Would'st thou thy children bless? The sacred voice Of nature calls thee; where she points the way

Tread confident. No labyrinth is here:

No clue of Ariadne wilt thou need,

To Theseus given; fair is her open path,

And strong the steady light she casts around,
Instinctive light, the surest safest guide.

Thy child is born. See, where the treacherous nurse, Or priestess of Lucina, in her hand

The ready medicine brings! Forewarned, beware;
Within the fatal drug lurks death; by this,
Thousands from yet untasted life retire,
Thousands of infant souls; yet sanctified
By custom, other reasons are assign'd,
And nature is accused of impious deeds
She ne'er committed. Nature will preserve

Whate'er she frames: and what the child requires

In his new state, sagaciously provides,

Both food and remedy: Before the sun

Hath from his birth encircled half the sphere,
He asks, plain as expressive signs can ask,
The mother's breast: without a moment's pause
Hear the mute voice of instinct and obey.
Know the first efflux from the milky fount
Is nature's chymic mixture, which no power
Of art presumptuous can supply; this flows
Gently detersive, purifying, bland;
This each impediment o'ercomes, and gives
The young, unfetter'd springs of life to play.
Hence too the mother is secure: The streams,
Her infant's health promoting, flow to her
Salubrious; otherwise confined, or urged
Back to their source, what evils may she dread!
Sickness, and giddy languor, shivering cold,
And heat alternate, dire obstructions, pangs
Of sharpest torture, cancers, by the juice
Of boasted hemloc not to be remov'd.

O mother (let me by that tenderest name
Conjure thee) still pursue the task begun!
-Nor unless urged by strong necessity,
Some fated, some peculiar circumstance,
By which thy health may suffer, or thy child

Inhale disease, or that the genial food
Too scanty flows, give to an Alien's care
Thy orphan babe. Oh! if by choice thou dost
What shall I call thee? woman? No, though fair
Thy face, and deckt with unimagined charms
Though sweetness seem portray'd in every line,
And smiles which might become a Hebe, rise
At will, crisping thy rosy cheeks, though all
That's lovely, kind, attractive, elegant,
Dwell in thy outward shape, and catch the eye
Of gazing rapture, all is but deceit;

The form of woman's thine, but not the soul.
Had'st thou been treated thus, perchance the prey
Of death long since, no child of thine had known
An equal lot severe. O unblown flower!
Soft bud of spring! Planted in foreign soil,
How wilt thou prosper! Brush'd by other winds
In a new clime, and fed by other dews
Than suit thy nature! From a stranger hand

Ah, what can infancy expect, when she

Whose essence was inwove with thine, whose life,
Whose soul thou didst participate, neglects
Herself in thee, and breaks the strongest seal
Which nature stamp'd in vain upon her heart.

O luckless babe, born in an evil hour!
Who shall thy numerous wants attend? explore
The latent cause of ill? thy slumbers guard?
And when awake, with nice sedulity
Thy every glance observe? A parent might;
A hireling cannot; though of blameless mind,
Though conscious duty prompt her to the task,
She feels not in her breast the impulsive goad
Of instinct, all the fond, the fearful thoughts
Awakening; say, at length that habit's power
Can something like maternal kindness give,
Yet, ere that time, may the poor nursling die.
Besides, who can assure the lacteal springs
Clear, and untainted? Oft disorder lurks
Beneath the vivid bloom, and cheerful eye,
Promising health; and poisonous juice secrete,
Slow undermining life, stains what should be
The purest nutriment. Hence, worse than death,
Long years of misery to thy blasted child.

A burthen to himself, by others shunn'd,
He wishes for the grave, and wastes his days
In solitary wo; or haply weds,

And propagates the hereditary plague;
Entailing on his name the bitter curse
Of generations yet unborn, a race

Pithless, and weak, of faded texture wan;

Like some declining plant, with mildew'd leaves,
Whose root a treacherous insect gnaws unseen.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

A RIDE TO NIAGARA.

(Continued from page 62.)

