'er thee! The fine rainbow, which is continually forming and dis- route, in travelling through the Genesee country to Niag Hark! I hear the traveller's song, As he winds the woods along ;- Hither, sprites, who love to harm, And the shudd'ring murderer sits,' Hither bend ye, turn ye hither, Eyes that blast and wings that wither! Cross the wand'ring Christian's way, Lead him, ere the glimpse of day, Many a mile of madd'ning error, Through the maze of night and terror, Till the morn behold him lying On the damp earth, pale and dying. Mock him, when his eager sight Seeks the cordial cottage-light; Gleam then, like the lightning-bug, Tempt him to the den that's dug For the foul and famish'd brood Of the she-wolf, gaunt for blood; Or, unto the dangerous pass O'er the deep and dark morass, Where the trembling Indian brings Belts of porcelain, pipes, and rings, Tributes, to be hung in air, To the Fiend presiding there!" Then, when night's long labor past, Wilder'd, faint, he falls at last, 1 "The Five Confederated Nations (of Indians) were set fled along the banks of the Susquehannah and the adjacent country, until the year 1779, when General Sullivan, with an army of 4000 men, drove them from their country to Niagara, where, being obliged to live on salted provisions, to which they were unaccustomed, great numbers of them died. Two hundred of them, it is said, were buried in one grave, where they had encamped."-Morse's American Geography. The alligator, who is supposed to lie in a torpid state all the winter, in the bank of some creek or pond, having preVously swallowed a large number of pine-knots, which are his only sustenance during the time. This was the mode of punishment for murder (as Charlevoir tells us, among the Hurons. "They laid the dead body Sinking where the causeway's edge TO THE HONORABLE W. R. SPENCER FROM BUFFALO, UPON LAKE ERIE. Nec venit ad duros musa vocata Getas. THOU oft hast told me of the happy hours There still, too, roam those other souls of song, With whom thy spirit hath communed so long, That, quick as light, their rarest gems of thought, By Memory's magic to thy lip are brought. upon poles at the top of a cabin, and the murderer was obliged to remain several days together, and to receive all that dropped from the carcass, not only on himself but on his food." 4 "We find also collars of porcelain, tobacco, ears of maize, skins, &c., by the side of difficult and dangerous ways, on rocks, or by the side of the falls; and these are so many of ferings made to the spirits which preside in these places."See Charlevoix's Letter on the Traditions and the Religion of the Savages of Canada. Father Hennepin too mentions this ceremony; he also says, "We took notice of one barbarian, who made a kind of sacrifice upon an oak at the Cascade of St. Antony of Padua, upon the river Mississippi. '-See Hennepin's Voyage into North America. But here, alas! by Erie's stormy lake, All that creation's varying mass assumes Of grand or lovely, here aspires and blooms; Bold rise the mountains, rich the gardens glow, Bright lakes expand, and conquering' rivers flow; But mind, immortal mind, without whose ray, This world's a wilderness and man but clay, Mind, mind alone, in barren, still repose, Nor blooms, nor rises, nor expands, nor flows. Take Christians, Mohawks, democrats, and all From the rude wigwam to the congress-hall, From man the savage, whether slaved or free, To man the civilized, less tame than he,"Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife Betwixt half-polish'd and half-barbarous life; Where every ill the ancient world could brew Is mix'd with every grossness of the new; Where all corrupts, though little can entice, And naught is known of luxury, but its vice! Is this the region then, is this the clime To heads that meditate and hearts that feel? Yet, yet forgive me, oh ye sacred few, Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew; Whom, known and loved through many a social eve, "Twas bliss to live with, and 'twas pain to leave.3 1 This epithet was suggested by Charlevoix's striking description of the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi. "I believe this is the finest confluence in the world. The two rivers are much of the same breadth, each about half a league; but the Missouri is by far the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror, through which it carries its white waves to the opposite shore, without mixing them: afterwards it gives its color to the Mississippi, which it never loses again, but carries quite down to the sea."-Letter xxvii. Not with more joy the lonely exile scann'd Long may you loathe the Gallic dross that run Through your fair country and corrupts its sons; Long love the arts, the glories which adorn Those fields of freedom, where your sires were bo Oh! if America can yet be great, If neither chain'd by choice, nor doom'd by fate Believe me, Spencer, while I wing'd the hours Where Schuylkill winds his way through bank flowers, Though few the days, the happy evenings few, So warm with heart, so rich with mind they flew That my charm'd soul forgot its wish to roam, And rested there, as in a dream of home. delphia, I passed the few agreeable moments which my through the States afforded me. Mr. Dennie has succed in diffusing through this cultivated little circle that love good literature and sound politics, which he feels so z ously himself, and which is so very rarely the character of his countrymen. They will not, I trust, accuse me o liberality for the picture which I have given of the ignor and corruption that surround them. If I did not hate, ought, the rabble to which they are opposed, I could value, as I do, the spirit with which they defy it; an Alluding to the fanciful notion of "words congealed in learning from them what Americans can be, I but see northern air." the more indignation what Americans are. "In the society of Mr. Dennie and his friends, at Phila |