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No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years
Of wealth and glory turn'd to dust and tears;
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
And even the Lion all subdued appears,
And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum,
With dull and daily dissonance, repeats
The echo of the tyrant's voice along
The soft waves, once all musical to song,

That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng
Of gondolas-and to the busy hum

Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
Were but the overbeating of the heart,
And flow of too much happiness, which needs
The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood
Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.
But these are better than the gloomy errors,
The weeds of nations in their last decay,

When Vice walks forth with her unsoften'd terrors,
And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;
And Hope is nothing but a false delay,

The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death,
When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,
And apathy of limb, the dull beginning

Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning,
Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away:
Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,
To him appears renewal of his breath,
And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;
And then he talks of life, and how again
He feels his spirits soaring-albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek;
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him-and the dizzy
Chamber swims round and round-and shadows busy,
At which he vainly catches, flit, and gleam,
Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream,
And all is ice and blackness,--and the earth
That which it was the moment ere our birth.
'There is no hope for nations!-Search the page
Of many thousand years-the daily scene,
The flow and ebb of each recurring age,

The everlasting to be which hath been,
Hath taught us nought or little: still we lean
On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
Our strength away in wrestling with the air;
For 'tis our nature strikes us down: the beasts
Slaughter'd in hourly hecatombs for feasts

Are of as high an order-they must go

Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter.

Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,

What have they given your children in return?

A heritage of servitude and woes,

A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows.
What! do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn,
O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,
And deem this proof of loyalty the real;
Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?

All that your sires have left you, all that Time
Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
Spring from a different theme!-Ye see and read,
Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed!
Save the few spirits, who, despite of all,

And worse than all, the sudden crimes engender'd,
By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,

And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tender'd
Gushing from Freedom's fountains-when the crowd,
Madden'd with centuries of drought, are loud,
And trample on each other to obtain

The cup which brings oblivion of a chain

Heavy and sore,-in which long yoked they plough'd
The sand, or if there sprung the yellow grain,

'Twas not for them, their necks were too much bow'd,
And their dead palates chew'd the cud of pain-
Yes! the few spirits-who, despite of deeds
Which they abhor, confound not with the cause,
Those momentary starts from Nature's laws,
Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite
But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth
With all her seasons to repair the blight
With a few summers, and again put forth
Cities and generations-fair, when free-
For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee!
Glory and Empire! once upon these towers
With Freedom-godlike Triad! how ye sate!
The league of mightiest nations, in those hours
When Venice was an envy, might abate,
But did not quench, her spirit-in her fate
All were enwrapp'd: the feasted monarchs knew
And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate,
Although they humbled-with the kingly few
The many felt, for from all days and climes
She was the voyager's worship;-even her crimes
Were of the softer order-born of Love,

She drank no blood, nor fatten'd on the dead,

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But gladden'd where her harmless conquests spread;
For these restored the Cross, that from above
Hallow'd her sheltering banners, which incessant
Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,
Which, if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank
The city it has clothed in chains, which clank
Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe
The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles;
Yet she but shares with them a common wo,
And call'd the "kingdom" of a conquering foe,-
But knows what all-and, most of all, we know—
With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!
The name of Commonwealth is past and gone

O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe;
Venice is crush'd, and Holland deigns to own

A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;
If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time,
For tyranny of late is cunning grown,
And in its own good season tramples down
The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,

Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and
Bequeath'd-a heritage of heart and hand,
And proud distinction from each other land,
Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's motion,
As if his senseless sceptre were a wand
Full of the magic of exploded science-
Still one great clime, in full and free defiance,
Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime,
Above the far Atlantic!-She has taught
Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag,
The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag,

May strike to those whose red right hands have bought
Rights cheaply earn'd with blood. Still, still, for ever
Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
That it should flow, and overflow, than creep
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Damm'd like the dull canal with locks and chains,
And moving, as a sick man in his sleep,
'Three paces, and then faltering:-better be
Where the extinguish'd Spartans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopyla,
'Than stagnate in our marsh,-or o'er the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more, America, to thee!

Foreign Intelligence.

FRANCE.

School for Naturalists and Botanists.-The king of France has lately created, on the proposition of the minister of the Interior, a school for young naturalists; it is attached to the Jardin du Roi, and directed by the professors of that establishment. The intention is, that after having received instruction sufficient, these students should visit different parts of the world, at the expense and for the advantage of the state.

The excursions they will undertake will be conformable to Itineraries traced by the professors; avoiding countries already sufficiently known. All their researches will be directed to useful ends. This institution, which promises happy results, is a seed, in its nature abundantly prolific; but, which eventually may develop itself to the great profit of the philosophic world: and perhaps may prove the germ of an association of naturalists, in more countries than one.

