THE HANGING OF THE SPY.

bough, and to take off and twist together the bridle reins, one of which being made fast about the criminal's neck, the general, as he held the other in his ready hand, exhorted him to commend his soul to God for the last time. The bewildered wretch essayed to pray, but his ideas utterly failed him, and the words faltered slow and incoherent on his tongue; still, in the faint hope of succour or respite, he prolonged the imperfect orisons till they were stayed by the advance of his relentless executioner, who, motioning him forward, proceeded to perform the last act of the tragedy. Throwing the almost lifeless Crowles by main strength on the saddle, he ascended the tree and attached the other end of the leather noose securely to the branch above; this done, he hastened down, and giving a sudden lash to the horse it sprung from under the culprit; the body fell with a heavy wrench; the neck cracked,

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swoon, nor shriek, nor sigh succeeded the appalling conviction, as it flashed across her brain; calm, cold, and colourless as a corpse, she stood and heard the message by the negro, then mutely signed him to depart. There was no living soul about the premises but herself and her little ones, the only servant being gone on a Sunday's visit to her friends. But, possessed of the nature and habits of a Spartan female, the bereaved woman sufficed for herself, and wasted not the time in weeping and wailing words over her fatherless children. These she made ready to go abroad; then removing the saddle, that had been the ower's footstool to eternity, she accoutred herself and the animal in the riding gear proper to her own use, loaded and shouldered the gun with which, in her girlish days, she had brought down many a soaring bird, and many a bounding deer; and leading the horse by the bridle, with

and every limb, violently convulsed, quivered the youngest child in her arms, the two boys fol

long and fearfully in the air. Gen. Campbell stood in stern silence, looking on the dying struggles of the spy, till the last vibration of thong and limb had ceased; then directing his servant to take the horse to Mrs. Crowles, with the information of her husband's death, and where the body was to be found, he mounted his own galland steed, and rejoining his wife, rode on to meeting in leisurely unconcern, as if nothing unusual had happened.

Mrs. Crowles was at this time the mother of three children, and on the eve of confinement with her fourth. She had been for some days awaiting, in great anxiety, the return of her husband, from an errand of more than ordinary peril. She was still a woman of great beauty; for though the freshened glow of her maiden bloom had vanished, it was replaced with a more touching, if less brilliant charn, in the air of matronly dignity, gently blent with melancholy tenderness, now softening the expression of her fine features. As she sat in the door of her log cabin, (I am aware that cottage has the more refined sound, but I cannot help preferring the local term) her large black eyes alternately cast from the bible, in which she read to the infant on her lap, and then turned wistfully down the road in search of her Bradley's approaching form, she might have served as the model to a painter about to limn the Genius of America-full of

lowing her, she proceeded on foot to the nearest
house, distant about a mile and a half. No wo-
manly sign of grief burst all this while from eye
or lip, or breast:

Vengeance, deep brooding o'er the slain,
Had locked the source of softer woe."

Her resolution was taken-her mind made up;
her first care and thought was for the body of
her murdered (as it seemed to her) husband; her
next, to shoot the man who had but inflicted the
just penalty of martial law on that husband's mis-
deeds. Buoyed up by the energy of her revenge-
ful purpose, she reached the farm house of John
Helms; he was from home. Jane told her tra-
gic tale to its shocked in-dwellers, confiding her
orphans to their kind charge, bade them raise
the neighbourhood to follow her to the fatal spot;
and, disregarding all persuasion or remonstrance,
mounted her paltrey and rode rapidly off, on her
pious duty of guarding the remains of her beloved
partner from insult or injury by man or beast of
prey. The inhabitants of these upland tracts
were few and scattered far, the roads rough and
circuitous, and besides, it was the sabbath day;
so that much time necessarily elapsed before a
sufficient number were collected, and the simple
preparations made for cutting down and remov-
ing the corpse. These completed, the party
pressed forward with all speed to the relief of

majestic firmness, yet pale in saddened doubt, the forlorn but high-souled heroine. They

