LXI. THE TROPICAL CONSTELLATIONS.

FROM the time that we entered the Torrid Zone, we were never wearied with admiring, every night, the beauty of the southern sky, which, as we advanced, opened new constellations to our view. We feel an indescribable sensation, when, on approaching the Equator, and particularly on passing from one hemisphere to the other, we see those stars, which we have contemplated from our infancy, progressively sink, and finally disappear. Nothing awakens in the traveler a livelier remembrance of the immense distance by which he is separated from his country, than the aspect of an unknown firmament. The grouping of the stars of the first magnitude, some scattered nebula rivaling in splendor the milky way, and tracts of space remarkable for their extreme blackness, give a particular physiog'nomy to the southern sky..

This sight fills with admiration even those who, uninstructed in the branches of accurate science, feel the same emotion of delight in the contemplation of the heavenly vault, as in the view of a beautiful landscape, or a majestic site. A traveler has no need of being a botanist, to rec'ognize the Torrid Zone in the mere aspect of its vegetation; and without having acquired any notions of astronomy, without any acquaintance with celestial charts, he feels that he is not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation of the ship, or the °phosphorescent clouds of Magellan, arise on the horizon. The heaven and the earth, everything in the Equinoctial regions, assumes an exotic character.

The lower regions of the air were loaded with vapors for some days. We first saw distinctly the Cross of the South, in the night of the fourth and fifth of July, in the sixteenth degree of latitude. It was strongly inclined, and appeared from time to time between the clouds; the centre of which, furrowed by uncondensed lightnings, reflected a silvery lustre. If a traveler may be permitted to speak of his personal emotions, I shall add, that on this night I saw one of the reveries of my earliest youth accomplished.

At a period when I studied the heavens, not with the intention of devoting myself to astronomy, but only to acquire a knowledge of the stars, I was agitated by a fear unknown to those who love a sedentary life. It seemed painful to me to renounce the hope of beholding those beautiful constellations which border the South Pole. Impatient to rove in the Equinoctial regions, I could not raise my eyes towards the starry vault, without thinking of the Cross of the South.

The pleasure felt on discovering this constellation was warmly shared by such of the crew as had lived in the colonies. In the

solitude of the seas, we hail a star as a friend from whom we have been long separated. Among the Portuguese and the Spaniards, peculiar motives seem to increase this feeling. A religious sentiment attaches them to a constellation, the form of which recalls the sign of the faith planted by their ancestors in the deserts of the New World.

The two great stars which mark the summit and the foot of the Cross, having nearly the same right ascension, it follows that the constellation is almost vertical at the moment when it passes the meridian. This circumstance is known to every nation that lives beyond the tropics, or in the southern hemisphere. It is known at what hour of the night, in different seasons, the Southern Cross is erect or inclined.

It is a time-piece that advances with great regularity nearly four minutes a day; and no other group of stars exhibits to the naked eye an observation of time so easily made. How often have we heard our guide exclaim, in the savannas of Venezuela or in the desert extending from Lima to Truxillo, "Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend!" How frequently did these words remind us of that affecting scene, where Paul and Virginia, seated near the source of the river Lataniers, conversed together for the last time; and when the old man, at the sight of the Southern Cross, warns them that it is time to separate.

BARON HUMBOLDT.

LXII. THE BIRD AND MUSICIAN.

MENAPHON AND AMETHUS.

MEN. Passing from Italy to Greece, the taleg
Which poets of an elder time have feigned

To glorify their temple, bred in me

Desire of visiting that paradise.

To Thessaly I came; and living private,

Without acquaintance of more sweet companions
Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts,

I day by day frequented silent groves,
And solitary walks. One morning early
This accident encountered me:-I heard
The sweetest and most ravishing contention
That art and nature ever were at strife in.

AMET. I cannot yet conceive what you infer
By art and nature.

MEN.

I shall soon resolve you.

A sound of music touched mine ears, or rather,
Indeed, entranced my soul! As I stole nearer,
Invited by the melody, I saw

This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute,
With strains of strange variety and harmony,
Proclaiming, as it seemed, so bold a challenge
To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds,
That, as they flocked about him, all stood silent,
Wondering at what they heard. I wondered too.
AMET. And so do I; good! on-

MEN.
A nightingale,
Nature's best skilled musician, undertakes

The challenge, and for every several strain

The well-shaped youth could touch, she sung her own;
He could not run division with more art

Upon his quaking instrument, than she,
The nightingale, did with her various notes
Reply to for a voice, and for a sound,
Amethus, 'tis much easier to believe

That such they were, than hope to hear again.
A ET. How did the rivals part?
MEN.
You term them rightly;
For they were rivals, and their mistress, harmony.
Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird

Whom art had never taught clefs, moods, or notes,
Should "vie with him for mastery, whose study

Had busied many hours to perfect practice.