Universal Alphabet.-M. Volney, peer of France, well known by former works, has lately published a volume on the application of the European alphabet to the languages of Asia; he describes it as an elementary work, useful to all travellers into the oriental continent. This writer had already published a tract entitled Simplification of Eastern languages, or a new and easy method of learning the Arabic, the Persian, and the Turkish languages, by means of the European characters. Paris, 1795.

By means of the Roman alphabet with certain additional signs, the author proposes to express all the Asiatic idioms, and thereby to facilitate our researches into the dialects, the history, the sciences, the arts, and the immense literary treasures of Asia; at the same time, these acquisitions would support and enlarge the commercial connexions of Europe with the original country of the hu

man race.

This work is dedicated to the Academy at Calcutta. The first part of it comprizes the definitions as well of the general system of sounds pronounced, as of the system of letters, or signs by which those sounds are expressed. In the second part the author considers all the vocal enunciations and tones used among Europeans. They amount to nineteen or twenty vowels, and thirty-two consosants, almost the same as those of the richest languages of Asia; the Sanscrit particularly, according to several of its alphabets.

The twenty-five, or twenty six letters of the Roman alphabet are not adequate to the notation of all the variations of voice. But this alphabet has the valuable advantage of offering the most simple forms, and of being employed throughout Europe, in America, and in all the European colonies of Asia. M. Volney proposes to render it universal, by obtaining from itself other simple signs, necessary to mark additional sounds.

In the third part of his work, the author reduces his theory to practice, by applying it to the Arabic alphabet, which is one of the most complicated of the Asiatics, though not so vicious in its application as the thousand hyphen'd Sanscrit. The same process applies to the Turkish, the Persian, the Syriac, the Hebrew, the Ethiopian, &c.; and even to Sanscrit and the Chinese.

The curious in etymology will find in this work many new and learned applications of the powers of the letters: and we have somewhat enlarged on its nature, because it may prove extremely useful to the preparatory studies of our youth destined for Asia; not to notice the additional assistance it may afford to the practical conduct and advantage of gentlemen, whose situations oblige them to daily intercourse with Asiatics of various provinces, some of whose languages are acquired with difficulty, or but imperfectly, after much labour and time spent in studying them.

GREECE.

State of Literature. The progress of that civilization which is the constant attendant or consequence of letters, continues to be rapid. The number of schools of the second order, Gymnasia, augments daily. The principal establishments of the kind are at Smyrna, at Kydonios (a small town of eight or ten thousand inhabitants, opposite the island of Lesbos) and in the island of Chios. A young man, a native of Kydonios, mentioned above, has staid long enough in the printing-office of M. Didot, at Paris, to perfect himself in the art of printing. Also, a daughter of the professor of the Gymnasium in that town, named Erianthia, not more than eighteen years of age, has translated into modern Greek, Fenelon's work on

the Education of Daughters. The inhabitants of Chios have held meetings for the purpose of raising subscriptions in order to establish a public library.

HOLLAND.

Public Instruction: gratis.-We learn from the last annual Report of the Schools for giving gratuitous instruction at Amsterdam, that in the eleven schools of this description, three thousand six hundred and fifty children received the rudiments of education, gratis: to which may be added, about eight hundred others who received instruction in the evening schools.

Interesting New

The Addresses of the Philadelphia Society for the promotion of National Industry-collected in one vol. 8vo. pp. 276.-M. Carey and Son.

The History of the Lives of Abelard and Heloisa, with their genuine letters, &c. by the Rev. J. Berington, with a beautiful coloured plate.-Republished by Abm. Small.

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Publications.

The recent alterations in the bounda ry lines of counties and townships. New counties; their seats of justice and distance from the state capital. Post offices, if established since the year 1818.

The latitude and longitude of new towns, and other important points.

Roads and projected canals, with the names of the streams, &c. which they are intended to connect.

Minerals, and mineral springs of recent discovery.

Soil, products, and face of the coun

try.

Natural curiosities.

Indian antiquities, with the origin of Indian names.

The principal bridges, water-falls, and lighthouses.

The head of sloop navigation, on the principal streams.

The altitude, situation, and course of mountains, with their local names.

Errors in existing maps, with hints for their correction.

*** Information on any of the above heads, or other intelligence which will contribute to the accuracy of the work, will be thankfully received by the publishers, Messrs. Tanner, Vallance, Kearny, and Co. Philadelphia.

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