Transcriber's Note:

In "Descriptions of the Divine Being," P. 96, the block quote inside ~ (tilde) marks is a transliteration of the Hebrew. The transliteration was not present in the original and has been added by the transcriber; [h.] is used for Het, to distinguish it from h for Hey. The UTF8 and HTML versions also have the Hebrew script shown in the original.

Remaining transcriber's notes are at the end of the text.

THE

PORTLAND SKETCH BOOK.

EDITED BY

MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

PORTLAND:
COLMAN & CHISHOLM.

Arthur Shirley, Printer.

1836.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, by Edward Stephens, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Maine.

PREFACE.

The object of the Portland Sketch-Book, is to collect in a small compass, literary specimens from such authors as have a just claim to be styled Portland writers. The list might have been extended to a much greater length, had all been included who have made our city a place of transient residence; but no writer has a place in this volume who is not, or has not been, a citizen of Portland, either by birth or a long residence. Therefore, all the names contained in these pages are emphatically those of Portland authors. Among those who were actually born here and either wholly, or in part educated here, will be found the following names, most of which are already known to the world of literature.

S. B. Beckett—James Brooks—William Cutter—Charles S. Daveis—Nathaniel Deering—P. H. Greenleaf—Charles P. Ilsley—Joseph Ingraham—Geo. W. Light—Henry W. Longfellow—Grenville Mellen—Frederick Mellen—Isaac McLellan, Jr.—John Neal—Elizabeth Smith—William Willis—N. P. Willis.

Considering the population of our city—hardly fifteen thousand at this time—the list itself we apprehend will be considered as not the least remarkable part of the book.

It was the design of the Publishers to furnish a book composed of original articles from all our living authors, and to select only from those who have been lost to us; but though great exertions were made, the editor found much difficulty in collecting original materials, even after they had been promised by almost every individual to whom she applied. According to the original design, each living author was to have contributed a limited number of pages; but after frequent disappointments, all restrictions were taken off; each writer furnished as many original pages as suited his pleasure, and the deficiency was supplied by selected articles. In her selections, the editor has endeavored to do impartial justice to our authors, and, in almost every instance, she has been guided by them in her choice. If in any case she has been obliged to exercise her own judgment, in contradiction to theirs, it was because the publishers had restricted her to a certain number of pages, and the articles proposed would have swelled the volume beyond the prescribed limits. Original papers are inserted exactly as they were supplied by their separate authors. A general invitation was extended; therefore it should give no offence, if those who have contributed largely fill the greater portion of the Book, to the exclusion of much excellent matter, which might have been selected. Several writers who did not forward their contributions as expected, have been omitted altogether, as the editor could find nothing of theirs extant which was adapted to a work strictly literary.

In order to avoid all appearance of partiality, it has been thought advisable to make an alphabetical arrangement of names, and to let chance decide the position of each author in the Book.

The compiler has a word of apology to offer, before she consigns her little book to the public. Reasons which will be easily understood would have prevented her appropriating any considerable portion to herself; but she had contracted with the publishers to furnish a volume, which should be at least two thirds original, and when the pages forwarded to her were found insufficient for her object, she was obliged, however unwillingly, to supply the deficiency.

The Editor now submits her Portland Book to the public, with much solicitude that it may meet with approbation—feeling certain that indulgence would be extended to her, could it be known how much labor and difficulty have attended her slender exertions, in the literature of a city she has never ceased to love.

P. S. Among the papers omitted from necessity, is one by the Rev. Dr. Nichols, which, owing to accident, did not arrive till the arrangements for the work were entirely completed. In the absence of the Editor, whose own leading article arrived almost too late for insertion, we have taken the liberty to state the facts, that our readers may understand the cause of an omission so extraordinary.

CONTENTS.

THE
PORTLAND SKETCH BOOK.

DIAMOND COVE.

A beauteous Cove, amid the isles
That sprinkle Casco's winding bay,
Where, like an Eden, nature smiles
In all her wild and rich array.
'Tis sheltered from the ocean's roar
By beetling crags and foam-girt rifts,
And mossy trees, that ages hoar
Have braved the sea-gales on its cliffs!
The broad-armed oak, the beech and pine,
And elm, their branches intertwine
Above its tranquil, glassy face,
So that the sun finds scarcely space
At mid-day, for his fervid beam
To shimmer on the limpid stream;
And in its rugged, sparry caves,
Worn by the winter's tempest waves,
Gleams many a crystal wildly bright
Like diamonds, flashing radiant light,
And hence the fairy spot is 'hight.'

The forests far extending round,
Ne'er to the spoiler's axe resound;
Nor is man's toil or traces there;
But resteth all as lone and fair—
The sunny slopes, the rocks and trees,
As desert isles in Indian seas,
That sometimes rise upon the view
Of some far-wandering, wind-bound crew,
Sleeping alone mid ocean's blue.

The lonely ospray rears her brood
Deep in the forest-solitude;
And through the long, bright summer day,
When ocean, calm as mountain lake,
Bears not a breath its hush to break,
The snow-winged sea-gull tilts away
Upon the long, smooth swell, that sweeps,
In curving, wide, unbroken reach,
Into the cove from outer deeps,
Unwinding up the pebbly beach.

Oft blithly ring the wide old woods,
Within their loneliest solitudes,
To youthful shout, and song, and glee,
And viol's merry minstrelsy,
When summer's stirless, sultry air
Pervades the city's thoroughfare,
And drives the throng to seek the shades
Of these green, zephyr-breathing glades!
The dance goes round; the trunks so tall—
Rough columns of the festal hall—
Sustain a broad and lofty roof
Of nature's greenest, loveliest woof!
The maiden weaves, in lieu of wreath,
The bending fern-plumes in her hair,
And the wild flowers with scented breath,
That spring to blossom every where
Around; the forest's dream-like rest
Drives care and sorrow from each breast,
And makes the worn and weary blest!

