the triumph of the other, form no pleasing subject of retrospection; while the unsuccessful and often unrewarded loyalty of the sufferers for government, cannot be recollected without the most wounding regret. The years of Madame, after I parted with her, were involved in a cloud raised by the conflicts of contending arms, which I vainly endeavored to penetrate. My account of her must, therefore, in a great measure, terminate with this sad year. My father taking in spring decided measures for leaving America, intrusted his lands to the care of his friend John Munro, Esq., then residing near Clarendon, and chief magistrate of that newly-peopled district, a very worthy friend and countryman of his own, who was then in high triumph on account of a fancied conquest over the supporters of the twenty-mile line; and thought, when that point was fully established, there would be no further obstruction to their realizing their property to great advantage, or colonizing it from Scotland, if such should be their wish. Aunt leaned hard to the latter expedient, but my father could not think of leaving me behind to await the chance of his return; and I had been talked into a wish for revisiting the land of my nativity.

I left my domestic favorites with great pain, but took care to introduce them to Aunt, and implored her, with all the pathos I was mistress of, to take an interest in them when I was gone; which she very good-naturedly promised to do. Another very kind thing she did. Once a year she spent a day or two at General Schuyler's; I call him by his later-acquired title, to distinguish him from the number of his namesakes I have had occasion to mention. She now so timed her visit (though in dreadful weather) that I might accompany her, and take my last farewell of my young companions there : yet I could not bring myself to think it a final one. The terrible words, no more, never passed my lips. I had too buoyant a spirit to encounter a voluntary heartache by looking on the dark side of any thing, and always figured myself returning, and joyfully received by the friends with whom I was parting.

CHAPTER LXI.

Description of the breaking up of the Ice on the Hudson river.

Soon after this I witnessed, for the last time, the sublime spectacle of the ice breaking up on the river; an object that fills and elevates the mind with ideas of power, and grandeur, and, indeed, magnificence; before which all the triumphs of human art sink into contemptible insignificance. This noble object of animated greatness, for such it seemed, I never missed; its approach being announced, like a loud and long peal of thunder, the whole population of Albany were down at the river-side in a moment; and if it happened, as was often the case, in the morning, there could not be a more grotesque assemblage. No one who had a nightcap on waited to put it off; as for waiting for one's cloak, or gloves, it was a thing out of the question; you caught the thing next you, that could wrap round you, and ran. In the way you saw every door left open, and pails, baskets, &c., without number, set down in the street. It was a perfect saturnalia. People never dreamed of being obeyed by their slaves, till the ice was past. The houses were left quite empty; the meanest slave, the youngest child, all were to be found on the shore. Such as could walk, ran; and they that could not, were carried by those whose duty would have been to stay and attend them. When arrived at the show-place, unlike the audience collected to witness any spectacle of human invention, the multitude, with their eyes all bent one way, stood immoveable, and silent as death, till the tumult ceased, and the mighty commotion was passed by; then every one tried to give vent to the vast conceptions with which his mind had been distended. Every child, and every negro, was sure to say, "Is not this like the day of judgment?” and what they said every one else thought. Now to describe this is impossible; but I mean to account, in some degree, for it. The ice, which had been all winter very thick, instead of diminishing, as might be expected in spring, still increased, as the sunshine came, and the days lengthened.

Much snow fell in February, which, melted by the heat of the sun, was stagnant for a day on the surface of the ice, and then by the night frosts, which were still severe, was added, as a new accession to the thickness of it, above the former surface. This was so often repeated, that, in some years, the ice gained two feet in thickness, after the heat cf the sun became such as one would have expected should have entirely dissolved it. So conscious were the natives of the safety this accumulation of ice afforded, that the sledges continued to drive on the ice when the trees were budding, and every thing looked like spring; nay, when there was so much melted on the surface that the horses were knee-deep in water while travelling on it, and portentous cracks on every side announced the approaching rupture. This could scarce have been produced by the mere influence of the sun till midsummer. It was the swelling of the waters under the ice, increased by rivulets, enlarged by melted snows, that produced this catastrophe; for such the awful concussion made it appear. The prelude to the general bursting of this mighty mass, was a fracture, lengthways, in the middle of the stream, produced by the effort of the imprisoned waters, now increased too much to be contained within their wonted bounds. Conceive a solid mass, from six to eight feet thick, bursting for many miles in one continued rupture, produced by a force inconceivably great, and, in a manner, inexpressibly sudden. Thunder is no ade