at that gloomiest juncture of our righteous war. Suddenly the clatter of horses' hoofs, growing louder and louder, echoed on her eager ear; the two biggest children ran toddling along towards the gate, to meet "daddy," and get a ride to the house on "daddy's" horse. The glad wife made all haste to rise that her situation and burden of book and baby permitted, and went smilingly forth to meet the person dearest to her on earth, though he was the insidious betrayer of his country, and had placed her at deadly variance with all in her father's house. A black man with a led horse is seen slowly riding up to the doorthat horse she instantly recognizes as her husband's-that rider is known for the servant of Gen. Campbell, the implacable foe, the pitiless destroyer of tory and of traitor. At once the whole truth is comprehended by the widowed sufferer; there needs no words to tell it. Neither

reached the place of execution; the evening shadows were gathering fast around, but the level rays of the sinking sun, as he shone behind the lofty chesnut tree, streamed in yellow lustre on the scene beneath. A dark object, strongly defined on the blue of the opposite horizon, first arrested their attention; it was the body of Bradley Crowles, swinging stiff and stark from the projecting bough; the only living thing in view was the horse, quietly grazing at the edge of the woods. Stretched on the ground, at the foot of the fatal tree, lay the hapless Jane Crowles; she was sometime dead. Overcome with fatigue and emotion at a sight so awful to the eyes of a wife, she had taken the pangs of travail before her time, and sunk under them. The cold autumnal winds, sadly sighing her requiem, lifted her long hair and blew the withered leaves over her as she lay in her pale loveliness, a martyr to conju

I'D BE A RAY-THE RED SATCHEL.

Surmise is the gossamer that malice blows on fair reputations: the corroding dew, that destroys the choice blossom. Surmise is primarily the squint of suspicion, and suspicion is established before it is confirmed.-Zimmerman.

heart envied the splendid appearance of the tight-laced belles of Eddington farm, and were determined that as they could afford it as well as the best, scarlet should be the reigning colour of the lasses of Aaronsburg.

he graduated at Yale, and thinking it rather too bare-faced even for an attorney, to transact business so near the premises without calling upon his relation, Henry Mortimer, he ventured to renew the acquaintance of their youth, and introduced to the family his two daughters, who, till now, had never breathed the vulgar air of two hundred miles from their city residence. Of daughters, Mortimer had an equal number, and a son who was the pride of Eddington farm, and who welcomed with that kind of politeness, not frequently used at courts, which speaks the meaning of the heart, Timothy Fifa and Misses Amelia and Arabella Fifa to the hospitality and romantic scenery surrounding the village and the farm. The younger of the Fifas was a lovely girl of thirteen, who had not completed her education; and not expecting to find the well-stored library of Mortimer in the wilderness of their retreat, had brought a bright scarlet colored satchel of the finest silk, well lined with the latest novels, to amuse the tedious hours of gentility, till viewed the wonder-working scarlet. They soon their return to fashionable communicateness in discovered that plain linsey woolsey of the looms

the great city of New York. Fifa's eldest daughter was of the ripeness of love-admirable eighteen-when the city graces bloomed around her for the accomplishment of hymeneal honours. Their genteel demeanour soon attracted the attention of Dr. Sprig, who had handled bones and sinews in the great city, while at the Medical School; and therefore, to him a New Yorker's company was like treading the same path over again. In process of time, gentility began to manifest its appearance in the arrangements of Eddington farm.

The homespun frocks of the girls, with their large pockets, virtues inherited from their great grandmother, must give place to the calico investiture of their city cousins; and the scarlet coloured satchel of Miss Arabella Fifa was converted into an indispensable reticule, of the modern vocabulary, ary, to hold handkerchief and snuff boxes, for the improving, corset applying, and citifying metamorphosis in the vicinity of Aaronsburg. When appearing at church, after the fashionable arrangement of all the articles of the new nomenclature, none attracted more conspiculously the attention of the rosy cheeked lasses of the vil village than the aforesaid red satchel, and Wonder was straining her optics to discover to what purpose the Misses Mortimer would give it the honour of an application. It could not be, said they, to carry the contribution money, for a purse would be much more convenient for that. It can't be to carry their dinner in, for they are too charitable to old Mrs. Guyon, the gingercake baker, for that. They could not hit upon the meaning, till a convention of the old grand dames proposed voting the wearers into purgatory, for upsetting the understanding of the swains and sweet-hearts of the village by this untimely and unseemly exhibition of the scarlet colour. Why, said they, it is an insult to our old dominie, who prefers any thing black to that British colour of the Mortimers; and I dare say, that the wearers think more of king George than of the Whigs of this free country.