And when the broad, dim waters blush
Beneath the tints of ebbing day,
When comes the moon out in the hush
Of eve, with mellow, timid ray,
And twilight lingers far away
On the blue waste, the fisher's skiff
Comes dancing in, and 'neath the cliff
Is moored to rest, till morning's train
Beams with fresh beauty o'er the main,
And wakes him to his toil again!

O, lovely there is sunset-hour!
When twilight falls with soothing power
Along the forest-windings dim,
And from the thicket, sweet and low,
The red-breast tunes a farewell hymn
To daylight's latest, lingering glow—
When slope, and rock, and wood around,
In all their dreamy, hushed repose,
Are glassed adown the bright profound—
And passing fair is evening's close!
When from the bright, cerulean dome,
The sea-fowl, that have all the day
Wheeled o'er the far, lone billows' spray,
Come thronging to their eyries home;
When over rock and wave, remote,
From yon dim fort, the bugle's note
Along the listening air doth creep,
Seeming to steal down from the sky,
Or with out-bursting, martial sweep
Rings through the forests, clanging high,
While echo waked bears on the strain,
Till faint, beyond the trackless main,
In realms of space it seems to die.
But lovelier still is night's calm noon!
When like a sea-nymph's fairy bark,
The mirrored crescent of the moon
Swings on the waters weltering dark;
And in her solitary beam,
Upon each bald, storm-beaten height,
The quartz and mica wildly gleam,
Spangling the rocks with magic light;
And when a silvery minstrelsy
Is swelling o'er the dim-lit sea,
As of some wandering fairy throng,
Passing on viewless wing along,
Tuning their spirit-lyres to song;
And when the night's soft breeze comes out,
And for a moment breathes about,
Shaking a burst of fresh perfume
From every honied bell and bloom,
Startling the tall pine from its rest,
And sleeping wood-bird in her nest,
Or kissing the bright water's breast;
Then stealing off into the shade,
As if it were a thing afraid!

The Indian prized this beauteous spot
Of old; beneath the embowering shade
He reared his rude and simple cot;
And round these wild shores where they played
In youth, still—pilgrims from the bourn
Of far Penobscot's sinuous stream,
Aged and bowed, and weary worn—
Lingering they love to stray, and dream
O'er the proud hopes possessed of yore,
When forest, isle and mainland shore,
For many a league, owned but their sway;
When, on the labyrinthine bay,
Now checkered o'er with many a sail,
Alone his lightsome birch canoe
Fast, by the bright, green islets flew,
Nor bark spread canvas to the gale.

Matchless retreat! mayst aye remain
As wild, as natural and free
As now thou art; nor hope of gain,
Nor enterprize a motive be
To lay thy hoary forests low;
Gold ne'er can make thy beauties glow,
Nor enterprize restore thy pride,
When once the monarchs round thy tide,
Have felt the exterminating blow.

OUR OWN COUNTRY.

By James Brooks.

