Where darkness dwells with frightful moan,
And bones and blood around are strown-
The bones and blood of men:

So on the pedregal's stern brow,
With doubtful front we lay;

Between were cragged rocks and rifts,
And oozing streams and slippery drifts,
A labyrinthian way.

We crossed it at the dead of night,
'Mid gloom and falling rain,
While now and then across our path
The roaring guns' illumined wrath
Came lighting up the plain.

Ah! many a heart was sad that night,
And many a soldier sighed,
For never in such evil case
Had men met Danger face to face
With Grim DEATH at his side.

"T was dark without and dark within;
Our fortune's hope was gone;
When rose the CESAR of that field,
One born to conquer, not to yield;
He came, he saw, he won!*

The rain has ceased; the early clouds
Rise from the mountains dun;
Slow, bright'ning from the eastern vale,
Broad streaks of white and gold impale
The pathway of the sun.

And silently we gain their rear

In the dim morn like a ghost;
Our 'hope' is organized, and flies,
While yet no sound is heard to rise
From either watching host.

One moment! Like ten thousand drums

The musketry rolls out;

While like the bass-drum's booming knells,
The cannons' diapason swells,

With many a mingled shout.

A gallant storm; a thousand shouts!

And lo! the foes fly fast;

In maddest haste, in wild alarms,

They break their ranks, they leave their arms,

Like chaff before the blast.

Ah! goodly prisoners and spoil

Were heaped in precious store;

Statesmen and Presidents were there,

And gallant dead with raven hair,

Lay weltering in their gore.

GENERAL PERSIFOR SMITH, by the absence of ranking-officers, fell in command, and upon kim devolved all the responsibility, as to him belongs the glory, of this entire action.

But let me tell you more than all
What made our pulses bound:
There, shining in that early light,
As once at Buena Vista's fight,

Our captured guns were found.*

Then, soldiers bronzed and grimly-faced,
Gave strange emotion flow,
And tears of joy fell thick and fast,
To greet these long-lost friends at last,
And turn them on the foe.

Sound, trumpet! for the victors! joy and gladness
Do well become the valiant and the brave.
Wail, trumpet! for the dying! tears and sadness
Fall nobly on the Christian soldier's† grave.

OUR OLD CHURCH.

A SKETCH FROM AN ACTUALITY.

BY O. D. TIMEKEEPER, GENT

In my memory, looking back through many years, our old church stands out in as definite relief as yonder maple, now beginning to drop its leaves, does against this pale autumnal sky.

It is the most prominent object in my boyish remembrance. I am glad that it is so. I thought it then the noblest and most wonderful piece of architecture that the world could show. I think so now. Since those days of simplicity, I have been permitted to doze under the influence of faultless moral homilies in many churches of modern ease and luxury-brayely-upholstered, cheerfully-furnished palaces of religion, places of fashionable resort;' I have stood on the tessellated floors of grey piles, which counted their age by centuries, when the blare of the tumultuous organ rolled its heavy echoes through the groined arches, and the clear sunlight, streaming through the storied windows, glorified the translucent pictures of ancient saints and martyrs, and the swelling jubilate of the choir mingled itself somehow with the tombs of knights around me, with the translucent pictures; and the sense of ages crowding upon me, until my soul was lifted up to visions of long-departed kings and churchmen, of early days of toil, agony, and triumph, of martyrdom, and of ineffable glory; yet from all these I have turned joyfully to the memory of that rude edifice, where first I listened to a public

*Two six-pounders, which after a brave struggle had been lost to the Mexicans by Lieutenant O'BRIEN of the Fourth Artillery at Buena-Vista, were re-taken at Contreras by a company of the same regiment.

