"The writer of English history may be pardoned if he lingers too fondly over the figure of the king in whose court, at whose impulse, it may be in whose very words, English history begins."

-CHARLES DICKENS.

2. THE FATE OF THE INDIANS.

Not many generations ago, where you now sit, circled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over our heads the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate.

Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and the helpless, the council-fire glared on the wise and the daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all are here; and when the tiger strife was over here curled the smoke of peace.

Here, too, they worshipped; and from many a dark bosom went up a fervent prayer to the Great

Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of Nature knew not the God of Revelation, but the God of the Universe he acknowledged in everything around.

He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lowly dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his midday throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine that had defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid warbler that never left its native grove; in the fearless eagle whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his foot; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light to whose mysterious source he bent in humble, though blind adoration.

And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you, the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face a whole, peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of Nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant.

Here and there a stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamed, untamable progenitors! The Indian of falcon glance and lion bearing, the

theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.

As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying away to the untrodden West. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever.

Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of person they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay tribute to their unhappy fate as a people.

-CHARLES SPRAGUE.

Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or Milky Way.

- POPE..

3. THE THIRTEEN COLONIES.

The thirteen original colonies-"The Old Thirteen," as they were often called were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. All the rest of the present States were made from these, or from territory added to these. The history of our country down to the Revolution is, therefore, the history of these thirteen colonies.

Each of the thirteen had something peculiar in its history to distinguish it from the rest. To begin with, they were established by several different nations. Most of them were founded by Englishmen; but New York and New Jersey were settled by the Dutch, and Delaware by the Swedes ; while the Carolinas were first explored and named by a French colony.

Most of them were founded by small parties of settlers, among whom no great distinctions of rank existed. Two of them-Pennsylvania and Maryland--had each a single proprietor, who owned the whole soil. New York had its "patroons," or large landholders, with tenants under them.

Most of them were founded by those who fled from religious persecutions in Europe. Yet one of

them - Rhode Island - was made up largely from those persecuted in another colony; and another— Maryland was founded by Roman Catholics. Some had charter governments, some had royal governments without charters, and others were governed by the original proprietors, or those who represented them.

They were all alike in some things, however much they differed in others. They all had something of local self-government; that is, each community, to a greater or less extent, made and administered its own laws. Moreover, they all became subject to Great Britain at last, even if they had not been first settled by Englishmen. Finally, they all grew gradually discontented with the British Government, because they thought themselves ill-treated. This discontent made them at last separate themselves from England, and form a complete union with one another. But this was not accomplished without a war-the war commonly called the American Revolution.

When the troubles began, most of the people supposed themselves to be very loyal, and they were ready to shout, "God save King George! Even after they had raised armies, and had begun to fight, the Continental Congress said, "We have not raised armies with the ambitious design of separating from Great Britain and establishing independent States."