What nation presents such a spectacle as ours, of a confederated government, so complicated, so full of checks and balances, over such a vast extent of territory, with so many varied interests, and yet moving so harmoniously! I go within the walls of the capitol at Washington, and there, under the star-spangled banners that wave amid its domes, I find the representatives of three territories, and of twenty-four nations, nations in many senses they may be called, that have within them all the germ and sinew to raise a greater people than many of the proud principalities of Europe, all speaking one language—all acting with one heart, and all burning with the same enthusiasm—the love and glory of our common country,—even if parties do exist, and bitter domestic quarrels now and then arise. I take my map, and I mark from whence they come. What a breadth of latitude, and of longitude, too,—in the fairest portion of North-America! What a variety of climate,—and then what a variety of production! What a stretch of sea-coast, on two oceans—with harbors enough for all the commerce of the world! What an immense national domain, surveyed, and unsurveyed, of extinguished, and unextinguished Indian titles within the States and Territories, and without, estimated, in the aggregate, to be 1,090,871,753 acres, and to be worth the immense sum of $1,363,589,69,—750,000,000 acres of which are without the bounds of the States and the territories, and are yet to make new States and to be admitted into the Union! Our annual revenue, now, from the sales, is over three millions of dollars. Our national debt, too, is already more than extinguished,—and yet within fifty-eight years, starting with a population of about three millions, we have fought the War of Independence, again not ingloriously struggled with the greatest naval power in the world, fresh with laurels won on sea and land,—and now we have a population of over thirteen millions of souls. One cannot feel the grandeur of our Republic, unless he surveys it in detail. For example, a Senator in Congress, from Louisiana, has just arrived in Washington. Twenty days of his journey he passed in a steam-boat on inland waters,—moving not so rapidly, perhaps, as other steam-boats sometimes move, in deeper waters,—but constantly moving, at a quick pace too, day and night. I never shall forget the rapture of a traveller, who left the green parks of New Orleans early in March,—that land of the orange and the olive, then teeming with verdure, freshness and life, and, as it were, mocking him with the mid-summer of his own northern home. He journeyed leisurely toward the region of ice and snow, to watch the budding of the young flowers, and to catch the breeze of the Spring. He crossed the Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne; he ascended the big Tombeckbee in a comfortable steam-boat. From Tuscaloosa, he shot athwart the wilds of Alabama, over Indian grounds, that bloody battles have rendered ever memorable. He traversed Georgia, the Carolinas, ranged along the base of the mountains of Virginia,—and for three months and more, he enjoyed one perpetual, one unvarying, ever-coming Spring,—that most delicious season of the year,—till, by the middle of June, he found himself in the fogs of the Passamaquoddy, where tardy summer was even then hesitating whether it was time to come. And yet he had not been off the soil of his own country! The flag that he saw on the summit of the fortress, on the lakes near New Orleans, was the like of that which floated from the staff on the hills of Fort Sullivan, in the easternmost extremity of Maine;—and the morning gun that startled his slumbers, among the rocky battlements that defy the wild tides of the Bay of Fundy, was not answered till many minutes after, on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The swamps, the embankments, the cane-brakes of the Father of Waters, on whose muddy banks the croaking alligator displayed his ponderous jaws,—the cotton-fields, the rice-grounds of the low southern country,—and the vast fields of wheat and corn in the regions of the mountains, were far, far behind him:—and he was now, in a Hyperborean land—where nature wore a rough and surly aspect, and a cold soil and a cold clime, drove man to launch his bark upon the ocean, to dare wind and wave, and to seek from the deep, in fisheries, and from freights, the treasures his own home will not give him. Indeed, such a journey as this, in one's own country, to an inquisitive mind, is worth all 'the tours of Europe.' If a young American, then, wishes to feel the full importance of an American Congress, let him make such a journey. Let him stand on the levee at New Orleans and count the number and the tiers of American vessels that there lie, four, five and six thick, on its long embankment. Let him hear the puff, puff, puff, of the high-pressure steam-boats, that come sweeping in almost every hour, perhaps from a port two thousand miles off,—from the then frozen winter of the North, to the full burning summer of the South,—all inland navigation,—fleets of them under his eye,—splendid boats, too, many of them, as the world can show,—with elegant rooms, neat berths, spacious saloons, and a costly piano, it may be,—so that travellers of both sexes can dance or sing their way to Louisville, as if they were on a party of pleasure. Let him survey all these, as they come in with products from the Red River, twelve hundred miles in one direction, or from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, two thousand miles in another direction, from the western tributaries of the vast Mississippi, the thickets of the Arkansas, or White River,—from the muddy, far-reaching Missouri, and its hundreds of branches:—and then in the east, from the Illinois, the Ohio, and its numerous tributaries—such as the Tennessee, the Cumberland, or the meanest of which, such as the Sandy River, on the borders of Kentucky—that will in a freshet fret and roar, and dash, as if it were the Father of Floods, till it sinks into nothing, when embosomed in the greater stream, and there acknowledges its own insignificance. Let him see 'the Broad Horns,' the adventurous flatboats of western waters, on which—frail bark!—the daring backwoodsman sallies forth from the Wabash, or rivers hundreds of miles above, on a voyage of atlantic distance, with hogs—horses—oxen and cattle of all kinds on board—corn, flour, wheat, all the products of rich western lands—and let him see them, too, as he stems the strong current of the Mississippi, as if the wood on which he floated was realizing the fable of the Nymphs of Ida—goddesses, instead of pines. Take the young traveller where the clear, silvery waters of the Ohio become tinged with the mud from the Missouri, and where the currents of the mighty rivers run apart for miles, as if indignant at the strange embrace. Ascend with him farther, to St. Louis, where, if he looks upon the map he will find that he is about as near the east as the west, and that soon, the emigrant, who is borne on the wave of population that now beats at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and anon will overleap its summits—will speak of him as he now speaks of New-England, as far in the east. And then tell him that far west as he is, he is but at the beginning of steam navigation—that the Mississippi itself is navigable six or seven hundred miles upward—and that steam-boats have actually gone on the Missouri two thousand one hundred miles above its mouth, and that they can go five hundred miles farther still! Take him, then, from this land where the woodsman is leveling the forest every hour, across the rich prairies of Illinois, where civilization is throwing up towns and villages, pointed with the spire of the church, and adorned with the college and the school,—then athwart the flourishing fields of Indiana, to Cincinnati,—well called 'the Queen of the West,'—a city of thirty thousand inhabitants, with paved streets, numerous churches, flourishing manufactories, and an intelligent society too,—and this in a State with a million of souls in it now, that has undertaken gigantic public works,—where the fierce savages, even within the memory of the young men, made the hearts of their parents quake with fear,—roaming over the forests, as they did, in unbridled triumph,—wielding the tomahawk in terror, and ringing the war-hoop like demons of vengeance let loose from below! Show him our immense inland seas, from Green Bay to Lake Ontario,—not inconsiderable oceans,—encompassed with fertile fields. Show him the public works of the Empire State, as well as those of Pennsylvania,—works the wonder of the world,—such as no people in modern times have ever equalled. And then introduce him to the busy, humming, thriving population of New-England, from the Green Mountains of Vermont, the Switzerland of America, to the northern lakes and wide sea-coast of Maine. Show him the industry, energy, skill and ingenuity of these hardy people, who let not a rivulet run, nor a puff of wind blow, without turning it to some account,—who mingle in every thing, speculate in every thing, and dare every thing wherever a cent of money is to be earned—whose lumbermen are found not only in the deepest woods of the snowy and fearful wilds of Maine, throwing up sawmills on the lone waterfalls, and making the woods ring with their hissing music—but found, too, on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and coming also on mighty rafts of deal from every eastern tributary of the wild St. John, Meduxnekeag and Aroostook, streams whose names geographers hardly know. And then too, as if this were not enough, they turn their enterprize and form companies 'to log and lumber,' even on the Ocmulgee and Oconee of the State of Georgia—and on this day they are actually found in the Floridas, there planning similar schemes, and as there are no waterfalls, making steam impel their saws. Show him the banks of the Penobscot, now studded with superb villages—jewels of places, that have sprung up like magic—the magnificent military road that leads to the United States' garrison at Houlton, a fairy spot in the wilderness, but approached by as excellent a road as the United States can boast of.

