pected letters, that he might be able to impart happiness by telling the news, But every body said the Dominie was a good man. He certainly could speak in Latin, and I have heard him use words that I suspected were Greek, for they were neither Dutch nor English; and in preparing himself for his sacred office, he had cultivated an acquaintance with the Hebrew. With such men for leaders, the whole company seemed to be quite above suspicion.

There were others of the company, who, although equally wellknown, were not equally sure guaranties of the good intentions of the party. Among them Cobus recognised an old associate, both in idleness and labor, Staats Van Zuyle; a hard drinker, but still a very convenient member of the community, as he was always on hand to do small jobs, or to swell any gathering that might be made for some idle or mad adventure. There too was Bartus Lent, who every body said was not lazy, but 'disinclined to work.' He could not be induced for any consideration to subject himself to the drudgery of regular labor, but he would travel any distance, and submit to any amount of fatigue, if engaged in some outlandish undertaking. At the rear of the procession, carrying a spade and crow-bar, came black Harry; who, being somewhat club-footed, might have been mistaken by a stranger for another kind of personage; but Cobus knew him, and had no doubt as to his identity. The design of all this was quite beyond the fisherman's powers of conjecturing; but in spite of his firm confidence in the integrity of the leaders of the band, his mind inclined to dark and painful misgivings.

What they did after they had passed out of sight is of course unknown; but it was rumored that the usual incantations were tried without success. Probably the conjurations were not skilfully performed; or, more likely still, in repeating the mystic formula the dominie let fall some word of Hebrew, which the devil dreads as much as he does holy-water. However this may have been, it is pretty certain that they entirely failed in their attempts to raise the devil.

Not so, however, with the other company, who had gone up to the top of the hill, and were there lurking in silence while these were engaged at the water-side below them. But their silence did not continue long. First came a deep and dismal groan, as if from some sad captive confined in the bowels of the hill. This was repeated again and again, becoming at each repetition more wild and dismal; the voice seemed also to magnifyy itself into that of a multitude, while every dell and mountain-side echoed back the mournful cadences. To this succeeded thundering and crashing sounds along the hill-sides, with sudden flashes of fire, and all ending with a violent splashing in the water. These phenomena were frequently repeated, and each seemed more terrible than its predecessor; and at every plunge into the flood, a yell would arise from the hill-top, as if ten thousand elves were there holding their orgies.

At this point the 'Squire suggested that perhaps they were detected in their designs, and that some evil-minded persons had gone up to the top of the hill and were tumbling down rocks upon them ; but

the Dominie was inclined to think there was something preternatural about the business; he suspected these thundering missives were nothing less than the demons themselves, done up into fardels, and coming to protect their stores. Things were now rapidly coming to a crisis; fight and flight were the only alternatives that remained to them; and who could fight with invisible enemies, that came tumbbling from the mountain like avalanches, and were detected only by their terrible thunderings and the gleams of their own unsteady light? What was said in the council-of-war called on the occasion was never reported; but a flight was resolved upon, and at once executed.

These strange transactions had all been carefully noted by Cobus De Grau, who had come down to the margin of the marsh, and was there sitting upon a great stone, awaiting the issue of the matter in the most intense bewilderment. There was he sitting, deeply wrapped in thought, and listening intently to each successive rumbling and crashing sound from the mysterious bodies, if bodies they were, that had so disconcerted the minds of his friends, when he was suddenly aroused from his reveries by the rapid approach of the whole company, who came running pell mell, as if the old keeper had been upon their heels. 'Squire Stoutenberg led the way, alike forgetful of the staid dignity of his character and the years that had passed since he had put his powers of flight to the test. Dominie Van Der Huyden was close behind, having abandoned all confidence in his incantations, and for the moment having no faith in Hebrew. Then came a promiscuous crowd, elbowing and jostling each other, as if assured that indeed the devil would take the hindmost.' Last of all came poor Harry, who was quite unable to hold way with his companions in their flight, though his powers of locomotion were far from contemptible. They soon gained the bridge, and were about to escape from the enchanted region, when they encountered a new obstacle. The tide had risen over the road and made the passage difficult and perilous; but the mole at the road-side was still above the water, affording a safe but narrow path to the high ground. All now seemed likely to end well, for most of the company had proceeded nearly over, and poor Harry was coming rapidly across the bridge, when oh, horribile dictu! first a frightful blaze burst from the water near the farther abutment of the bridge, followed by a deafening peal of thunder that bellowed up and down the creek, and awakened a hundred echoes among the neighboring hills and more distant mountains; then fire was communicated to the bridge, which travelled with fearful rapidity from end to end, at first illuminating the whole region, and then leaving it in ten-fold greater darkness, filled with a dense smoke, and fumes of burning brimstone. At first it was presumed that Harry had been carried off by the explosion to satisfy the expectant keeper of the hidden gold; but he soon convinced them to the contrary. Forgetting at once his lameness and love of dry feet, he dashed onward through fire and smoke, measuring three yards at a bound, and splashing through the water like a high-pressure steamboat, till he gained the dry land and was beyond the reach of harm.

So remarkable an affair could not transpire without eliciting some

attention, especially as domestic news was always scarce in the village, and consequently in demand. But the mystery was never fully explained. 'Squire Stoutenberg would never permit himself to be questioned relative to the matter, and the Dominie, though one would as soon have expected a sieve would hold water as that he would keep a secret, was nevertheless wonderfully oracular on that subject; and even poor Harry would seem wondrous wise when quizzed about it, and would answer all questions on the subject by a knowing shake of the head, and an unusually large display of the white portions of his eyes.

On the other hand, a rumor obtained currency, to the effect that the first company was made up of some of the young men of the village, who had obtained some intimation of the designs of their neighbors, and had taken this method to play a practical joke upon them. These, it was said, had tumbled rocks down the hill upon the adventurers at the water-side, and by their groans and shrieks had frightened them into a frenzy that resulted in a headlong retreat. At the bridge a train of gun-powder had been laid, by firing which the alarm of one party and the amusement of the other were completed.

This rumor, though it afforded an ingenious and plausible explanation of the case, rested on no sufficient authority, and was not universally believed. There are yet a good many persons to be found who believe that there is more in the world than its philosophy has ever dreamed of, and who will believe whatever may be proved to them by sufficient evidence. So ended this renowned adventure of the Last of the Money-Diggers.

STANZAS .

TRANSLATED FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ, BY DR. DICKSON, OF LONDON.

It is spring; yet with all the soft sweetness it brings,
One kiss of my love were worth twenty such springs;
Had she breathed on that rose, had she filled the wine up,

I had joyed in the odor and welcomed the cup!

Take the wine, take the flowers; now their charms are forgot;
For what is the bower where the bulbul is not?

The cypress invites me with long floating hair,

But the bird of my languishing heart is not there!

How delightful to gaze on her ravishing lip,

Yet what were the pain if forbidden to sip!

For the flame of her dark eye would scorch up the heart,
If not soothed by the balm which her kisses impart.

What boots it for HAFIZ, whose life is a breath,
To say for her sake he could welcome even death?
Since for one happy glance of her love-lighted eye
Even angels, who die not, with gladness would die !

THE MOURNIN G

F OR BI ON.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OP MOSOHUS.

BY REV. JAMES GILBORNE LYONS, LL. D.

THE poet BION was born at Smyrna, on the banks of the Meles, a river which HOMER's residence or birth in Ionia had before ennobled. He wrote pastorals in the Doric dialect, lived in Sicily, and died by poison about the third century before CHRIST. The idyl of MoscHus, which laments his death, though rather ambitious in its style, is justly celebrated for its poetical imagery. It is also well fitted, by its tone of melancholy despair, to show us how much revelation has done for man in scattering the darkness which hung over the life to come. The present translator has closely followed the text given by TAUCHNITZ in the Leipsic edition, departing from it however so far as to make the poet spoken of in the ninety-first line of the Greek, ANAOREON, and not SIMONIDES.

