character of wise gayety. Come, love, look at me, and say you will go to this island, and that directly, for the sunset hour will soon be here, and unless we hasten we shall lose the fairest hours."

Chalcahual remembered afterward that, as he noticed that the day was wearing away, Lesa started and said sternly, and in a tone of command: Chalcahual, you must go then; Montezuma must have your counsels now-ask me no questions, it must be as I say. When we meet again, the gods will give us time for song and joyousness, and surely," she added with a faint smile: "We, who are married now for both time and eternity, can spare a little time for harsh duties. Go, dearest, to Montezuma, and give to him somewhat of your bravery. Your bravery and strength will be severely tested, and I know you will never sink or lose courage in upholding your country's life and honor. Do not look at me with such wonder written in your countenance; believe me, I would not tell you to go now, if it were not for our country's good, and that must now be paramount. By-and-bye we shall have time given to us by the gods to tell one the other that we are one for time and eternity. You have much to love in life, Chalcahual; if I were not with you, here is our boy to live for. Come, Chalcahual, you must go."

The noble cacique hesitated about obeying her, for he felt that she was ill. A moment ago she was cold, and her pulse seemed almost as if it had ceased beating; then her hand grew so very feverish, and her frame seemed shaken by emotion; and now her hand was icy cold again, and her words were certainly somewhat wild; but her reiterated, "go, dear Chalcahual, as you love me," decided him, and snatching a kiss from her cold cheek, he sought Montezuma-determining, however, that his stay should be very short. Had he lingered on the way, he might have heard Lesa's long and agonized scream, when she realized that she was alone with her dread purpose. The attendants, who rushed to the room in dismay at the sound, afterward told how passionately she embraced her child, and that she soon left the palace alone, and with hurried, irregular steps.

Chalcahual found Montezuma was surrounded by the Spaniards, who were endeavoring to wile the unfortunate monarch into some cheerfulness; and seeing no possibility of gaining the emperor's ear, he gladly received his commands to deliver a kindly message to some tributary, though petty king, who was then ill in the capital, for his message could soon be given, and he might return the sooner to Lesa. His way passed by the great temple, and, looking up at the immense pile. he inwardly prayed that the day might soon come when the idols of wood and of stone should be taken from their shrines, and the God of Spirit, the great Unknown God, be worshipped. As he came toward the temple upon his return, he knew by the hushed multitude assembled about the base of the pyramidal structure, that it was the hour of evening sacrifice; and upon the steps, about the centre of the pyramid, he saw a long procession of the magnificently clad priests, and heard their wild chaunts, while wreaths. of incense lightly curled above their heads, as they paced on their way. The setting sun threw a beautiful light about them, and he could clearly distinguish, by the absence of the towering panache of feathers, that it was a woman who was to be the offering, and that she was a willing sacrifice, for her step was almost as firm as that of the priests, and her hands were folded upon her breast, and her eye bent down in prayer. Chalcahual's soul sickened as he saw the pomp of this horrid procession, and yet he leaned against a tree and watched it, as higher and higher the procession mounted on their way, winding round the pyramid, and at last reached the great square upon the top, where was the stone of sacrifice

and the temples. After a short silence, he heard the faint screams of the victim-faint, because of their distance from her, and which told that, if the heart was willing, the flesh shrank. Turning to one nearest him, Chalcahual asked who it might be. The one he questioned was a stranger in the city, and knew him not; so he answered, quietly: "She is a willing sacrifice to avert the displeasure of the gods, who seem to have deserted us. Her name is Lesa, 1 believe, wife of the great warrior, Chalcahual!"

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Months and months went away, and people no longer inquired about Chalcahual, for again he was heard in the war council, and again he led the battle; but horror, fever, insanity, and the utter desolation of his heart and home had done their work, and his face was marked with deep lines of anguish, and his form wasted, and there was silver mingled in his dark hair. Battle after battle went by before the prayer was granted. He would have prayed, had it not been for the haunting echoes of Lesa's words:" These are stern duties, indeed." But at last death folded her arms about him, and when some devoted friends removed the dying man from the thickest of the fight to a quiet place to die, and would have given him water to slake the fierce thirst caused by his wounds, he turned away his head and murmured, while a sweet smile beamed upon his face:-"No, I am going to Lesa!"

THE CHESAPEAKE.

On thy brim I am standing, thou beautiful Bay !
Where in childhood as free as the zephyr I stray'd,
And as glad as the lark at the dawning of day,

In the beams of the morning disported and play'd;
With entrancing delight view'd thy waters afar,
That lay like a banner of silver unfurled,

Until glow'd in the westward the soft vesper star,

And the queen of the night shed her smile o'er the world.

