exclaim, What merit has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some state of preexistence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the scepter of rule and the key of riches in his puny fist; while I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?" Now, the man who recorded these bitter and distempered complaints was the author of the following exquisite lines:

"Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed:
How He, who bore in heaven the second name,
Had not on earth whereon to lay his head;
How his first followers and servants sped,
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land;

How he who lone in Patmos banished,
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,

and cheer him? Had he got no hold of the truth which conducts the soul, amid a thousand perils and trials, to serenity and repose? He had a godly father, and his early training was in the best school of religion. Had that no effect on his conduct and history? Beyond all controversy it had; but it was chiefly to deepen his wretchedness and give a keener poignancy to his sorrow. He was one of those who could admire the drapery of religion, while he neglected itself. Like Sir Walter Scott, and many more, he was shrewd and quick to detect the hypocritical pretence to godliness, but he had no discernment of the intrinsic power of truth; and hence, he was tortured to ago

Heaven's command."

Or these,

"But, when in life we 're tempest-driven,
And conscience but a canker,

A correspondence fix'd in heaven
Is sure a noble anchor."

Now the instructive point here is, that while this gifted man could scatter gems around him like the brilliants emitted by the creations of Eastern fable, he was himself "poor, and wretched, and miserable," the sport of passion,-a thing driven of the wind, and tossed. And why? Was there no anchorage for such a soul?—nothing to teach that troubled mind, that, as all things are guided by Him who is love, all things are overruled for good to them that love him? Had he never learned, or was there no one at hand to whisper, that it is possible for man, instead of indulging such violent outbreaks against the ways of God, to say, "I have learned in all circumstances in which I am, to be therewith content?" Was there no power in the words, "Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven ?" Alas for man, when poetry, or genius, or sentimentalism, however exquisite, is the only guide of his soul in trouble! In this gifted man's life we read with the clearness of a revelation of the impotence of genius, or any natural gift, to restrain the passions, or promote the real happiness of man. Power, whether intellectual or imaginative, only enables man to go more signally astray, when it is not under the control of a pure conscience and sanctified

reason.

But, amid all his gloom and despondency, had Burns no internal guide to enlighten

wished for death. Had he been utterly ignorant of religion, conscience might have been more easily appeased; but, knowing it as he did to a certain extent, yet setting it often utterly at defiance, he just heaped woes upon himself by his own right hand. The fearful gift of genius, like the fatal gift of beauty, may thus help on man's misery, unless it be controlled by the wisdom which comes from above; and even Dr. Currie was obliged at last to write of the man whom he loved and admired,"His temper now became more irritable and gloomy. He fled from himself into society, often of the lowest kind. And in such company, that part of the convivial scene in which wine increases sensibility and excites benevolence, was hurried over to reach the succeeding part, over which uncontrolled passion generally presided. He who suffers the pollution of inebriation, how shall he escape other pollution ?"

Yet Burns had a God whom he often professed to revere. He wrote new versions of some of the Psalms, he is the author of some poetical prayers, as well as of poems, which one can scarcely read without tears; and from these we may ascertain what was the religion of Burns. And at the very most it was the religion of emotion or the imagination. The holiness of God formed no element in it; and because that was left out, it was a kind of pantheistic figment which was worshiped, and not the true Jehovah. The wondrous Alp-clouds which are sometimes seen at sunset fringed with gold by his light are brilliant, no doubt, and gorgeous, but they are not the sun himself; and, in like manner, the ideal creations of

[For the National Magazine.]

THE BELL OF ST. REGIS.

BY REV. MARK TRAFTON.

BROAD and stately the St. Lawrence
Rolls its billows to the sea,
Feeling in its onward motion

Thy strong pulse, Niagara :
On its bosom nations' navies
Float, in peerless majesty.

On its swelling current rolling,

Through dark, towering Northern hills; Taking to its bosom kindly

Thousands of their laughing rills: Glorious river! floating on thee,

How the heart with rapture thrills!

Just above the Monte Royal,

There a bay of beauty lies;
Where the mountain shadows mingle
With the blue of northern skies;
And the borealis flashes,

Like the light in beauty's eyes.

Here the village of St. Regis

Circles round the bending bay; Where the Indian mother watches Her young dusky charge at play; And the buskin'd hunters gather, From the chase at close of day. Bright the eddying current breaking, Sparkles on the whiten'd shore; Now it drops like molten silver

From the Indian's flashing oar;
While oft borne on evening breezes
Comes Niagara's sullen roar.

Oft is seen, by summer's moonlight,
O'er the waters, calm and blue,
Fill'd with blushing, black-eyed lovers,
Gliding on, the bark canoe:
There love's magic spell is binding
Fast in one fond hearts and true.

A thousand wigwams thickly cluster,
Where the grassy bank retires;
A thousand stern and painted warriors
Here had lit the council fires;
Gravely round the calumet passes
Which sweet thoughts of peace inspires.

A friar from France had call'd them
Near two hundred years ago,
To listen to a message sent

From the dreaded Manitou;
And the red men calmly listen
To the oily words that flow.

Now he speaks of the Great Father
Who sends them the waving corn;
Now of the suffering Nazarene

To shame and scoffing born;
Of the garden's bloody agony—
The scourge, and cross, and thorn,

Why swells the savage bosom?

Has the scared old warrior fears? Why course those tears down dusky cheeks From eyes unused to tears?

"Tis pity stirs the stoic soul,

By the tragic tale he hears.

And now all tongues are raising
Praise to the virgin one;

And cheerful hands are raising there
A temple for her Son:

They haste to bring their choicest gifts
In many a battle won.

