It was a hunter's paradise. Deer grazed on its meadows The elk trooped in herds, like squadrons of cavalry. In the still morning, one might hear the clatter of their antlers for half a mile over the dewy prairie. Countless bison roamed the plains, filing in grave procession to drink at the rivers, plunging and snorting among the rapids and quicksands, rolling their huge buik on the grass, or rushing upon each other in hot encounter, like champions under shield. The wildeat glared from the thicket; the raccoon thrust his furry countenance from the hollow tree, and the opossum swung, head downwards, from the overhanging bough.

With the opening spring, when the forests are budding into leaf, and the prairies gemmed with flowers; when a warm, faint haze rests upon the landscape-then heart and senses are inthralled with luxurious beauty. The shrubs and wild fruittrees, flushed with pale red blossoms, and the small clustering flowers of grape-vines, which choke the gigantic trees with Laocoon writhings, fill the forest with their rich perfume. A few days later, and a cloud of verdure overshadows the land, while birds innumerable sing beneath its canopy, and brighten its shades with their glancing hues.

Yet this western paradise is not free from the curse of Adam. The beneficent sun, which kindles into life so many forms of loveliness and beauty, fails not to engender venom and death from the rank slime of pestilential swamp and marsh. In some stagnant pool, buried in the jungle-like depths of the forest, where the hot and lifeless water reeks with exhalations, the water-suake basks by the margin, or winds his checkered length of loathsome beauty across the sleepy surface. From beneath the rotten carcass of some fallen tree, the moccason thrusts out his broad flat head, ready to dart on the intruder. On the dry, sun-scorched prairie, the rattlesnake, a more generous enemy, reposes in his spiral coil. He scorns to shun the eye of day, as if conscious of the honor accorded to his name by the warlike race, who, jointly with him, claim lordship over the land. But some intrusive footstep awakes him from his elumbers. His neck is arched; the white fangs gleam in his distended jaws; his small eyes dart rays of unutterable fierceness; and his rattles, invisible with their quick vibration, ring the sharp warning which no man will rashly contemin.

The land thus prodigal of good and evil, so remote from the sea, so primitive in its aspect, might well be deemed an undiscovered region, ignorant of European arts; yet it may boast a colonization as old as that of many a spot to which are accorded the scanty honors of an American antiquity. The earliest settlement of Pennsylvania was made in 1681; the first occupation of the Illinois took place in the previons year. La Salle may be called the father of the colony. That remarkable man entered the country with a handful of followers, bent on his grand scheme of Mississippi discovery. A legion of enemics rose in his path; but neither delay, disappointment, sickness, famine, open force, nor secret conspiracy, could bend his soul of iron. Disasters accumulated upon him. He flung them off, and still pressed forward to his object. His victorious energy bore all before it, but the success on which he had staked his life served only to entail fresh calamity, and an untimely death; and his best reward is, that his name stands forth in history an imperishable monument of heroic constancy. When on his way to the Missis sippi in the year 1680, La Salle built a fort in the country of the Illinois, and, on his return from the mouth of the great river, some of his followers remained, and established themselves near the spot, Heroes of another stamp took up the work which

the daring Norman had begun. Jesuit missionaries, among the best and purest of their order, burning with zeal for the salvation of souls, and the gaining of an immortal crown, here toiled and suffered, with a self-sacrificing devotion which extorts a tribute of admiration even from sectarian bigotry. While the colder apostles of Protestantism labored upon the outskirts of heathendem, these champions of the cross, the forlorn hope of the army of Rome, pierced to the heart of its dark and dreary domain, confronting death at every step, and well repaid for all, could they but sprinkle a few drops of water on the forehead of a dying child, or hang a gilded crucifix round the neck of some warrior, pleased with the glittering trinket. With the beginning of the eighteenth century, the black robe of the Jesuit was known in every village of the Illinois. Defying the wiles of Sa'an and the malice of his emissaries, the Indian sorcerers, exposed to the rage of the elements, and every casualty of forest life, they followed their wandering proselytes to war and to the chase; now wading through morasses, now dragging canoes over rapids and sand-bars; now scorched with heat of the sweltering prairie, and now shivering houseless in the blasts of January. At Kaskaskia and Cahokia they established missions, and built frail churches from the bark of trees, fit emblems of their own transient and futile labors. Morning and evening, the savage worshippers sang praises to the Virgin, and knelt in supplication before the shrine of St. Joseph.

Soldiers and fur-traders followed where these pioneers of the church had led the way. Forts were built here and there throughout the country, and the cabins of settlers clustered about the missionhouses. The new colonists, emigrants from Canada or disbanded soldiers of French regiments, bore a close resemblance to the settlers of Detroit, or the primitive people of Acadia, whese simple life poetry has chosen as an appropriate theme. The Creole of the Illinois, contented, light-hearted, and thriftless, by no means fulfilled the injunction to increase and multiply, and the colony languished in spite of the fertile soil. The people labored long enough to gain a bare subsistence for each passing day, and spent the rest of their time in dancing and merrymaking, smoking, gossiping, and hunting. Their native gayety was irrepressible, and they found means to stimulate it with wine made from the fruit of the wild grape-vines. Thus they passed their days, at peace with themselves, hand and glove with their Indian neighbors, and ignorant of all the world beside. Money was scarcely known among them. Skins and furs were the prevailing currency, and in every village a great portion of the land was held in common. The military commandant, whose station was at Fort Chartres, on the Mississippi, ruled the colony with a sway absolute as that of the Pacha of Egypt, and judged civil and criminal cases without right of appeal. Yet his power was exercised in a patriarchal spirit, and he usually commanded the respect and confidence of the people. Many years later, when, after the War of the Revolution, the Illinois came under the jurisdiction of the United States, the perplexed inhabitants, totally at a loss to understand the complicated machinery of republicanism, begged to be delivered from the intolerable burden of self-government, and to be once more subjected to a military commandant.

