Mohammed's Mosque forsees it's final fires;

And Rome's more lordly Temple day by day expires.

As o'er proud Asian realms the traveller winds,
His manly spirit, hush'd by terror, falls;
When some deceased town's lost site he finds,
Where ruin wild his pondering eye appals;
Where silence swims along the moulder'd walls,
And broods upon departed Grandeur's tomb.
Through the lone, hollow aisles sad echo calls,
At each slow step; deep sighs the breathing gloom,
And weeping fields, around, bewail their Empress' doom.

Where o'er an hundred realms, the throne uprose,
The screech-owl nests, the panther builds his home;
Sleep the dull newts, the lazy adders doze,
Where pomp and luxury danc'd the golden room.
Low lies in dust the sky-resembled dome;
Tall grass around the broken column waves;
And brambles climb, and lonely thistles bloom:
The moulder'd arch the weedy streamlet laves,
And low resound, beneath, unnumber'd sunken graves.

Soon fleets the sun-bright Form, by man ador'd;
And soon man's dæmon chiefs from memory fade.
In musty volume, now must be explored,
Where dwelt imperial nations, long decay'd.

The brightest meteors angry clouds invade;
And where the wonders glitter'd, none explain.

Where Carthage, with proud hand, the trident sway'd,
Now mud-wall'd cots sit sullen on the plain,

And wandering, fierce, and wild, sequester'd Arabs reign.

In thee, O Albion! queen of nations, live

Whatever splendours earth's wide realms have known;
In thee proud Persia sees her pomp revive;

And Greece her arts; and Rome her lordly throne:
By every wind, thy Tyrian fleets are blown;

Supreme, on Fame's dread roll, thy heroes stand;
All ocean's realms thy naval scepter own;

Of bards, of sages, how august thy band!
And one rich Eden blooms around thy garden'd land.

But O how vast thy crimes! Through Heaven's great year,
When few centurial suns have trac'd their way;

When southern Europe, worn by feuds severe;
Weak, doating, fallen, has bow'd to Russian sway;
And setting glory beam'd her farewell ray;

To wastes, perchance, thy brilliant fields shall turn;
In dust, thy temples, towers, and towns decay;
The forest howl, where London's turrets burn;
And all thy garlands deck thy sad, funereal urn.

Some land, scarce glimmering in the light of fame,
Scepter'd with arts, and arms (if I divine)
Some unknown wild, some shore without a name,
In all thy pomp, shall then majestic shine.

As silver-headed Time's slow years decline,
Not ruins only meet th' enquiring eye:

Where round yon mouldering oak vain brambles twine,
The filial stem, already towering high,

Erelong shall stretch his arms, and nod in yonder sky.

PSALM CXXXVII

[From Dwight's revision of Watts's Psalms]

I love thy kingdom, Lord,
The house of thine abode,

The church, our blest Redeemer sav'd
With his own precious blood.

I love thy Church, O God!
Her walls before thee stand,

Dear as the apple of thine eye,
And graven on thy hand.

If e'er to bless thy sons

My voice, or hands, deny,

These hands let useful skill forsake,
This voice in silence die.

If e'er my heart forget
Her welfare, or her wo,
Let every joy this heart forsake,
And every grief o'erflow.

For her my tears shall fall;
For her my prayers ascend;

To her my cares and toils be given,
'Till toils and cares shall end.

Beyond my highest joy

I prize her heavenly ways,

Her sweet communion, solemn vows,
Her hymns of love and praise.

Jesus, thou Friend divine,

Our Saviour and our King,
Thy hand from every snare and foe
Shall great deliverance bring.

Sure as thy truth shall last,
To Zion shall be given

The brightest glories, earth can yield,

And brighter bliss of heaven.

