soldiers see me drop; the day is ours! Oh! keep it;" and with these words he expired. In the battle, with Wolfe fell the commander-inchief of the French American colonies, Montcalm. He was born in France in 1712, entered the military service in his 15th year, and was sent to Canada in 1756. He highly distinguished himself on several occasions. ESOP, AND HIS FABLES. may In all ages and nations, the fables of Esop have been resorted to for the instruction of young people, and have supplied matter for the wisdom of more advanced years. If the infant mind can be taught to abhor violence and injustice by the fable of the Wef and the Lamb; if the advantages of persevering industry can be inculcated by the story of the Hure and the Tortoise; and if the disgrace of the bragging traveller can supply the young with a caution against boasting, lessons of more extended wisdom be derived from the various apologues in which not beasts, fishes, or trees alone, but human beings and fabulous divinities are introduced. To no author, excepting Esop, has it happened to have portions of his works condensed into proverbial sayings, passing from mouth to mouth, as matter of familiar conversation, too applicable to demand introduction, too well known to require explanation. Thus, when we speak of Blowing Hot and Cold, no one expects that the story of the Satyr and the Traveller shoud be repeated to him; or, when mention is made of the Dog in the Manger, the Viper and the File, or the Mountain in Labor, the mind of the hearer is instantly informed that envious selfishness, malignant and impotent rage, and rash promises, or threats, productive of no consequence, are meant to be described and satirized. Æsop, the author of most of the fables which are current in the collections passing under his name, made his way to eminence, unfavored by any circumstances of birth, fortune, or person: he was a Phrygian, of the lowest order of society, a purchased slave, and of person so deformed, that the description of him is nearly hideous; and, as if merit were allotted to him only to show against what difficulties it can successfully struggle, he had an impediment in his speech, which rendered him almost unintelligible. Yet, by persevering patience, and the manly struggle of a firm and exalted mind, he was enabled to become, not only the companion of his superiors, but the instructer of those who most prided themselves on their wisdom. His prudent counsels quieted the minds of the Athenians, when they were ready to break out into fatal violence, at the usurpation of Pisistratus; he taught them the dangers they had to apprehend from the alliances, or even the quarrels, of powerful and dangerous neighbors; and all this by such popular narratives as remain forever fixed in the memory, and form a continual guide to the judgment. The effect of his wisdom was such, that he was not only respected and well treated during his life, but, as Phædrus, the most spirited and accomplished of his translators, has informed us, the polite Athenians dedicated a colossal statue to his memory; and, although he had been but a slave, consecrated his fame on an imperishable pedestal, to inform mankind, says the Roman author, that the road to honorable distinction was open to all men. Wits of the first class in all nations, from Pha drus, in Rome, to La Fontaine, in Paris, have thought their time well employed in collecting, amplifying, pointing, and embellishing the narratives of this author, with the addition of similar stories and anecdotes,--such as passing time and their own observation could supply. Every nation has shown the state of the times, or its prevailing genius, in the manner of rendering, augmenting, or imitating, this, their great model. Of the imitators of Esop, it is not intended to speak; but self-denial would be too severely taxed, were no mention to be made of the elegant fictions of Gay, so exquisitely invented, and judiciously applied, as to raise a spark of honest envy even in the friendly bosom of Swift. It is earnestly to be hoped that the fables of Esop, as the means of information and instruction, may never be disused nor neglected. In the course of them he portrays himself as a friend of truth and justice, a man of sincere benevolence, and communicative of his good principles; as a man who honored and feared the gods whom he was brought up to worship, although his mind carried him above the feebleness of superstition, and protected him against the arts of deception. ARABIAN HOSPITALITY. Haji Ben Hassuna, a chief of a party of the Bey's (of Tripoli) troops, pursued by Arabs, lost his way, and was benighted near the enemy's camp. Passing the door of a tent which was open, he stopped his horse and implored assistance, being exhausted with fatigue and thirst. The warlike Arab bid his enemy enter his tent with confidence, and treated him with all the respect and hospitality