ERASTUS W. ELLSWORTH

WAB born November, 1823, in East Windsor, Conn., where he is at present a resident. Ile was edu. cated at Amherst College, studied law, but was

A privacy of glorious light. Each single tree has a little shade that the mass standing at wide case can never create the shady solitude, without which there is no grove.

But the eye never wearies of palms more than the car of singing birds, Solitary they stand upon the sand, or upon the level, fertile land in groups, with a grace and dignity that no tree surpasses Very soon the eye beholds in their forms the original type of the columns which it will afterward admire ia the temples Almost the first palm is architecturally suggestive, even in those Western gardens-but to artists living among them and seeing only them! Mea's hands are not delicate in the early ages, and the fountain fairness of the palms is not very flowingly fashioned in the capitals, but in the flowery perfection of the Parthenon the palm triumphs The forms of those columus came from Egypt, and that which was the suspicion of the earlier workers, was the success of more delicate designing. So is the palm inwound with our art and poetry and religion, and of all trees would the Howadji be a palm, wide-waving peace and plenty, and feeling is kin to the Parthenon and Raphael's pictures.

the War of the North American Tribes against the English Colon es after the Conquest of Caneda, appeared in an octavo volume in 1851. The work attracted attention by its individuality of subject, respect by its evidences of thorough investigation, and popularity by its literary merits. Mr. Parkman at once attained a foremost rank as a historian. His volume is written in a clear, animated tone, giving in its pages due prominence to the picturesque scenery as well as the dramatic action of its topic.

Mr. Parkman is at present occupied in the preparation of a History of French Discovery and Colonization in North America, a subject well adapted to his powers.

THE ILLINOIS.

We turn to a region of which, as yet, we have caught but transient glimpses; a region which to our forefathers seemed remote and strange, as to us the mountain strongholds of the Apaches, or the wastes of farthest Oregon. The country of the Iilinois was chiefly embraced within the boundaries of the state which now retains the name. Thitherward, from the east, the west, and the north, three mighty rivers rolled their tributary waters; while countless smaller streams smaller only in comparison-traverse I the land with a watery network, impregnating the warm soil with exuberant fecundity. From the eastward, the Ohio-La Belle Rivière-pursued its windings for more than a thousand miles The Mississippi descended from the distant north; while from its fountains in the west, three thousand miles away, the Missouri poured its torrent towards the same common centre. Born among mountains, trackless even now, except by the adventurous footstep of the trapper,-aurtured amid the howling of beasts and the war-cries of savages, never silent in that wilderness,-it holds its angry course through sun-scorched deserts, among towers and palaces, the architecture of no human hand, among lodges of barbarian hordes, and herds of bison blackening the prairie to the horizon. Fierce, reckless, headstrong, exulting in its tumultuous force, it plays a thousand freaks of wanton power; bearing away forests from its shores, and planting then, with roots uppermost, in its quicksals; sweeping off islands, and rebuilding then; frothing and raging in foam and whirlpool, and, again, gliding with dwindled current along its sandy channel. At length, dark with ncurbed fury, it pours its muddy tide into the relu tant Mississippi That majestic river, drawing life from the pure fountains of the north, wandering among emerald prairies and wood-crowned bluffs, loses all its earlier charm with this unhallowed union. At first, it shrinks, as with repugnance, and along the saine channel the two streams flow side by side, with unmingled waters But the disturbing power prevails at length; and the united torrent bears onward in its might, boiling up from the bottom, whirling in many a vortex, flooding its shores with a malign deluge fraught with pestilence and fever, and burying forests in its depths to insnare the heedless voyager. Mightiest among rivers, it is the connecting link of adverse climates and contrasted races; and while at its northern source the fur-clad Indian shivers in the cold,-where it mingles with the ocean, the growth of the tropics springs along its banks, and the panting negro cools his limbs in its refreshing waters

To these great rivers and their tributary streams the country of the Illinois owed its wealth, its grassy prairies, and the stately woods that flourished on its deep, rich soil. This prolific land teemed with life.

1

"They eat their fill, and they are filled with wind.
They do the noble works of noble mind.
Repute, and often bread, the world refuse.
They go unto their place,

The greatest of the race.
What is the use?

"Should some new star, in the fair evening sky
Kindle a blaze, startling so keen an eye
Gf flamings eminent, athwart the dews,
Our thoughts would say: No doubt
That star will soon burn out.
What is the use!

"Who'll care for me, when I am dead and gone!
Not many now, and surely, soon, not one;
And should I sing like an immortal Muse
Men, if they read the line,

Read for their good, not mine;
What is the use?

"And song, if passable, is doomed to pass-
Common, though sweet as the new-scythed grass,
Of human deeds and thoughts Time bears no newɛ,
That, flying, he can lack,

Else they would break his back,
What is the use!

"Spirit of Beauty! Breath of golden lyres!
Perpetual tremble of immortal wires!
Divinely torturing rapture of the Muse!
Conspicuous wretchedness!
Thou starry, sole success!-
What is the use!

"Doth not all struggle tell, upon its brow,
That he who makes it is not easy now,

But hopes to be? Vain hope that dost abuse!
Coquetting with thine eyes,

And fooling him who sighs,

What is the use!

"Go pry the lintels of the pyramids;

Lift the old king's mysterious coffin lids—

This dust was theirs whose names these stones

confuse,

These mighty monuments Of mighty discontenta.

What is the use!