moments he felt the hold of the soldier behind be- | pling sea; but when the tempest came, and the angin to relax; and shortly after, he fell with a groan gry surf lashed the opposing shore, and the dashing to the earth. A few seconds more and a sharp, spray was borne far inland by the blast, appalled tingling pain told him that he was wounded in the and terrified, they must have fled precipitately from leg, and by his convulsive bounds he was satisfied the scene. that his horse was also desperately wounded. But every evil has its antidote; and the storm, Bending low to the mane, with a sagacity sharp-wide-spread and devastating, uprooted gigantic ened by the fear of death, he contrived to place as trees, which, floating on the surface of the once many large trees as possible between his pursuers and himself. He rode thus for miles; and long after the pursuit must have ceased, the vindictive warwhoop seemed to ring in his ears. more tranquil ocean, suggested the means of transportation. The art of navigation, in the beautiful mythology of the ancients ascribed to Venus and Minerva, owes its first invention to Ousous, the Phoenician, who, on the trunk of a tree, denuded of its branches, and half excavated by fire, boldly pushed from the shore, and encountered the untried perils of the deep. His poor horse carried him to the last, but fell within a mile of the post. Bandaging his leg with a handkerchief, the sergeant attempted to proceed on foot; but, faint and exhausted with the loss of blood, he could not. From a feeling which all will To the canoe succeeded the raft; and thence, in understand, he retraced his steps, determined that regular succession, the galley manned with oars, if die he must, it should be beside the faithful steed. and the ship propelled by sails. From skirting With his head upon the neck of the dying animal, along the coasts, men, inured by degrees to the he swooned away, and was found by scouts from dangers of a new element, extended their interthe garrison sent out in consequence of the noise course from mainland to island; and at length, of the firing. with the newly-invented compass for their guide, Nearly the whole garrison at the post turned they boldly stood from the land, and wanderout in pursuit of the enemy,-but the Indians had ed over the fathomless ocean in quest of other disappeared with all their booty. With the muti-worlds. lated bodies of his late companions however, the sergeant was rejoiced to see the treacherous scout brought in-" and stranger," said he, while his face glowed with savage delight, "I was the man who tied the noose for him." new world, bolder than the Phoenician, may launch forth,-with its single aid combat the opposing winds, and rocking in the storm, career successfully over the billows of the wide Atlantic. And what country can profit like our own? One of those worlds has requited the blessing of civilization conferred upon it, by the application of an agent which bids fair to effect as great a revolution in maritime affairs, as the invention of gunpowder nearly five hundred years ago, did in the Clank, clank, clank-splash, splash, splash-art of war. Steam is indeed a wonderful agent; alas for the practical and unpoetic age in which and perchance before many years, a native of this we live! A man in the depths of the hold below, turns a cock, throws a few sticks of wood upon the fire, and the strange eccentric is moved by the steam, whose supply it afterwards regulates. As the valves open and close, the piston-rod, with the regularity of the pendulum, moves up and down, Its coasts, indented with frequent bays and inlets turning the paddle-shaft which whirls, in unceasing of the ocean, and nearly its every valley watered revolutions, the immense wheels that propel us. by navigable and majestic rivers, this country, now No longer spreading a sail to the breeze, or drift- rapidly advancing, is destined, ere long, to attain ing idly with the current, the arks and the broad the first rank in the great family of nations. As I horns have disappeared-the wild and melodious stood upon the summit of the Alleghany, and benotes of the boatman's bugle are unheard,-and in held a graceful sweep of verdant hills and plains, their stead, the soothing solitude of nature is dis-boundless as the view, and recollected that they turbed by the monotonous clank of a workshop. Surely the most beautiful object in nature is the ocean heaving and swelling in its mysterious undulation; its calm and placid surface checkered with light and shade, reflecting the sky above, and the changing aspect