o thee_!
And the _sword_ thou hast taken, with murderous art,
From thy heaven-doomed lineage _ne'er shall depart_."

A SCENE ON THE SUSQUEHANNA.

HARRISBURG.

BY JOSEPH R. CHANDLER.

The incidents of life around us--of common life--of everyday events,
and the common scenes which Nature has prepared on every side, are
full of interest, full of means of gratifying a taste formed or
cultivated to rational enjoyment. The Hymmalayen mountains may overtop
the Andes, and the Amazon bear more water to the sea than the
Susquehanna, but it follows not thence that the combination of
scenery--points of beauty to be associated with the eye--are less
attractive in the latter than in the former; and though thousands may
tread, may ride, or may murder on the unfrequented path of the elder
world, and give tragic effect to narrative, yet on all sides of us, in
our home experience, and our limited wandering, events are every day
occurring of as much interest to the participators as are those which
constitute the theme of the foreign tourist; and scenes are presenting
themselves almost daily within our own observation, that need only the
pen of a Radcliffe to describe, or the pencil of a Claude to depict,
to fix them on the imperishable canvas of the artist or the immortal
page of the gifted poet.

How often have we been struck with the clustering beauties of a
seashore by Birch, or some landscape by Russell Smith, and while we
gazed in admiration at the production so rich in artistic skill, and
felt astonishment at the fidelity of the representation, have shrunk
away from the picture, ashamed that objects so constantly before our
eyes should have remained unadmired till the pencil of the artist had
transferred them to canvas--had selected the moment when sunshine had
brought out the clustering beauties of some gentle promontory, or
shade had deepened the darkness of the dell, and all which to our eyes
had been daily spread out in constantly changing hues, had been fixed
in beauty to challenge our admiration and create new love for the
original.

Events which strike us with astonishment in their record, whether they
are real or imaginary, acquire much of their importance from our
knowledge of the antecedent circumstances and present condition of the
actors. We connect the present with the past, and our sympathies
becoming enlisted with the joys or sorrows of others, all that relates
to them acquires the exaggerated