Rol. There is not a moment to be lost in words: this disguise I tore from the dead body of a friar, as I passed our field of battle; it has gained me entrance to thy dungeon; now, take it, thou, and fly.

Al. And Rolla

Rol. Will remain. here in thy place.

Al. And die for me? No! Rather eternal tortures rack me.

Rol. I shall not die, Alonzo. It is thy life Pizarro seeks, not Rolla's; and from my prison soon will thy arm > deliver me; or, should it be otherwise, I am as a blighted plantain, standing alone amid the sandy desert. Nothing seeks or lives beneath my shelter. Thou art a husband and a father-the being of a lovely wife and helpless infant hangs upon thy life. Go! go, Alonzo! Go, to save, not thyself, but Cora and thy child!

Al. Urge me not thus, my friend. I had prepared to die in peace.

Rol. To die in peace! devoting her thou hast sworn to live for, to madness, misery, and death? For, be assured, the state I left her in forbids all hope, but from thy quick

Rol. If thou art yet irresolute, Alonzo, now heed me well. I think thou hast not known that Rolla ever pledged his word, and shrunk from its fulfillment. If thou art proudly obstinate to deny thy friend the transport of preserving Cora's life in thee, no power that sways the will of man shall stir me hence; and thou'lt but have the desperate triumph of seeing Rolla perish by thy side, with the assured conviction that Cora and thy child are lost forever. Al. Oh, Rolla!

Rol. Begone. The dawn approaches. Fear not for me. I will treat with Pizarro, as for surrender and submission. I shall gain time, no doubt, while thou, with a chosen. band, passing the secret way, mayest, at night, return, release thy friend, and bear him back in triumph. Yes, hasten, dear Alonzo! Even now, I hear thy frantic wife, poor Cora, call thee! Haste, Alonzo! Haste! Haste!

Al. Rolla! you distract me. Wear you the robe, and, though dreadful the necessity, we will strike down the guard, and force our passage.

Rol. What, the soldier on duty here?

Al. death.

Yes, else, seeing two, the alarm will be instant

Rol. For my nation's safety, I would not harm him. That soldier, mark me, is a man! All are not men that wear the human form. He refused my prayers, refused my gold, denying admittance, till his own feelings bribed him. I would not risk a hair of that man's head, to save my heart-strings from consuming fire. But haste! But haste! A moment's further pause, and all is lost.

Al. Rolla, I fear thy friendship drives me from honor, and from right.

Rol. Did Rolla ever counsel dishonor to his friend?
Al. Oh! my preserver !

Rol. I feel thy warm tears dropping on my cheek. Go! I am rewarded. (Throwing a friar's garment over Alonzo.) There, conceal thy face; and that they may not clank, hold fast thy chains. Now, God be with thee!

Al. At night we meet again. Then, so aid me Heaven! I return to save, or perish with thee! (Exit.)

Rol. He has passed the outer porch! he is safe! he will soon embrace his wife and child! Now, Cora, didst thou not wrong me? This is the first time, throughout my life, I ever deceived man. Forgive me, God of Truth! if I am wrong. Alonzo flatters himself that we shall meet again! Yes, there! (Lifting his hands to heaven.) Assuredly we shall meet again; there, possess in peace the joys of everlasting love and friendship.

FROM SHERIDAN,

CXIX. THE INDIANS.

THERE is, in the fate of the unfortunate Indians, much to awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment; much which may be urged to excuse

their own atrocities; much in their characters which betrays us into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history? By a law of their nature they seem destined to a slow, but sure extinction. Everywhere, at the approach of the white man, they fade away. We hear the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of autumn, and they are gone forever. They pass mournfully by us, and they return no

more.

The through encamp

Two centuries ago, the smoke of their wigwams and the fires of their councils, rose in every valley, from Hudson's Bay to the farthest Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes. The shouts of victory and the wardance, rung through the mountains and the glades. thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk, whistled the forests; and the hunter's trace and the dark ment, startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to the songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future.

Braver

men never lived; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage, and fortitude, and sagacity, and perseverance, beyond most of the human race. They shrunk from no dangers, and they feared no hardships.

But where are they? Where are the villages, and warriors, and youth? the sachems and the tribes? the hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty, work. M; nor famine, ner war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which hath eaten into their heart-cores; a plague, which the touch of the white man communicated; a poison, which betrayed them into a lingering ruin.

The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may now call their own. Already the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable homes, the aged, the helpless, the women, and the warriors, "few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on

9. shout Tied new ideas in short sentences

I ask about at does.

their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls around their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or dispatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance. upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears;

they utter no cries; they heave no groans.

There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance nor submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterance; which has no aim nor method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them; no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know, and feel, that there is for them still one remove further, not distant, nor unseen. It is to the general burial-ground of their race.

FROM STORY.

CXX. THE INDIAN'S BURIAL PLACE.

Ir is the spot I came to seek,

My fathers' ancient burial-place,

Ere, from these vales, ashamed and weak,

Withdrew our wasted race.

It is the spot, I know it well,

Of which our old traditions tell.

A white man, gazing on the scene,
Would say, a lovely spot is here,
And praise the lawns, so fresh and green,
Between the hills so sheer.

I like it not; I would the plain
Lay in its tall old groves again.

The sheep are on the slopes around,
The cattle in the meadows feed;
And laborers turn the crumbling ground,
Or drop the yellow seed;

And prancing steeds, in trappings gay,
Whirl the bright chariot o'er the way.

Methinks it were a nobler sight

To see these vales in woods arrayed, Their summits in the golden light,

Their trunks in grateful shade,
And herds of deer, that bounding go
O'er rills and prostrate trees below.

And then to mark the lord of all,
The forest hero, trained to wars,
Quivered and plumed, and lithe and tall,
And seamed with glorious scars,
Walk forth, amid his reign, to dare
The wolf, and grapple with the bear.

This bank, in which the dead were laid,
Was sacred when its soil was ours:
Hither the artless Indian maid

Brought, wreaths of beads and flowers.
And the gray chief and gifted seer
Worshiped the god of thunders here.

But now the wheat is green and high
On clods that hide the warrior's breast:
And, scattered, in the furrows, lie

The weapons of his rest;

And there, in the loose sand, is thrown
Of his large arm the moldering bone.

Ah! little thought the strong and brave,
Who bore their lifeless chieftain forth;
Or the young wife, that weeping gave
Her first-born to the earth,

That the pale race, who waste us now, Among their bones should guide the plow!

They waste us: ay, like April snow

In the warm noon, we shrink away;
And fast they follow, as we go
Toward the setting day,

Till they shall fill the land, and we
Are driven into the western sea.

FROM BRYANT.