On a gently swelling headland
Its lofty spire they rear,

But from its tower no clanging bell
Rings out the hour of prayer;
But the priest has said, "All this is vain
Till a bell's sweet chime you hear."
Then the hunters ranged the forests,

And watch'd the beaver's haunts,
For furs, to bring the crowning gift,
A bell from La Belle France:
But what it was, is mystery-

Like the visions of a trance. In Paris gay 'twas purchased, And baptized in Notre-Dame, Then shipp'd on board the Grand Monarque To cross the rolling main:

And they waited till the leaves were sere; But they waited all in vain.

With winter came a rumor

A British cruiser bore
The Grand Monarque a prize away,
With all her treasured store;
And the silver bell is captive held

On stern New-England's shore.
The warrior loosed his bow-string,

The chase the hunter leaves,
The maiden ceased to tell her beads,
The heart of childhood grieves:
And wailings rise, as when grim death
Of the first-born son bereaves.

But the priest has traced the captive
To Deerfield's valley, where
The sacred bell is held to call

The Puritans to prayer!
"St. Francis! that a Christian bell
Such sacrilege should bear!"

Then the council-fire was lighted
At the ghostly father's call;

A thousand painted warriors came
The bell to save from thrall:
For the father says, "It burns in hell
Till the pale-faced robbers fall.

"Holy virgin sleep the faithful
While the boasting infidel
Perform their sacrilegious rites

With the tones of a Christian bell!
While it pines in iron bonds away
From the souls it loves so well.
"At the solemn hour of midnight,
As I wander forth alone,
Then come its bitter wailing
On the wintry tempests borne.
Ah!
my soul is sad within me,
For my minstrel lost I mourn.

"Why lingers then the warrior?
Why sleeps the fearless brave?
Would ye rest, had the pale foeman
Of your first-born made a slave?
In vain shall be your hunting
Till the captive bell you save."

Wild rose the startling warwhoop
From a thousand painted braves;
And round the mystic war-dance whirls
Like the whirlpool's troubled waves;
Now, wo betide the pale-face!

For blood the war-club laves.
The mystic rites are ended,

And the banded warriors go,
Through dark and tangled forests,
Through storms of sleet and snow;
Fell hate is burning in each heart,
They seek the pale-faced foe.
Not for the love of conquest,

Nor thirst for gather'd spoil;
No proud ambition moves the soul
To undergo such toil;
But to bring a captive angel
Back to a Christian soil.

On through the dreary deserts,
Through sinking bog and fen;
Midst howling wintry tempests,
Press on these fearless men:
The ghostly leader cheers the march
With many a chanted hymn.

Quiet and still the sleepers

That night in Deerfield lie;
No watch is set, no danger fear'd,
No dream that foe was nigh;

But wildly shriek'd the wintry wind,
As swept it swiftly by.

So sweetly sleeps the infant

In the mother's close embrace; An angel's call is in its ear,

For smiles are on its face;

And soundly sleeps the weary sire-
No fears his fancies trace.

A yell burst on their slumbers-
"Tis the redman's warwhoop wild;
The gleaming hatchet cleft the skull
Of the mother and her child;
The sleeping sire woke to see
His home a burning pile.

The hissing flames are spreading,
And fast the death shots fell;
While high the din of conflict rose,
For dear each life they sell ;

When wild and startling rose the tones
Of the St. Regis bell!

"The virgin calls to vengeance !"
The ghostly leader cries;

"Let the doom'd heretics now find

No mercy in your eyes;

Now on her altar here we lay
A bloody sacrifice."

The victor's shout was blending

With those strange, mysterious tones; But richer in the savage ear

Rose mingled shrieks and groans, As fast the surging flames inwrapt Those peaceful valley homes.

Now bound upon their shoulders

Is borne the wondrous bell;

As back through drifting snows they march,
With the scalp-song's echoing swell:
But Deerfield groan'd for years beneath
The woes which on it fell.

But long the way and weary,

While the bell's full weight they bore;
So with prayers and hymns 't was buried
On Champlain's ice-bound shore:
There slept the rescued captive,
Until spring return'd once more.

But tales of stirring wonder

Were spread the tribes among;
The bell had recognized its friends,
And loud its silver tongue

Had cheer'd them, when the battle raged,
And the victor's praise had sung.

So marvelous its mystic powers,

No spirit, black from hell,
But shrinks away in pale affright,
When speaks the Christian bell.
The miracles its power had wrought
No friar's tongue could tell.

When spring return'd in beauty,
With bird and blossom rare,
Then march'd a band of stalwart men,
The wonder home to bear;

And the priest with holy water goes,
To guard the treasure there.

Twilight was falling softly,

On river, bay, and lawn;

The wondering tribe, in musings deep,
Were to the forest drawn;

They had waited for their friends' return,
Since morning's earliest dawn.

But list! above the murmur

Of the distant cascade's roar

Comes breathing through the perfumed woods
Strains never heard before;

No tones like these had echo woke
Upon their pebbled shore.

Now rose the victors' shouting—

But with it, on them fell

Tones clear and sweet, such as till then Ne'er caused their hearts to swell; When sudden, from all tongues was heard, "The Bell; it is the Bell!

Down the St. Lawrence floating,

When the sun has westward roll'd, St. Regis' graceful spire is seen,

Like a shaft of burnish'd gold:

As the vesper's notes are blending
With the billows' murmuring swell,
How sweetly o'er the waters float
Thy tones, ST. REGIS BELL!

THERE is a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in work. Were he ever so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Doubt, desire, sorrow, remorse, indignation, despair itself, all these, like hell dogs, lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker as of every man; but he bends himself with free valor against his task, and all these are stilled-all these shrink murmuring far off into their caves.-Thomas Carlyle.