Show him the hundreds and hundreds of coasters that run up every creek and inlet of tide-water there, at times left high and dry, as if the ocean would never float them more: and then lift him above considerations of a mercenary character, and show him how New-England men are perpetuating their high character and holy love of liberty,—and how, by neat and elegant churches, that adorn every village,—by comfortable school-houses, that appear every two miles, or oftener, upon almost every road, free for every body,—high-born, and low-born,—by academies and colleges, that thicken even to an inconvenience; by asylums and institutions, munificently endowed, for the benefit of the poor:—and see, too, with what generous pride their bosoms swell when they go within the consecrated walls of Faneuil Hall, or point out the heights of Bunker Hill, or speak of Concord, or Lexington.

Give any young man such a tour as this—the best he can make—and I am sure his heart will beat quick, when he sees the proud spectacle of the assemblage of the representatives of all these people, and all these interests, within a single hall. He will more and more revere the residue of those revolutionary patriots, who not only left us such a heritage, won by their sufferings and their blood, but such a constitution—such a government here in Washington, regulating all our national concerns—but who have also, in effect, left us twenty-four other governments, with territory enough to double them by-and-by—that regulate all the minor concerns of the people, acting within their own sphere; now, in the winter, assembling within their various capitols, from Jefferson city, on Missouri, to Augusta, on the Kennebec;—from the capitol on the Hudson, to the government house on the Mississippi. Show me a spectacle more glorious, more encouraging, than this, even in the pages of all history; such a constellation of free States, with no public force, but public opinion—moving by well regulated law—each in its own proper orbit, around the brighter star in Washington,—thus realizing, as it were, on earth, almost practically, the beautiful display of infinite wisdom, that fixed the sun in the centre, and sent the revolving planets on their errands. God grant it may end as with them!

THE CRUISE OF THE DART.

By S. B. Beckett.

"There was an old and quiet man,
And by the fire sat he;
And now, said he, to you I'll tell
Things passing strange that once befell
A ship upon the sea."—Mary Howitt.

"There she is, Ricardo," said I to my friend, as we reached the end of the pier, in Havana, while the Dart lay about half a mile off the shore,—"what think you of her?"

"Beautiful!—a more symmetrical craft never passed the Moro!"

So thought I, and my heart responded with a thrill of pride to the sentiment. How saucy she looked, with her gay streamers abroad upon the winds, and the red-striped flag of the Union floating jauntily at the main peak—with her lofty masts tapering away, till, relieved against the blue abyss, they were apparently diminished to the size of willow wands, while the slight ropes that supported the upper spars seemed, from the pier, like the fairy tracery of the spider. Although surrounded by ships, xebecs, brigantines, polacres, galleys and galliots from almost every clime in christendom, she stood up conspicuously among them all, an apt representative of the land whence she came! But let us take a nearer view of the beauty. The hull was long, low, and at the bows almost as sharp as the missile after which she was named. From the waist to the stern she tapered away in the most graceful proportions, and she had as lovely a run as ever slid over the dancing billows. Light and graceful as a sea-bird, she rocked on the undulating water. But her rig!—herein, to my thinking, was her chiefest beauty—every thing pertaining to it was so exact, so even and so tanto. Besides the sail usually carried by man-of-war schooners, she had the requisite appertenances for a royal and flying kite, or sky-sail, which, now that she was in port, were all rigged up. Not another vessel of her class in the navy could spread so much canvas to the influence of old Boreas as the Dart.

Her armament consisted of one long brass twenty-four pounder, mounted on a revolving carriage midships, and six twelve-pound carronades. Add to this a picked crew of ninety men, with the redoubtable Jonathan West as our captain, Mr. Dacre Dacres as first, and your humble servant, Ahasuerus Hackinsack, as second lieutenant, besides a posse of minor officers and middies,—and you may form a faint idea of the Dart.

Bidding adieu to my friend, I jumped into the pinnace waiting, and in a few minutes stood on her quarter deck.

But it will be necessary for me to explain for what purpose the Dart was here. She had been dispatched by government to cruise among the Leeward Islands, and about Cape St. Antonio, in quest of a daring band of pirates, who, trusting to their superior prowess and the fleetness of their vessel, a schooner called the Sea-Sprite, had long scourged the merchantmen of the Indian seas with impunity. Cruiser after cruiser had been sent out to attack them in vain. She had invariably escaped, until at length, in reality, they were left for awhile, the undisputed 'rulers of the waves,' as they vauntingly styled themselves. It was said of the Sea-Sprite, that she was as fleet as the winds, and as mysterious in her movements; and her master spirit, the fierce Juan Piesta, was as wily and fierce a robber, as ever prowled upon the western waters. Indeed, so wonderful and various had been his escapes, that many of the Spaniards, and the lower orders of seamen in general, believed him to be leagued with the Powers of Darkness!

But the Dart had been fitted up for the present cruise expressly on account of her matchless speed, and our captain, generally known in the service by the significant appellation of Old Satan West, was, in situations where fighting or peril formed any part of the story, a full match for his namesake.

After cruising about the western extremity of Cuba, for nearly a month, to no purpose, we bore away for the southern coast of St. Domingo, and at the time my story opens, were off Jacquemel. The morning was heralded onward by troops of clouds, of the most brilliant and burning hues—deep crimson ridges—fire-fringed volumes of purple, hanging far in the depths of the mild and beautiful heaven—long, rose-tinted and golden plumes, stretching up from the horizon to the zenith,—forming altogether a most gorgeous and magnificent spectacle, while, to complete the pageant, the sun, just rising from his ocean lair, shed a flood of glaring light far over the restless expanse toward us, and every rope and spar of our vessel, begemmed with bright dew-drops, flashed and twinkled in his beams, like the jeweled robes of a princely bride.