CAPTAIN CHARLES HANSON fell at Contreras. In announcing it in despatches, General SCOTT says: 'He was not more distinguished for gallantry, than for modesty, morals, and piety.,

prayer, and for the first time wondered at the stateliness of Old Hundred. Since then, a confusion of sights and appearances has gathered about my wanderings; statelier shrines, fairer sanctuaries, and more imposing ceremonies, but my heart is true to that. I say I am glad that it is so. I hold it of no small importance that the boy, as he launches into the turmoil of life, with all its selfishness and beguiling heresy, can turn his eye then, and ever after, back to that old land-mark in the fair, or perhaps cloudy field of his memory; and, amid all the doubt, and temptation, and bitterness of life, his eye can meet one stable and fixed object, a type of the simple faith of his fathers. It is second only to that other sanctuary — home. Indeed, I little envy the boy or man, whose heart is not bound by threads that will now and then draw him back to either of these.

Do not think, O reader, too readily snuffing in the air some 'wind of doctrine,' that, mounted in the old pulpit, and protected and over-shaded by the sounding-board, I am inveigling you into any manner of preaching. I am not partial to lay sermons; and mine, I fear, would lack two essentials to an effective discourse piety and an audience!

You who are so fortunate as to have seen any of those puritanic 'meeting-houses' that were once so frequent all over the New-England States, and but few of which remain, will know at once what my church was. I say my church, because the venerable building was long since sold by its ambitious proprietors, and pulled down, and I do not know but I am the only capitalist who cares to make any investment in, or that there is any one who will dispute my title to, its memory.

It was a very large, square structure, with perhaps no more pretension to architectural merit than an ample barn, only that it was surmounted and renowned by a most wonderful steeple and spire. Two huge foldingdoors (without the preface of a vestibule,) opened directly into the main aisle, which led straight to the pulpit. The pulpit was elevated to nearly a level with the deep galleries, that ran round three sides of the building, and it had, in my eyes, all the sanctity of the 'holy of holies.' No place has seemed so sacred to me since. No temptation could have induced me to enter it; I think I would sooner have gone past the graveground alone in the night. It rose in a solid body from the floor, and had no exterior stair-case. Over-awed by its sounding-board, there it stood like an impregnable castle, against which the artillery of this world might brawl in vain. Two doors from below opened into it; one, I was informed, led by a flight of steps to the sacred seat itself; and the other, into a closet of incomprehensible darkness, where such boys as grew unruly on the Lord's day, were confined. If the seat of the desk sym

bolized to me the summit of holiness, this closet had all the terrors of that place of outer darkness.' In the fashionable pulpits of these days, I think, one will not often be reminded of the existence of any such

terror.

Upon one week-day, I remember to have ventured into the church with a boy older than myself. I know how I trembled at my presumption, and how my affright rose to little short of terror, when the audacious boy opened the pulpit door, and went a little way up the stair-case. How thankful I was for his escape; and we both scampered out of the

church, waking the slumbering echoes with our hurrying feet; nor did we feel quite assured of our safety, until we had slammed the massive door behind us, with a jar that seemed to arouse great solemn echoes which we could hear roaming about among the deserted pews.

After the fashion of all the churches of that period, the pews were square, with a single row of seats about the sides, so that the members of the family sat facing each other; and the head of the household could keep a watchful eye on the younger branches, who were somewhat disposed to let their attention wander to their young neighbors, who were penned in in like manner. The seats were furnished with hinges, and were always turned back when we stood up to prayer, so that I thought it fine fun, and a sort of relief to the monotony, when they came clattering down, in a sort of chorus to the amen of the preacher.

As the pulpit was so much elevated, and the galleries projected so far over the pews, those in the remote ones could hardly see their preacher; yet this was of little moment, as people went to divine worship in those days, rather to hear than to see; and the stentorian voice of the preacher was well fitted to give any one within a quarter of a mile a pretty good idea of sound, if they had not the quality of deafness remarkably developed.

Of the choir that played so brave a part in the Sabbath's service, I now remember little, except that their tunes were very orthodox, and were sung very loud. Indeed, I believe that loudness was then, and always had been, the most remarkable feature in the music that rose from behind the red curtains of that old gallery. I find in the early records of the church, that my great-grandfather was fined five Yankee shillings for singing too loud a tenor! Yet it seems this attempt to convert his notes into hard currency did not abate his enthusiasm a jot, as the record farther shows that he was removed from the choir altogether, 'in that he maketh so great a noise with his mouth, which befitteth rather the brawling of sinful convocations than the House of the Lord!'

