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 . We are much pleased with it, and judging from past efforts of the same pen, do not hesitate to promise our readers a rich treat.”

This was a domestic tale of some length, apparently designed to illustrate the folly and vanity of a worldly and ambitious mother; but although the first six chapters were in the hands of the publisher, and the remainder nearly ready for publication, it was, for the reasons before-mentioned, entirely withdrawn, notwithstanding the earnest solicitation of the editors into whose hands it had passed.

 

for purposes of personal convenience, by a simple community, thrown without protection among strangers, in a country yet almost savage, without money, and with few facilities for building, this town was not distinguished from the other primitive settlements except by the love of association which it evinced, and the strong marks of national character which it assumed. The common interest of safety, not less than old prejudices in favour of this mode of life, seemed to warrant the propriety of combining that strength, which, when divided, might not be sufficient to protect their lives from the Indian’s scalping knife, or their customs and property from the invasions of the roving, unsettled, and shifting tide of white population. It would hardly be supposed that a people who had forsaken their own country for the sake of these hallowed customs, could easily merge them into the rude and reckless mass of provincial habits,—every feeling of national love, every principle of their sacred religion forbade it; and the formidable barrier of a foreign tongue, whilst it shut them in from the new world, guarded the treasure they had so much desired to keep inviolate. An ignorance of the common methods of agriculture practised here, as well as strong prejudices in favour of their former habits of living, prevented them from seizing with avidity on large bodies of land by individual possession; but the site of a town being selected, a lot of four acres was apportioned to every citizen. In a short time a hundred houses had risen, in a regularly compact body, in the square of which stood a building superior in size and construction to the rest, which served the threefold purpose of