for which his people are so famous. The highest among them, like the Patriarchs of old, wait on their guest. A man of rank, when visited by a stranger, quickly fetches a lamb from his flock and kills it, and his wife superintends her women in dressing it in the best manner. With some of the Arabs, the primitive custom (so often spoken of in the Bible,) of washing the feet is yet adopted, and this compliment is performed by the head of the family. Their supper was the best of the fatted lamb roasted; their dessert, dates and dried fruit; and the Arab's wife, to honor more particularly her husband's guest, set before him a dish of "boseen" of her own making. This was a preparation of flour and water kneaded into a paste, which being half baked was broken to pieces and kneaded again with new milk, oil, and salt, and garnished with 'kadeed," or mutton, dried and salted in the highest manner. Though these two chiefs were opposed in war, they talked with candor and friendship to each other, recounting the achievements of themselves and their ancestors, when a sudden paleness overspread the countenance of the host. He started from his seat and retired, and in a few moments afterwards sent word to his guest that his bed was prepared, and all things ready for his repose; that he was not well himself, and could not attend to finish the repast; that he had examined the Moor's horse, and found it too much exhausted to bear him through a hard journey the next day, but that before sunrise an able horse with every accommodation would be ready at the door of the tent, where he would meet him and expect him to depart with all speed. The stranger, not able to account farther for the conduct of his host, retired to rest. An Arab waked him in time to take refreshment before his departure, which was ready prepared for him; but he saw none of the family, till he perceived, on reaching the door of the tent, the master of it holding the bridle of his horse, and supporting his stirrups for him to mount, which is done among the Arabs as the last office of friendship. No sooner was Haji mounted, than his host announced to him that throughout the whole of the enemy's camp he had not so great an enemy to dread as himself. "Last night," said he, "in the exploits of your ancestors, you discovered to me the murderer of my father. There lie all the habits he was slain in, (which were at that moment brought to the door of the tent) over which, in the presence of my family, I have many times sworn to revenge his death, and to seek the blood of his murderer from sunrise to sunset. The sun has not yet risen: the sun will be no more than risen, when I pursue you, after you have in safety quitted my tent, where, fortunately for you, it is against our religion to molest you after your having sought my protection and found a refuge there; but all my obligations cease as soon as we part, and from that moment you must consider me as one determined on your destruction, in whatever part, or at whatever distance we may meet again. You have not mounted a horse inferior to the one that stands ready for myself; on its swiftness surpassing that of mine depends one of our lives, or both." After saying this, he shook his adversary by the hand and parted from him. The Moor, profiting by the few moments he had in advance, reached the Bey's army in time to escape his pursuer, who followed him closely, as near the enemy's camp he could with safety. This was certainly a striking trait of hospitality, but it was no more than every Arab and every Moor in the same circumstances would do. THE DOGS OF ST. BERNARD. Child preserved by a dog. The convent of the Great St. Bernard is situated near the top of the mountain known by that name, near one of the most dangerous passages of the Alps, between Switzerland and Savoy. In these regions the traveller is often overtaken by the most severe weather, even after days of cloudless beauty, when the glaciers glitter in the sunshine, and the pink flowers of the rhododendron appear as if they were never to be sullied by the tempest. But a storm suddenly comes on; the roads are rendered impassable by drifts of snow; the avalanches, which are huge loosened masses of snow or ice, are swept into the valleys, carrying trees and crags of rock before them, The hospitable monks, though their, revenue is scanty, open their doors to every stranger that presents himself. To be cold, to be weary, to be benighted, constitute the title to their comfortable shelter, their cheering meal, and their agreeable converse. But their attention to the distressed does not end here. They devote themselves to the dangerous task of searching for those unhappy persons who may have been overtaken by the sudden storm, and would perish but for their charitable succor. Most remarkably are they assisted in these truly Christian offices. They have a breed of noble dogs in their