With my book I have walked on thy blossoming strand,
While I sent my young thoughts down the vale of the past,
To the time, when the Red Man was lord of the land-
And his ear unattuned to the cannon's fierce blast;

Or ensconsed in these bowers of roses serene,

And woodbines from morning till eventide dwelt,
O'er the Sorrows of Harold, and Spencer's fair Queen-
At the altar of Homer enraptured have knelt.

Yes, beloved Chesapeake! ah! how oft on thy bank,
When the flowerets were smiling-the birds were all glee,
And the young pauting fawn stoop'd beside thee and drank,
The fountains were leaping through woodland and lea-
And the world was effulgent with beauty and life!

Have I roved with one dear to affection and love,
Till my soul with bright visions of glory was rife,
And my thoughts were all pinion'd in regions above!
But those days have departed-those visions are o’er—
That dear one has gone to the Land of the Bless'd-
The friends that watch'd over my slumbers of yore,

And soothed by affection my sorrowing breast,

Are roving afar, or repose in the clay;

And nought now is left midst the world's crowded mart,
Save the memory of these to enliven my way,
And illumine the void in this desolate heart.

POLITICAL PORTRAITS WITH PEN AND PENCIL.

HENRY MILLER SHREVE.

WHATEVER mitigates the severity of human toil, adds to the comfort, wealth and happiness of the laboring millions, or opens new sources of public prosperity, must always meet with ready encouragement from that party whose great mission is the elevation and improvement of our race. Entering fully into the spirit of modern civilization, and keeping pace with the growing resources of our Republic, the Democracy has always maintained its position as the party of progress and the party of the people ;ready to lend willing aid, in all legitimate forms, to every wise movement for the general good. Whilst prompt to vindicate civil and religious liberty against all assaults, open or covert, and to strike off the fetters which monopoly or selfish interests fasten upon human industry, it has not been indifferent to the scientific discoveries and useful inventions, by which, in our age, man has made the elements servants of his will, and imposed on them the burthens under which he once struggled to the prostration of his mental and physical energies. Among not the least of the many rich fruits of our political institutions, may be numbered the various applications of science to useful purposes. Yankee ingenuity has become proverbial; yet it may well be questioned whether many have considered properly the connexion of our system of government with that trait of national character. An intelligent, industrious and thrifty people, brought into daily contact with the various obstacles thickly strewn along the path of ordinary labor, could not long forego the necessary effort to remove those difficulties. Whilst we owe to the higher departments of learning most of the brilliant discoveries of modern times, we are indebted to the humble students of nature for the most useful and startling applications of physical laws to human wants. Indeed, so gradual and imperceptible have been many of the improvements of the last half century, that very few of the most learned have been able to keep pace with them, or to trace their origin and progress. Science scatters its blessings with a lavish bounty, but is most beneficent in its popular form -in giving motion to countless water-wheels and steam engines-directing the mariner over the trackless deep-sending intelligence with lightning speed along electric wires-entering, in untold shapes, into the daily pursuits of honest industry, and freeing them of their worst evils. In all this, there is much to strengthen our faith in human progress, and to give us a higher estimate of man's destiny as a social being. Political freedom, unfettered enterprise, a government of equal laws, the diffusion of knowledge, and general industry, have wrought changes of which the world dreamed not a century ago, and which should convince even the most sceptical, of the capacities of our race for indefinite improvement in all that elevates and purifies individuals or communities. It is not to the limited range of party measures, important as they unquestionably are, that Democracy confines all of its choice blessings. Its beneficent results end not with the triumphs of the hour, but extends, in ever-widening circles, to remote events, embracing in their comprehensive grasp both nations and individuals. Man is the unit of its calculations, and not society as a mass, in which individual

suffering, poverty and ignorance, in their most hideous forms, are consistent with general prosperity. Hence, he must be regarded as contributing his full share to Democratic influences, whoever he may be, that gives new value and activity to human industry, relieves it of its heaviest burthens, and enlarges the sphere of its operations and usefulness.

It is in this view of the mission of Democracy-of its principles and sympathies that we present to our readers, in this number of the Review, the engraved likeness, from a crayon sketch by D'Almaine, the Illinois artist, and the following biographical sketch, of HENRY MILLER SHREVE:

At the close of the third volume of his history of the United States, Mr. Bancroft notices, with peculiar force, that simultaneously with the signing of the treaty of Aix La Chapelle, which was supposed to settle the balance of power between contending dynasties in Europe and to give permanence to a new colonial system, a Virginia stripling, the son of a widow, was wending his toilsome way, armed with compass and chain, over the unexplored Alleghanies, the beginning of a career destined to end in the mightiest results. The student of history is familiar with the vast designs of France to found a colonial empire in North America, and her efforts to connect the Canadas, by a cordon of military posts and trading stations, with the Valley of the Mississippi and her possessions on the Gulf coast. By the enterprise of her traders and the zeal of her missionaries, she had succeeded in surrounding the English colonies, from the Kennebec on the East, the Mohawk Valley and the Lakes on the North, and the Alleghanies on the West, with numerous tribes of Indians, ever ready to commit hostilities against whatever rival should break through the charmed circle she had marked out as the boundaries of her American domain. The struggle between her and England, terminating in the war of the Austrian succession, was postponed by the treaty of 1748; but their respective colonial boundaries in the North-west were not then adjusted. On the 4th of July, four years previous, Virginia had acquired from the Iroquois a claim to the whole Northwest Territory; and whilst the representatives of Europe were arranging the preliminaries to a peace in the Old World, the Virginia stripling was opening for an unknown Republic in the New-a pathway to the richest inheritance civilization ever claimed. Thus early was the attention of our ancestors directed to the magnificent valley beyond the Alleghanies; and did Washington become the pioneer of their pregnant hopes. The peaceful beginning of his illustrious career was identified with the rising greatness of the Mississippi Valley; and, by a strange ordering of human events, his earliest military renown was won on the same spot where his first civic triumphs were gained. Along the Monongahela are the first footprints of his usefulness and glory. A leader in a new struggle for freedom, he began his career by passing the mountain barriers to Anglo-American progress, and closed it not, until his companions in arms had found new homes in the transmontane wilderness, bearing still farther westward the fruits of American civilization and liberty.

Among the many distinguished officers of the Revolution, whose sacrifices forced them, at its close, to provide new homes for themselves and families on the public domain in the far off West, was Col. Israel Shreve, commander of the Second Regiment of New Jersey Patriots, and his eldest son, John Shreve, a lieutenant in the same regiment. They were Quakers by education and from reflection. Deeply imbued with the spirit of their simple faith, they prized above all earthly blessings the right to follow unmolested the teachings of the monitor within. They had cherished with fondest zeal an ennobling faith in man's high destiny, and learned to recognize no

superior, save God alone, who spoke to them through the silent promptings of a pure and tranquil soul. The first mutterings of the gathering storm in 1776 fell upon their ears, whilst they were dwelling quietly on their little farms near Burlington, in New-Jersey. They responded boldly to its dread appeal, and, despite the admonitious of the church and its earnest lessons of non-resistance, offered their services for the battle-field. They fought gallantly at Brandywine, and throughout that severe contest for libertynever doubting that duty to their God was consistent with the holiest dictates of patriotism. So resolute and true were they in their political faith, that the father always refused to join his Quaker brethren again, at the cost of a confession that he had strayed from the path of duty in fighting for his country. He believed no such error, and would not play the hypocrite to gain communion with those to whose simple faith on other points he readily subscribed. The first tenets of his creed required him to commune immediately with the Author of his Being, and to go forth from those solemn communings.obedient to the lessons they taught. He had thus acted, and could not repent that he too had dared all for national independence.

In the year 1787, Col. Israel Shreve, with his family, migrated from Burlington County, in New Jersey, to the Monongahela Valley, and purchased the first tract of land surveyed by Washington in 1748, and known to this day as the "Washington Bottom." His fourth son, the subject of this sketch-Henry Miller Shreve-was born at the old homestead in New-Jersey, on the 21st of October, 1785, and was consequently only two years old when he crossed the Alleghanies to receive his education in the wilderness, and enter upon the theatre of his subsequent usefulness.

At that period there were only a few scattered clearings in the vast West. Twenty years previous, Daniel Boone had led the way, but immigrants followed his adventurous path with extreme reluctance. Danger and death lurked in every forest, and the track of the early pioneers in Kentucky and Ohio was ever marked with blood. The Indian tribes warred upon the advancing whites, and visited every settlement with the tomahawk and scalping-knife, from the advent of Boone to the close of Wayne's expedition. During the Revolutionary war, George Rogers Clarke had perfected the Virginia title to the North-west Territory, by conquering every military post from the Falls of the Ohio to the then Spanish fort and French settlement at St. Louis. Congress was not indifferent to the future well-being of the West, nor did it place a low estimate upon its value; for when, in the darkest hour of the conflict, the aid of Spain was proffered, on condition that the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi should be surrendered to her, the overture was calmly but firmly rejected. In 1787, the western pioneers divided their labor between their farms and the Indian wars. Most of them had been well trained in border warfare, and were of tried daring. None others would have ventured into the remote wilderness, cut off from former friends and potent aid by intervening mountains, which but few wagons had attempted to cross. Such a severe school was well adapted to the education of the young in all the sterner lessons of life. With fathers, who had either grappled with the Indian in deadly strife, or fought against the disciplined legions of England on many a well-contested field,-surrounded, too, by ceaseless dangers from their infancy,-the young men of the frontier became early inured to hardship, skilled in the use of the rifle, quick to discern danger and to repel it, and accustomed to rely on their own resources for safety and success in every enterprise. The whole white population West of the Alleghanies could not at that time have exceeded one hundred thousand.

Whilst history has done at least partial justice to the adverturous spirits