of the flying clouds! And the most beautiful perfection of art-is it not a ship buoyant and graceful, under a cloud of canvass buffeting the elements; and, against wind, or tide, or current, pressing onward to her port of destination? While yet the world was young, the nomadic tribes that wandered along the coasts must have gazed wistfully on the radiant surface of the rip stretched onward and onward, until the one extreme was locked in the rude embrace of thickribbed ice, while the other was washed by the phosphorescent ripple of the tropic, and turning East and West, beheld on each side an ocean for a boundary, I could not help exclaiming; Oh my country, if your energies be but properly directed, to what a glorious consummation may you not attain! Cincinnati is a thriving, and promises to become an extensive and populous, town; but its wharves, its streets, its every aspect, proclaims the sordid spirit of trade. I long for the simplicity of nature-not that. I am misanthropic; for though "The sweet roses breathe their fragrance around, The ties which bind me to my kind are few-for "Of Nature's gifts with lilies boast, and whose pure soul seems "given To be appropriate to her face, And show on earth a glimpse of heav'n," I shall doubtless bow down before her. It may be, that, denied the sympathy which they crave, my feelings will shrink from the social light with a timidity proportioned to their present yearning, Dieu me conduisse! anxiety to proceed, we lost each other. After ineffectually trying to find him, I threw myself at the foot of a tree, beside which gurgled a small stream. The early hour at which I had risen, and the great fatigue I had since undergone, combined with the soothing sound of the water as it rippled by, caused me to fall asleep. What awoke me I know not, but the first object I saw was the disc of the sun just descending behind the tops of the trees; as, nearly blinded by its rays, I turned my eyes away, I beheld a stag with enormous antlers standing at the edge of the brook, a short gun-shot from me. He had evidently been drinking, but disturbed perhaps by my slight movement on waking, his head was thrown back in the attitude of listening. I remained perfectly still, and he again began to drink. With the utmost caution I reached my gun, and taking deliberate aim fired and severely wounded him. He made one bound across the run, when to my amazement he turned the next moment, and rushed furiously towards me. I had barely time to spring into the tree when he brought up with a violent blow against it. He then walked round and round the tree, anxious to get at me, and glared upon me with more ferocity than I thought the animal capable of. After blockading me in this singular manner This morning, we dashed into the Mississippi, for fifteen or twenty minutes, he turned to go, when whose turbid and swollen waters roll far and wide I coughed aloud, and with rekindled fury he again beyond their usual boundaries. It is a scene wild dashed at the tree. His wound was certainly seand magnificent, but appalling from the dangers vere, and I hoped would prove a vital one, for he which beset it. The river is filled with broken bled profusely. At last he slowly walked away, rafts, drift logs, and sunken or floating trees. The regardless of every attempt I made to call him danger of running upon a snag or a sawyer is great, back. Immediately descending the tree, I reloaded and ever impending. The current is so strong, my gun, which had fallen beside it, and followed in that frequently caught by a whirl or an eddy, our pursuit. I was unsuccessful, and in addition to huge boat, like a stray leaf on the counter-current my disappointment, discovered that in my eager of a rivulet, is turned round and round, until, stri-ness, I had lost the bearings I had taken. king against a tree, it is sent again into the mid- Although the night promised to be a mild one, current. The word torrent will perhaps convey a the prospect of spending it in the woods was far more correct idea of its irresistible rapidity. Some- from pleasant, and I halloed long and loud for my times we are carried for miles among the trees- companions. Echo alone replied—not the echo of from whose verdant tops, the birds who have re- the sage writer, which to the call "where are mained undisturbed by the rush and the roar be- they?" answered "where;" but the only kind of neath, fly at our approach, as if aware that their echo I have ever heard, which in such a case only enemy is man. would have replied, "are they" and now, in fainter notes, returned my own wild