'T was the spotless uniform they wear
In the chambers of the dead!

"I saw a fair, young maid

In the snowy vesture drest;
So pure, she looked as one arrayed
For the mansions of the blest.

"A smile had left its trace

On her lip, at the parting breath,
And the beauty in that lovely face
Was fixed with the seal of death!

The same character belongs to the piece entitled "The Empty Bird's-Nest."

"And thou, my sad, little, lonely nest,
Hast oft been sought as the peaceful rest
Of a weary wing and a guiltless breast!
But where is thy builder now?

And what has become of the helpless brood,
For which the mother, with daily food,
Came flitting so light, through the spicy wood,
To her home on the waving bough?

"The fowler, perhaps, has hurled the dart,
Which the parent bird has received in her heart;
And her tender orphans are scattered apart,

So wide, they never again.

In thy warm, soft cell of love can meet,

And thou hast been filled with the snow and the sleet,
By the hail and the winds have thy sides been beat,
And drenched by the pitiless rain.

"Though great was the toil which thy building cost,
With thy fibres so neatly coiled and crossed,
And thy lining of down, thou art lorn and lost,
A ruin beyond repair;

So I'll take thee down, as I would not see

Such a sorrowful sight on the gay green tree;

And when I have torn thee, thy parts shall be
Like thy tenants, dispersed in air.

"Thou hast made me to think of each heart-woven tie;
Of the child's first home, and of her, whose eye
Watched fondly o'er those, who were reared to die
Where the grave of a distant shore

Received to its bosom the strangers' clay;

For when, as thy birds, they had passed away,

T was not to return, and the mother and they
In time were to meet no more!"

The next specimen which we shall offer, is, though shorter, still better. It is the versification of an incident which has occurred in many a family, and will occur again and again. Miss Gould has judged well in uttering it in simple words; for any thing different from simplicity would have spoiled it. It will cause not a few parents to sigh deeply – perhaps, to weep.

"THE PLAYTHINGS.

"Oh! mother, here's the very top,

That brother used to spin;

The vase with seeds I 've seen him drop

To call our robin in;

The line that held his pretty kite,

His bow, his cup and ball,

The slate on which he learned to write,

His feather, cap, and all!'

"My dear, I'd put the things away
Just where they were before:
Go, Anna, take him out to play,
And shut the closet door.
Sweet innocent! he little thinks

The slightest thought expressed,
Of him that 's lost, too deeply sinks
Within a mother's breast!""

There are some pieces in the volume, of a gayer character than those we have extracted, and they are happily executed. But in so short a notice as this, we do not feel disposed to fly "from grave to gay," and shall therefore leave our readers under the impression of the feelings which the general tone of this book is calculated to inspire.

ART. V." The District School as it was, by ONE, WHO WENT TO IT. Boston, Carter, Hendee, & Co. 1833. 12mo. pp. 156.

We hope and trust this little book will be extensively read. If not, it will be for some reason besides its want of merit. One merit, and this is among the very rarest, it certainly has; that of effecting precisely what it undertakes. It undertakes to picture the District School. And the District School, both without and within, both in its unity and in its variety, both in its principal and in its accessory ideas, stands right before us. We see, we have seen a thousand times, that old, weather-stained, crazy building, with its slamming blinds, and its curiously diversified windows, apparently contrived, by wooden, cracked, and puttied panes, to prevent too large and direct an influx of light, the "District School as it was not rejoicing in excess of light. We hear the continuous, bee-like hum of its swarming inmates. Our childhood is back upon us. Its giddiness is in our brain; its recklessness is in our heart; its vitality is leaping along every nerve, and whirling through every vein. We are again "reading," at the top of our voice, in utter defiance of emphasis, intonation, cadence, and such like antiquated prejudices. We are spelling "abomination," a tin medal being about our neck. We are battling sturdily, but with blows as aimless as old blind Polypheme's, with the "Parts of Speech." Our arm aches with long holding at full length the heavy Bible; -a not very wisely selected instrument of punishment, though often and variously used in old times. Our hand is blushing with the ferula's kiss. We are rolling and tumbling in the snow. We are on fire with the excitement of a snow-ball fight. In a word, the work of years is undone in a moment; our hard-earned experience has slipped from our grasp; and we are again that drollest of all droll things, that museum of all oddities, that incarnation of all angles, and twists, and crooks, that most care-free, uproarious, and happy creature, a country school-boy.

