the State and Federal governments are
thus divided, and in the same degree
rivals and sentinels upon each other;
the chances for unequal legislation in
the branch where there is most danger
of the government of the few, are di-
minished as far as possible by the limi-
tations upon its powers; the labor of
superintending the whole operations of
government is thus facilitated, by di-
viding it amongst the people who act
together or by parts, according to the
extent of their homogeneous interests,
and a citadel ready garrisoned is fur-
nished in each State for the defence of
popular rights generally, and of its own
separate and peculiar interests. It is
no longer surprising, that those who
prefer the government of the few,
should oppose a system which pre-
serves a popular stronghold in each
State. They cannot change the form
or spirit of our government, except
through the tax-consuming party, and
therefore, they desire by construction
to remove all the obstacles to unequal
legislation in the general government,
and to strengthen particular classes or
interests, through whom they may carry
on a social war with the masses.
Above all, it is indispensable to their
ends to destroy, as far as possible, the
power and importance of the State gov-
ernments, of the separate States; for
they are, whilst maintained, the im-
pregnable fortresses of popular power,
ready for legal and organized resistance
to usurpation, come from what quarter
it may. The democratic party, on the
other hand, who desire the government
of the many, have the strongest induce-
ments to maintain the just and consti-
tutional division of power between the
Federal and State governments, and to
require both to be administered upon
fair and equal principles.

foreseen by the framers of the consti-
tution, were guarded against in that
instrument, and we have in it every
security against them which human
wisdom could devise, if we will only
adhere to it faithfully. These reme-
dies consist in the distribution of power
between the States and General Gov-
ernment. To guard against these combi-
nations in the latter, when, alone, they
could be extensively injurious, the field
of operations is limited, as far as was
possible. That government was con-
fined to a few great and leading ob-
jects, in relation to which the people
of all the States were nearly homoge-
neous. The opportunities for unequal
legislation, and the chances for sec-
tional disputes, were thus diminished. A
strict responsibility of the representa-
tive to the people, was, in a great mea-
sure, secured by confining him to ob-
jects, in which his own immediate
constituents had a direct interest in his
legislation, and in his legislating justly.
The work of supervising the represen-
tatives, was made easy to the people
by dividing the labor, and giving to
those of each State the exclusive guard-
ianship of their own separate interests,
which they best understood. To dimin-
ish temptations to a selfish ambition,
the General Government was stripped
of all unnecessary patronage, and as far
as was consistent with the two great
ends of the association, heretofore de-
scribed, the distribution of honors and
office was left to the States, that they
might have something with which to
reward their own favorites and especial
friends. Every provision which could
be inserted in the constitution to di-
minish the chances of unequal legisla-
tion, it contains; and the organic struc-
ture of the General Government itself
is such as to distribute its influence
upon just terms amongst the States, It is in unequal legislation that the
and to prevent the enactment of any tax-consuming party lives, and moves,
law which does not combine a ma- and has its being; and whether that legis-
jority of the people, and of the States lation operates unequally upon sections,
of the confederacy. Above all, the classes, or individuals, its effect, al-
people of each State are organized though different in its degree, is the
with a separate government, to guard same in its nature. The man who
its peculiar interests, and to warn chiefly desires to preserve the rights of
its people of any breach of trust in the States, and he whose interests are
the joint agency, or of any other dan- concentrated in perpetuating the rule
ger which may threaten them. It is of the many, must, under our political
this division of the functions of a com- system, use the same means to attain
plete government between two, which their ends. There is a necessary con-
has effected the wonders of our political nection between the two, and a house
system. The tax-consuming parties in is divided against itself, when they are
[Concluded on page 320. In the passage of this Number through the press,
this space was left, to be filled in with this article; but overrunning the space
reserved for it, and not admitting of curtailment, it has been deemed best to
ransfer the concluding page to the end of the Number.]

THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.*

BY J. G. WHITTIER.

We had been wandering for many days

Through the rough northern country. We had seen
The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud

Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake
Of Winnepiseogee; and had gone,

With sunrise breezes, round the leafy isles
Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips
Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds,
Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall
Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,
Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind
Comes burdened with the everlasting moan
Of forests and of far-off water-falls,

We had looked upward where the summer sky,
Resting its bases on the abutting crags,
Sprung its light arch, sun-gilded and serene,
Across the deep abysm. We had passed
The high source of the Saco; and, bewildered
In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills
Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud,
The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop
Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains

Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick
As meadow mole-hills-the far sea of Casco

A white gleam on the horizon of the east;
Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;
Moosehillock's mountain-range, and Kearsarge
Lifting his Titan forehead to the sun!

And we had rested underneath the oaks
Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken
By the perpetual beating of the falls

Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked

The winding Pemigewasset, overhung

By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,
Or lazily gliding through its intervals,

From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam
Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon
Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines
Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams
At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver
The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls.

Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sachem of Saugus, married a daughter of Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chieftain, in 1662. The wedding took place at Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the ceremonies closed with a great feast. According to the usages of the chiefs, Passaconaway ordered a select number of his men to accompany the newly-married couple to the dwelling of the husband, where in turn there was another great feast. Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit expressing a desire to visit her father's house, was permitted to go accompanied by a brave escort of her husband's chief men. But when she wished to return, her father sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her husband, and asking him to come and take her away. He returned for answer that he had escorted his wife to her father's house in the style that became a chief, and that now if she wished to return, her father must send her back in the same way. This Passaconaway refused to do, and it is said that here terminated the connexion of the newly-wedded pair.-Vide Morton's New Canaan.