"Fore top there! what's that away in the wake o' the sun?" called out Mr. Dacres.

"A drifting spar, I believe, Sir—but the sun throws such a glare on the water I cannot see plainly."

I looked in the direction pointed out, and saw a dark object tumbling about on the fiery swell, like an evil spirit in torment. We altered our course and stood away toward it. It turned out to be a boat, apparently empty, but on a nearer inspection we perceived a man lying under its thwarts, whose pale, lank features and sunken eye bespoke him as suffering the last pangs of starvation. My surprise can better be imagined than described, on discovering in the unfortunate man a highly loved companion of my boyhood, Frederick Percy! He was transferred from his miserable quarters to a snug berth on board of the Dart, and in a few hours, by the judicious management of our surgeon, was resuscitated, so as to be able to come on deck.

His story may be told in a few words. He had been travelling in England—while there had married a beautiful, but friendless orphan. Soon after this occurrence he embarked in one of his father's ships for Philadelphia, intending to touch at St. Domingo city, and take in a freight. But, three days before, when within a few hours' sail of their destined port, they had fallen in with a piratical schooner, which, after a short struggle, succeeded in capturing them. While protecting his wife from the insults of the bucaneers, he received a blow in the temple, which deprived him of his senses; and when he awoke to consciousness it was night, wild and dark, and he was tossing on the lone sea, without provisions, sail or oars, as we had found him. For three days he had not tasted food. Poor fellow! his anxiety as to the fate of his wife almost drove him to distraction.

This circumstance assured us that we were on the right trail of the marauder whom we sought. We continued beating up the coast till noon, when the breeze died away into a stark calm, and we lay rolling on the long glassy swell, about ten leagues from the St. Domingo shore. The sun was intensely powerful, glowing through the hazy atmosphere, directly over our heads, like a red-hot cannon ball; and the far-stretching main was as sultry and arid as the sands of an African desert. To the north, the cloud-topped mountains of St. Domingo obstructed our view, looming through the blue haze to an immense height—presenting to as the aspect of huge, flat, shadowy walls; and one need have taxed his imagination but lightly, to fancy them the boundaries dividing us from a brighter and a better clime. The depths of the ocean were as translucent as an unobscured summer sky, and far beneath us we could distinguish the dolphins and king-fish, roaming leisurely about, or darting hither and thither as some object attracted their pursuit; while nearer its surface the blue element was alive with myriads of minor nondescripts, riggling, flouncing and lazily moving up and down,—probably attracted by the shade of our dark hull.

The men having little else to do, obtained from the captain permission to fish. Directly they had hauled in a dozen or more of the most ill-favored, shapeless, unchristian-looking articles I ever clapped eyes on, which, when I came from aft, were dancing their death jigs on the forecastle-deck, much to the diversion of the captain's black waiter, Essequibo.

"Halloo!—this way, blackey!" shouted an old tar to the merry African, who, by the way, was a kind of reference table for the whole crew—"Egad! Billy, look here,—what do you call this comical looking devil that has helped himself to my hook? Why! his body is as long as the articles of discipline, and his mouth almost as long as his body!—your own main-hatch-way is not a circumstance to it!"

"Him be one gar fish—ocium gar!—he no good for eat," answered the black with a grin that drew the corners of his mouth almost back to his ears, so that, to appearance, small was the hinge that kept brain and body together.

At the sight the querist dropped the fish, exclaiming with feigned wonder, "By all that's crooked, an even bet!—ar'n't your mouth made ov injy rubber, Billy!"

"Good ting to hab de larsh mout, Misser Mongo,—eat de more—lib de longer," said Billy.

"Screw your blinkers this way, Jack Simpson, there's a prize for you," said another, as he dragged a huge lump-headed, bull-eyed, tail-less mass out of the water, with fins protruding, like thorns, from every part of his body!—"Guess he's one of the fighting cocks down below, seeing his spurs!—any how, he's well armed,—I'll be keel-hauled, if he don't look like the beauty that we saw carved out on the Frencher's stern, with the Neptune bestride it, in Havana, barin' he wants a tail! Han't he a queer un?—but how in natur do you suppose he makes out to steer without a rudder?"

"Steer wid he head turn behin' him!" answered Seignor Essequibo, bursting into a chuckling laugh—mightily tickled with the struggles of the ungainly monster,—"Che, che, che!—him sea-dragum—catch um plenty on de cos ob Barbado. Take care ob him horn!"

"Yo, heave, ho! Shaint Pathrick, an' it's me what's caught a whale!" drawled out a brawny Patlander, while he tugged and sweated to heave in his prize.

"My gorra! you hook one barracouter!" cried Billy, as his eye caught a glimpse of the big fish curveting in the water at the end of Paddy's line,—"Bes' fish in de worl'!—good for make um chowder—good for fry—for ebery ting,—me help you pull him in, Massa Coulan," and without further ado, he laid hold of the line. The beautiful fish was hauled in, and consigned to the custody of the cook.

"Stave in my bulwarks, if this 'ere dragon-fish ha'n't stuck one of his horns into my foot an inch deep!" roared an old marine,—"Hand me that sarving mallet, snow ball, I'll see if I can't give him a hint to behave better!"

"Hurrah!—here comes an owl-fish, I reckon;" shouted a merry wight of a tar, from the land of wooden nutmegs,—"specimen of the salt-water owl! Lord, look at his teeth—how he grins!—What are you laughing at, my beauty?"