balloo. might My friend and his father have received me with the open-handed hospitality for which the South The sun had now set, and night approached and South-West are proverbial. Last night, the more like the gathering of mist than the withdrawal second since my arrival, they made up a grand of light. I struggled on, almost losing a sense of hunting match, in which I, unthinking mortal, fatigue in anxiety, when, through the thickening joined. By sunrise this morning, after a hurried gloom, I perceived that the trees grew thinner, breakfast, we were off; but unused to the rifle, I and quickened my pace in the hope that carried my own fowling-piece. We soon sepa- prove the clearing of the plantation. I was prorated, all but a young brother of my friends', who voked to find myself on the edge of a small canekept with me. Little accustomed to the woods, by brake. Recollecting presently that I had heard mid-day, I felt much fatigued, and lagged slowly this canebrake spoken of as lying in a certain dialong; while my little guide, seemingly as fresh as rection, I concluded that my best course would be when we started, was eager in pursuit of game. immediately through it. I had scarce proceeded In a short time, between my weariness and his one-fourth of the distance, when I found it so fa tiguing, forcing my way through the high canes, of victory ringing in his ear, did he so much that I had decided on throwing myself down and claim our admiration, as when with his parting spending the night there, when I was startled by breath he stayed the hand of blood with the exclathe rattle of a rattlesnake. The sound was so mation-" Remember, he is a prisoner!" sudden and unexpected, that I could not tell from what quarter it came; and afraid to step any way, gathered the canes as thick as I could around me, and stood in breathless expectation. In a few moments I heard him glide away, and springing off in the opposite direction, I regained the wood, and soon afterwards heard the welcome shouts of my friends in search of me. Peace to his manes-for his was indeed "a bold spirit in a loyal breast." Shade of my noble friend!-for thus in life thou didst permit me to call thee-a few years since, and I was but a stripling under thy almost paternal care, and advised by thee, with little of the toil, I gained much of the fruits of experience. A few months, perchance a few weeks hence, I trust to I spent a month very pleasantly, when the near grapple with thy murderers, and upon my unexpiration of my leave of absence rendered it ne- flushed sword, before High Heaven, I swear to fall cessary that I should repair to the seaboard. I or to avenge thee. have reached it in time to join the squadron under Commodore Porter, destined to act against the pirates who infest the coasts of Cuba and the adjacent islands. The squadron consists of the John Adams and Hornet, sloops-of-war; the Sea Gull (steam brig), and the schooners Greyhound, Beagle, Fox, Terret and Wild-Cat. These schooners carry each a long gun and two cannonades; the crew consists of forty men all told, and they are about the size of the small wood-boats which navigate the Chesapeake. MUSINGS. I. Pata nascitur. To grasp the shadows of imagination, The images to trace, transfer, assort, II. In medio tutisimus ibis. The spirit of vengeance animates the whole country for the fate of the gallant and lamented Allen. This high-toned, intelligent and inestimable officer, universally respected, and dearly beloved by all who knew him, fell, as only the brave can fall, while, upright and reckless of exposure, he cheered his men to victory. With the force under 'Gainst health, o'erwrought exertion less offends, his command, he attacked the pirates in Seguapa Than the putrescence of inert repose, bay; and after the capture of one vessel, was stand-As cataracts fling out purer air than fens. ing in the boat, encouraging his crew as they bore down upon another, when he received the fatal Wound. With victory almost in his grasp, he died too soon for his country, but not too soon for enduring fame. As, a short time after, he lay upon the deck of his vessel, an officer, maddened at the sight of his dying chief, seized a cutlass, and was about to plunge it into the bosom of one of the pirates, lashed to the boom, when his hand was arrested by the faint but distinct exclamation, "Remember, Mr. Henley, he is a prisoner!" They were his last words. Yet the calm stream, that forth, deep-volumed, goes, Ill-fated Poland! tho' thy breast was erst, Christendom's shield 'gainst powers of Heathenesse, Which Europe, that