establishment, w'.ose extraordinary sagacity often enables them to rescue the traveller from destruction. Benumbed with cold, weary in the search for a lost track, his senses yielding to the stupifying influence of frost, which betrays the exhausted sufferer into a deep sleep, the unhappy man sinks upon the ground, and the snow-drift covers him from human sight. It is then that the keen scent and the exquisite docility of these admirable dogs are called into action. Though the perishing man lie ten or even twenty feet beneath the snow, the delicacy of smell with which they can trace him offers a chance of escape. They scratch away the snow with their feet; they set up a continued hoarse and solemn bark, which brings the monks and laborers of the convent to their assistance. To provide for the chance that the dogs, without human help, may succeed in discovering the unfortunate traveller, one of them has a flask of spirits round his neck, to which the fainting man may apply for support; and another has a cloak to cover him. These wonderful exertions are often successful; and even where they fail of restoring him who has perished, the dogs discover the body, so that it may be secured for the recognition of friends; and such is the ef fect of the temperature, that the dead features generally preserve their firmness for the space of two years. One of these noble creatures was decorated with a medal, in commemoration of his having saved the lives of twenty-two persons, who, but for his sagacity, must have perished. Many travellers who have crossed the passage of St. Bernard, since the peace, have seen this dog, and have heard, around the blazing fire of the monks, the story of his extraordinary career. He died about the year 1816, in an attempt to convey a poor traveller to his anxious family. The Piedmontese courier arrived at St. Bernard in a very stormy season, laboring to make his way to the little village of St. Pierre, in the valley beneath the mountain, where his wife and children dwelt. It was in vain that the monks attempted to check his resolution to reach his family. They at last gave him two guides, each of whom was accompanied by a dog, of which one was the remarkable creature whose services had been so valuable to mankind. Descending from the convent, they were in an instant overwhelmed by two avalanches; and the same common destruction awaited the family of the poor courier, who were toiling up the mountain in the hope to obtain some news of their expected friend. They all perished. A story is told of one of these dogs, who, having found a child unhurt whose mother had been destroyed by an avalanche, induced the poor boy to mount upon his back, and thus carried him to the gate of the convent. The subject is represented in a French print, which we have copied. THE ESKIMAUX DOGS. The dogs of the Eskimaux offer to us a striking example of the great services which the race of dogs has rendered to mankind in the progress of civilisation. The inhabitants of the shores of Baffin's Bay, and of those still more inclement regions to which discovery ships have penetrated, are perhaps never destined to advance much farther than their present condition in the scale of humanity. Their climate forbids them attempting the gratification of any desires beyond the commonest animal wants. In the short summers, they hunt the rein-deer for a stock of food and clothing; during the long winter, when the stern demands of hunger drive them from their snow huts to search for provisions, they still find a supply in the rein-deer, in the seals which lie in holes under the ice of the lakes, and in the bears which prowl about on the frozen shores of the sea. Without the exquisite scent and the undaunted courage of their dogs, the several objects of their chase could never be obtained in sufficient quantities during the winter, to supply the wants of the inhabitants; nor could the men be conveyed from place to place over the snow, with that celerity which greatly contributes to their success in hunting. In drawing the sledges, if the dogs scent a single rein-deer, even a quarter of a mile distant, they gallop off furiously in the direction of the scent; and the animal is soon within reach of the unerring arrow of the hunter. They will discover a sealhole entirely by the smell, at a very great distance. Their desire to attack the ferocious bear is so great, that the word nennook, which signifies that animal, is often used to encourage them, when running in a sledge; two or three dogs, led forward by a man, will fasten upon the largest bear without hesitation. They are eager to chase every animal but the wolf; and of him they appear to have an instinctive terror which manifests itself on his approach, in a loud and long continued howl. Certainly there is no animal which combines so many properties useful to his master, as the dog of the Eskimaux. The dogs of the Eskimaux