present, as in all the previous numbers of the series, all the new words which occur in each reading lesson are formed into a spelling lesson, each word being divided, accented, pronounced, and defined, so that the scholar will be able to read understandingly. The author has also taken great pains to select such pieces as had a tendency to improve the heart as well as the head; for, as he observes, The youth of our country cannot enjoy the blessings of our free institutions, or aid in perpetuating them, unless they are morally as well as intellectually educated.' At the close of each reading-lesson, are questions, intended for exercising the scholars upon what they have read, for the purpose not only of calling into action their thinking and reasoning powers, but also of impressing deeply on their minds the principles inculcated in the lessons thus read. We commend the work cordially to public acceptance. ・・・ A VERY acceptable and timely little volume has been issued by Messrs. STANFORD AND SWORDS, entitled 'Halloween, a Romaunt; with Lays, Meditative and Devotional.' It is from the pen of Rev. ARTHUR CLEVELAND COXE, author of 'Christian Ballads,' etc., a poet of much versatility and fire... FROM the new publishing house of FARMER AND DAGGERS, Number Thirty, Ann-Street, we have a new edition of Mrs. MARY CLAVERS' last admirable work, Forest Life;' GALT's entertaining Life of LAWRIE TODD,' with a new and characteristic preface by GRANT THORBURN, (who in a late 'original' essay 'cribs' without acknowledgment a certain 'Quaker' story of ours;) 'The Book of British Ballads,' edited by S. C. HALL, a rare and costly work in the English edition, yet complete in the present at a moderate price, with the addition of a well-written introduction by PARK BENJAMIN, Esq.; and the Poems of Sir EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, collected and arranged by C. DONALD MACLEOD. The collection is made from his novels dramas, and poems, and embraces nearly all that is worthy the writer's poetical reputation. The works to be issued by Messrs. FARMER AND DAGGERS are to be chosen by Mr. PARK BENJAMIN ; whose known taste and experience will insure a good selection from the better publications of the day. MR. SCHOOLCRAFT'S Onéota' has reached its fifth number. This is a production of value as well as of interest. Every thing in relation to the Red Race, from the pen of this gentleman, may be relied upon as entirely authentic. The traditions, tales, legends, descriptions of customs, etc., which are here to be found, were gathered from the lips of the aborigines themselves, or from personal observation during a residence of more than twenty years among them. The work will, when completed, supply a most important desideratum in the history of those who were once 'monarchs of all they surveyed' on this great continent. We have just been glancing over a long mislaid copy of Mr. HORACE GREELEY'S 'Address before the Literary Societies of Hamilton College,' in July last. We have encountered enough however, even in a cursory perusal, to convince us that the orator of the occasion urged, with his usual directness and force, the true dignity of honest labor; and that in all his inculcations, he had at heart the best interests of his kind. We commend the performance, thus hastily despatched, to the attentive regard of all our readers.... The Monthly Rose' is the pretty title of a pretty periodical, sustained by the present and former members of the Albany Female Academy, the first number of which lies before us. The articles are well written, both the prose and verse, and the editress-es perform their new duties with grace and apparent ease. Sweet young ladies! if you would but admit Mynheer DEIDRICH into your editorial councils, you should have all the aid of his long experience in your profession, in consideration of the simple gratification which a glance at your sparkling eyes and bright faces would afford him. Dear fellow-laboress-es! is it a vote? GOLDSMITH'S Gems of Penmanship,' a large and handsome quarto, containing numerous specimens of his plain and ornamental writing, will attract public attention to his professional merits. His plain round hands, fine and coarse, are excellent examples for learners; we trust, however, that he does not generally teach his 'flourishing' style in his flourishing academy. Such a hand-writing, in the eyes of a business-man, would seem like the ornamental touches' of a French dancing-master, eliminated' or thrown off in a walk along Broadway. Mr. GOLDSMITH's essay upon The Pen,' and his remarks upon, and directions for, good penmanship, are sensible, and well put forth.・・ SOME of our weekly contemporaries are putting on beautiful garments with the new year. The 'ALBION,' so long established, and so favorably known throughout the United States, has donned a very handsome dress, and added to its other attractions an agricultural department, under the supervision of Hon. J. S. SKINNER. Apropos of the 'ALBION:' its last engraving is a full-length likeness of the great NELSON, a superior work of art, of very large dimensions, and in all its accessories truly admirable. It is alone worth a year's subscription to the popular journal which it adorns. MESSRS. GOULD, KENDALL AND LINCOLN, Boston, have published the Life of GODFREY WILLIAM VON Leibnitz, on the basis of the German work of Dr. G. E. GUHRANER. BY JOHN MACKIE. It is for sale in NewYork by Mr. MARK H. NEWMAN, Broadway.

