UPON THE DEATH OF A COUNTRY CLERGYMAN.

FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND.

IF in departed souls the power remain
Their earthly homes to visit once again,
Not in the night thy visit wilt thou make,
When only sorrowing and yearning wake;
No! in a Summer morning's light serene,
When not a cloud upon the heaven is seen,
When high the golden harvest waves its head,
All interspersed with flowers of blue and red,
Thou, as of yore, among the fields wilt walk,
Greeting each reaper with kind, friendly talk.

A SONG.

BY FRANCES S. OSGOOD.

THEY tell me I was false to thee;
But they are false, who say it;
The vow I made was pure and free,
And time can ne'er betray it.

I laid my heart on virtue's shrine,
I loved truth, honor, kindness;

I love them still; -I thought them thine!
Too soon I wept my blindness.

'Tis thou wert false to them and me; My worship still I cherish;

My love, still true, has turned from thee, To find them, or to perish!

THE EXILES OF ACADIA.

BY GEORGE BANCROFT.

[THIS extract from the second part of Bancroft's History of the United States,' has, at our request, been furnished by the author. The unpublished work from which it is taken, will form two volumes, and include the entire history of the American Revolution.-PUB.]

WHILE Braddock was preparing to penetrate the forests of Western Pennsylvania, the sovereignty of England was established in Acadia. The peninsular region

- abounding in harbors and in forests, rich in its ocean fisheries and in the product of its rivers, near to a continent that invited to the chase and the fur-trade, having, in its interior, large tracts of alluvial soil - had become dear to its inhabitants, who beheld around them the graves of their ancestors for several generations. It had been the oldest French colony in North America. There the Bretons had built their dwellings sixteen years before the Pilgrims reached the shores of New England. With the progress of the respective settlements, sectional jealousies and religious bigotry had renewed their warfare; the offspring of the Massachusetts husbandmen were taught to abhor "popish cruelties," and "popish superstitions;" while Roman-catholic missionaries had so persevered in propagating the faith

of their church among the villages of the Abenakis, that the wigwams of the savages contained enthusiasts, who mingled veneration for catholic christianity and France, with an unrelenting hatred of the English.

At last, after repeated conquests and restorations, by the treaty of Utrecht, Acadia, or Nova Scotia, remained with Great Britain. Yet the name of Annapolis, and a feeble English garrison, and the emigration of hardly five or six English families, were nearly all that marked the supremacy of England. The old inhabitants remained on the soil which they had subdued, hardly conscious that they had changed their sovereign. They still loved the language and the usages of their forefathers; and their religion was graven upon their souls in letters, that time could not efface. They promised submission to England; but such was the love with which France had inspired them, that they would not fight against its standard or renounce its name. Though conquered, they were French neutrals.

For nearly forty years from the peace of Utrecht they had been forgotten or neglected by the European world; and had prospered in their seclusion. No tax-gatherer was known in their villages; no tribute of any kind was exacted of them; no magistrate dwelt among them. The parish priest made their records, and had charge of wills, and regulated their successions. Their little disputes were settled among themselves, with scarcely an instance of an appeal to English authority at Annapolis. The pastures were covered with their herds and flocks; their joint labor redeemed from the sea the alluvial marshes; and by dykes, raised by extraordinary efforts of social industry, shut out the rivers and the tide, and

reclaimed large tracts of exuberant fertility. Long afterwards the remains of their works were pointed out with admiration; and the meadows are seen, where the tides were excluded, and richest grasses waved in security, or fields of wheat yielded fifty and thirty fold at the harvest. Their houses were built in clusters, not far asunder; neatly constructed and comfortably furnished; and, round them, all kinds of domestic fowls abounded. With the spinning-wheel and the loom, their women made, of flax from their own fields, of fleeces from their own flocks, coarse but sufficient clothing. The few foreign luxuries that were coveted, could be obtained from Annapolis or Louisburgh, in return for furs, or wheat, or cattle. Their exchanges were chiefly by way of barter; very little coin circulated among them; no custom-house was known on their coasts, and paper money had not extended its curse to their peaceful abodes.

Thus were the Acadians happy in their neutrality, and in the abundance which they drew from the land that was their father-land. They formed, as it were, one great family; a natural benevolence anticipated beggary; and the needy went as guests from house to house. Their morals were of an unaffected purity. Love, the instinct of the young, was sanctified and calmed by the universal custom of early marriages. They were all sincere catholics, and to them marriage was a holy sacrament. The neighbours of the community would assist the new couple to raise their cottage, while the wilderness offered land enough to the industry of the young farmer. Their numbers increased; and in 1749, the colony, which had begun only as the trading station of a company, with a monopoly of the fur trade, counted