lead always a fatiguing, and often a very painful life. In the summer they are fat and vigorous; for they have abundance of kaow, or the skin and part of the blubber of the walrus. But their feeding in winter is very precarious. Their masters have but little to spare; and the dogs become miserably thin, at a time when the severest labor is imposed upon them. It is not, therefore, surprising that the shouts and blows of their drivers have no effect in preventing them from rushing out of their road to pick up whatever they can descry; or that they are constantly creeping into the huts, to pilfer any thing within their reach: their chances of success are but small; for the people within the huts are equally keen in the protection of their stores, and they spend half their time in shouting out the names of the intruders (for the dogs have all names,) and in driving them forth by the most unmerciful blows The hunger which the Eskimaux dogs feel so severely in winter, is somewhat increased by the temperature they live in. In cold climates, aid in temperate ones in cold weather, animal food is required in larger quantities than in warm weather, and in temperate regions. The only mode which the dogs have of assuaging or deceiving the calls of hunger, is by the distention of the stomach with any filth which they can find to swallow. The painful sense of hunger is generally regarded as the effect of the contraction of the stomach, which effect is constantly increased by a draught of cold liquid. Captain Parry mentions that in winter the Eskimaux dogs will not drink water, unless it happen to be oily. They know, by experience, that their cravings would be increased by this indulgence, and they lick some clean snow as a substitute, which produces a less contraction of the stomach than water. Dogs, in general, can bear hunger for a very long time, without any serious injury, having a supply of some substance for the distension of their stomachs. ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND. Friend after friend departs; Who hath not lost a friend? There is no union here of hearts That finds not here an end; Were this frail world our final rest, Living or dying none were blest. Beyond the flight of time,— Beyond the reign of death,— Nor life's affections, transient fire, Where parting is unknown; Formed for the good alone; Thus star by star declines, Till all are past away; As morning high and higher shines, To pure and perfect day; Nor sink those stars in empty night, But hide themselves in heaven's own light. MONTGOMERY. EXCESS IN THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE. The principal end why we are to get knowledge here, is to make use of it for the benefit of ourselves and others in this world; but if by gaining it we destroy our health, we labor for a thing that will be useless in our hands; and if by harassing our bodies, (though with a design to render ourselves more useful,) we deprive ourselves of the abilities and opportunities of doing that good we might have done with a meaner talent, which God thought sufficient for us, by having denied us the strength to improve it to that pitch which men of stronger constitutions can attain to, we rob God of so much service, and our neighbor of all that help, which, in a state of health, with moderate knowledge, we might have been able to perform. He that sinks his vessel by overloading it, though it be with gold and silver and precious stones, will give his owner but an ill account of his voyage.-Locke. A HAPPY RETORT. The obscurity of Lord Tenterden's birth is well known; but he had too much good sense to feel any false shame on that account. We have heard it related of him, that when, in an early period of his professional career, a brother barrister, with whom he happened to have a quarrel, had the bad taste to twit him on his origin; his manly and severe answer was, "Yes, sir, I am the son of a barber; if you had been the son of a barber, you would have been a barber yourself." RESTORED VIEW OF POMPEII. It is certainly surprising, that this most interesting city should have remained undiscovered until so late a period, and that antiquaries and learned men should have so long and materially erred about its situation. In many places masses of ruins, portions of the buried theatres, temples, and houses were not two feet below the surface of the soil; the country people were continually digging up pieces of worked marble, and other antique objects; in several spots they had even laid open the outer walls of the town; and yet men did not find out what it was, that peculiar, isolated mound of cinders and ashes, earth and pumice-stone, covered. There is another circumstance which increases the wonder of Pompeii remaining so long concealed. A subterranean canal, cut from the river Sarno, traverses the city, and is seen darkly and silently gliding on under the temple of