picklearities"), and then dying intestate, or, what's worse, willing their property away God knows where,-than of great fortunes derived from obsequiousness. I remember a man, who, after having failed in trade, retired to a remote country-town at an advanced period of life, with little or nothing but his wits to live upon. After receiving the civilities of his neighbours, in virtue of an imposing exterior, a few well-applied innuendoes, and frequent dissertations on the relative value of landed and funded security, he gradually began to express his regard for his new friends, his satisfaction at his reception among them, the pleasure he derived from their society, and his admiration at their several virtues; and, at length, sending for the attorney, he dictated the sketch of a will, in which he inserted the names of the most considerable residents in the environs. To some names he put two cyphers, and to others three, leaving the prepositive numeral which was to give value to the whole-a blank. This will he ordered the man of law to draw up in form, of course with the strictest possible injunctions of secrecy. The secret was of course confidentially betrayed to every one of the interested parties, with a friendly hint "to stick to the warm old fellow, without a relation of his own on the face of the earth." Thus the testator contrived to pass the rest of his life very comfortably from house to house; and from that day forward never wanted a hare, or a brace of pheasants, a basket of fish, or of grapes, when he chose, for the sake of appearances, to dine at his own lodgings. At the day of his death he very honourably divided all he had equally among these numerous expectants; bequeathing to each, in the strict fulfilment of his implied promise, just £00 0s. Od.

the

Against frauds like these, the poor legacy-hunter cannot be too guarded; for there is no tread-mill to punish this species of vagrancyunless, indeed, the devil, the true inventor of that anti-English species of legal torture, has a round-about of his own, where, by the by, he cannot at least punish the prisoner before trial and judgment.-Indeed, old folks in general have an unlucky pride in thus overreaching their prey, and chuckle heartily (in their sleeve) at the idea of the disappointment which the opening of their will will produce. When the party is a female, and not within the prohibited degrees of kindred, the best means of proceeding is to marry at once; and then the law and usage combine to leave the lady no longer a will of her own. If this be not possible, the case is too often all but desperate. Waiting for dead men's shoes is at best but a tedious business; and the bailiffs of this world may be more expeditious than their great prototype of the next, who, being always sure of his man, is very often most provokingly forgetful, and keeps the writ a long while in his pocket. All things, in short, considered, as long as lotteries and little-goes exist, I would not advise a friend to take to legacy-hunting. Even gambling in foreign securities, or joining the Poyais or the Cape of Good Hope settlers, may be made a better trade, or at all events a pleasanter one, than dodging the whims or watching the growing decrepitude of a fellow who continues to exist long after he has ceased to live, for the mere pleasure of balking your most reasonable expectations, laughing at your agonies, and making your life an "eternal renewal of hope, with an everlasting disappointment."

M.

ELEGIAC STANZAS.

I WANDER'D When the shadows fell,
'Till darkness brooded o'er the deep;
And thoughts of her, I loved so well,
Came o'er me-but I could not weep.
The night was silent as the grave

I thought of her who slumber'd there :
Of her I would have died to save-
The young, the beautiful, the fair.
I could not weep a single tear,—
The wave of ocean roll'd below,
And evil thoughts were gathering near—
But oh, thank God! it was not so.
I wept not still-but when the light
Was kindled on the beacon tower,
And stream'd on ocean through the night,
I felt an influence from the hour:
My better feelings, that had slept,
Gush'd like the water from the rock
When Israel's leader smote-I wept
Such tears as can the heart unlock.
They were not tears of bitterness,
But such as contrite spirits shed;
For thus Religion comes to bless

The darken'd hour, when hope is fled.
I wept-but they were tears of balm,
And soon was felt throughout my frame
A blessed, and a holy calm—

And call'd I then upon his name.

"Oh God! be thou the mourner's stay,

My refuge on life's troubled sea;

Thy word the light that guides my way
To her I love, to Heaven and thee."

W. T.

SOCIAL AND SAVAGE LIFE.-DANIEL BOON.

