And mix with their eternal ray?'
"We feel as Byron did when he imagined these lines. I see him with upturned eyes gazing on the blue expanse above, watching the stars; thinking of heaven; feeling earth, and hating it, and his soul flying away from it, to meet and mingle in the firmament above him with the spiritually bright and heavenly pure brilliants sparkling on her diadem. How mean—how miserably mean this earth, and all it gives! One diamond in a world of dirt. The soul that loves and contemplates the eternal—shall it shake off at once the miserable clod, and in a moment glisten among the millions, pure, bright, and lovely as these? There is but one idea of hell—eternal torture! But every man has his own idea of heaven: yet, with all, its chiefest attribute is eternal happiness. The wretch craves it for rest; he who never knew care or suffering, desires it for enjoyment; and the wildest imagination sublimates its bliss to love and beauty. And God only knows what it is, or in what it consists. But we shall know, and I, in a little time. On Him who gave me being I confidently rely for all which is destined in my future."
His spirit was eminently worshipful. The wisdom and goodness of God he saw in every creature; he contemplated these as a part of the grand whole, and saw a union and use in all for the harmony of the whole; he saw all created nature linked, each filling and subserving a part, in duties and uses, as designed, and, his mind filled with the contemplation, his soul expanded in love and worship of the great Architect who conceived and created all.
With all this might of mind and beauty of soul, there lurked a demon to mar and destroy. It worked its end: let us draw a veil over the frailties of poor human nature, and, in the admiration of the genius and the soul, forget the foibles and frailties of the body.
ACADIAN FRENCH SETTLERS.
Sugar vs. Cotton—Acadia—A Specimen of Mississippi French Life—Bayou La Fourche—The Great Flood—Theological Arbitration—A Rustic Ball —Old-Fashioned Weddings—Creoles and Quadroons—The Planter—Negro Servants—Gauls and Anglo-Normans—Antagonism of Races.
Forty years ago, there was quite an excitement among the cotton-planters, in the neighborhood of Natchez, upon the subject of sugar-planting in the southern portion of Louisiana. At that time it was thought the duty (two and a half cents per pound) on imported sugars would be continued as a revenue tax, and that it would afford sufficient protection to make the business of sugar-planting much more profitable than that of cotton. The section of country attracting the largest share of attention for this purpose was the Teche, or Attakapas country, the Bayous La Fourche, Terre Bonne, and Black. The Teche and La Fourche had long been settled by a population, known in Louisiana as the Acadian French. These people, thus named, had once resided in Nova Scotia and Lower Canada, or Canada East as now known. When peopled by the French, Nova Scotia was called Acadia. Upon the conquest by the English, these people were expelled the country, and in a most inhuman and unchristian manner. They were permitted to choose the countries to which they would go, and were there sent by the British Government. Many went to Canada, some to Vincennes in Indiana, some to St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, Viedepouche, and Kaskaskia in Mississippi, and many returned to France.
Upon the cession, or rather donation to Spain of Louisiana by France, these, with many others of a population similar to these, from the different arrondissements of France, were sent to Louisiana, and were located in Opelousas, Attakapas, La Fourche, and in the parishes of St. John the Baptist, St. Charles, and St. James (parishes constituting the Acadian coast on the Mississippi). On the La Fourche they constituted, forty years ago, almost the entire population. They were illiterate and poor. Possessing the richest lands on earth, which they had reclaimed from the annual inundations of the Mississippi River by levees constructed along the margins of the stream—with a climate congenial and healthful, and with every facility afforded by the navigation of the bayou and the Mississippi for reaching the best market for all they could produce—yet, with all these natural advantages, promising to labor and enterprise the most ample rewards, they could not be stimulated to industry or made to understand them.
They had established their homes on the margin of the stream, and cleared a few acres of the land donated by the Government, upon which to grow a little corn and a few vegetables. With a limited amount of stock, which found subsistence upon the cane and grass of the woods, and with the assistance of a shot-gun, they managed to subsist—as Peake's mother served the Lord—after a fashion.