she wears them not, may bless Base has been thy requital. Chains accurst, Sarmatian valor, now thy limbs compress, By fell ingratitude imposed. Twice riven, Those chains still compass thee: did thy distress Thus perished the dutiful son and the kind bro-Appeal in vain to those for whom thou'dst striven? Where was your succor, Earth? O! where your lightnings, ther; who, to support his sisters and his aged mother, lived a bachelor, and denied himself all the luxuries and many of the comforts of life. Not in his first action, when one after another his two seniors fell; and as they were borne below, he sprung upon a gun, exclaiming-" Boys, here's another William H. for you!" and with three cheers re Heaven? IV. Paucity of elements, multitude of combinations. newed the fight; not when in Manilla he so Ours be the bumbler task to readjust Who studied Nature's volume wisely and well. coolly and skilfully prepared to oppose an over-The treasured truths which on their pages dwell; whelming force; and not, when as Claverhouse, To catch a grace from Wisdom's sculptured bust, he fell with the cheer upon his lip, and the shout And brush from ancient Lore, the cobweb and the dust. Job was sore tempted to "curse God and die," His speech, sole vehicle of stern commands, Of life regardless, if achieved his plans, A Chimboraza towering on his throne, The corse-piled structure of his ruthless hands, The Peasant and the Prince. When monarchs fall, 'tis as an avalanche, Yet Nature made them of the self-same strain! Can these things be by Nature's ordination? Have toil'd or bled that man might yet be free! In such a cause, the sword who would not wield? Or if abundance, overflowing thence, Of Heathenesse, then, the evangelizing friend, NORTHERN RAMBLES. There are few so aged, still fewer so young, and not one so occupied in the duties and affairs of life, that they should not devote a portion of this beau tiful month to rambles in the woods. If the aged have lost their youth, they will recover a blessed portion of its joyful enthusiasm; if the weary mother lose not her burden of care, she will receive new vigor and animation, and that freshness of purpose and hope that she most of all needs, to enable her to sustain it. "Moping melancholy" may delightfully indulge her gentle humors there, and, what is still more delightful, get cured of her morbid propensities. Merry it is in the good, green wood Where the mavis and merle are singing; and its influence over the mind is irresistible-at least one feels so when in the act of throwing off the shawl, and sitting down surrounded with the beautiful spoils of a fresh jaunt. It is said our little Mayflower does not flourish south of Massachusetts,—as if, in gratitude for the honor of being associated, by its name, with the recollection of our pilgrim fathers, it would garnish no other land but that which was an asylum to them, and is the blessed home of their descendants. It flowered six weeks since (1st May); but truth constrains the admission that the younkers who would go "a Maying," very prudently provided themselves with rubbers and tippets before encountering the rough south-easter, on which their little favorite was so lavishly "wasting its sweetness. Such is our climate; and through all of May, the vase of Mayflowers on the mantle is most incongruously associated in promoting our wellbeing, with a blazing wood-fire on the hearth be And whose the coward heart, still throbbing, that would neath. yield? X. Charity begins at home. I would not hinder pure Beneficence; But keep it, rather, by dissuasive force, Thus Charity her blessings should dispense, But the breezes are softening; the choral emigrants have returned joyously to their haunts,the bobolink to his alder-the martin to his house; and who does not exclaim with the glorious, natureloving bard-" it were an injury and sullenness against nature, not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicings with heaven and earth?" He who spoke as never man did, referred most touchingly to the birds and the flowers; and one-himself under the influence of no ordinary inspiration-has observed, that "Moses and the prophets looked upon the heavens and the earth with a more poetic eye, than the poets of antiquity or the harpers of our own times." But if any impassioned lover of nature prefer not to excuse his enthusiasm by the example of these, he may, without fear of sacrilege, refer to the poet, who, with an intellect, verily but "a little lower than the angels," descended from his fellowship with them, "Cherub and seraph, potentates and thrones, And