quate image of this awful explosion, which roused all the sleepers, within the reach of the sound, as completely as the final convulsion of nature, and the solemn peal of the awakening trumpet, might be supposed to do. The stream in summer was confined by a pebbly strand, overhung with high and steep banks, crowned with lofty trees, which were considered as a sacred barrier against the encroachments of this annual visitation. Never dryads dwelt in more security than those of the vine-clad elms, that extended their ample branches over this mighty stream. Their tangled roots, laid bare by the impetuous torrents, formed caverns ever fresh and fragrant; where the most delicate plants flourished, unvisited by scorching suns, or snipping blasts; and nothing could be more singular than the variety of plants and birds that were sheltered in these intricate and safe recesses.

But when the bursting of the crystal surface set loose the many waters that had rushed down, swollen with the annual tribute of dissolving snow, the islands and low lands were all flooded in an instant; and the lofty banks, from which you were wont to overlook the stream, were now entirely filled by an impetuous torrent, bearing down, with incredible and tumultuous rage, immense shoals of ice; which, breaking every instant by the concussion of others, jammed together in some places, in others erecting themselves in gigantic heights for an instant in the air, and seeming to combat with their fellow-giants crowding on in all directions, and falling together with an inconceivable crash, formed a terrible moving picture, animated and various beyond conception; for it was not only the cerulean ice, whose broken edges, combating with the stream, refracted light into a thousand rainbows, that charmed your attention, lofty pines, large pieces of the bank torn off by the ice with all their early green and tender foliage, were driven on like travelling islands, amid this battle of breakers, for such it seemed. I am absurdly attempting to paint a scene, under which the powers of language sink. Suffice it, that this year its solemnity was increased by an unusual quantity of snow, which the last hard winter had accumulated, and the dissolution of which now threatened an inundation.

Solemn indeed it was to me, as the memento of my approaching journey, which was to take place whenever the ice broke, this being here a kind of epoch. The parting with all that I loved at the Flats was such an affliction, as it is even yet a renewal of sorrows to recollect. I loved the very barn and the swamp I have described so much that I could not see them for the last time without a pang. As for the island and the bank of the river, I know not how I should have parted with them, if I had thought the parting final; the good kind neighbors, and my faithful and most affectionate Marian, to whom of all others this separation was most wounding, grieved me not a little. I was always sanguine in the extreme, and would hope against hope; but Marian, who was older, and had more common sense, knew too well how little likelihood there was of my ever returning. Often with streaming eyes and bursting sobs she begged to know if the soul of a person dying in America could find

its way over the vast ocean to join that of those who rose to the abodes of future bliss from Europe; her hope of a reunion being now entirely referred to that in a better world. There was no truth I found it so difficult to impress upon her mind as the possibility of spirits being instantaneously transported from one distant place to another; a doctrine which seemed to her very comfortable. Her agony at the final

parting I do not like to think of. When I used to obtain permission to pass a little time in town, I was transported with the thoughts of the enjoyments that awaited me in the society of my patroness, and the young friends I most loved; but now all was vapid and joyless, and in scenes the most desirable my whole mind was occupied by the pleasing past and the dubious future.

CHAPTER LXII.

Departure from Albany.-Origin of the State of Vermont.

AFTER quitting the Flats we were to stay for some days at Madame's, till we should make a circular visit and take leave. Having lulled my disappointment with regard to Clarendon, and filled all my dreams with images of Clydesdale and Tweedale, and every other vale or dale that was the haunt of the pastoral muse in Scotland, I grew pretty well reconciled to my approaching journey; thinking I should meet piety and literature in every cottage, and poetry and music in every recess, among the sublime scenery of my native mountains. At any rate, I was sure I should hear the larks sing, and see the early primrose deck the woods, and daisies enamel the meadows; on all which privileges I had been taught to set the due value. Yet I wondered very much how it was that I could enjoy nothing with such gay visions opening before me. My heart, I suppose, was honester than my imagination, for it refused to take pleasure in any thing; which was a state of mind so new to me that I could not understand it. Everywhere I was caressed, and none of these caresses