from the garden of Eden. Many a time have I clung to the willows, and looked in pity on the godlike exile, as he toiled in the fields, with his children around him; and when he sought the shade, again and again have I leaped down to cool his feverish brow. Pleasant as I found this benevolent office, I delighted still more to nestle among the pretty, yellow ringlets of the infant Abel, and shine there, like a diamond on the surface of golden waves. Alas, it is anguish to remember how I kissed his silken eyelash, when he lay stretched in death, under the cruel hand of Cain!

Time rolled slowly on, and the world grew more wicked. I lived almost entirely in the clouds, or on the flowers; for mankind could offer no couch fit for the repose of innocence, save the babe's sinless lip. At last, excessive vice demanded punishment. The Almighty sent it in the form of rain; and, in forty days, the fair earth was overwhelmed. I was permitted to remain in the foggy atmosphere; and, when the deluge ceased, I found myself arranged, with a multitude of rain drops, before the blazing pavilion of the sun. His seven colored rays were separated in passing through us, and reflected on the opposite quarter of the heavens. Thus I had the honor to assist in forming the first rainbow ever seen by man.

It is now five thousand, eight hundred, and twentyeight years, since I first came into being; and you may well suppose that, were all my adventures detailed, they would fill a ponderous volume. I have traversed the wide world over, and watched its inhabitants through all their infinitude of changes. I have been

in tears on the lyre of Sappho, when her love inspired fingers swept across its strings. In the aromatic bath, I have kissed the transparent cheek of proud Aspasia ; and I have twinkled on Plato's pale, intellectual brow, when he dreamed his ethereal philosophy in her magic bower. I remained at the bottom of the cup in which Cleopatra dissolved her costly pearl, and I plunged indignantly from the prow of Antony's vessel, when he retired from the fight, and gave the world for beauty.

I have been poured forth within the dazzling shrine of Apollo, and mixed with the rosy libations to Bacchus. The bramin of Hindostan has worshipped me in the sacred stream of Ganges. With me the druid has quenched his sacrifice; the Roman pontiff signed the sacred emblem of the cross, and the Levite made clean his hands before he entered within the sanctuary. The princely archbishops of England have taken me from magnificent baptismal fonts; and, in the wild glens of Scotland, the persecuted covenanter has sprinkled me on many a guiltless head. I have jumped from the banyan tree on the back of a Hindoo god, and glittered on the marble cheeks of deities in Athens. I have trembled on the Turkish crescent; slept on the Russian cross; died on the Chinese pagoda; and awaked between the Persian and the sun he adores.

Warm climates have ever been my favorites; for there, I was often in heaven, in a state of melting, delicious languor; and my visitations to earth were ever among the beautiful and the brilliant.

For one hundred years I was doomed to reluctant drudgery in the cold regions of the north; during which my soul was sent forth from gipsy kettles, over the Geysers of Iceland, and embodied again to freeze the head of the Kamschatkadale to his bearskin pillow. I could tell wonders to Captain Parry, and absolutely craze Symmes with my discoveries. I could, if I chose, make known to hardy adventurers, who have risked life and limb to ascertain it, whether or not wild geese summer at the pole; but the giant king of the glaciers has forbidden me to reveal many to things, which it is not expedient for the world know at present. I dare not disobey him, for he once enchained me, in the dreary chambers of an ice mountain, forty long years; and, had not the huge mass been seized with the modern spirit of enterprise, and moved southward, I might never have regained my liberty. The first use I made of freedom was to revisit the scenes I had enjoyed so much when men were comparatively strangers on earth. I sought repose, after my wearisome journey, in the holy stream of Jordan; but scarcely had the waves given me their welcome embrace, ere the celebrated Chateaubriand conveyed me from thence to France, to perform my part in the august baptism of the infant "King of Rome." For such an office, I was willing to leave my beloved Palestine; for seldom have I rested on a boy of loftier promise, or more cherub loveliness; but I liked not the service in which the crafty politician employed me a few years after. It shames me to tell that the water, sprinkled on the son of Bonaparte,

aided to prepare the vile pages of "Le Roi est mortVive le Roi!" with which the capricious Frenchman afterward welcomed the tenth Charles of Bourbon. Disgusted with the servile race of courtiers, I hastened to England, in hopes of finding an aristocracy too proud, in their long inherited greatness, to sue for the favor of a never satisfied multitude, or to triumph over them with all the vulgar superciliousness of newly acquired power. Few, very few such I found; for true nobility of soul is rare; but many a glorious exploit was achieved by me in that favored land of intelligence and freedom. Once, while hovering listlessly in the air, I aided in forming the rainbow which Campbell has immortalized in such splendid verse; and on the next day, Wordsworth apostrophized me, as I lay quivering on the edge of his favorite daisy.

I moistened some of the pages of Scott, before they were wet with the world's tears; and I trickled from the point of Mrs Hemans' pen, when her eloquent spirit held communion with Tasso. I have evaporated on the burning page of Byron, and sparkled on the spangled lines of Moore.

It would take too long a time to detail all the services I rendered the great, the gifted, and the fair, during my residence in the "fast anchored isle." Suffice it to say, with all its advantages, I found much to displease me; and I was anxious to visit a new republic, which I had heard of, "beyond the ocean, where the laws were just, and men were happy." This land, too, has its evils; but I love it better than any spot I have

seen in all my wanderings. Niagara has thrown me forth in spray; and, frozen on its rugged cliffs, I have seemed "like a giant's starting tear." I have streamed from the Indian oar into the mighty rivers of the West, and slumbered in the cold, blue depths of Canadian lakes. I frolicked in the joyous little stream which honest Aunt Deborah Lenox praised so sensibly, and I formed a part of the "Rivulet" which brought back the happy dream of childhood to the soul of Bryant; that soul on whose waveless mirror, nature is ever reflected in a placid smile, all radiant with poetry.

But, in good truth, I have had little leisure for recreations like these; for rain drops, as well as every thing else, are pressed into full employment in this land of business. I have labored hard in mills, manufactories, and distilleries; and died a thousand deaths in pushing forward the swift sailing boats on the Hudson and the Mississippi. A few months since, I rose from the water works of Philadelphia, and soon hovered over the Boston Athenæum. I happened to alight on the head of a poet, who was just quitting the gallery, and was scorched to vapor in an instant. I descended just in time for a Frenchman to mix me with the "eau de miel," which he was pouring into an elegant cut glass vial. A fashionable fop, who considered perfume "the sovereign'st thing on earth," presented me to a celebrated belle. I shall probably die on the corner of her embroidered handkerchief; but for me to die, is only to exist again; of course, my adventures will be as long as the world's history.