seventeenth of June, one hundred and forty-five years later; namely, in the year seventeen hundred and seventy-five. terrific scene of war rages on, the top of the hill.

A

Wait for a favorable moment: when the volumes of fiery smoke roll away, and over the masts of that sixty-gun ship, whose batteries are blazing upon the hill, you behold Mr. Blackstone's farm changed to an ill-built town of about two thousand dwelling-houses, mostly of wood, with scarce any public buildings, but eight or nine churches, the old State House, and Faneuil Hall; Roxbury beyond, an insignificant village; a vacant marsh in all the space now occupied by Cambridgeport and East Cambridge, by Chelsea and East Boston; and beneath your feet the town of Charlestown, consisting, in the morning, of a line of about three hundred houses, wrapped in a sheet of flames at noon, and reduced at eventide to a heap of ashes.

But those fires are kindled at the altar of Liberty. American independence is established. American commerce smiles on the spot; and now, from the top of one of the triple hills of Mr. Blackstone's farm, a stately edifice arises, which seems to invite us as to an observatory. As we look down from this lofty structure, we behold the third picture— a crowded, busy scene.

We see beneath us a city containing eighty or ninety thousand inhabitants, and mainly built of brick and granite. Vessels of every description are moored at the wharves. Long lines of commodious and even stately houses cover a space which, within the memory of man, was in a state of nature. Substantial blocks of warehouses and stores have forced their way to the channel.

Faneuil Hall itself, the consecrated and unchangeable, has swelled to twice its original dimensions. Athenæums, hospitals, asylums, and infirmaries adorn the streets. The school-house rears its modest front in every quarter of the y 204.

d 237, 241.

city, and sixty or seventy churches attest that the children are content to walk in the good old ways of their fathers.

Connected with the city by eight bridges, avenues, or ferries, you behold a range of towns, most of them municipally distinct, but all of them in reality forming, with Boston, one vast metropolis, animated by one commercial life. Shading off from these, you see that most lovely background, a succession of happy settlements, spotted with villas, farmhouses, and cottages, united to Boston by a constant intercourse, sustaining the capital from their fields and gardens, and prosperous in the reflux of the city's wealth.

Of the social life included within this circuit, and of all that in times past has adorned and ennobled it, commercial industry has been an active element, and has exalted itself by its intimate association with every thing else we hold dear. Within this circuit what memorials strike the eye! — what recollections what institutions - what patriotic treas

ures and names that cannot die!

There lie the canonized precincts of Lexington and Concord; there rise the sacred heights of Dorchester and Charlestown; there is Harvard, the ancient and venerable, foster-child of public and private liberality in every part of the state; to whose existence Charlestown gave the first impulse, to whose growth and usefulness the opulence of Boston has at all times ministered with open hand.

Still farther on than the eye can reach, four lines of communication by railroad and steam have, within our own day, united with the capital, by bands of iron, a still broader circuit of towns and villages. Hark to the voice of life and business which sounds along the lines!

While we speak, one of them is shooting onward to the illimitable west, and all are uniting with the other kindred enterprises, to form one harmonious and prosperous whole, in which town and country, agriculture and manufactures,

labor and capital, art and nature wrought and compacted into one grand system are constantly gathering and diffusing, concentrating and radiating the economical, the social, the moral blessings of a liberal and diffusive commerce.

EDWARD EVERETT.

TOPOGRAPHICAL; descriptive of a place. DELINEATED; sketched, painted, described. MOORED; fastened. INFIRMARY; a place where the sick are lodged and nursed. METROPOLIS; the chief city or the capital of a country. COMPACTED; pressed closely together, consolidated.

Then JUPITER and four large moons

A brilliant scene display;

They make his night resplendent shine,
And give him constant day.

Next SATURN, which, with wondrous rings
And seven fair moons, is graced ;
HERSCHEL, with his six moons, appears
Last in the system placed.

How great must God be, who has made
So many worlds on high!

And yet how kind! -for he looks down,
And marks a sparrow fly.

Though Lord of countless worlds unknown,
He makes that child his care

Who asks his favor, and who breathes
To him the fervent prayer.

STORY OF LA ROCHE.

MORE than forty years ago, an English philosopher, whose works have since been read and admired by all Europe, resided at a little town in France. Some disappointments in his native country had first driven him abroad, and he was afterwards induced to remain there, from having found, in this retreat, where the connections even of nation and language were avoided, a perfect seclusion and retire

ment highly favorable to the development of abstract subjects, in which he excelled all writers of his age.

His humanity had induced him to offer his house to a sick stranger and his daughter. His guest proved to be a Protestant clergyman, of Switzerland, called La Roche, a widower, who had lately buried his wife after a long and lingering illness, for which travelling had been prescribed, and was now returning home, after an ineffectual and melancholy journey, with his only child.

"I have been thanking God," said the good La Roche, "for my recovery." "That is right," replied his host. "I would not wish," continued the old man, hesitatingly, "to think otherwise. Did I not look up with gratitude to that Being, I should barely be satisfied with my recovery as a continuation of life, which, it may be, is not a real good.

"Alas! I may live to wish I had died—that you had left me to die, sir, instead of kindly relieving me. But when I look on this renovated being as the gift of the Almighty, I feel a far different sentiment; my heart dilates with gratitude and love to him; it is prepared for doing his will, not as a duty, but as a pleasure; and regards every breach of it, not with disapprobation, but with horror." "You say right, my dear sir,” replied the philosopher; "but you are not yet reëstablished enough to talk much; you must take care of your health, and neither study nor preach for some time.

“I have been thinking over a scheme that struck me to-day when you mentioned your intended departure. I never was in Switzerland; I have a great mind to accompany your daughter and you into that country. I will help to take care of you by the road; for, as I was your first physician, I hold myself responsible for your cure.' La Roche's eyes glistened at the proposal; his daughter was called in and told of it. She was equally pleased with her father; for they really loved their host.