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MONKS' MOUND, ST. CLAIR COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

ABOUT six miles from the Mississippi river, in an eastwardly direc tion from St. Louis, in St. Clair county, Illinois, is situated a remarkable group of mounds, which rise out of the level prairie of the American Bottom, at a distance of two or three miles from the bluffs, or high-lands, and range semi-circularly with the margin of the prairie. The greater one, or Monks' Mound, is in the form of a parallelogram, and is estimated to be one hundred and twenty-five feet high. Its top is flat, and presents an area of about two acres, laid out in a garden, planted with fruit and shade-trees, and containing the residence of the proprietor. On the south side of this mound is a terrace, about two hundred and fifty yards long, and ninety in width, perfectly level, and elevated about forty-five feet above the surface of the prairie. At the distance of a quarter of a mile to the north-east, Cantine creek enters Cahokia creek, and the latter winds around within one hundred and fifty yards of the northern base of the mound. To the west, some two hundred yards, on a small mound, was formerly the principal residence of a community of Monks of the Order of La Trappe, from whom the place took the name of Monks' Mound.' Southwardly there are two mounds, about sixty feet apart at the base, and sixty feet high. One of them rises very steeply in a conical form, and has a large tree growing near the top of it. At a distance it looks not unlike a large helmet-cap of a dragoon, with a feather in the side. On the west of these mounds, and immediately at the base, is a large pond; and it requires but a very little stretch of the imagination to suppose that all the earth used in elevating the mounds was taken from the bed of the pond. The mounds altogether on the American Bottom have been estimated at two hundred in number. They are of various forms and sizes, and some of them are crowned with trees, that must have been growing for centuries. They are all composed of the same kind of earth, without any stones in them, except

small broken pieces of flint. The earth of which they are formed is precisely the same sort of alluvial now hourly deposited by the Mississippi upon its banks. None of them are in any way occupied, except Monks' Mound, and one other, which has been converted into a ' Mount Auburn,' enclosed with palings, and covered with marble memorials of the dead.

We are not aware that any of these mounds have been opened, with a view of examining their structure and contents; but in digging a well to the depth of sixty feet, about half way up the west side of Monks' Mound, a few decayed bones, and some flint arrow-heads and broken pieces of pottery were found. From the surface of the small mound from which the view was taken, an artist and the writer, in the space of a few minutes, picked up about half a peck of broken bones, and pieces of pottery and flint. One of the bones, which is nearly perfect, is evidently the arm-bone of a human being. The pottery is of the same material as the urns found in the mounds of Ohio, and mentioned by Atwater, in his work on American Antiquities, and when entire, doubtless formed urns of a similar shape. A few years since a mound near Florisant, Missouri, resembling in appearance several of those on the American Bottom, was opened by a party of gentlemen, and in the centre of it they found a human skeleton in a sitting posture. Its skull is of different conformation from the heads of the present race of Indians, indicating lower cheek-bones and higher forehead, and the general features of the Caucasian race. This skull corresponds with one in the possession of the writer, which was taken from a mound on the south-western border of Missouri, near Arkansas, and which exactly resembles one found in a mound in Peru, South America, and presented to Professor J. N. McDowell, of the St. Louis Medical School, by Mr. Delafield, author of some interesting treatises on the antiquities of this continent.

The American Bottom was evidently at one time, a lake, and has been overflowed since the country was settled by the whites. Marine shells in vast quantities abound, in the sides of the bluffs, which form its eastern and southern boundaries. The Mississippi must formerly have poured its mighty torrent over the whole plain; and, whether these mounds were formed by deposits of alluvion from the reäcting eddies of its current, or whether the plain was an ancient Waterloo, where the rival armies of a by-gone race contended, and on which the conquerors raised these mounds, to perpetuate the achievement of a great victory, or to commemorate their heroic dead, are questions which can only be answered by conjectures.

Monks' Mound, when viewed from the west, presents strikingly the appearance of a strong castle or fortress, which time has just began to mark with ruin. The muddy creek of Cahokia that winds near its base can easily be fancied a moat, and the rude platform of planks by which it is crossed transformed into a draw-bridge; while the terraces, which on this side rise with considerable regularity above each other, look as if they were intended for armed hosts to parade upon, and appear as though no jutty frieze buttress, nor coigne of vantage,' had been omitted in their construction. From the top of the mound the

view is one of exceeding beauty. The wide prairie stretches for miles its carpeting of green, gemmed with the most beautiful flowers, and dotted at intervals with clusters of trees, that look in the distance like emeralds embossed in a rich embroidery; and where formerly the wild buffalo ranged, and the war-yell of the savage ascended, now herds of domestic cattle are grazing, and

'Peace is tinkling in the shepherd's bell,

And singing with the reapers.'