The satchel having attained pre-eminence merely for the sake of uniformity of personal pretensions, the use to which it might be applied was yet to be learned from the innovators on the wholesome rules of the village. The Senatus Consultum, after a session of three weeks in the village, adjourned to meet at Eddington farm, to know precisely what was intended by this new fangled system of innovation on the venerable doings and usages of man and maid, in these regions of primordial simplicity. Here they learned that it would be very commodious to put fans, snuff boxes, combs, needle cushions, pin cases, knitting and netting of various kinds, and almost innumerable were the outlandish names which astounded the smoking group as they

of Deidrich Knickerbocker's cousin, Stophel Vanderscriver, would not exactly correspond with the scarlet silk satchel, and it cost eighteen bushels of good wheat to furnish chintz calico and silk to match it, for one girl in the way of the Mortimers, for church going. This aroused the whole Sanhedrim of Aaronsburg, or Arrysburg, as the venerable termed it, in the vernacular. Dunder und blitzen, said their magistrates, if you go on at this rate, in a few years the whole village and the country round will not bring its taxes, set up at sheriff's sale.

Derrick Slaughterdam was right. Snuff and tobacco formed already a proportion of the expenditure of the village, not the most desirable to the economical part of it; and this sweeping declaration was sufficient to induce the authoritative to desist from their extravagancies, and among others, Henry Mortimer was not the most backward in retracing the steps his relatives, the Fifas' expedition, had brought upon him. It was time his son and daughters had improved admirably in genteel life. He and the girls, accompanied ccompanied by Dr. Sprig, had visited New York, to renew the red satchel acquaintance, and the daughters more than once ventured with a brace of young gentlemen to summer it with the Mortimers, and it was even whispered that Henry's son and Miss Arabella would, in time, make a happy match; and it had been insinuated that Dr. Sprig might be coupled with Miss Amelia. Things were going forward in this kind of style, when Henry understood that one of the two farms which he possessed, and intended for his son to aid in the matrimonial contract, must be mortgaged to balance the expenditure of his genteel children. Brought to his senses by this exhibit of his affairs, he resolved, with the energy which accomplishes whatever it undertakes, not to retain the gentility which had made such sad inroads on his purse, and immediately inventoried the rings, bracelets, tortoise shell, silver plates, sideboards, and all the paraphanelia of his imagina

The scarlet had entered the imaginations of the ry elevation, not excepting the fashionable young, and none would be satisfied with the olden shape-makers of the ladies-busk, corset, and fare of their grandmothers; swain and sweet- all. Oh! the lamentation of some of the lasses

at this resolve of Mortimer, but his firmness con- | the despots who oppose the education of the peoquered. "Richard was himself again." ple will be viewed with but little gratitude by their successors, if, unfortunately, their attempts

as they desire."

'The Fifas did not deign to answer, and Juliana viewed herself as having overcome the sophists, but concluded that prejudice would direct them to act as they were educated by their Yale taught father. This argumentation gave Juliana cause to believe that most of the new arrangements of Eddington farm were as unrepublican as the sentiments of Mr. Fifa's daughters, in relation to the people, and their principles were heartily detested.

The younger daughter of Mortimer was the most happy of the children at this reformation. to arrest the progress of science be as operative She had never approved of the glitter in which her father had arrayed the family, and therefore regretted less the gewgaws which the Misses Fifas had selected, to the exhaustion of their purses. Another event, too, showed that she did not entertain the most respectful consideration for her cousins, as they had undervalue lher lover, he being a country school master. On the second visit of the Fifa's to Aaronsburg, Juliana Mortimer introduced her lover to her city cousins, and having mentioned his avocation, the two young ladies expressed astonishment, that any of their relations would condescend to admit to companionship a person, who would follow an occupation so much beneath the genius and dignity of a gentleman; which produced the retort, that the Fifas' father was a weaver, and that the greatest lawyer of which she had read, was Sir Matthew Hale, wh who took to the bar from the high way, having robbed for a livelihood in his early years. She thought that the occupation of her lover was at least as honorable, though not so oppressive as that of the citizen lawyer.

or

The Misses Fifas, in reply, asserted that the schoolmaster was elevating the ideas of the people far too high for such drudges, and that it was immaterial whether they were instructed not; and that their pa had taught them to consider any who make pretensions to grammar and geography, etc., who were not either lawyers, doctors, or divines, as fops, and accordingly she had so considered and treated them.

