tance and reserve, and is glad to waive the distinctions of rank, and to enter into the honest heartfelt enjoyments of common life. Indeed the very amusements of the country bring men more and more together, and the sound of hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony. I believe this is one great reason why the nobility and gentry are more popular among the inferior orders in England than they are in any other country; and why the latter have endured so many excessive pressures and extremities, without repining more generally at the unequal distribution of fortune and privilege.

To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may also be attributed the rural feeling that runs through British literature; the frequent use of illustrations from rural life; those incomparable descriptions of nature which abound in the British poets, that have continued down from The Flower and the Leaf" of Chaucer, and have brought into our closets all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape. The pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid Nature an occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms; but the British poets have lived and revelled with her—they have wooed her in her most secret haunts—they have watched her minutest caprices. A spray could not tremble in the breeze-a leaf could not rustle to the ground—a diamond drop could not patter in the streama fragrance could not exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate observers, and wrought up into some beautiful morality.

The effect of this devotion of elegant minds to rural occupations has been wonderful on the face of the country. A great part of the island is level, and would be monotonous were it not for the charms of culture; but it is studded and gemmed, as it were, with castles and palaces, and embroidered with parks and gardens. It does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home-scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique, farm-house and moss-grown cottage is a picture; and as the roads are continually winding, and the view is shut in by groves and hedges, the eye is delighted by a continual succes· sion of small landscapes of captivating loveliness.

The great charm, however, of English scenery is the moral feeling that seems to pervade it. It is associated in the mind with ideas of order, of quiet, of sober well-established principles, of hoary usage and reverend custom. Every thing seems to be the growth of ages, of regular and peaceful existence. The old church. of remote architecture, with its low massive portal; its Gothic tower; its windows rich with tracery and painted glass; its stately monuments of warriors and worthies of the olden time, ancestors of the present lords of the soil; its tombstones, recording successive generations of sturdy yeomanry, whose progeny still plough the same fields and kneel at the same altar. The parsonage, a quaint irregular pile, partly antiquated, but repaired and altered in the taste of various ages and occupants-the stile and footpath leading from the churchyard, across pleasant fields, and along shady hedgerows, according to an immemorable right of way-the neighboring village, with its venerable cottages, its public green sheltered by trees, under which the forefathers of the present race have sported-the antique family mansion, standing apart in some little rural domain, but looking down with a protecting air on the surrounding scene: all these common features of English landscape evince a calm and settled security, an hereditary transmission of homebred virtues and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the moral character of the nation.

It is a pleasant sight on a Sunday morning, when the bell is sending its sober melody across the quiet fields, to behold the peasantry in their best finery, with ruddy faces, and modest cheerfulness, thronging tranquilly along the green lanes to church; but it is still more pleasing to see them in the evenings, gathering about their cottage doors, and appearing to exult in the humble comforts and embellishments which their own hands have spread around them.

It is this sweet home-feeling, this settled repose of affection in the domestic scene, that is, after all, the parent of the steadiest virtues, and purest enjoyments; and I cannot close these desultory remarks better, than by quoting the words of a modern Eng lish poet, who has depicted it with remarkable felicity:

Through each gradation, from the castled hall,
The city dome, the villa crowned with shade,
But chief from modest mansions numberless,
In town or hamlet, shelt'ring middle life,

Down to the cottaged vale, and straw-roof'd shed,
This western isle hath long been fam'd for scenes
Where bliss domestic finds a dwelling-place:
Domestic bliss, that, like a harmless dove,
(Honor and sweet endearment keeping guard,)
Can centre in a little quiet nest

All that desire would fly for through the earth;
That can, the world eluding, be itself
A world enjoy d; that wants no witnesses
But its own sharers, and approving Heaven:
That, like a flower deep hid in rocky cleft,
Smiles, though 'tis looking only at the sky.

102. THE MOSKITO INDIAN OF JUAN FERNANDEZ. DAMPIER.

[DAMPIER, one of those intrepid English navigators who voyaged and fought in the old buccaneering spirit, was born in 1652. His early life was spent in the roving life of those lawless adventurers who were a terror to every flag. He was subsequently employed in the Royal Navy, and went upon a voyage of discovery to the South Sea. His voyages were published from time to time, between 1697 and 1709, and thus form three volumes in 8vo.]

