DEDICATION. To the Citizens of Boston, the prompt and munificent consolers of the afflicted, whose Benevolence it is difficult adequately to panegyrize, and impossible to exaggerate, I dedicate this Poem. GEORGE MANNERS. PREFACE. In the following lines two poetical essentials are wanting-SIMILE and FICTION. Such is the horrific sublimity of its subject, that the former could not have been easily introduced without diminishing the Grandeur of Description; and such the affecting incidents of actual suffering to which it alludes, that the latter would, in a great measure, have destroyed the interest and sympathy which they are calculated to excite. A Simile, in heroic or descriptive poetry, should always elevate and enlarge our ideas of that with which it is compared; but neither the fancy of a Poet nor the realities of Nature could furnish an image equal, in horror and magnificence, to an Ocean of Flame, agitated and impelled by its attendant Hurricane, consuming forests and spreading devastation and destruction over millions of acres:-Such, alas! was the dreadful dispensation of Providence with which the miserable inhabitants of New Brunswick were recently visited—such the unparalleled horrors which I have attempted to describe. I feel (and who would not?) very inadequate to the task of doing justice to the afflicting subject; all that I have related is, however, according to the best information that I have been able to obtain, substantially correct, and I am confident that my motives will be justly appreciated by a sympathizing and benevolent Public. THE CONFLAGRATION. "Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent." VIRG. EN. 2-755. WHAT bosom bleeds not o'er th' historic page Which tells the horrors of a former age, When Herculaneum's and Pompeii's domes Sunk simultaneous in their flaming tombs; When the Earth yawn'd convulsed, and, in one grave, |