at length, as a really grand fiction, and as a
fine specimen of old English. "For profit of
the common people," says the history,
"Virgilius on a great mighty marble pillar
did make a bridge mat came up to the palace;
that palace and the pillar stood in the mid of
Rome; and upon this pillar made he a lamp
of glass that alway burned without going
out, and nobody might put it out; and this
lamp lightened over all the city of Rome from
one corner to the other, and there was not so
little a street but it gave such light that it
seemed two torches there had stand; and
upon the walls of the palace made he a metal
man that held in his hand a metal bow that
pointed ever upon the lamp for to shoot it out,
but always burned the lamp, and gave light
over all Rome. And upon a time went the
burgesses' daughters to play in the palace,
and beheld the metal man; and one of them
asked, in sport, why he shot not; and then
she came to the man, and with her hand
touched the bow, and then the bolt flew out,
and brake the lamp that Virgilius made;
and it was wonder that the maiden went not
out of her mind for the great fear she had,
and also the other burgesses' daughters that
were in her company, of the great stroke that
it gave when it hit the lamp, and when they
saw the metal man so swiftly run his way;
and never after was he no more seen. And
this foresaid lamp was abiding burning after
the death of Virgilius by the space of three
hundred years or more."

After all, to what does an Eternal Lamp
amount even on the showing of its believers?
Merely to something whose perpetuity is
leased upon chance, and which accident or
mischief may at any time bring to a sudden
and final stop.

  OLD SETTLERS OF TENNESSEE.

The western settler in America of the
present day is not remarkable for polish. The
west end of the world is much less refined
than the west end of London. Yet the
dwellers in the back settlements now, are in
a high condition of refinement compared with
their primogenitors.

We are never tired of drawing comparisons
between the comforts and advantages
possessed by civilised men as they were sixty
or eighty years ago and as they are at present.
It occurs to me, however, that the veriest
savage is not quite what he used to be, and
that the backwoodsmen, settlers, pioneers,
or whatever else they may be called, are
altered greatly in their character by the great
changes made of late in the material condition
of society. In these days, pioneers wear
boots, and their wives play upon pianos; and
rough as they may be now, they cannot do
such things and still be quite what their
forefathers were.

The fault lies not with them, but with the
spirit of the time. At the present time the
emigrant goes westward through unexplored
forests in a steamboat, carrying on board,
under care of a steward, a corkscrew, a few
forks (possibly silver), glass and china, beds,
and a thousand luxurious knick-knacks. The
wilds of Minnesota and Nebraska become in
six months thoroughly tutored, even —to
speak by comparison —genteel. The tailor
and the milliner belong to the first party of
pioneers quite as much as the carpenter or
mason. The publican, the doctor, and the
printer land by the next boat. Walk in
these wilds next year, and you hear pianos
beaten by the hands of the stout damsels who
dwell and walk about there, arrayed in silk;
you may drop in, too, at the pastrycook's;
or play at billiards; or read stiff patriotism in
the Nebraska Mercury. A steamer or a
coach brings friends of settlers from the inner
world on visits, or carries away the pioneer
shopkeeper to make his purchase of "an
entirely new stock of spring goods." Yet, in
practice, all this is considered rough work by
the traveller from Europe.

The pioneers of eighty years ago lived quite
in another way. Take for an illustration the
old time when Tennessee, now one of the
most populous states of the Union, was
occupied by the first white men who made a
home there. I will say nothing just now of
the incessant conflicts with the Indians, the
attacks and surprises; the bitterness of hatred
seasoning the wild excitement of the conflict;
the familiarity with scenes of bloodshed which
— in the absence of a counteracting influence
— deadened the religious sentiment among
the pioneers. They were not holy men,
although they had no lack of human virtue;
and it is not for me to say how much they
may have benefitted by the great Religious
Revival —the term is American —effected
among them by certain preachers, Presbyterian
and Methodist. On that occasion they
all flocked together —fifty-four years ago —in
a dense forest, devoting themselves to religious
exercises night and day. Lamps and torches
all night long made a gala in the primeval
wood, in which there were twent}y thousand
people worshipping, and being taught to
worship, in a wild way suited to their tempers.

Longer ago than that, when the settlement
began in Tennessee, the only path into it
from the cast was by a single Indian trail. It
would admit nothing larger than a
packhorse. No waggon was seen in Tennessee
before the year seventeen hundred and seventy-six.
The want of conveyance indicates the
want of a vast number of things, that are now
conveyed about with as little thought of any
special blessing in the means of transit, as we
have in connexion with our regular supplies
of light and air. Salt brought upon packhorses
cost ten dollars a bushel; coffea and tea
were never seen; and the little sugar made out
of the sugar maple was used only for the sick,
or for the occasional sweetening of a dram in
honour of some extraordinary event —the