The building, as I have said, was large and somewhat rude, yet its timbers were all of massive proportions, and of sufficient substance to build at least three modern edifices. It was of durable and permanent construction, built to stand for ever, not unlike the plain, strong faith and doctrines of its builders. I may be wrong. I generally am in such matters- yet I cannot but think that the airy and unsubstantial fabrics of these days are also emblematical of the religious notions of their builders; that they are liable to the remodelling of every fancy, or even to be blown to the ground by a strong wind.

But the tall spire: ah, that was the eighth wonder of the world to me; rather, it was the one wonder, for I was then in peaceful ignorance that any other part of the earth had ever set up a claim to any. It was surmounted by a fish; a most miraculous piece of carving. I don't know but it is heresy for me to say it, but I think a fish might much more appropriately be set to tell the direction of the marine currents, than of those in the air; yet, for all this, I hold myself ready to defend the use of this symbol by our forefathers, (who were much addicted to the Newfoundland fisheries, I am told,) against the pretensions of the flaunting rooster,' which has so frequently been set upon spires as a

triumphant proclamation of the superiority of that church over all neighboring sects and religions whatsoever.

I think a very pretty moral might be drawn from the somewhat modern practice of affixing weather-cocks to our church-spires. It used to be thought sufficient that the spire should point heavenward, adorned only by a plain ball, or a simple cross - an emblem of our faith, which I hope the 'rooster' is not, nor the fish neither, for that matter. But our forefathers were practical men. They could not 'afford' to rear the spire only as a beautiful object in the landscape. The church must render itself useful on other days, as well as the Sabbath. The spire should not stand idle. At least, it could tell which way the wind was.' It is an idea every way worthy of the sharp business aspect of the time. I confess, however, it is well it should be so; for the same large class of men who would be seldom led to the Bible, did it not have about it properties grateful to a razor, would as seldom look at a church, could they not steal from it the secret of the weather. The effect is, that our religion, or the place where we keep it, is looked up to. But I wander. It was a foolish fancy of mine- I give it for what it is worth- that, whether it was fixed by rust, or by association, or by a prevailing wind toward that quarter, the fish in question always pointed toward Cape Cod. Yet the greatest marvel to me was to understand how the fish got there. And it was not until years after, that I met a passage in a heathen poet which seemed to afford some clue to the riddle. He is singing of the great flood in the age of Deucalion and Pyrrha :

'OMNE quum Proteus pecus egit altos
Viscere montes,

Piscium et summa genus hæsit ulmo.'

It must have been in some more recent freshet, that the race of fishes not only lodged in the branches of the loftiest elms, but also impaled them. selves upon so many church-spires. If any think this is a vein of trifling ill-assorting with the gravity of the theme, I beg to assure them, that I intend it not as such; and that I am as ready as any one to exclaim, in strains of real eloquence, 'Venerable fish! you have come down to us from a former generation!'

I am convinced, if I neglected to mention him, I should do injustice to the memory of a character who filled a scarcely less prominent place in my boyish world than the minister himself, and who certainly was regarded with no less awe: I refer to the TITHING-MAN. He was the public conserver of order and decorum on the Sabbath. Our tithingman was of burly, and, it seemed to me, giant frame, with cruel countenance, and a great shock of bushy hair. He carried in his hand, as a sort of baton of office, a staff or pole, not less than ten feet in length. During the service, he usually sat in the gallery, with his sharp eyes always on the alert for offenders; and woe be to the boy who indulged in whispering, or in unfortunate rustling of hymn-book leaves! The keeper of silence immediately descended upon him, with his terrible staff, and either hurried the urchin to his own seat, or administered such a rebuke as well grounded the boy in sanctified decorum for ever after. And at the noon-intermission he seemed every where present, striding about like Polyphemus with his pine-tree, trunca manum pinus regit,'