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Show 1836- 1837] Flagg's Far West 187 hopeless are such aspirations of the children of men! As nations or as individuals, our memory we can never embalm! A few, indeed, may retain the forlorn relic within the sanctuary of hearts which loved us while with them, and that with a tenderness stronger than death; but, with the great mass of mankind, our absence can be noticed only for a day; and then the ranks close up, and a gravestone tells the passing stranger that we lived and died: a few years - the finger of time has been busy with the inscription, and we are as if we had never been. If, then, it must be even so, " Oh, let keep the soul embalm'd, and pure In living virtue; that, when both must sever, Although corruption may our frame consume, Th* immortal spirit in the skies may bloom." St. Clair Co., Illinois. XV " Are they here, The dead of other days? And did the dust Of these fair solitudes once stir with life And burn with passion? All is gone; All, save the piles of earth that hold their bones, The platforms where they worship'd unknown gods, The barriers which they builded from the soil To keep the foe at bay." The Prairies. THE antiquity of " Monk Mound " is a circumstance which fails not to arrest the attention of every visiter. That centuries have elapsed since this vast pile of earth was heaped up from the plain, no one can doubt: every circumstance, even the most minute and inconsiderable, confirms an idea which the venerable oaks upon its soil conclusively demonstrate. With this premise admitted, consider for a moment the destructive effects of the elements even for a limited period upon the works of our race. Little more |