members, among whom the fine is apportioned; and it frequently happens that the culprit himself, if he has a large number of male relations, pays a very trifling part of the sum. There are several tribes of Aenezes and northern Bedouins, where the culprit alone pays the fine. The rest of the de tails on the blood revenge, given in the treatise on Bedouin

manners, are correct.

Among the Bedouins of Kezek, the price of blood is the Eafye, or 1000 piastres; besides the Zola, which is called by the Southern Arabs Tolba wa ghorra; and consists, among the Turks of Kezek, in a mare, a sword, and a gun; and among the Christians, in a maid and a mare. The murderer's family is obliged to furnish the nearest relation of the deceased with a young girl; for which he pays nothing to her father; and he is at liberty either to marry her himself, or to cede her to some of his friends, who pay him the same sum they would have paid for marrying her to her father.

Among the Arabs el Kebly, the price of blood is fixed at a thousand piastres, if a stranger has committed the deed; but if an individual of the tribe itself has killed his neighbour, his nearest relations are obliged to pay a fine of 1000 piastres, and besides a Tolba wa ghorra of a mare, a girl, a slave, a gun &c.; this is generally subject to diminution from the generosity of the dead man's family.

It is a law among the Bedouins, that if a wife is killed for adultery, (a punishment which is invariably inflicted on her, not by her husband, but by her own father or brother,) her blood is asked from the adulterer, who was the reason of her being killed. He is thus generally driven into exile, with his whole family, until the husband relents; but debts of blood of this species are seldom expiated but with the death of one of the adulterer's family.

There are Bedouin tribes, who are in continual national warfare with each other, and slaughter, without mercy, all the individuals of their enemies they can lay hold of. The tribes thus circumstanced live generally at a great distance from each other; and this resentment is generally nourished, by strolling parties going to and fro. This is the case with the Howeytat, and the Aenezes of the Hedjed, who never take any prisoners of each other.

If an Arab is to swear before the judge, that he is innocent of the murder of which he stands accused; he does not swear that he has not killed him; but he takes an oath," that he has not cut open his skin."

LINES,

Addressed to Mr. John D. Hunter on his returning to the simplicity of Indian life and manners, since his late arrival from England.

Child of the forest! is thy nature still

Wild and untamed, as the cold gushing rill,

That bursts in torrents from the mountain's side,
And holds its headlong course, with hurried tide,
For some brief space, then peaceful in the shade
Forever winds, 'mid cool retreat and glade;
Nor seeks with ocean dark to blend its wave,
Or hide its sparkling flow in deep unfathomed cave?

Thou hast been where the noble and the gay
In splendor dwell, and pass their glittering day;
Where every morning waked to new delight,
And art prolonged with brilliant hours the night;—
In festive hall or bower the feast was spread,
While mirth flow'd round, and glow'd the wine cup red;
Where sparkled wit, refined with sense and taste,
And beauties rare the polished circles graced.
Thou hast been where bright jewels shone around,
And fairy forms, with varied garlands crown'd,
Floated in air, and wove the mystic measure,
That fill'd thy heart with wonder and with pleasure.

Then did thy spirit lingering look behind,
And feel that happiness thou could'st not find
'Mid splendid scenes,-that golden fetters bind
With slavish custom the immortal mind?
Say! while soft music breathed upon thine ear,
Did not thy restless spirit pause, to hear,

In thought, the distant cat'ract's thund'ring roar ;
And far beyond the festive chamber soar,
To lay thee at its feet, and there enjoy
Nature's sublimity, without alloy,

Where seemed a thousand rivers rushing by?
-Ah, yes! I know it by that vacant eye.

Thy spirit borne upon the mountain wind,
Left the gay scene, with pomp and glare behind,
And swept the desert world in that dark hour,

To sigh among the trees, in autumn's leafless bower.

And while thy foot the silken carpet prest,
Which Persian looms yield up, at King's behest,
Say! was thy step less free-less light its bound,
Than when it trod the Indian's hunting ground?
Than when thy buskin brushed the morning dew
From heath and flower, as o'er the turf it flew,
And dashed the glittering drops, the red game to pursue?

Soft was the velvet sod, and rich I ween,

Where, clustering round the bubbling spring, was seen,
Beneath the rock's cool shade, 'mid verdure green

Vol. I. No. V.

46

The purple violet and daisy pied;

Where buttercups in yellow lustre vied

With water lillies bright; and many a flower,
With golden eye, peep'd out to deck the bower,
Where oft at noon thou'st paused thy thirst to slake,
In the pure wave of the cool mountain lake;
And laid thee down, upon the fragrant sod,
Rich with perfume, by footstep seldom trod;
Oft too with sinewy arm hast drawn the bow,
And laid the monarch of the forest low.
These simple joys for which thy spirit pants,
Impel thy flight again to sylvan haunts.
But knowledge opes to thee her tempting fount,
The "hill of science" bids thy genius mount!-
And canst thou linger on the desert plain,
Content in solitude profound to reign,
O'er that wild empire, nature's vast domain,
And all thy former anxious hopes restrain?