To end the controversy, in a rapture,
Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,
So many voluntaries, and so quick,
That there was curiosity and cunning,
Concord in discord, lines of differing method
Meeting in one full centre of delight!

AMET. Now for the bird.

MEN.

The bird, ordained to be

Music's first martyr, strove to imitate

These several sounds; which, when her warbling throat Failed in, for grief, down dropped she on his lute,

And break her heart! It was the quaintest sadness,

To see the conqueror upon her hearse,

To weep a funeral elegy of tears:

That trust me, my Amethus, I could chide

MEN. He looked upon the trophies of his art,

Then sighed, then wiped his eyes, then sighed and cried:-
"Alas, poor creature! I will soon revenge
This cruelty upon the author of it.

Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,
Shall never more betray a harmless peace
To an untimely end;" and in that sorrow,
As he was pashing it against a tree,

I suddenly stepped in.

AMET.

Thou hast discoursed

A truth of mirth and pity.

JOHN FORD.

LXIII.-DEATH OF MADAME ROLAND.

THIS heroic woman had been early involved in the proscription of the "Girondists, of whom her splendid talents had almost rendered her the head. Confined in the prison of the Abbaye, she employed the tedious months of captivity in composing the memoirs, which so well illustrate her eventful life. With a firm hand she traced, in that gloomy abode, the joyous as well as the melancholy periods of her existency; the brilliant dreams and ardent patriotism of her youth; the stormy and eventful scenes of her maturer years, the horrors and anguish of her latest days.

While suffering under the fanaticism of the people, when about to die under the violence of a mob, she never abandoned the principles of her youth, nor regretted her martyrdom in the cause of freedom. If the thoughts of her daughter and her husband sometimes melted her to tears, she regained her firmness on every important occasion. Her memoirs evince unbroken serenity of mind, though she was frequently interrupted in their composition by the cries of those whom the executioners were dragging from the adjoining cells to the scaffold.

On the day of her trial she was dressed with scrupulous care in white. Her fine black hâir fell in profuse curls to her waist; but the display of its beauty was owing to her jailers, who had deprived her of all means of dressing it. She chose that dress as 'emblematic of the purity of her mind. Her advocate, M. Chaveau Lagarde, visited her to receive her last instructions; drawing a ring from her finger she said, "To morrow I shall be no more; I know well the fate which

awaits me; your kind assistance could be of no avail; it would endanger you without saving me. Do not therefore, I pray you, come to the tribunal, but accept this as the last testimony of my regard!"

Her defence, composed by herself the night before the trial, is one of the most eloquent and touching monuments of the Revolution. Her answers to the interrogatories of the judges, the dignity of her manner, the beauty of her figure; melted even the Revolutionary audience with pity. Finding they could implicate her in no other way, the president asked her if she was acquainted with the place of her husband's retreat. She replied, that "Whether she knew it or not she would not reveal it, and that there was no law by which she was obliged in a court of justice to violate the strongest feelings of nature." Upon this she was immediately condemned. When the reading of her sentence was concluded, she rose and said, “You judge me worthy to share the fate of the great men whom you have assassinated. I shall endeavor to imitate their firmness on the scaffold." She regained her prison with an elastic step and beaming eye. Her whole soul appeared absorbed in the heroic feelings with which she was animated.

She was conveyed to the scaffold in the same car with a man whose firmness was not equal to her own. While passing along the streets, her whole anxiety appeared to be to support his courage. She did this with so much simplicity and effect, that she frequently brought a smile on the lips which were about to perish! At the place of execution she bowed before the gigantic statue of Liberty, and pronounced the memorable words, "O Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name!"

When they arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she had the generosity to renounce, in favor of her companion, the privilege of being first executed. "Ascend first," said she; "let me at least spâre you the pain of seeing my blood flow." Turning to the executioner, she asked if he would consent to that arrangement; he replied, that his orders were, that she should die the first. "You cannot," said she, with a smile, "I am sure, refuse a woman her last request?" Undismayed by the spectacle which immediately ensued, she calmly bent her head under the guillotine, and perished with the serenity she had evinced ever since her imprisonment.

ARCHIBALD ALISON.

LXIV. THE VILLAGE PREACHER.

NEAR Yonder copse where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild,