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deep in the lovely temples of the beautiful Alice Johnson! In the very same instant, also, that the fatal weapon was thus buried in the head of the fair and innocent captive, a bullet sped to his heart by an eagle-eyed and unerring rifleman, who comprehended his purpose as he sprang from his hiding-place, brought the furious Mackwah, with a convulsive bound, his full length upon the earth. The vindictive warrior pointed with exultation to the bleeding victim at his side, as his body was writhing in the last struggle with death; and he died "grinning horribly a ghastly smile."

But who can paint the sufferings of the twice bereaved parent, at the moment of such an awful disappointment, or adequately describe the emotions then swelling his bleeding, bursting heart! In one moment he beheld the lovely form of his beloved and only child, in health and beauty, extending her arms in an ecstasy of delight to meet his warm embrace, and in the next instant, he was clasping her mangled remains to his throbbing bosom, the flesh yet quivering in the agonies. of death!

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"Not all the tears,

The lingering, lasting misery of years,

Could match that minute's anguish! All the worst

Of sorrow's elements, in that dark hour,

Broke o'er his soul, and with one crash of fate

Laid the hopes of his whole life desolate,"

Long and dreary was the pilgrimage of Mr. Johnson, after the tragic events we have here recorded. His wife soon followed her little ones to the mansions of rest: when the last ray of earthly happiness was extinguished in his bosom for ever. He never smiled again!

LAKE ST. SACRAMENT.

And many a gloomy tale tradition yet
Saves from oblivion, of their struggles vain,
Their prowess, and their wrongs.-ROBERT C. SANDS.

As one escaped from cruel hands I come,

From hearts that ne'er knew pity; dark and vengeful;
Who quaff the tears of orphans, bathe in blood,
And know no music but the groans of men.

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Gustavus Vasa.

It was early in the evening of a clear bright night in December, 1756, that a group of young officers were standing upon the bleak and naked summit of the French Mountain, at the distance, perhaps, of three or four furlongs, in a direct line, from the British garrison of Fort William Henry, on the head-waters of Lake George. The atmosphere was sharp, but there being no wind, it was less cutting and severe than is usual at that season in such high American latitudes. A heavy body of snow mantled the ground to the depth of several feet, the surface of which having been moistened by a recent thaw, had subsequently been so strongly incrusted by the frost as to afford secure footing to the huntsman, the scout, or the savage prowling

VOL. I.-L

upon the war-path. "The moon was up, and yet it was not night," as Childe Harold has it ;-for, in addition to the peerless queen, and the countless array of stars studding her pathway, and glittering in her train, the northern portion of the heavens was irradiated by the Aurora borealis, shooting up from the horizon in streams of glory, and stretching athwart the sky with varied beauty and unwonted magnificence.

For the purpose of viewing this sublime spectacle with greater satisfaction, Captain Thorndyke and several of his companions had left the garrison and climbed to the summit of the mountain, from whose loftier height they could overlook, as it were, the range of hills running off in the direction of Canada, on the north-western side of the lake. Nor was their labour lost. The display of this beautiful phenomenon, the cause of which man's wisdom has hitherto found it impossible to explain, was on that evening peculiarly grand and imposingexciting the special admiration and wonder even of those who, like our party, were accustomed to these fantastic fireworks of the sky. At one moment, a wide space of the arc of the northern hemisphere would be illuminated by the rapid succession of flashes of light quicker than the eye can wink, and soft and silvery as the fleecy moon-lit cloud. These were succeeded by sudden streams of coloured lights, blazing up, and shooting, in diverging tracks, far into the empyrean. Then would follow a broad blaze of brighter light, bursting upwards as if from

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