Are you dwelling in those parts of our land where most is done for education, and comforting yourself that at least you and yours shall escape in safety? But how can you tell that in five or ten years either you, or those you love best, will not be the other side of the Alleghany, and in the most destitute portion of the nation? The changes of fortune, the pursuit of wealth, the mutations of matrimonial connexions, utterly forbid any reliance on permanency of residence. And how can one portion of this nation suffer and the other escape? Is not the vast River Valley, whatever may be the character of its millions, to hold the controlling power of our nation? If any portion of the fair West be tortured with civil commotion and lawless rage, will not every groan re-echo from the maternal heart of New-England and New-York, whose sons and daughters are dwelling on every prairie and in every valley of our land? Mother, whose hands are so busy in ornamenting your darling child; Sister, whose fingers fly so swiftly over the canvass or lace; Daughter, so earnestly engaged in preparing your elegant habiliments, look back to that beautiful daughter of emperors, that sister of kings, that mother of princes, brought to her palace-home amid a nation’s transports, the welcome bride of the nation’s heir. Again, on the birth of her first-born, hear the triumphant pæan re-echoed across the ocean, sung by the very children in our streets, and in the memory of many now on the stage: “A Dauphin’s born! let cannon loud With echoes rend the sky; All hail to Gallia’s King! Columbia’s great ally!” And thus the great English orator of that day describes her: “It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles: and surely never lighted on this orb, which she scarcely seemed to touch, a more delightful vision! I saw her, just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Little did I dream I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords would have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.” Look, now, through those prison bars. There, pale and mournful, upon a pallet of straw, rests one for whom the splendours of Versailles scarcely seemed enough. Her once bright locks, even in youth, are gray with fear and sorrow. She is in solitude; her husband in one cell, and her weeping children, torn from her and placed with brutal keepers, in another. And now her husband is borne forth to a bloody death. Again her prison doors unclose, and she comes forth, seated on the fatal car, her hands tied behind her back, surrounded by thousands, who shout with malignant joy as the fatal guillotine terminates her woes.