virtues," in the very sanctum sanctorum of the Divine pre- "Flowers-worthy of paradise, which nature boon adornments of the gentle virtues. Hence it is that "Yet was it ne'er my fate from thee to find, Sad Helen has no friend, now thou art gone." Such sentiments of pity and forgiveness, seem the breathings of the very genius of Christianity. And this from a heathen poet, in the description of a heathen warrior! But the chivalrous avengers of their own wrongs in our own days, probably re As, in reading the Iliad, it is difficult to believe that "the blind old man of Scio" could ever see; in perusing the writings of Milton, it is hard to believe that he was ever blind. Who that has followed the Grecian poet through his fields of slaugh-flect that she was a woman. ter and rivers of blood till exhausted with excitement and horror, but has thought how often the dearer English bard would have led him from the battle-ground to some sequestered vale in a beautiful bend of the Scamander, where the brayings of the far-off trumpet should be lost in the melody of the shepherd's lute, and the quiet scenes of pastoral life and domestic peace, be, to the weary spirit, The leaves of the Mayflower have, this spring, like the very lap of Elysium? But we are conowing to the mildness of the last winter, uncommon strained to forgive him; for, while feeling, pain- freshness and beauty. Being the product of the fully, the need of the refreshment and repose so previous year, they have usually a dryness, and delightfully vouchsafed in the "divine poem" of coarseness of texture which are not quite in keepour own English bard-(thanks to Carlyle for helping with the extreme delicacy of the blossoms they ing one to feel that he is ours, spite of the slight disclose, and appear not very unlike an aged fosterdivision which politics and the Atlantic have inter- mother with a rosy grandchild in her bosom. posed); and ready to denounce the poet who, The sweet-briar, or eglantine, is distinguishable writing from the bosom of the world's garden, from the common wild-rose, not more by its height gives us no more of beautiful nature than an acci- and peculiar elegance of form, than by the fradental glimpse of a sacred laurel or a consecrated grance of its foliage, which when wet with dew or beech; he leads us into the sanctuary of the do- a recent shower, throws out a perfume as strong mestic affections, like one who has ministered at and scarcely less delicious than that of the honeytheir altar, bearing the keys of its holiest and deepsuckle. It is the most beautiful specimen of sponest recesses, and beautiful are the revelations taneous production that our Maine forests afford. that he makes. It is a mystery, that one existing Sweet rose-what tame praise! Thy imperial sisunder the debasing influences of a vile mythology, ters cherished and caressed in the elysian gardens and, as it seems, quite unaffected by the softening on the shores of the Bosphorus, or unfolding their and purifying influences of external nature, could blushing petals and glowing hearts to the wooing conceive of hearts so pure, and delineate charac-songs of the nightingales in the bowers of Persia, ters so perfect as those of Hector and Andromache. or smiling beneath the sun of Andalusia, or perA certain critic asserts that 66 Homer makes no fuming the gardens of the Thuilleries,-not one of effort in describing the Trojan character," and that them has more perfect gracefulness of form, rich"Achilles is the hero of the poem, and the grand ness of odor, and more perfect beauty than thyself— object of the poem is to ennoble and exalt him." whether springing from the clefts of the rocks on But if so, while the poet "nodded" over the character of Hector, the man awoke, and his true heart throbs in every bounding pulse of his "second hero." He felt that But our June ramble was among flowers-not poets,-though we might pause even in the gardens of paradise, to regret that females, by common consent, are prohibited the reading of the Iliad in its original language. Haply our regrets may be checked by the thought that Milton and Shakspeare were Englishmen. and the rugged breast of the Himmelayahs, almost in the region of perpetual snows, or nursed by the north wind and the storms in the forest-grounds of Maine--the foster-child of Nature. It betrays its forest-birth, flourish where it may; and but little taste is exhibited in propping and tying and regave to Hector the humanizing and perfecting straining the graceful sweep of its branches, as it "Achilles was a lion—not a man ;” VOL. VIII-66 |