AN attachment to what is called civilized life, is considered to be interwoven with our existence; but perhaps it is not so much so as we in general suspect. Like an attachment to the locality where we spent our earliest years, the value which we feel for it arises less from its intrinsic superiority over savage life being properly estimated by us, than from the effect of habit. Local attachments we owe to accident, they relate to things, and therefore there can be no interchange of regard, no mutual tie between them and ourselves, beyond what may arise from fancy and the associations that they may recall. They offer us nothing like the affection we feel towards friends and relatives who receive our kind offices and render us theirs in exchange. Local attachments are experienced in their greatest intensity by those who live remote from large cities and great congregations of men. Inhabitants of mountainous districts, however unpolished in manners and less advanced in civilization than those of plains, feel much stronger the charm that binds them to the scenes of their early life-the countryman much

more than the citizen. Climate seems in this respect to make little distinction; the Laplander, the Swiss, and the Negro whom we steal from among his native mangroves and his pestilential marshes to steep in slavery, are alike strongly sensible of its influence. In great capitals it is almost obliterated; the early habits of their inhabitants being singularly unpropitious to its operation. The endless change of objects, the soul-engrossing traffic, and the bustle and turmoil of London, for example, soon stifle every trace of the feeling, if the smallest portion of it exist at all among its natives. In truth, what local attachment, in the sense I allude to, can be experienced by him who was born and resided two or three years in Smithfield, lived two or three more in the purlieus of Fleet-street, or among the dirty alleys of Holborn, his residence for ever shifted as the calls of business might require? The local attachment of a Londoner is a very general and indefinite thing, and perhaps only consists in his regard for the name of the city itself, and its high claims upon public estimation, and because he will have every thing with which he is connected, to be better than any other. His early removal into the shop or manufactory, his artificial mode of life, his associates, and the demoralization around, make him incapable of feeling any of the sensations experienced by the unsophisticated inhabitant of the country, who has spent his youth amid the charms of nature, gazed with a delight of which the Londoner is utterly ignorant, upon the blue stream, the craggy mountain, or the tufted wood, from the door of the tenement in which he was born, and which has sheltered his ancestors for ages-who has noted every tree in the landscape on which he has looked with fondness for years, and has completely identified with his own heart "the hill that lifts him to the storms :"-his neighbours are all in his horizon of view; it is his little universe, and he would exchange it for no other. Thus, what may be called the highest congregated state of man, tends to obliterate local attachments, which will be found strongest in that state of society which approaches nearest to the simplicity of Nature.

It has been remarked, that those who have been educated in civilized society, if they have at any time been forced to quit it by some accidental circumstance, and mingled with the Indian tribes in the forests of America, adopting for any considerable time their mode of life, and ranging unrestrained through the vast domains which have never yet submitted to the plough, have found it extremely difficult to return again and yield obedience to its restraints and institutions. A Mr. Hunter has lately published a most interesting work, containing an account of his life and residence among the Indian tribes of North America, having been made captive by them, when an infant, in one of their attacks upon the White settlements. According to their custom, they adopted him into a family, and reared him up in their own mode of life. He wandered with them across the vast territory of the Missouri to the Pacific Ocean, and back again to the western states of America. He made his escape from them to one of the American cities, where he attracted much notice. This gentleman has stated to his intimate friends, that, particularly since he has been initiated into the forms of polished life, he has felt at times an almost irresistible inclination to return and join again his former associates; every thing seeming beyond measure cramped and restrained when con