"Le diable! une chouette dans la mer?" exclaimed a little wizen-pated Frenchman, who had seated himself astraddle of the cathead.—"Vel, Monsieur Vagastafsh, comment nommez vous dish petit poisson?"

"Poison! No, Monsheer, I rather guess there han't the least bit o' poison in natur about that ere young shark!" replied Wagstaff, "though for that matter a shark's worse'n poison."

"I not mean poison—I say poisson—fish."

"O, poison fish—yes, I know—you'll find plenty of them on the Bahamy copper banks. I always gets the cook to put a piece of silver in the boilers, when we grub on fish in them ere parts."

"O, mon dieu! le rashcalle hash bitez mon vum almos' off! Sacré, vous ingrat, to treatez me so like, when I am feed you wis de bon dîner!"

My attention was called away from this scene of hilarity, by the voice of the watch in the fore-top, announcing a sail in sight.

A faint indefinable speck could be seen in the quarter designated, fluttering on the bosom of the blue sea like a drift of foam. With the aid of the glass we made it out to be the topsail of a schooner, so distant that her hull and lower sails were below the brim of the horizon. Her canvas had probably just been unloosed to the breeze, which was directly after seen roughening the face of the broad, smooth expanse as it swept down toward us.

"That glass, Mr. Waters—she is standing toward us, and by the gods of war! the cut of her narrow flying royal, looks marvellously like that of our friend, the Sea-Sprite!" said the captain, while the blood flashed over his bald forehead, like 'heat lightning' over a summer cloud; "Mr. Hackinsack, see that every thing is ready for a chase."

The broad sails were unloosed and sheeted close home. Directly the wind was with us, and we were bowling along under a press of canvas.

"Now, quartermaster, look to your sails as closely, as you would watch one seeking your life." Another squint through the glass. "Ha! they have suspected us, and are standing in toward the land, jam on the wind;—let them look to it sharply; it must be a fleet pair of heels that can keep pace with the Dart,—though to say the least of yonder cruiser, she is no laggard!"

After pacing the deck some ten minutes, he again hove short and lifted the glass to his eye.

"By heavens! the little witch still holds her way with us!—Have the skysail set, and rig out the top-gallant-studd'n'sail!"

Every one on board was now eager in the chase. The orders were obeyed almost as soon as given. Our proud vessel, under the press of sail, absolutely flew over the water, haughtily tossing the rampant surges from her sides, while her bows were buried in a roaring and swirling sheet of foam, and a broad band of snow stretched far over the dark blue waste astern, showing a wake as strait as an arrow. She was careened down to the breeze, so that her lower studd'n'sail-boom every moment dashed a cloud of spray from the romping billows, and her lee rail was at times under water. Her masts curved and whiffled beneath the immense piles of canvas, like a stringed bow.

"She walks the waters bravely," said the captain, casting a glance of exultation at the distended sails and bending spars, and then at our arrowy wake.—"But, by Jupiter, the chase still almost holds her way with us. We need more sail aft. Bear a hand, my men, and run up the ringtail."

"That will answer,—a dolphin would have a sweat to beat us in this trim!"

"Well, Mr Percy, is yonder dasher the craft that pillaged your ship, and sent you cruising about the ocean in that bit of a cockle-shell, think you?"

"That is the pirate schooner—I cannot mistake her," replied Percy, who stood with his flashing eyes rivetted on the vessel, and his fingers impatiently working about the hilt of his cutlass, while his brow was darkened with an intense desire of revenge.

Three hours passed, and we had gained within a league of the noble looking craft. She was heeled down to the breeze, so that owing to the 'bagging' of her lower sails, her hull was almost hidden from sight. Like a snowy cloud, she darted along the revelling waters, the sunbeams basking on her wide-spread wings, and the sprightly billows flashing and surging around her bows. Never saw I an object more beautiful.

The land was now fully in sight—a stern and rock-bound coast, against which the breakers dashed with maddening violence, and for half a mile from the shore, the water was one conflicting waste of snowy surf and billow. No signs of inhabitants, on either hand, as far as the eye could view, were discernible. The long range of stern, solitary mountains arose from the waves, and towered away till lost in the clouds. Their sides, save where some splintered cliff lifted its gray peaks in the day, were clothed with thick forests, among which the tufted palm and wild cinnamon stood up conspicuously, like sentinels looking afar over the wide waste of blue. Here and there a torrent could be traced, leaping from crag to cliff, seeming, as it blazed in the fierce sun-light, to run liquid fire; and gorgeous masses of wild creepers and tangled undergrowth hung down over the embattled heights, swaying and flaunting in the gale, like the banners and streamers of an encamped army.

Not the slightest chance for harbor or anchorage could be discovered along the whole iron-bound coast, yet the gallant little Sea-sprite held steadily on her course, steering broad for the base of the mountains.

"Why, in the name of madness, is the fellow driving in among the breakers?" muttered our captain;—"Thinks he to escape by running into danger? By Mars, and if I mistake not, he shall have peril to his heart's content, ere nightfall!"