Isis. This is said to have been cut towards the middle of the fifteenth century, to supply the contiguous town of the Torre dell'Annunziata with fresh water; it probably ran anciently in the same channel. But, cutting it, or clearing it, workmen must have crossed under Pompeii from one side to the other. As you walk round the walls of the city, and see now the volcanic matter is piled upon it in one heap, it looks as though the hand of man had purposely buried it, by carrying and throwing over it the volcanic matter. This matter does not spread in any direction beyond the town, over the fine plain which gently declines towards the bay of Naples. The volcanic eruption was so confined in its course or its fall, as to bury Pompeii, and only Pompeii: for the shower of ashes and pumice-stone which descended in the immediate neighborhood certainly made but a slight difference in the elevation of the plain. Where a town has been buried by lava, like Herculaneum, the process is casily traced. You can follow the black, hardened lava from the cone of the mountain to the sea whose waters it invaded for "many a rood," and those who have seen the lava in its liquid state, when it flows on like a river of molten iron, can conceive at once how it would bury every thing it found in its way. There is often a confusion of ideas, among those who have not had the advantages of visiting these interesting places, as to the matter which covers Pompeii and Herculaneum: they fancy they were both buried by lava. Herculaneum was so, and the work of excavating there, was like digging in a quarry of very hard stone The descent into the places cleared is like the descent into a quarry or mine, and are always under ground, lighted by torches. you But Pompeii was covered by loose mud, pumicestone, and ashes, over which, in the course of centuries, there collected vegetable soil. Beneath this shallow soil, the whole is very crumbly and easy to dig, in few spots more difficult than one of our common gravel-pits. The matter excavated 18 carried off in carts, and thrown outside of the town; and in times when the labor is carried on with activity, as cart after cart withdraws with the earth that covered them, you see houses entire, except their roofs, which have nearly always fallen in, make their appearance, and, by degrees, a whole street opens to the sun-shine or the shower, just like the streets of any inhabited neighboring town. It is curious to observe, as the volcanic matter is removed, that the houses are principally built of lava, the more ancient product of the same Vesuvius, whose later results buried and concealed Pompeii for so many ages. Implements of building found at Pompeii. In the autumn of 1822 I saw Pompeii under very interesting circumstances. It was a few days after an eruption of Vesuvius which I had witnessed, and which was considered by far the grandest eruption of recent times. From Portici, our road was coated with lapilla or pumice-stone, and a fine, impalpable powder, of a palish gray hue, that had been discharged from the mountain, round whose base we were winding. In many places this coating was more than a foot deep, but it was pretty equally spread, not accumulating in any particular spot As we drove into Pompeii our carriage wheels crushed this matter, which contained the principal components of what had buried the city: it was lodged on the edges of the houses' walls, and on their roofs, (where the Neapolitan government had furnished them with any;) it lay inches thick on the tops of the pillars and truncated columns of the ancient temples; it covered all the floors of the houses that had no roofs, and concealed the mosaics. In the amphitheatre, where we sat down to refresh ourselves, we were obliged to make the guides clear it away with shovels-it was every where. Looking from the upper walls of the amphitheatre, we saw the whole country covered with it-trees and all were coated with the pale-gray plaster, nor did it disappear for many months after. Some ignorant fellows at Naples pretended the fine ashes, or powder, contained gold! Neapolitans began to collect it. They found no gold, but it turned out to be an excellent thing for cleaning and polishing plate! This dust continued to be blown from the mountain many days after the eruption had ceased. It once made a pretty figure of me! I was riding up the Posilippo road when it came on to rain; the rain brought down and gave consistency to the dust, which adhered to my black coat and pantaloons, until I looked as if I had been rolled in plaster of Paris. But it travelled farther than Posilippo, for a friend of mine, an officer in the navy, assured me it had fallen with rain on the deck of his ship, when between three and four hundred miles from Naples and Mount Vesuvius. There is an old story, that during one of the great eruptions of this mountain, or Etna, cinders were thrown as far as