"I pity your father," said Juliana, "for instructing you in sentiments so derogating from American ladies. Do you not know that in a free country, the people must be intelligent to preserve its freedom? If you know this, you must certainly know, that they cannot become intelligent without instructors: and if there be genius in language and literary pursuits, it follows, that he who communicates to the young tyro, in order to form the future lawyer, physician, or divine, must possess genius to render his instruction successful."

"I meant," said Miss Fifa, "that their employment was not estimated liberal, because their pecuniary compensation is small in proportion to the other professions; and money, you know, is the criterion of merit."

"That does not argue," replied Juliana, "that the most meritorious actions are the best rewarded; and I shall ever esteem mankind for their merit, leaving money matters to those who regard them more."

"But," answered Miss Fifa, " you should show some attention to family," &c.

Henry's son at length concluded, that unless Miss Fifa would consent to conform to the arrangements which his father had now persuaded him to be all important, why she must even continue to be Miss Fifa to the conclusion of the subject.

It is owing to the determined air of the magistrate, and the republican simplicity and good sense of the inhabitants of Aaronsburg and its vicinity, that they still adhere to the moral lectures of the pastor, and that M. Mortimer still possesses an unincumbered inheritance-being one other farm, unmortgaged, besides Eddington farm. REMARKER.

Written for the Casket.

ON KNOWLEDGE.

OR AN INQUIRY INTO THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANCIENTS,
AS COMPARED WITH THAT OF THE MODERNS.

"There is nothing new under the sun."-HOLY WRIT.

There is a dogma held by some philosophers, that genius is entirely dependent on opportunity, application and circumstance, and that one man is as likely to become great as another, if equal advantages are granted. Not less prevalent, and not less false than this hypothesis, is the notion among the superficial, that the moderns have far out stripped the ancients in general knowledge, and that the sciences have been carried in discovery and improvement far beyond any knowledge the ancients had of them. The falsity of this may be proven by many respectable authorities, and first I shall speak of Chemistry.

Chemistry, in which so much improvement has been made of late, and which a century ago was but the rude skeleton of a science, was nevertheless well known to the ancients. Chemistry had its origin in Egypt. Plutarch, in his Isis and Ostris, calls a district of Egypt Chamia; hence from Chamia or Chimia, comes the word Chemistry; or, as it is sometimes written, Chymistry. Scripture tells us of the land of Cham, and Bockhart says, the Copts still call themselves Chemia, or Chami.

Tubal-Cain is the first chymist we have any account, of who worked in brass and iron, and, consequently, must have had a considerable knowledge of the science; for he had first to work the mine, and afterwards to separate and refine from the ore, all of which are chemical operations. The Vulcan of heathen mythology was no other than Tubal-Cain.

"My lover's grandfather was a member of the American bar, and his father an officer of the revolution and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and he possesses sufficient republicanism to permit his son to instruct the rising generation, who are to become the future guardians of our country, when our fathers shall have mingled with the spirits of eternity." Thus said Juliana, and she further remarked, "that As there are now some chemical operations

which were unknown to the ancients, so did they | tracted from sea salt, which of course must have understand some which modern science cannot been distilled. Pliny gives evidence of the same. fathom. The Scriptures inform us that Moses Galen performed many experiments by fire, and rendered the golden calf potable, which the great Bærhaave acknowledged was beyond the power of any chymist of his time. Modern chymistry has a solvent for gold, which is the aqua regia, or nitric and muriatic acids united, but it does not render the gold potable; on the contrary, it would destroy life. The cement, with which they reared the monuments of their glory is unknown to modern times; and also the manner of embalming their mummies, which have resisted the tooth of time three thousand years. Every means have been tried by the moderns, to recover the lost art of embalming bodies, but without effect; which evidences in the Egyptians a superior knowledge of chymistry. The mummies of Lewis de Bils and Jean de Bois, who were celebrated in the art, have gone to corruption. There is a mummy in the museum at London, which is covered with granated glass of various colours, which serves to show that they were acquainted also with the manufacture of glass.

knew that by it many secrets of nature might be discovered. Hippocrates, the friend of Democritus, understood the general principles of chemistry, and was well instructed in its useful parts. Many passages from Plato are considered aphorisms in chemistry, and Dioxorides mentions many substances now known in chemistry. Ammonia, we are told, received its name from having been discovered near the temple of Jupiter Ammon. Petronius declares that Democritus, the father of experimental philosophy, extracted the juice of every simple, and that there was not a quality belonging to the vegetable or mineral kingdom that had eluded his curious research.