--

Our author is no copyist. His descriptions are not dim, spiritless imitations of some lifeless foreign original. His language is forcible, picturesque, and his own. It lets the thought shine through it, without rounding off one corner, or

smoothing out one wrinkle, or straightening a single crook. Rural life here is not a shrub sickly and pining at its removal from its native earth. It is thriving and vigorous, its native soil clinging to its roots, not one branch dead, not one leaf withered.

There is, indeed, a class of critics, who will be likely sometimes to take offence at our author's phraseology; — I mean that sapient class, who think Homer's similes vulgar, because they speak of sheep and kine; or Edmund Burke guilty of bad taste, because he so often draws illustrations from the mechanic arts; or the Old Testament writings unrefined, because so full of rural sights and sounds. Such critics may possibly quarrel with our author's phraseology for the very thing we particularly like it for; namely, that sprinkling of rusticity, which sets off so aptly the subject treated. To have spoken of the homely objects here brought before us in the silken language of the album, would have been casing a raw country boy in the full dress of a city exquisite.

This book is wonderful for its exactness of truth. We could almost hold up our hand in court, in testimony that we had ourselves been actors in all its scenes. Every graduate of a country school, who takes it up, will, unless we mistake, find it not easy to lay it down, until he has completed its perusal. And the city-born and city-bred, who would know just what rural life is, had better read this book with all convenient despatch.

It may be thought we should offer some specimens in justification of our encomiums, which, being representatives of our feelings, have not, we admit, been very stinted. We have no great opinion of specimens in general, and more especially in the case of a book like this, so much of the value of which consists in little nice touches, which, separate from their connexion, make but an indifferent show. However, in compliance with custom, we will cite one passage, to the verisimilitude of which, by the way, our own experience can bear witness.

Abijah Wilkins was a "surly, saucy, profane, and truthless" boy. He had, for years, been a thorn in the side of successive schoolmasters. Mr. Johnson, this winter's master, had been apprized of this boy's little pleasant peculiarities, and was prepared for them.

"Well, the afternoon of the first day, Abijah thrust a pin into a boy beside him, which made him suddenly cry out with the sharp pain. The sufferer was questioned, Abijah was accused, and found guilty. The master requested James Clark to go to his room and bring a rattan he would find there, as if the formidable ferula was unequal to the present exigency. James came with a rattan very long and very elastic, as if it had been selected from a thousand, not to walk with, but to whip. Then he ordered all the blinds next to the road to be closed. He then said, 'Abijah, come this way,' He came. 'The school may shut their books and suspend their studies a few minutes. Abijah, take off your frock, fold it up, lay it on the seat behind you.' Abijah obeyed these several commands with sullen tardiness. Here, a boy up towards the back seat burst out with a sort of shuddering laugh produced by a nervous excitement he could not control. Silence,' said the master, with a thunder, and a stamp on the floor, that made the house quake. All was as still as midnight. Not a foot moved, not a seat cracked, not a book rustled. The school seemed to be appalled. The expression of every countenance was changed. Some were unnaturally pale, some flushed, and eighty distended and moistening eyes were fastened on the scene. The awful expectation was too much for one poor girl. 'May I go home?' she whined with an imploring and terrified look. A single cast from the countenance of authority crushed the trembler down into her seat again. A tremulous sigh escaped from one of the larger girls, then all was breathlessly still again. Take off your jacket also, Abijah. Fold it and lay it on your frock." Mr. Johnson then took his chair and set it away at the farthest distance the floor would permit, as if all the space that could be had would be necessary for the operations about to take place. He then took the rattan, and seemed to examine it closely, drew it through his hand, bent it almost double, laid it down again. He then took off his own coat, folded it up, and laid it on the desk. Abijah's breast then heaved like a bellows, his limbs began to tremble, and his face was like a sheet. The master now took the rattan in his right hand, and the criminal by the collar with his left, his large knuckles pressing hard against the shoulder of the boy. He raised the stick high over the shrinking back. Then O what a screech! Had the rod fallen? No, it still remained suspended in the air. O,—I wont do so agin, I'll never do so agin, -O, —O, — don't, I will be good,- sartinly will!' The threatening instrument of pain was gently taken from its elevation. The master spoke. You promise, do you?' 'Yis, Sir, -O, yis, Sir.' The tight grasp was