Constantinople; by substituting the fine powder I have alluded to, for cinders, the story becomes not improbable. ANECDOTES OF THE SLOTH. This "It must be observed, that the Sloth does not hang head-downwards, like the vampire. When asleep, he supports himself from a branch parallel to the earth. He first seizes the branch with one arm, and then with the other; and after that, brings up both his legs, one by one, to the same branch, so that all the four are in a line: he seems perfectly at rest in this position. As the Sloth is an inhabitant of forests within the tropics, where the trees touch each other in the greatest profusion, there seems to be no reason why he should confine himself to one tree alone for food, and entirely strip it of its leaves. During the many years I have ranged the forests, I have never seen a tree in such a state of nudity; indeed, I would hazard a conjecture, that by the time the animal has finished the last of the old leaves, there would be a new crop on the part of the tree he had stripped first, ready for him to begin again, so quick is the process of vegetation in these countries." In an experiment tried by the traveller of putting a dog to death by means of the exceedingly subtle wourali poison, made by the South American Indians, "some faint resistance on the part of nature (says he) was observed, as its existence struggled for superiority; but in the following instance of the Sloth, life sunk in death without the least apparent contention, without a cry, without a struggle, and without a groan. was the Ai, or three-toed Sloth. It was in the possession of a gentleman who was collecting curiosities. He wished to have it killed, in order to preserve the skin, and the wourali poison was resorted to as the easiest death. Of all animals, not even the toad and tortoise excepted, this poor ill-formed creature is the most tenacious of life. It exists long after it has received wounds which would have destroyed any other animal; and it may be said, on seeing a mortally wounded Sloth, that life disputes with death every inch of flesh in its body. The A was wounded in the leg, and put down on the floor, about two feet from the table; it contrived to reach the leg of the table, and fastened itself on it, as if wishful to ascend. But this was its last advancing step; life was ebbing fast, though imperceptibly; nor could this singular production of nature, which has been formed of a texture to resist death in a thousand shapes, make any stand against the wourali poison. First, one fore-leg let go its hold, and dropped down motionless by its side; the other gradually did the same. The fore-legs having now lost their strength, the Sloth slowly doubled its body, and placed its head betwixt its hind-legs, which still adhered to the table; but when the poison had affected these also, it sunk to the ground, but sunk so gently, that you Could not distinguish the movement from an ordinary motion; and had you been ignorant that it was wounded with a poisoned arrow, you would never have suspected that it was dying. During the tenth minute from the time it was wounded, it stirred, and that was all; and the minute after, life's last spark was out." Waterton. TASSO. On the 11th of March, 1544, was born at Sorrento, near Naples, Torquato Tasso, the great author of the Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered.) His father was Bernardo Tasso, also a scholar and a poet, in his own day of considerable repute. The life of Tasso was almost from its commencement a troubled romance. His infancy was distinguished by extraordinary precocity; but he was yet a mere child when political events induced his father to leave Naples, and, separating himself from his family, to take up his abode at Rome. Hither Torquato, when he was only in his eleventh year, was called upon to follow him, and to bid adieu both to what had been hitherto his home, and to the only parent whom it might almost be said he had ever known. The feelings of the young poet expressed themselves upon this occasion in some lines of great tenderness and beauty, which have been thus translated: "Forth from a mother's fostering breast He never again saw his mother; she died about eighteen months after he had left her. The only near relation he now had remaining besides his father was a sister; and from her also he was separated, those with whom she resided after her mother's death at Naples preventing her from going to share, as she wished to do, the exile of her father and brother. But after the two latter had been together for about two years at Rome, circumstances occurred which again divided them. Bernardo found it necessary to consult his safety by retiring from that city, on which he proceeded himself to Urbino, and sent his son to Bergamo, in the north of Italy. The favorable reception, however, which the for mer found at the court of the Duke of Urbino, in |