There were five souls of us whom travel's chance
Had thrown together in these wild north hills :-
A city lawyer, for a month escaping

From his dull office, where the weary eye

Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets-
Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see

Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to take
Its chances all as God sends; and his brother,
Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining
The warmth and freshness of a genial heart,
Whose mirror of the beautiful and true,
In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed
By dust of theologic strife, or breath
Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore ;
Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking
The hue and image of o'er-leaning flowers,
Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon,
Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves,
And tenderest moonrise. 'Twas, in truth, a study,
To mark his spirit, alternating between

A decent and professional gravity

And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often
Laughed in the face of his divinity,

Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined
The oracle, and for the pattern priest

Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant,
To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn,
Giving the latest news of city stocks

And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning
Than the great presence of the awful mountains
Glorified by the sunset ;-and his daughter,

A delicate flower on whom had blown too long
Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice
And winnowing the fogs of Labrador,

Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts' bay,

With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves
And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on its stem,
Poisoning our sea-side atmosphere.

It chanced

That as we turned upon our homeward way,
A drear north-eastern storm came howling up
The valley of the Saco; and that girl
Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington,
Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled
In gusts around its sharp cold pinnacle,

Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams
Which lave that giant's feet; whose laugh was heard
Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze

Which swelled our sail amidst the lake's green islands,
Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly drooped
Like a flower in the frost. So, in that quiet inn
Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled
Heavily against the horizon of the north,

Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our home;
And while the mist hung over dripping hills,

And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all day long

Beat their sad music upon roof and pane,
We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.

The lawyer in the pauses of the storm

Went angling down the Saco, and returning,

Recounted his adventures and mishaps;
Gave us the history of his scaly clients
Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations
Of barbarous law latin, passages

From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and fresh
As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire
Where under aged trees, the south-west wind
Of soft June mornings fanned the thin white hair
Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told,
Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons,
His commentaries, articles and creeds
For the fair page of human loveliness—
The missal of young hearts, whose sacred text
Is music, its illumining sweet smiles.
He sang the songs she loved; and in his low,
Deep earnest voice, recited many a page
Of poetry-the holiest, tenderest lines
Of the sad bard of Olney-the sweet songs,
Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature,
Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount
Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing
From the green hills, immortal in his lays.
And for myself, obedient to her wish,

I searched our landlord's proffered library :

A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures
Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them-

Watts' unmelodious psalms-Astrology's

Last home, a musty file of Almanacs,
And an old chronicle of border wars
And Indian history. And, as I read
A story of the marriage of the Chief
Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,
Daughter of Passaconaway who dwelt
In the old time upon the Merrimack,
Our fair one, in the playful exercise
Of her prerogative-the right divine
Of youth and beauty, bade us versify
The legend, and with ready pencil sketched
Its plan and outlines, laughingly assigning
To each his part, and barring our excuses
With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers
Whose voices still are heard in the Romance
Of silver-tongued Boccacio, on the banks
Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling
The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled
From stately Florence, we rehearsed our rhymes
To their fair auditor, and shared by turns
Her kind approval and her playful censure.

It may be that these fragments owe alone
To the fair setting of their circumstances—
The associations of time, scene and audience—
Their place among the pictures which fill up
The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust
That some, who sigh, while wandering in thought,
Pilgrims of Romance, o'er the olden world,

That our broad land-our sea-like lakes, and mountains
Piled to the clouds,—our rivers overhung

By forests which have known no other change
For ages, than the budding and the fall

Of leaves-our valleys lovelier than those

Which the old poets sang of-should but figure
On the apocryphal chart of speculation

As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges,
Rights and appurtenances which make up
A Yankee Paradise-unsung, unknown,
To beautiful tradition; even their names,
Whose melody yet lingers like the last
Vibration of the red man's requiem,
Exchanged for syllables significant

Of cotton-mill and rail-car,—will look kindly
Upon this effort to call up the ghost

Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased ear
To the responses of the questioned Shade:

I. THE MERRIMACK.

Oн, child of that white-crested mountain whose springs
Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's wings,
Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters shine,
Leaping grey walls of rock, flashing through the dwarf pine.
From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so lone,
From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of stone,
By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and free,
Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the sea!
No bridge arched thy waters save that where the trees
Stretched their long arms above thee and kissed in the breeze:
No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy shores,
The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars.
Green-tufted, oak-shadowed, by Amoskeag's fall
Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall,
Thy Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn,
And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with corn.
But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these,
And greener its grasses and taller its trees,
Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had rung,
Or the mower his scythe in the meadows had swung.
In their sheltered repose looking out from the wood
The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook stood,
There glided the corn-dance-the Council fire shone,
And against the red war-post the hatchet was thrown.
There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and the young
To the pike and the white perch their baited lines flung;
There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the shy maid
Wove her many-hued baskets, and bright wampum braid.
Oh, Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine
Could rise from thy waters to question of mine,
Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks a moan
Of sorrow would swell for the days which have gone.

Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel,
The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel;
But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze,
The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees!
II. THE BASHABA.*

LIFT we the twilight curtains of the Past,

And turning from familiar sight and sound,

* This was the name which the Indians of New England gave to two or three of their principal chiefs, to whom all their inferior sagamores acknowledged allegiance.