trasted with the liberty and ease of his former mode of life. Mr. Hunter's work contains much interesting matter for the consideration of the philosopher, and indeed of all who make the history of the human mind their study. It discloses many traits of Indian character, which must tend to raise rather than depress them in the scale of being. The fondness of the savage for ranging the forest and leading the life of a hunter, arises from the same love of liberty which is engrafted in the nature of civilized man, and is diminished, but never utterly annihilated, in the bosom of the citizen. Every attempt which has been made in Canada to amalgamate the aboriginal inhabitants with Europeans has failed. A chief here and there has been found, after long intercourse, to join occasionally the colonial society, and conduct himself in a very superior manner, so as to demonstrate that he was able, if he pleased, to support the artificial accomplishments of those whom he visited; but soon afterwards he has resumed his Indian habiliments, and rejoined his countrymen in the forest, with a delight that seemed to have derived a higher value from the contrast it afforded him to the manners he had just quitted. The village of Jeune Lorette in Canada is entirely an Indian residence; but though every method has been taken to make them adopt European customs, even with the children, who have been instructed in reading and writing, the effort has appeared insurmountable. By the aid of the strong liquors and diseases imported from Europe, they will by and by become extinct, owing to the rapid diminution of their population, but they will never disappear by being blended with those who have conveyed to them these baleful plagues. The stream of Indian life will be dried up, pure to its last dregs, without commingling its waters and repairing its diminution from foreign sources. Yet these Indians have the sagacity to discover that knowledge is strength, and to shelter themselves under our protection, some of them even tilling small plots of ground after the mode they have learnt from us. But nothing can obliterate their affection for their own mode of life. After all, considering them abstractedly from the part they constitute towards the whole body politic, a considerable portion of the inhabitants of every civilized state have little of which to boast over the Aborigines of Canada, either in the employments in which they spend their time, the moral innocence of their lives, or the elevation of their pursuits. The free Indian has the advantage in many high and romantic qualities; he is brave, content, and independent, while the former cannot be said to

be either.

But there may sometimes be motives for the freedom of the woods and forests being adopted by civilized men. The injustice and oppression that man often receives from his fellow, from bad laws, or from the shafts of calumny, may appear in themselves sufficiently strong to justify him in adopting the simplicity and uncontrolled state of natural life. To men of particular dispositions, of high spirit, and keen feelings, whose minds have been deeply wounded, a life spent apart from scenes which they cannot contemplate without pain, has been felt to be grateful. They have determined that the social compact is dissolved that the boasted protection which was held out as the price of restraint, and for which freedom and property were sacrificed, was no longer a shield held over them. They hear statesmen talk of citizenship, and the duty of every man to bear evil and injustice, and even

to sacrifice himself for the sake of the community-that the bundle must not be weakened by abstracting a single stick. They hear lawyers boast of the excellency of laws that bar that exercise of his free will which inclines him to withdraw from their power, and declaring that his fealty, arising from the accidental circumstance of birth, can never be violated under any pretence;-that he must bear every evil life can inflict, but has no right to withdraw himself from that society which has a paramount claim on him and his. He considers, reflects, and at last presumes to differ from these very politic but sophistical principles. What is society to him? has he power over his own property, and shall he have none over a choice of country? Shall he not resign that which in his feelings is guilty of injustice towards him, and endeavour to spend the remainder of life in the mode most congenial and soothing to a wounded spirit? He demurs a moment, forms his resolution, rushes into the woods, and becomes a hunter for the rest of his days, far removed from the footsteps of civilized man. Who can blame such an individual, or with justice contend that he has no moral right thus to dispose of himself? Who can blame him for not submitting to a state of life full of disgust, and that would drench the remainder of his days in suffering?

Such was, in all probability, the reasoning of Colonel Daniel Boon, whose name was unknown in this country until it was lately brought before the public by Lord Byron. His history is still a novelty. Accident made me acquainted with some incidents respecting him by means of an American friend. Memoirs of this extraordinary individual, or rather of part of his singular career, have been published on the other side of the Atlantic, but I believe have never yet reached England. Boon originally belonged to the state of North Carolina, where he cultivated a farm. In company with five other individuals, he left that province in 1769, and journeyed to a river that falls into the Ohio,

*The passage alluded to, by Lord Byron, is as follows:

Of all men, saving Sylla, the manslayer,

Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
The General Boon, backwoodsman of Kentucky,

Was happiest among mortals any where;

For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoy'd the lonely, vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.
Crime came not near him-she is not the child

Of solitude; health shrank not from him-for
Her home is in the rarely-trodden wild,

Where if men seek her not, and death be more
Their choice than life, forgive them, as beguiled

By habit to what their own hearts abhor-
In cities caged. The present case in point I
Cite is, that Boon lived hunting up to ninety;
And what's still stranger, left behind a name
For which men vainly decimate the throng,
Not only famous, but of that good fame,

Without which glory's but a tavern song-
Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame,

Which hate nor envy e'er could tinge with wrong;
An active hermit, even in age the child
Of nature, or the Man of Ross run wild.