That did attend themselves, and had the virtue Could not out-peer these twain. Pardon me, gods! Boys, we'll go dress our hunt-Fair youth, come in; So far as thou wilt speak it. Arv. The night to the owl, and morn to the lark less welcome. Imo. Thanks, sir. Arv. I pray, draw near. [Exeunt INVOCATION TO MORNING.-THOMSON. The meek-eyed morn appears, mother of dews, White break the clouds away. With quickened step, And opens all the lawny prospect wide. The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top, At early passenger. Music awakes The native voice of undissembled joy; And thick around the woodland hymns arise. Roused by the cock, the soon-clad shepherd leaves For is their aught in sleep can charm the wise? To lie in dead oblivion, losing half The fleeting moments of too short a life, Total extinction of the enlightened soul! Or else to feverish vanity alive, Wildered and tossing through distempered dreams? Who would in such a gloomy state remain And sheds the shining day, that burnished plays Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe! 'Tis by thy secret, strong, attractive force, Without whose quickening glance their cumbrous orbs The vegetable world is also thine, In world-rejoicing state, it moves sublime. A common hymn; while, round thy beaming car Herbs, flowers and fruits; till, kindling at thy touch, VALLEY OF MEXICO.-WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. THE troops, refreshed by a night's rest, succeeded, early on the following day, in gaining the crest of the sierra of Ahualco, which stretches like a curtain between the two great mountains on the north and south. Their progress was now comparatively easy, and they marched forward with a buoyant step as they felt they were treading the soil of Montezuma. They had not advanced far, when, turning an angle of the sierra, they suddenly came on a view which more than compensated the toils of the preceding day. It was that of the Valley of Mexico, or Tenochtitlan, as more commonly called by the natives; which, with its picturesque assemblage of water, woodland, and cultivated plains, its shining cities and shadowy hills, was spread out like some gay and gorgeous panorama before them. In the highly rarefied atmosphere of these upper regions, even remote objects have a brilliancy of coloring and a distinctness of outline which seem to annihilate distance. Stretching far away at their feet were seen noble forests of oak, sycamore, and cedar, and beyond, yellow fields of maize and the towering maguey, intermingled with orchards and blooming gardens; for flowers, in such demand for their religious festivals, were even more abundant in this populous valley than in other parts of Anahuac. In the centre of the great basin were beheld the lakes, occupying then a much larger portion of its surface than at present; their borders thickly studded with towns and hamlets, and, in the midst-like some Indian empress with her coronal of pearls-the fair city of Mexico, with her white towers and pyramidal temples, reposing, as it were, on the bosom of the waters, the far-famed "Venice of the Aztecs." High over all rose the royal hill of Chapoltepec, the residence of the Mexican monarchs, crowned with the same grove of gigantic cypresses, which at this day fling their broad shadows over the land. In the distance beyond the blue waters of the lake, and nearly screened by intervening foliage, was seen a shining speck, the rival capital of Tezcuco, and, still farther on, the dark belt of porphyry, girdling the Valley around like a rich setting which nature had devised for the fairest of her jewels. Such was the beautiful vision which broke on the eyes of the conquerors. And even now, when so sad a change has come over the scene; when the stately forests have been laid low, and the soil, unsheltered from the fierce radiance of a tropical sun, is in many places abandoned to sterility; when the waters have retired, leaving a broad and ghastly margin white with the incrustation of salts, while the cities and hamlets on their borders have mouldered into ruins; even now that desolation broods over the landscape, so indestructible are the lines of beauty which nature has traced on its features, that no traveler, however cold, can gaze on them with any other emotions than those of astonishment and rapture. What, then, must have been the emotions of the Spaniards, when, after working their toilsome way into the upper air, the cloudy tabernacle parted before their eyes, and they beheld these fair scenes in all their pristine magnificence and beauty! It was like the spectacle which greeted the eyes of Moses from the summit of Pisgah, and, in the warm glow of their feelings, they cried out, "It is the promised land!" CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.-JOANNA BAILLIE. Is there a man, that, from some lofty steep, Bore priests and nobles of the land, And rustic hinds and townsmen trim, Who, in his lofty gait, and high Trusting in One alone, whom heaven and earth adore! Another world is in his mind, Peopled with creatures of his kind, With hearts to feel, with minds to soar, Thoughts to consider and explore; Souls who might find, from trespass shriven, Virtue on earth and joy in heaven. "That power divine, whom storms obey," Vain thoughts! which heaven doth but ordain But hath there lived of mortal mould, |