guarded the adventurer upon the Spanish main four centuries ago, and which now can be seen, the most beautiful emblem of our salvation, shining down through a Cuban and Mexican night,--just before the Christian era, glittered in our northern heavens! The same GREAT WILL, which knows no North and no South, and which is sending again, by an irreversible law, the southern cross to our northern skies, on its everlasting cycle of emigration--does it not control the revolutions of nations, and the vicissitudes of empires? The very stars in their courses are "Knights of the Golden Circle," and illustrate the record of human advancement. They are the type of that territorial expansion from which this American continent can not be exempted without annihilation. The finger of Providence points to our nation as the guiding star of this progress. Let him who would either dusk its radiancy, or make it the meteor of a moment, cast again with nicer heed our nation's horoscope. MARTHA HOPKINS.--_Phoebe Cary._ From the kitchen, Martha Hopkins, as she stood there making pies, Southward looks along the turnpike, with her hand above her eyes; Where along the distant hill-side, her yearning heifer feeds, And a little grass is growing in a mighty sight of weeds. All the air is full of noises for there isn't any school, And boys, with turned-up pantaloons, are wading in the pool; Blithely frisk unnumber'd chickens, cackling, for they can not laugh, Where the airy summits brighten, nimbly leaps a little calf. Gentle eyes of Martha Hopkins! tell me wherefore do ye gaze, On the ground that's being furrow'd for the planting of the maize? Tell me wherefore down the valley, ye have traced the turnpike's way Far beyond the cattle-pasture, and the brick-yard with its clay? Ah! the dog-wood tree may blossom, and the door-yard grass may shine, With the tears of amber dropping from the washing on the line, And the morning's breath of balsam, lightly brush her faded cheek-- Little recketh Martha Hopkins of the tales of spring they speak. When the summer's burning solstice on the scanty harvest glow'd, She had watch'd a man on horseback riding down the turnpike road; Many times she saw him turning, looking backward quite forlorn, Till amid her tears she lost him in the shadow of the barn. Ere the supper-time was over, he had pass'd the kiln of brick, Cross'd the rushing Yellow River, and forded quite a creek, And his flat-boat load was taken, at the time for pork and beans, With the traders of the Wabash, to the wharf at New Orleans. Therefore watches Martha Hopkins--holding in her hand the pans, When the sound of distant footsteps seems exactly like a man's: Not a wind the stove-pipe rattles, not a door behind her jars, But she seems to hear the rattle of his letting down the bars.