Thy lip has scarcely prest the sparkling shrine, And canst thou the delicious draught resign? Slaked is thy thirst so soon, for light divine?

See how she bares her breast, and offers free, The deep rich draught, exhaustless as the sea, From that bright dazzling fount, to nurture thee. There lay thy fever'd lip; nor fear too long Its grateful sweets to taste-the draught prolong. Through life 'twill energy and vigour give; That thirst shall ne'er be quench'd, but thou shalt live To lead the Red Man there, and bid him lave His darkened soul in that bright flowing wave.

In some soft moment, did thy heart ne'er know
A wish, a fond desire! thy cheek ne'er glow,
Thy bosom swell with rapture at the thought,
That some fond angel breast, with feeling fraught,
And sentiment refined, would mildly gleam
Upon thy path, with intellect's bright beam?
With soft intelligence would light thy lot,
Would share thy lone retreat, and Indian cot,
And fly with thee to deserts deep and drear,
That the wild panther's howl should meet her ear
And fill her timid breast at midnight hour with fear?
To be" thine own Medora," wild and sad,
To hang upon thy neck, and make thee glad;
Come bounding like the deer at thy return,
Rise in the night to bid the beacon burn,
And breathless rush to meet thee, when her ear
Weary with list'ning, deem'd thy footstep near?
To bind amid the ringlets of her hair
With deep dark glossy curls of beauty rare,
Those rich white flowers that scent the desert air;
Then sportive bid thee praise her coronet,

Glittering with pearl, with trembling dew drops wet;

And say, the wreath her polish'd temples bore

She would not change for what an earldom's mistress wore!

By hill, by rock and stream, thou wand'rest slow,
With drooping crest, with loose and slacken'd bow,
Thy spirit sighs for joys thou should'st not know.

By some uprooted tree, or shiver'd rock,
By whirlwinds torn, or scath'd by lightning's shock,
Thou lay'st thee down, near the wild rushing stream,
To live once o'er again thy vanished dream,-
Thy lullaby the winds, and the young eagles' scream!
While moans the distant sea* upon thine ear,
And shrieks the fluttering curlew loud with fear,
As cowering o'er thy head, the coming storm to hear.

ད་

Sleep!-Softly sleep! and when the lightning's flash
Glares on thine eye, and the hoarse thunder's crash
Shall rouse thee from thy dream,-and echo round
Bellows amongst the rocks, with fearful sound,-
While darkness sits in triumph there the queen,
And shrouds in mantle black the troubled scene,-
Thine outstretch'd hand feels no fond pressure near;
No voice of love breathes on thy lonely ear,
With its sweet tones the dreary hour to cheer;
But hollow gusts shall sigh and meet thee there,
As rushing o'er thy bosom lone and bare,
They chill thy heart, and leave thee to despair!
New-York, August 11th 1824.

* Lake Huron, in the region of "Thunder Bay."

C.

A Few Days in Athens, being the translation of a Greek manuscript, discovered in Herculaneum. By Frances Wright, author of "Views of Society, and Manners in America." London, 1822.

Few of our readers, probably, have ever seen or heard of the little work under the above title, the production of a lady who visited the United States with such kindly feelings; and whose misfortune, perhaps, it was, that her predisposition in favour of our institutions led her to view every thing good through a magnifying medium. If the simple statement of facts, that are creditable to our civil or social character, throws our grandmother over the water into a passion, and makes the old lady savage and scurrilous, what else could be expected, in the case of a downright panegyric by one of her own daughters, than that she should forthwith proceed to cuff, scratch, and bemaul the delinquent, with all the vigour that her advanced age and infirm health would afford? Some of the sages of English criticism declared Miss Wright's book on America to be, from internal evidence, the work of no Englishwoman, but of an American Jacobin!

We owe the amiable and accomplished authoress of "Views of Society and Manners in America," much regard for the good will she has shown towards us; and much gratitude for the flattering, though sometimes over-coloured picture, which she has drawn of those portions of our republic which she visited. For our own part, we have perused her" Few days in Athens," with a delight not merely arising from the spirit and beauty of the sketch, but enhanced by the reflection that the writer had been the encomiast of America; and that though she had travelled, unmarried and unattended, through several portions of our country, she was not only neither massacred nor gouged, but not even insulted or offended. It is truly a subject of wonder.

We extract a part of the preface, in which the author accounts for not giving the name of the supposed Italian scholar to whom she was indebted for the version of the Greek manuscript, referred to in the title.

"Since the establishment of the saintly domination of the Vandals through out the territories of the rebellious and heterodox Italy, and particularly in consequence of the ordonnance of his most orthodox, most legitimate, and most Austrian Majesty, bearing that his dominions being in want of good subjects, his colleges are forbidden to send forth good scholars,* it has

*Je ne veux pas de savans dans mes etâts, je veux de bons sujets, was the dictum of the Austrian Autocrat to an Italian Professor.