THE ORIGIN OF A NAME

[From the "Travels in New-England and New-York"]

In this township there are two mountains; one of which is named Mount Cuba, from a dog which bore that name, and was killed upon it by a bear. The other was named Mount Sunday, Seven men, one of them a Mr. Palmer, went into the Eastern part of the township, and, in the language

from the following fact.

of the country, were lost; that is, they became wholly uncertain of the course, which they were to pursue, in order to regain their habitations. Palmer insisted, that it lay in a direction, really Eastward, although he believed it to point Westward. His companions, judging more correctly, determined to take the opposite course. In their progress, they passed over this mountain. The day, on which they ascended it, was the Sabbath; and the mountain has, from this circumstance, derived a name, which it will probably retain, so long as the posterity of the English colonists inhabit this country. The six men, returning home, and not finding Palmer, went again in search of him. In a place, two miles Eastward of the spot where they had left him, they found him engaged in a contest with a bear; which had attacked him the preceding evening, on his way. As the bear was advancing towards him, he was fortunate enough to procure a club; with which he had been able to defend himself, until he made good his retreat to a neighbouring tree. The bear followed him as he ascended the tree; but his club enabled him to keep the animal at bay, until his companions came up, and delivered him from the impending destruction.

I presume you will wonder at my mentioning these trifling incidents. I have mentioned them because they are trifles. The names of mountains, rivers, and other distinguished natural objects, both here and in England, have often seemed to me strange and inexplicable. The little incidents, which I have mentioned, furnish, I suspect, a probable explanation of this enigmatical subject, in a great proportion of cases. Events, sometimes more, and sometimes even less, significant than these, have, I am persuaded, been the origin of a great part of those odd appellations, given to so many of the objects in question. Among the proofs, that this opinion is just, the oddity, and the vulgarity of the appellations, and the speedy oblivion, into which the causes of them have fallen, are, to me, satisfactory. Their oddity proves them to have been derived from incidents, aside from the ordinary course of things: their vulgarity shews them to have been given by persons in humble life; and the fact, that the sources from which they have sprung have been so soon forgotten, evinces their insignificancy.

JOEL BARLOW

[Joel Barlow, the third in the most illustrious trio of "Hartford Wits," seems to have had many of the characteristics of the traditional Yankee. He was born in Connecticut in 1754, and was graduated at Yale College in 1778. Like many other collegians he served in the army during vacations, and is said to have fought at White Plains. After his graduation he studied law, then turned his attention for six weeks to divinity, and at the end of that time became chaplain of a Massachusetts brigade. In the few years immediately after the close of the war he practised law, founded a newspaper, edited a Psalm book for the Congregational Church of Connecticut, and conducted a book-store. Meanwhile he had published, besides his version of the Psalms, "The Prospect of Peace," a poem delivered at the time of his graduation, and "The Vision of Columbus." Both these were afterward utilized in the construction of the "Columbiad." In 1788 Barlow went abroad as agent of a western land company. In England he wrote "Advice to the privileged Orders," in prose, and "The Conspiracy of Kings,” in verse. The first-named of these works led to his expulsion from the country, and he went to France, where he took an active part in politics. It was while he was on a political mission in Savoy that he wrote "Hasty Pudding," his mock-heroic tribute to a favorite dish that was unexpectedly set before him. Later he engaged in business in Paris, and served as United States consul to Algiers. His fondness for French ideas in politics and reli. gion made him an object of suspicion in his native state, where Federalism and orthodoxy were dominant. It is said that the Congregational Church of Connecticut discarded his version of the Psalms as the work of an apostate. When in 1805 he returned to America, he took up his residence near Washington. Two years later he published the "Columbiad." In 1811 he was appointed minister to France, and the next year he died in Poland, where he had gone to meet Napoleon.

The "Vision of Columbus," which Barlow published in 1787, is a poem in nine books of heroic couplet. Columbus, despondent in prison, is taken by an angel to a height where he sees all the continent that he has discovered, and its future passes in vision before him. The "Columbiad," which appeared twenty years later, tells the same story at greater length in ten books. Barlow presented the unfortunate spectacle of an author becoming more bombastic and sophomoric as he grew older. By 1807 he had become a devotee of reformed spelling, and had grown fond of pedantic words, many of them of his own coinage. These peculiarities, together with the epic form and title of the new work, the unabashed references to Homer and Virgil in