But fate willed that we should be disappointed; for just as every thing had been arranged to treat the bucaneer with a fist full of grape and canister, one of those sudden tempests, so common to the West Indies in the autumn months, was upon us. A vast, black, conglomerated volume of vapor swung against the mountain summits, and curled heavily down over the cliffs. Brilliant scintillations were darting from its shadowy borders, and the zigzag lightnings were playing about it, and licking its ragged folds like the tongues of an evil spirit! Suddenly it burst asunder, and a burning gleam—a wide conflagration, as if the very earth had exploded—flashed over the hills, accompanied with a peal of thunder that made the broad ocean tremble, and our deck quiver under us, like a harpooned grampus in his death gasp! The electric fluid upheaved and hurled to fragments an immense peak near the summit of the mountains, and huge masses of rock, with thunderous din, and amid clouds of dust, smoke and fire, came bounding and racing down from crag to crag, uprooting the tall cedars, and dashing to splinters the firm iron-wood trees, as though they had been but reeds—sweeping a wide path of ruin through the thick forests, and shivering to atoms and dust the loose rocks that obstructed their career, till, with a whirring bound, they plunged from a beetling cliff into the sea, causing the tortured water to send up a cloud of mist and spray. All on board were struck aghast at the blinding brilliancy of the flash and its terrible effects.

We were aroused to a sense of our situation, by the clear, sonorous voice of Satan West, whom nothing pertaining to earth could daunt, calling all hands to take in sail.

Instantly the trade-wind ceased, and a fearful, death-like silence ensued. This was of short duration; hardly were our sails stowed close, when we saw the trees on shore drawn upwards, twisted off and rent to pieces, while a dense mass of leaves and broken branches whirled over the land; and a wild, deep, wailing sound, as of rushing wings, filled the air, foretelling the onset of the whirlwind.

"The hurricane is upon us!—helm hard aweather!" thundered the captain.

But the Dart was already lying on her beam-ends, heaving, groaning and quivering throughout every timber, in the fierce embrace of the tremendous blast! After its first overpowering shock, however, the gallant craft slowly recovered, and by dint of the strenuous exertions of our men, she was got before the gale. Away she sprang, like a frighted thing, over the tormented and whitening surges, completely shrouded in foam and spray. A dense cloud, murky as midnight, spread over the face of the heavens, where a moment before, naught met the gazer's eye, save the fleecy mackerel-clouds, drifting afar through its cerulean halls. The blue lightnings gleamed, the thunder boomed and rattled, the black billows shook their flashing manes, the whole firmament was in an uproar; and amid the wild rout, our little Dart, as a dry leaf in the autumn winds, was borne about, a very plaything in the eddying whirls of the frantic elements.

The tempest was as short lived as it was sudden, and, as the schooner had sustained no material injury, directly after it had abated she was under sail again. When the rain cleared up in shore, every eye sought eagerly for the pirate craft.

She had vanished!

Nothing met our view but the tossing and tumbling surges, and the breaker-beaten coast. If ever old Satan West was taken aback, it was then. His brow darkened, and a shadow of unutterable disappointment passed over his countenance.

"Gone!—By all that is mysterious and wonderful—gone!" he muttered to himself,—"escaped from my very grasp! Can there be truth in the wild tales told of her? No, no!—idiot to harbor the thought for a moment—she has foundered!"

But this was hardly probable, as not the slightest vestige of her remained about the spot.

Poor Percy, too, was the picture of despair. His hat had been blown away by the hurricane; and his hair tossed rudely in the wind, as he stood in the main-chains, gazing with the wildness of a maniac over the uproarous waters.

"The lovers of the marvelous would here find enough to fatten upon, I ween," said Dacres, composedly helping himself to a quid of tobacco. "What think you is to come next? for I hardly think the play ends with actors and all being spirited away in a thunder gust!"

I was interrupted in my reply by the energetic exclamations of the captain, who had been gazing seaward, over the quarter-rail.

"Yes, by all the imps in purgatory, it is that devil-leagued pirate," burst from his lips; and at the same moment the cry of Sail O! was heard from the forward watch.

A long-sparred vessel could be seen, relieved against the black bank of clouds, that were crowding down the horizon. Surprise was imaged on every countenance, and when the order was passed to crowd on all sail in pursuit, a murmur of disapprobation ran through the whole crew. However, such was their respect for the regulations of the service, and so great their dread of old Satan West, that no one dared demur openly. Again the Dart was bounding over the waves in pursuit of the stranger, which had confirmed our suspicions as to her character, by hoisting all sail and endeavoring to escape us.

But here likewise we were disappointed. She proved to be a Baltimore clipper, and had endeavored to run away from us, taking us for the same craft we had supposed her to be.

After parting from the Baltimorean, we ran in; and as the evening fell, anchored under the land, sheltered from the waves by a little rocky promontory. It was my turn to take the evening watch. Our wearied crew were soon lost in sleep, and all was hushed into repose, if I except the shrill, rasping voices of the green lizards, the buzzing and humming of the numerous insects on shore, and the occasional, long-drawn creak, creak of the cable, as the schooner swung at her anchor. The evening was mild and beautiful. The moon, attended by one bright, beautiful planet, was on her wonted round through the heavens, and the far expanse of ocean, reflecting her effulgence, seemed to roll in billows of molten silver beneath the gentle night-wind, which swept from the land, fragrant with the breath of wild-flowers and spicy shrubs.

Little Ponto, the royal reefer, lay on a gun carriage near me. This boy, whom, when on a former cruise, I had rescued from a Turkish Trader, was a favorite with all on board. Although, in person, effeminate and beautiful as a girl, and possessing the strong affections of the weaker sex, he still was not wanting in that high courage and energy which constitutes the pride of manhood. He was an orphan, and with the exception of a sister and aunt, who were living together in England, there was not, in the wide world, one being with whom he could claim relationship. When very young, he had been entrusted to the charge of the friendly captain of a merchant ship, bound to Smyrna, for the purpose of improving his health. But the vessel never reached her destined port. She was captured by an Algerine rover, and the boy made prisoner. It was from the worst of slavery that I had rescued him, and ever after the occurrence his gratitude toward me knew no bounds. He appeared to be contented and happy in his present situation, save when his thoughts reverted to his lone sister. Then the tears would spring into his eyes, and he would talk to me of her beauty and goodness, till I was almost in love with the pure being which his glowing descriptions had conjured to my mind. I loved that boy as a brother, and he returned my affection with a fervor, equalling that of a trusting woman.

