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And inland waste of rock and wood,
In searching sunshine, wild and rude,

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VOICES OF FREEDOM.

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.

[TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE, the black chieftain of Hayti, was a slave on the plantation "de Libertas," belonging to M. BAYOU. When the rising of the negroes took place, in 1791, ToUSSAINT refused to join them until he had aided M. BAYOU and his family to escape to Baltimore. The white man had discovered in TOUSSAINT many noble qualities, and had instructed him in some of the first branches of education; and the preservation of his life was owing to the negro's gratitude for this kindness.

In 1797, TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE was appointed, by the French government, General-in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo, and, as such, signed the Convention with General MAITLAND, for the evacuation of the island by the British. From this period, until 1801, the island, under the government of

TOUSSAINT was happy, tranquil, and prosperous. The miserable attempt of NAPOLEON to reëstablish slavery in St. Domingo, although it failed of its intended object, proved fatal to the negro chieftain. Treacherously seized by LE CLERC, he was hurried on board a vessel by night, and conveyed to France, where he was confined in a cold subterranean dungeon, at Besançon, where, in April, 1803, he died. The treatment of TOUSSAINT finds a parallel only in the murder of the DUKE D'ENGHEIN. It was the remark of GODWIN, in his Lectures, that the West India Islands, since their first discovery by COLUMBUS, could not boast of a single name which deserves comparison with that of TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.]

"TWAS night. The tranquil moonlight smile

With which Heaven dreams of Earth, shed down

Its beauty on the Indian isle

On broad green field and white-walled town;

And inland waste of rock and wood,

In searching sunshine, wild and rude,

Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam,
Soft as the landscape of a dream,
All motionless and dewy wet,

Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met:
The myrtle with its snowy bloom,
Crossing the nightshade's solemn gloom
The white cecropia's silver rind
Relieved by deeper green behind,
The orange with its fruit of gold, -
The lithe paullinia's verdant fold,
The passion-flower, with symbol holy,
Twining its tendrils long and lowly, —
The rhexias dark, and cassia tall,
And proudly rising over all,
The kingly palm's imperial stem,
Crowned with its leafy diadem,-
Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade,
The fiery-winged cucullo played!

Yes-lovely was thine aspect, then,
Fair island of the Western Sea!
Lavish of beauty, even when

Thy brutes were happier than thy men,
For they, at least, were free!
Regardless of thy glorious clime,
Unmindful of thy soil of flowers,
The toiling negro sighed, that Time
No faster sped his hours.
For, by the dewy moonlight still,
He fed the weary-turning mill,
Or bent him in the chill morass,
To pluck the long and tangled grass,
And hear above his scar-worn back
The heavy slave-whip's frequent crack;
While in his heart one evil thought

In solitary madness wrought,

One baleful fire surviving still

The quenching of the immortal mindOne sterner passion of his kind,

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