MOURN, mourn, ye leafy dells and Doric waters!

Ye rivers! weep for BION, loved and lost.

Be sad, ye plants! ye wide old forests! groan.

Breathe out your scents, O flowers! from drooping clusters.
Blush sorrowfully, ye roses! Bow thy head

In beauteous wo, thou starred anemoné!

Sweet hyacinth! make now thy letters speak,
And let those characters, so fraught with grief,
More thickly fall on every shining petal.
BION, the peerless melodist, is dead!

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!
Ye nightingales! complaining in dark leaves,
Tell the Sicilian streams of Arethusa,
The shepherd BION lives and sings no more:
Say that with him our mirth and music fled;
Say that with him the Doric song expired.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!
Ye swans of Strymon! mourn beside your waves.
Chant, with low voice, a melancholy strain;
A wild and liquid strain, like that which BION
Was wont to sing with lips that rivalled yours.
Go, tell the young and fair Eagrian virgins,
Tell all the nymphs by Bistonis' clear lake,
The ORPHEUS of the Dorian isle is dead.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!
The darling of the herds no longer sings:
He sits no more beneath the broad lone oaks,
Weaving his verse, but, in the realms below,
Warbles for PLUTO Some Letheän hymn.
Our hills are mute; the wandering heifer pines,
And spurns the pastures of the fresh cool glade.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!
APOLLO wept himself thy speedy fate;
APOLLO wept thee, BION! Satyrs grieved,
And dark PRIAPUS made loud moan for thee.

PAN seeks thy lay with sighing; fountain Nymphs
Did sob for thee in every green wood shade,
And all their flowing crystal turned to tears.

In the tall rocks ECHO deplores thy silence,
And sports not with thy strain: at thy departure
The trees all shed their fruits, the flowers all withered,
The milk no longer streamed from the mild ewe,
The honey from the hive: in the waxed cell
It darkly perished. Who would gather sweets
In that black hour when thy rare sweetness fled?

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!
Never beside the murmuring ocean-beach
Did dolphins grieve so loudly; never yet
So loudly did the plaintive nightingale

Mourn on the cliffs; never in such deep sorrow
Screamed the shrill swallows on the desert mountains.
Not thus for sad ALCYONE called CEYX:

Not the swift ciris on the gleaming billows,

Nor that strange bird which flies round MEMNON's tomb, With dirges for AURORA's warrior son,

In fragrant valleys of the golden morn,

Ever sent up such piercing sounds of wo,

As when they mourned for BION's early death.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!
The nightingales and swallows which he charmed,
And taught to speak, sat gathered on the boughs,
Lamenting with each other: sorrowing birds
Of meaner tribes replied: nor ye forget,

In saddening tones, O doves! to mourn his fall.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!
Who now will draw glad sounds from thy mute pipe,
Thou thrice deplored? Who now will touch the reeds
That whisper still of thy sweet lips and breath,
And still give out faint murmurs of thy lay?
We yield that pipe to PAN, though PAN, perchance,
Will fear to press thy syrinx with his mouth,
Lest he be judged to strive in vain with thee.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!

Lorn GALATEA weeps thy music hushed;

She that once came, entranced by those wild numbers, And sat beside thee on the wave-worn shore:

Thou wast no piping CYCLOPS: him in haste

Fair GALATEA fled, but smiled on thee,
Rising in beauty from the foaming deep;
And now, forgetful of her ocean-caves,

She sits in tears upon the lonely sands,

Or tends the flock which droops since thou art gone.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!
Shepherd! the Muses' gifts all fled with thee.
With thee the joys and hopes of youth departed,
And sorrowing Cupids weep around thy tomb.
VENUS loves thee far more than that warm kiss
With which she kissed ADONIS as he died.

Begin your wail, begin, Sicilian Muses!
Most musical of streams! this second pain,
This pain renewed, O Meles! must be thine.
Thy glorious HOMER perished long ago,
THAT SWEET MOUTH OF CALLIOPE; that son