March the 22nd, 1684. We came in sight of the island, and the next day got in and anchored in a bay at the south end of the island, in twenty-five fathom water, not two cables' lengths from the shore. We presently got out our canoe, and went ashore to see for a Moskito Indian, whom we left here, when we were chased hence by three Spanish ships in the year 1681, a little before we went to Arica; Captain Watling being then our commander, after Captain Sharpe was turned out.

This Indian lived here alone above two years, and although he was several times sought after by the Spaniards, who knew he was left on the island, yet they could never find him. He was in the woods hunting for goats when captain Watlin drew off his men,

and the ship was under sail before he came back to shore. He had with him his gun and a knife, with a small horn of powder, and a few shot; which being spent, he contrived a way by notching his knife to saw the barrel of his gun into small pieces, wherewith he made harpoons, lances, hooks, and a long knife; heating the pieces first in the fire, which he struck with his gun flint, and a piece of the barrel of his gun which he hardened, having learnt to do that among the English. The hot pieces of iron he would hammer out and bend as he pleased with stones, and saw them with his jagged knife, or grind them to an edge by long labor, and harden them to a good temper, as there was occasion.

All this may seem strange to those who are not acquainted with the sagacity of the Indians; but it is no more than these Moskito men are accustomed to in their own country, where they make their own fishing and striking instruments, without either forge or anvil; though they spend a great deal of time about them.

Other wild Indians who have not the use of iron, which the Moskito men have from the English, make hatchets of a very hard stone, with which they will cut down trees (the cotton tree especially, which is a soft tender wood,) to build their houses, or make canoes; and though in working their canoes hollow they cannot dig them so neat and thin, yet they make them fit for their service. This, their digging or hatchet work, they help out by fire; whether for the felling of the trees, or for the making the inside of their canoes hollow. These contrivances are used particularly by the savage Indians of Blewfield's River, whose canoes and

stone hatchets I have seen. These stone hatchets are about ten inches long, four broad, and three inches thick in the middle. They are ground away flat and sharp at both ends; right in the midst, and clear round it they make a notch, so wide and deep that a man might place his finger along it, and taking a stick or withe about four feet long, they bind it round the hatchet-head, in that notch, and so twisting it hard, use it as a handle or helve; the head being held by it very fast. Nor are other wild Indians less ingenious. Those of Patagonia, particularly, head their arrows with flint cut or ground, which I have seen and admired. But to return to our Moskito man on the isle of Juan Fernan

he got

He

dez. With such instruments as he made in that manner, such provision as the island afforded; either goats or fish. told us that at first he was forced to eat seal, which is very ordinary meat, before he had made hooks; but afterwards he never killed any seals but to make lines, cutting their skins into thongs. He had a little house or hut half a mile from the sea, which was lined with goats' skins; his couch or barbecu of sticks, lying along about two feet distant from the groand, was spread with the same, and was all his bedding. He had no clothes left, having worn out those he brought from Watlin's ship, but only a skin about his waist. He saw our ship the day before we came to an anchor, and did believe we were English, and therefore killed three goats in the morning, before we came to an anchor, and drest them with cabbage, to treat us when we came ashore.

He came then to the seaside to congratulate our safe arrival. And when we landed, a Moskito Indian, named Robin, first leapt ashore, and running to his brother Moskito man, threw himself flat on his face at his feet: who helping him up and embracing him, fell flat with his face on the ground at Robin's feet, and was by him taken up also. We stood with pleasure to behold the surprise, and tenderness, and solemnity of this interview ; which was exceedingly affectionate on both sides; and when their ceremonies of civility were over, we also that stood gazing at them drew near, each of us embracing him we had found here, who was overjoyed to see so many of his old friends come hither, as he thought, purposely to fetch him. He was named Will, as the other was Robin. These were names given them by the English, for they have no names among themselves; and they take it as a great favor to be named by any of us; and will complain for want of it if we do not appoint them some name when they are with us: saying of themselves they are poor men, and have no name.

[The Editor of "Half-Hours," in a little work which he wrote some years ago, entitled "The Results of Machinery," gave the substance of this curious story; and he added the following remarks, which may not be out of place in connection with the above extract :

Here, indeed, is a material alteration in the wealth of a man left on an uninhabited island. He had a regular supply of goats and fish; he had the