then on both, had slid down into this narrow passage, and presented a continued mass from one end to the other, so that it will require immense labor to render this road again passable. The Notch house was found uninjured, though the barn adjoining it by a shed, was crushed, and under its ruins were two dead horses. The house was entirely deserted; the beds were tumbled; their covering was turned down; and near them upon chairs and on the floor, lay the wearing apparel of the several members of the family; while the money and papers of Mr. Willey were lying in his open bar. No; not one of the family remains to tell another tale of danger. They were all buried alive under the overwhelming masses of earth and stone. Nine of them in number, frightened from their beds, and running for their lives to what they thought would be a place of greater safety, met death in his most appalling terrors, while they fondly hoped they were escaping from his fury. The mountains fell upon them, and hid them forever, from the light of life. After their alarm in June, Mr. Willey erected a camp at a little distance from the house, as a refuge in times of similar danger. This camp he supposed to be entirely secure; and to this the family were flying on that disastrous night. Had they remained in their house they would all have been saved, as a large rock in the rear of their dwelling resisted the avalanche, divided the torrent of sliding earth, rocks, trees, and water, leaving the house and a few feet of earth in front unbroken. But not so was the will of Heaven. Their death has blended a gloominess and a terror with the sublimity of the scene. The future traveller to this spot, while he feels a weakness coming over him, as he gazes up towards the heavens, and traces the horrible path of this disruption;-while he remembers that a long storm of rain beat upon the overhanging brow of the mountain, and that black heavy clouds girdled it mid-way; while his imagination draws the curtain of night over the hills and over the valley below, and he almost feels the awful grandeur of that moment when a long ridge of the dark ragged mountain, loosened itself in the higher regions of clouds, and rolled its desolations into the gulf be Formed, moulded, shaped, made, constituted. Uninjured, unhurt, without loss. From what? Money and papers. What was Mr. Willey's busi ness? -Bar, bolt, room in a tavern, obstacle at the entrance Another tale. What was the former? Hid them. What does the Bible mention as more Light of life, day of life, or life itself. Erected, raised up, built, constructed. Camp, order of tents placed by armies, place for lodging. Refuge, place of security, place to flee to. Danger. Is man often ignorant in regard to his own Disastrous, fatal, abounding in disasters, calamitous. Saved. Is it certain they would have been saved? Weakness, imbecility, effeminacy, want of strength. Disruption, break, rent, act of breaking asunder. Curtain. What is night made to resemble ? Grandeur, loftiness, sublimity, from grand. Ragged, uneven, rough, rent into tatters. neath-overwhelming as this must be to his senses; will yet regard it all with deeper, and more awful emotions, by the vivid recollection, that the wail of despair was in the storm, and the angel of death was at work busied in this breaking up of the elements. These hapless sufferers will never need a marble to perpetuate their memories. Their catastrophe may always be read on the rent face of a monument larger than the pyramids. LESSON XXX. A Whole Family Extinct. My feelings were in too high a state of excitement to attempt to write on what had happened. Even now, so many days after the mournful scene has passed, my bosom heaves with grief, not unlike the ocean which swells and rolls its extended billows long after the storm has ceased to rage. Our family have been visited with the sorest affliction. To lose so many relatives in one fatal moment, ignorant of the distress through which they passed,-left in awful suspense to form a thousand heartrending conjectures, without the possibility of obtaining an accurate knowledge of their condition-to think of death coming, in this or that horrid shape, on the partners of our blood,-must, you will readily believe, have pierced the bosoms of remaining kindred with sorrows too deep to be soon forgotten. Long will our breasts remain scarred with their wounds: a state, which agrees but too well with the present appearances of the region, whence springs our sorrow, where a cheerless desolation prevails, though the tempest which produced it has ceased its fury, and the thunder of that dreadful night no longer rolls its tremendous peals amidst the cliffs and defiles of those majestic hills, which being daily exposed to our view, are the daily remembrancers of our woe. mournful sense of what has passed we shall carry with us to our graves. A After leaving Crawford's, and proceeding to the place of our destination, when we entered the opening, a hundred rods perhaps below the Notch house, which was Desolations, ruins, destructions, from desolate. Vivid, lively, quick, striking, active. ? Angel of death. What is death here represented to be? Elements, component parts of the world. Perpetuate, continue in existence, make lasting. Catastrophe, event of death, final issue, destruction. Pyramids. Can you tell where these are to be found? Extinct, without succession, put out, quenched, extinguished, blotted out. This is the Willey family which is mentioned in the preceding lesson; and this account is from another hand, given in a private letter to a relative at a distance by a brother of the lamented man, whose catastrophe, with that of his whole household, is here recorded. As the event is without any parallel in our country, and deserves perpetual remembrance, no apology is deemed requisite for giving the history of it a place in a work of this kind; and the description would be imperfect without the part which is contained in this lesşon, as it describes an approach to the scene of desolation from a point opposite to that from which the writer of the two former lessons approached it. The author too had a deep personal interest in his subject, and had taken all the pains to investigate the circumstances and give an accurate report, which ardent affection, in such a case, would dictate. The whole must be profitably interesting to the youth of our land. Scarred, marked with wounds. Is the expression figurative ? Region. What place is meant? How did its appearance agree with the state of mind just described? Cheerless, without gaiety, or comfort, melancholy. From what derived ? Dreadful night. To what night is allusion made? Peals, loud sounds succeeding each other. .Remembrancers, persons or things that remind, preserve the memory of. The writer from his habitation had a full view of the White Mountains. Crawford's Not the Crawford mentioned before, still hidden from sight by an intervening ascent,—we met the first great slip which had crossed our path on level ground, and in some places actually ascending 50 or 60, and I know not but a hundred rods,—so great was the force with which it had been propelled from the base of the mountain. After passing this, which consisted of large rocks, trees and sand, and which was impassable except by footmen, and reaching the elevation just mentioned, we came in full view of the Notch house, and all the ruins which surround it. On our right stood in lengthened prospect the precipitous mountains, which had been scored and riven by the fires and tempests of many succeeding years. On our left and in front stood those, which though once covered with a wood of pleasant green, now presented their sides lacerated and torn by the convulsions of the recent storm. The plain before us appeared one continued bed of sand and rocks, with here and there the branches of green trees, and their peeled and shivered trunks, with old logs, which from their appearance must long have been buried beneath the mountain soil. With these the meadow, that stretches along before the Notch house, was covered and so deep that none of the long grass, nor even the alders that grew there, are to be seen. Moving on from this site, we came upon the next large slip, which continued till it met that of another, which came down below the Notch house, and within a rod of it. Thus far it was one continued heap of ruins; and beyond the house the slips continued many rods. The oue back of the house started in a direction, in which it must have torn it away, had it not been arrested by a ridge of land extending back from the house to a more precipitous part of the mountain. Descending to the point of this ridge, the slip divided, and sought the vallies which lie at the base; one part carrying away in its course the stable above the house, and the other passing immediately below it, leaving the house itself uninjured. It is this part, which is generally supposed to have carried. away my brother and his family. It is judged from appearances, to be the last that came down. It is the common, and a very probable conjecture, that the family designed, at first, to keep the house, and did actually re |