The ancients are considered in the background with respect to the invention of gunpowder, but there is numerous proof upon proof that they were well acquainted with it. Virgil and Valerius Flaccus speak of the imitation of thunder, produced by Salmoneus, in such a manner that we cannot but believe that they were effected We are told by Pliny, that the emperor Caius by gunpowder. He fell a victim to his experiby means of fire extracted gold from orpiment, ments, and it was believed that Jupiter destroywhich the Alchymists could never do, though in ed him for his audacity. Dion informs us that hunting for gold they stumbled on phosphorus. Caligula imitated thunder, and the historian Cleopatra laid a wager with Marc Antony, that Agathias says, that Anthemius Traliensis fell she would exceed him in the costliness of a sup- out with the rhetorician, Zeno, and set fire to per, and, in conjunction with Phacas, her physi- his house with thunder and lightning. But to cian, dissolved a pearl of great price in a kind set the matter doubt, Marcus Græcus of vinegar, which was served up at table as a gives a receipt, which which is the same now used, for conserve. These processes are far beyond mo- making gunpowder; namely, sulphur, charcoal dern chemistry, and there is another I shall men- and salt-petre. He then mentions the mode of tion, equally as strange. Petronius informs us, making rockets. This proves that the ancients that an artificer presented to Tiberius a vessel were not unacquainted with the science of made of malleable glass, which he happened to chymistry. let fall. The artificer took it up, and with a hammer beat out the dents which the fall had made. The emperor, upon asking if any one else knew the secret of making such glass, and being answered in the negative, ordered him immediately to be beheaded, least such a discovery should render gold and silver of no value. That such glass was made cannot be denied, for the authors of the time speak positively on the subject, among whom were Pliny, Petronius, Isidorus and Dion Cassius.

Painting on glass was carried to far greater beauty amongst the ancients than among the moderns. The windows of their churches were painted in the most brilliant manner, without clouding in the least degree the transparency of the glass. Bærhaave declares that it cannot be imitated in modern times. The ancients also excelled in enamelling and mosaic works, as may be seen in the works of Pliny, if I mistake not. Also in their imitations of precious stones. That the ancients understood the art of distillation, is proven by the fact that the alembic, one of the principle instruments, derived its name from the Greek language. Athenæus tells us, that the word ambix meant the cover of a pot, and among the Arabians the same term was used, only with the addition of al, which begins

The moderns claim all praise with respect to that part of philosophy which treats of sensible qualities, or which places sensation in the mind instead of the body. Yet Socrates, Plato, and a host of ancient philosophers, were well aware that odours and colours, heat and cold, were sensations produced in the mind; produced by the varied operations of surrounding bodies. Aristotle has told us, that "sensible qualities exist in the mind." The very doctrine of Descartes and Mallebranche was comprehended in the Pyrrhonic philosophy. Democritus was the first who denied that bodies possess sensible qualities, and Epicurus adopted his doctrine. Plato says, "we ought not to conclude that the wind is in itself hot and cold at the same time; but to conclude with Protagoras that he who is hot feels it hot, &c." Sextus Empiricus, when speaking of the doctrine of Democritus, says, that "sensible qualities have nothing in reality but in the opinion of those who are differently affected by them, according to the different dispositions of their organs; and that from this difference of disposition arise the perceptions of sweet and bitter, heat and cold; and also that we do not deceive ourselves in affirming that we feel such impressions; but in concluding that exterior objects must have in themselves something analo

most of their words, and hence the name alem-gous to our feelings." Epicurus speaks in a bic. Seneca describes an instrument of the similar manner.

same kind; and Aristotle tells us that oil was ex- Even Newton's theory of colours, which has