Monday, May 15, to the falls of Niagara. Opposite ChippeAt the way, the river seems to be about a mile and a half across, falls it is contracted and divided by an island into two main cataracts, the one near the British, the other near the American side. The road runs along the brow of a hill, and as you pass along at about two miles distance from Chippeway, you observe a wagon road descending to the right into some flats washed by the rapids of Niagara. The descent may be eighty or ninety feet. The flats are very narrow, but there are four or five buildings on them, a mill, a tannery, &c. At any of these you can procure a person to walk with half a mile to the Table Rock, over a part of which the river rushes and makes the great fall. Ten dollars would make this a good horse road; at present you have to wind through the bushes very uncomfortably. The tavern-keepers at Chippeway ought to feel it their duty to make the walk as comfortable for the ladies as possible, and a trifle would make it so. When you get on the edge of this limestone flat called the Table Rock, you have before you a full and complete view of an amphitheatre of about

you

half a mile* in circumference; comprehending close to your right two-thirds of the river Niagara, after rushing along in broken and foaming rapids, precipitating itself into a chasm beneath your feet, exactly one hundred and fifty feet deept. The falling water projects far enough to admit you to see a considerable way between the rock and the main sheet, and affords room enough for those who wish to descend, to go behind it. This is owing to a projecting ledge of the rock over which the water is precipitated. Opposite to you, at the distance of somewhat less than a quarter of a mile, you see the river broken by a finely wooded island; and the rest of this immense body of water, rushing down into the farther part of the chasm below, on the American side.

The roaring and foaming of the rapids for near a mile in full view before the river arrives at the precipice; the green tint of the water, edged all the way down by curling folds of snow white foam; the immediate chasm of boiling snow into which the river pours; the mist that eternally hovers over the gulf below, and through which you see at intervals the turbulence of the bottom; the trees of the island which divides the falls, and which seem to descend even below the edge of the precipice itself; the immense interminable mass of wood, which fills the whole of the surrounding country, and borders to the very edge, every part of the watery prospect; and the rapidity with which the green and white current below drives along

thus:

So it appears to me, but I find the measurement more precisely given

The Horse-shoe falls have an extent of about

Yards.

600

The Island,

340

The Small Fall beyond, on the American side,

8

Another island, wooded to the edge of the precipice,

20

The Great Fall on the American side, 163 feet to the bottom,

$50

The circumference of the amphitheatre, from the Table Rock to

the edge of the last mentioned fall,.

718

I think the eye takes in at least half a mile.

†This measurement I obtained from Mr. Jos. Ellicott, who told me he had taken much pains to ascertain the height from the Table Rock to the water's edge: and though he had made it one hundred and fifty feet on some trials, he had oftener made it one hundred and forty-nine feet six inches. It may, therefore, be called one hundred and fifty feet in round numbers.

as if in haste to escape from the horrible chasm in which it had been ingulfed, form altogether a scene of grandeur and of beauty, unrivalled. I felt content that I had taken the journey. It was worth the trouble.

After having sufficiently contemplated the scene before me, I was satisfied that I could well dispense with my intended tour to the American side; and also with the troublesome descent down an unsafe ladder half a mile off, and a walk of near a mile over the rough rocks at the bottom, to get at the view below, and behind the sheet of water. It appeared to me that every thing that was worth seeing, might be seen in safety and in comfort from the Table Rock; but those who have more youth, more leisure, and more curiosity than I had may like to see all that is to be seen. It is unpardonable in the tavern-keepers at Chippeway, whose establishments are to be maintained by the concourse of travellers, who come expressly to see the falls, that they do not provide at least a sound and safe ladder, and expend twenty or thirty dollars in laying the stones at the bottom in such a manner as to enable the female part of the visitants to contemplate the scene under the Ta ble Rock, if they wish so to do: at present it is an undertaking too arduous and fatiguing for the female sex.

Those who wish to descend will be directed to a house about half a mile from the flats, where a ladder is kept for the purpose. When I was there nobody had gone down it since the preceding season, and I was advised not to try; an advice which I readily complied with. From the flats where the habitations are, you can ascend again into the main road, which I think is about eighty or ninety fect perpendicular above the edge of the water. This, therefore, is the descent which forms the rapids of the river, before the perpendicular fall of one hundred and fifty feet commences.

When you have again got upon the high road by an ascent at the further end of the flats, you see about a hundred yards before you a house, with a field before it, fenced with a worm fence. It is now occupied by Charles Wilson, but has lately been sold to a Mr. Shannon. Do not go so far as the house, but skirt round the fence, and in about one hundred and fifty or two hundred yards, you will see two or three knolls or prominences on which you may again ake your stand, and have perhaps a still more complete view of the