To the west, at a distance of six miles, rise the domes and spires of St. Louis; to the north a dense forest, with Cahokia creek, like a huge silver serpent, winding in and out of it, and here and there a glimpse of the cottages in the settlement of Cantine is caught, with the blue smoke ascending straightly to the clear sky. Six or seven miles across the prairie, to the south, a large lake gleams in the sunshine, with the big pelicans flapping their lazy wings over it, and the white houses of 'French Village' studding its margin; back of these, and extending semi-circularly to the east, rise the bluffs, in some places perpendicularly, with their bare sides of rock and clay, and their summits crowned with majestic oaks, forming an impregnable wall, guarded by its forest sentinels, in their rich autumnal livery of green and gold.

During the French Revolution a community of Monks, of the Order of La Trappe, emigrated from a place of the same name near Paris, into the Gruyeres Alps, from whence they sent a colony to Amsterdam, who, finding that the French motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,' extended even there, and threatened the country with the doctrines of Atheism, then pervading in France, they determined on seeking an asylum in the United States. Arriving in Baltimore, after a tedious voyage, much reduced by starvation, they were hospitably entertained by Archbishop Carroll and Dr. Chatard, who administered to them every thing necessary to their comfort. They sought for a while a resting place in Pennsylvania, from whence they went to Kentucky, and located on a farm; and after a short residence there, and losing their stock and crops by a freshet, they removed to Florisant, near St. Louis, where they remained about eighteen months, and finally located at the Mounds, on the American Bottom, in Illinois, in 1807. A large tract of land was given to them, and they soon had nearly one hundred acres enclosed and cultivated, and well stocked with horses and cattle. They erected a horse-mill, and several log cabins for dwellings and work-shops, and also a church, of logs. Of their buildings there is now scarcely a vestige remaining. Their design was, to educate youth in all the branches of Literature, Agriculture, and the Mechanic Arts, on gratuitous terms. A number of pupils from the neighboring towns resorted to them for instruction, some of whom are now among the most accomplished merchants and artizans in the western country. The first discovery of coal in the bluffs was made by these monks in one of the mines from which St. Louis is in a great part supplied. Their blacksmiths complained of a want of proper fuel; and on their being informed that the earth, at the root of a tree which was struck by lightning, was burning, they went to the spot, and on digging a little below the surface, discov. ered a vein of coal.

The number, that originally came to this country, consisted of six monks and seven lay-brothers, under the paternal guidance of the Rev. Urban Guillet: it was however increased by additions from France, and from different parts of the United States, to thirty-six persons in all. Every thing seemed prosperous and happy about them, when suddenly they were assailed with a malignant fever, which carried off three of their number in one night. The country around them continuing unhealthy, in 1816 those remaining broke up the establishment, re-conveyed the land to Mr. Jarrot, the donor, and returned to France. During their residence at the Mounds, the monks pursued the same system of austerity instituted at La Trappe, by John le Bouthillier de Rance, the rigid Reformer of the Cistercian order. No one was ever allowed to speak to another, or to a stranger, except in cases of absolute necessity; neither could he address the superior, without first asking his permission, by a sign, and receiving his assent. They were allowed to receive no letters or news from the world, and were compelled to obey the least sign made, even by the lowest lay-brother in the community, although by doing so they might spoil whatever they were at the time engaged in. Their dress consisted entirely of woollen; they eat no flesh, and had but two meals a-day; their dinner was of soup, of turnips, carrots and other vegetables, with no seasoning but salt, and their supper, of two ounces of bread with water. They slept in their clothing upon boards, with blocks of wood for pillows, but in winter were allowed any quantity of covering they desired. When a stranger visited them, he was received with the utmost kindness by their guest-master, his wants attended to, and every thing freely shown and explained to him; and whenever he passed one of the monks, the latter bowed humbly to him, but without looking at him. They labored all day in the fields or in their work-shops in the most profound silence, the injunction of which was removed only from the one appointed to receive visitors, and those engaged in imparting instruction. When one of them was taken ill, the rigor of their discipline was entirely relaxed toward him, and every attention and comfort bestowed upon him; and if he was about to die, when in his last agonies he was placed upon a board, on which the superior had previously made the sign of a cross, with ashes, and the rest gathered around him to console and pray for him. The dead were wrapt in their ordinary habit and buried without a coffin in the field adjoining their residence. As soon as one was buried, a new grave was opened by his side, to be ready for the next who might need it. About twenty-five years have elapsed since these austere fathers abandoned the mounds; but the older inhabitants of the neighborhood still speak of their many acts of kindness and charity, and cherish their memories with the most filial affection.

GRAND TOWER, ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

NEARLY equally distant from St. Louis and the mouth of the Ohio, on the west side of the Mississippi, is Grand Tower. It is a column of solid rock, about fifty feet in diameter, rising fifty feet in height above the ordinary surface of the water, and crowned with a luxurious