idged the rivers,
Chained the rolling streams and rivers.
Schools were opened, where the people
Learned to read and write and cipher.
Coaches linked the growing city
With the busy world around it.
Youths and maidens joined in wedlock,
Parents knelt at family altars,
Children gamboled in the playgrounds,
Cats and dogs and cows and horses,
Swine and animals of burden,
Followed man, the master spirit,
And supplied domestic comfort.
Lawyers, doctors, merchants, traders,
Preachers, artisans, and idlers,
From afar and near flocked hither;
And the "continental coppers"
Were in speedy circulation.
Spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting,
Filled the women's dextrous fingers,
And the homespun and the linsey
Were the choice and boasted fabrics,
Furnished strong and useful garments,
In the day of early settlers.
Social gatherings were frequent,
'Round log fires and tallow candles,
And the quaint old invitations
To some public house or "tavern,"
Call a smile to faces modern;
"Come and join a square cotillon
At the hour of four precisely,"--
Was the custom of the city,
Of the sensible young city.
Sights and sounds all strange and novel,
Filled the wood with unknown echoes;
Man, the civilized, wrought changes,
And the olden landmarks vanished.

CANTO III.
1796-1812.
ANCIENT BUILDINGS.

More than threescore years are buried
With the ages long departed,
In the annals of Lancaster,
Of the city I am singing,
Since the place of law and justice,
Since the venerable forum,
The first court-house was erected.
Seventeen hundred eight and ninety,
Reads the record of the city.
Logs adorned its sides and summit,
Logs without and logs within it,
Building fashioned all so lowly,
That 'twas deemed unfit to linger
On its public, broad arena,
In the center of the township.
Down it fell one day thereafter,
(In eighteen hundred and eleven,
Of the ever moving cycle,)
And a nobler and a better,
Made of brick and stone and mortar,
Reared its ghostly head among us,
Reared its high and white cupola,
With its bell and towering belfry,
Clanging far and clanging nearer,
Tolling loud and tolling softly,
Ringing forth the day's proceedings.
Strangers, coming to the region
Of the city quaintly outlined,
Of its squ