Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune,

the curse of murder. There is a fine, stern lesson in this, a noble sermon preached extempore to embryo crime. Justice at the home office makes the

emn, awful, in the warning uttered in this. It says to crime-" Though the sea encompass you, though you have balked pursuit, and justice, like a hound at fault, beats and gropes confounded-though you have begun to count the profits of blood, and how to make the most of them, how in your new country to live a life of impunity and ease-nevertheless, give up the dream; dismiss the vision, and awake to horrid truth. There, in the horizon, miles away, is a thin dark vapor, the man at the mast has seen and reported it, and with every ten minutes it becomes more distinct; and now the distant gun is heard across the water, booming command; the ship's yards swing round-she lies to; and how rapid the ceremony-how brief the time! Murder, aghast and manacled, is made again to turn its face towards the land it has outraged with the sacrifice of blood.

From the Union Magazine for November. THE BELLS.

BY EDGAR A. POЕ.

I.

HEAR the sledges with the bells

Silver bells!

Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor Now-now to sit, or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells

[compels!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle

All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

In the silence of the night,

How we shiver with affright

At the melancholy menace of their tone.

For every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats

All alone,

And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute nor human-

They are Ghouls;
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls

A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæans of the bells-
Of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells
Of the bells, bells, bells-
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells

Of the bells, bells, bells;

To the tolling of the bells

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-

To the moaning and the groaning of the belle

PROSPECTUS. This work is conducted. in the spirit of Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favor ably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give spirit and freshness to it by many things which were excluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader.

The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, History, and Cominon Life, by the sagacious Spectator, the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Christian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with the best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, Fraser's, Tait's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Magazines, and of Chambers' admirable Journal. We do not consider it beneath our dignity to borrow wit and wisdom from Punch; and, when we think it good enough, make ase of the thunder of The Times. We shall increase our variety by importations from the continent of Europe, and from the new growth of the British colonies.

The steamship has brought Europe, Asia and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections, as Merchants, Travellers, and Politicians, with all parts of the world; so that much more than ever it

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now becomes every intelligent American to be informed of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And this not only because of their nearer connection with ou selves, but because the nations seem to be hastening through a rapid process of change, to some new state of things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute or foresee.

Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages and Travels, will be favorite matter for our selections; and, in general, we shall systematically and very fully acquaint our readers with the great department of Foreign affairs, without entirely neglecting our own.

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We hope that, by "winnowing the wheat from the chaff," by providing abundantly for the imagination, and by a large collection of Biography, Voyages and Travels, History, and more solid matter, we may produce a work which shall be popular, while at the same time it will aspire to raise the standard of public taste.

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From the Examiner.

THE PRESIDENTS OF FRANCE AND AMERICA.

To be pacific is as good a reason for French hostility as to be weak. Italy was so inviting that no wonder was excited at French invasion or French perfidy; but there is hardly an example in history of policy so blind and erroneous. Detested as the French always were by every other people, the Italians, always deceived by them, always plundered, always trampled on and cast off, continued to look toward them as protectors. Napoleon bartered Italy for a worthless wife; his nephew gives her up for an imperial crown under a papal consecration. He conciliated both Austria and Russia by abstaining from the consolidation of freedom throughout all the states of Europe, which might have been effected by the pressure of his foot, by only one step onward. And what has he gained by this alliance with despotism? The hatred of all free nations, the contempt even of the enslaved, not only of those who were reduced to this condition under his eye and his connivance, but also of the wretches born to servitude, the very nails and rivets of the chain that now encompasses the globe.

To what a height of glory might the President of France have attained if he had sprung up with her in her ascent toward freedom, if he had seconded and directed her energies, if he had abstained but from falsehood and fraud! History neither will nor can dissemble them; the eternal city bears the eternal testimony. The words of Mazzini are not the words of an angry zealot, but are registered in the archives of every honest heart. He accuses no man without the proof of all he utters; and there was a time when such an accusation, so confirmed, would have driven the delinquent beyond the pale of honorable men's society. A bold front and swaggering gait may reduce the cowardly to silence in presence of the ferocious; not an inch further. It has been tried of late against the Americans, and with what success? A receiver of stolen goods is defended in his roguery by a French envoy. The French envoy is requested by the American government to reconsider the propriety of his protection; the American government is answered with the same insolence as the Roman was on its calm and just expostulation. The matter was submitted by the American government to the French cabinet. The French cabinet defends at once both the insolence and the fraud. Passports are delivered to the envoy; he returns to France.

Arrogance is broken into foam when it dashes on the western shores of the Atlantic. America knows equally her interests and her dignity. Averse to war, averse to the politics of Europe, she is greatly more than a match against the united powers of that continent. France owes her money; and she VOL. XXIII. 25

CCLXXXIX. LIVING AGE.

will have it, although, like many a civil suit, the contest may cost her greatly more than her demands. She is not to be shuffled off, or brought to a compromise, by a minor piece of trickery; the amount of money is not in question. The question is, whether the Americans are to be treated as ignominiously and superciliously as the Italians. At the head of the United States is a brave, a temperate, a sagacious man; no falsehood of word or deed could ever be objected to him. Americans, I hope, will pardon me in comparing their president (the indignity is unintentional) with the President of France. In one we behold the grave, sedate, veracious Englishman of England's commonwealth, animated not indeed by a better spirit, but a spirit moving over vast and discordant populations with strength to direct their energies and assign their courses; the other without any first principles, any determinate line of conduct, swearing to republicanism before the people, abjuring it before the priest hood, undermining it at home, battering it down abroad, delighted at transient cheers on a railroad, deaf to the distant voice of history, following his uncle where the way is tortuous, deviating where it is straight, and stopping in the midst of it to bow with equal obsequiousness to the heads of two religions. Symbolical of such a character is the tree of liberty; a tree unsound at root, shrivelled at top, shedding its leaves on the laborers who plant it, and concealing the nakedness of its branches in the flutter of the garlands that bedizen it.

Sometimes a preference makes poor amends for a comparison; but America will pardon me thus weighing a sound president against a hollow one. Temperate and strong as she is, she will treat arrogant petulance with calm derision. The resources of France, she well knows, are inadequate to set afloat, with soldiers and stores, any fleet that could make an impression. Her soldiers would find no field of operations, until by the humanity and munificence of their captors they should be employed in levelling the road to California. Beside, the Americans would rather see them perform an easier and more voluntary duty. Not only in common with the nations of Europe, but infinitely beyond them, those on the Atlantic see with abhorrence the wrongs and cruelties committed against the bravest and longest free of any on our continent. Europe and Asia rise up simultaneously from a deathlike lethargy, which long held both against more outrageous insolence, more unprovoked ferocity. The god of Mahomet is called the Merciful; and his worship is not the worship of lip or knee. Because the disciple of Mahomet is merciful to the follower of Christ, a Christian potentate threatens him with a war! America will not strike down the arm of France if she defends for once the cause of humanity and honor. From no sympathy wil' she

East.

have repeatedly insisted on. No one acquainted with past history, or with the present condition of the Danubian populations, could resist this conviction. The scheme of the Austrian cabinet to consolidate a powerful empire, has been effected by means that bar the possibility of any such consolidation. Russian help has forever dislocated and disabled the Austrian empire, and the first important step has been taken to the humiliation and degradation of the Ottoman.

icy of St. Petersburg; and the dream of a Pansclavic empire will not end in the suppression of the "proud Magyars," but in the reduction of Eastern Europe into a Russian province. If history has meaning in it as well as words, we are not predicting without sufficient warrant. Russian protection and Russian intervention have for a century past been equally fatal. The poor ally non equitem dorso, non frænum depulit ore. "Where is Hamath and Arphad, Sepharvaina and Ivah?" was the question of the Babylonian envoy. What, with equal pertinence, we may ask, have been the fruits of Russian aid to Turkey and Persia, to Warsaw and Finland, in Asterabad and Bessarabia, and now in Moldavia and Wallachia? To all these lands its hatred has been dangerous, but its embrace deadly. Nor is Russian policy the work of a single man, or a single generation. Four sovereigns of the house of Romanoff have consistently walked in the same track. Yet it is not the policy of Catherine, of Paul, of Alexander, or of Nicholas, but of Russia. It bides its time; and the purpose of the fathers is accomplished by the third or fourth generation of the children. It employs, with equal readiness, fraud or force. Muscovite, Pansclavism, and the Greek church, are as much its instruments

of Prince Radzivil, even though foiled in its thirst for blood, will not have been without one effect aimed at by its author, in exhibiting the weakness of the government of the sultan. The unconditional hospitality offered to the Hungarians before Radzivil's arrival was sought to be encumbered with disgraceful conditions immediately after his departure. The Turkish ministers, urged and threatened by a majority of the council under Russian influence, appear to have had no confidence in their power to protect the exiles but by inducing the latter to embrace Mahommedanism. This extraordinary proposal has accordingly been deliberately made; and in this state, for the present, the matter remains.

The following affecting passage occurs in Kossuth's letter:

What steps it may be expedient that you should take, what we have a right to expect from the wellknown generosity of England, it would be hardly fitting for me to enter on. I place my own and my companions' fate in your hands, my lord, and in the name of humanity throw myself under the protec

peoples Siberia with the children of its victims, and fills their cities and homes with spies. It has a vulture's scent for the tainted portion of nations, and holds out every lure to the indolent, the venal, and the ambitious. Hardly ten years have elapsed since England encountered, in Central Asia, the intrigues of Russia. The Muscovite is now "stepping westward"-not with emissaries or protocols, but with "war in procinct," to subvert by its battalions that national independence by which Austrian arms and arts were equally discomfited. Austria, however, is at present merely a stage in the progress of Russia: the road to Constantinople is as direct by Vienna as by Bucharest.

That the overthrow of the Hungarians, and the consequent reduction of Austria to a state of utter dependence on Russia, would strengthen the czar in the traditional policy of the Russian cabinet, and enable him to carry out, with comparative

mother, are wandering about Hungary. They will probably soon fall into the hands of those Austrians who delight in torturing even feeble women, and with whom the innocence of childhood is no protection against persecutions. I conjure your excellency, in the name of the Most High, to put a stop to these cruelties by your powerful mediation, and especially to accord to my wife and children an asylum on the soil of the generous English people.

It is not long since the Times affected to disbelieve the wanton and barbarous cruelties here pointed at; and though, from day to day, it eagerly seizes on every apochryphal rumor that can damage the defeated patriots, it has omitted to protest against an act of fiendish barbarity recorded four days ago in its own columns, and which we believe to be without parallel in any civilized or uncivilized country. How striking is the simple