As I leaned against the companion-way, absorbed in pleasant dreams of my far home, a touch on the shoulder aroused me. I turned and Percy stood by my side. The beauty of the evening had soothed his wild and agitated feelings. He spoke of his wife with touching regret, as if certain that she was lost to him forever. For nearly an hour he stood gazing on the moon's bright attendant, as if he fancied it her home.

At length he disappeared below, and again Ponto, who seemed to be wrapped in a deep revery, was my only companion. We had remained several minutes in silence, when suddenly, as if it had dropped from the clouds, a female form appeared far above us, on a precipitous bluff that leaned out over the deep, on which the solitary moonlight slept in unobstructed brightness. The form advanced so near the brink of the fearful crag, that we could even distinguish the color of her drapery as it fluttered in the wind. By the motion of her arms she seemed beckoning us on shore; then, as if despairing to attract our attention, she looked fearfully about, and the next moment a strain of exquisite melody came floating down to us, like a voice from heaven. We remained breathless, and could almost distinguish the words.

The strain terminated in a startling cry, and with a frantic gesture the figure tore a crimson scarf from her neck, and shook it wildly on the winds; at the same moment the dark form of a man leaped out on the cliff. There was a short struggle, with reiterated shrieks of 'help! help! help!' in a voice of agony, and all disappeared in the deep shadow of another rock.

Ponto, who at the first burst of the song, had started up and grasped my arm with a degree of wild energy I had never witnessed in him before, now suddenly released his hold, and with a single bound plunged into the sea. So lost was I in amazement at the whole scene, that for a moment I remained undecided what course to pursue; then, not wishing to alarm the ship, I ordered Waters, the midshipman of the watch, to jump into the boat with a few of the men, and pull after him.

The head of my little favorite soon became visible in the moonlight. With a vigorous arm he struck out for the shore, and was immediately hid in the deep shadow of its mural cliffs. A moment, and I again saw him on the beetling rocks, whence the female had just disappeared; then he, too, was lost in the darkness.

Waters, after being absent in the boat about half an hour, returned without having discovered the least sign of the fugitive. Hour after hour I awaited the return of my adventurous boy, filled with painful anxiety.

As the night deepened, the clouds, which during the day had slumbered on the mountain battlements, as if held in awe by the majesty of the burning sun, rolled slowly down the steeps and gradually spread out on the sea, enveloping us in their humid embrace. A denser mist I never saw; my thin clothing was soon wet through and clinging to me like steel to a magnet, and we were completely lost in darkness. As I paced the deck, not willing to go below while my young favorite was in peril, Waters tapped me on the shoulder.

"Did you notice any thing then, Mr. Hackinsack? I thought I heard a splash in the water, like the dip of an oar."

"Some fish, I suppose, Waters."

"I think not, Sir; besides, just now I saw a dark object gliding slowly across our bow in the mist, which I then took for a drifting log."

I walked round the deck and peered into the fog on every side, but could discover nothing. I listened; all was silent save the tweet, tweet, of the lizards and the roar of the surf, as it beat on the rocks astern. Presently old Benjamin Ramrod, the gunner, came aft.

"I wish this infernal fog would clear up!" said he, "for the last half hour, I have heard strange noises about us! I am much mistaken, or we are surrounded by enemies of some sort or other. When that shining apparition arose from the bluff there, and began to beckon to us, I said to myself, some accident is going to happen before many hours, and you see if my pro'nostics ar'n't true. Minded you how, by her sweet voice, she lured that poor boy, Ponto, overboard?—and even I, who may say I've had some experience in such matters, began to feel a queerish sensation, as I harkened to her witchery. Many a poor sailor has lost his life by listening to their lonesome-like songs. I remember once when I was on the coast of Africa, in a gold-dust and ivory trader, we heard the water-wraiths and mermaids singing to each other all night long, and the very next day our ship was driven upon the rocks in a white squall, and wrecked, and only myself and a Congo nigger escaped alive, out of a crew of twenty-three!—It strikes me, too," he continued, after listening a moment, "that we shall have a storm before morning; the fog seems to be brushing by us, and the noise of the breakers on shore grows terribly loud. I would give all the prize-money I ever gained to be out of the place, with good sea-room, a flowing sheet, and our bows turned toward home—no good ever came of fighting these pirate imps.—Heaven help us! what is that?" he exclaimed with a start, as a tall, white form shot up, a few rods under our stern, seen but dimly through the fog.

The fact flashed upon me at once; our cable had been cut; it was the spray of the breakers rebounding from the shore. The best bower anchor was instantly let go, which brought us up; not however till we had drifted within a cable's length of the breakers, which ramped and roared all the night with maddening violence, as if eager to engulf us. The alarm was given, and in a few minutes every thing was prepared for any emergency that might occur.

I ordered Ramrod to clap a charge of grape into one of the bow-chasers and let drive at the first object that came in sight. As I gave the order the dip of oars could be plainly distinguished, receding from our bows. Benjamin did not wait to see the marauders, but fired in the direction of the sound. The fog was swept away before the mouth of the gun, to some distance, and I caught a glimpse of a boat filled with men. A deep groan told that the gun had been rightly directed.

There was now no doubt that we were surrounded by enemies. It was only by the foreboding watchfulness of the gunner that we were prevented from going ashore, where, doubtless, the pirates expected to have obtained an easy victory over us.

About ten minutes after this incident I was startled by the faint voice of Ponto, hailing me from under the schooner's side. I joyfully lowered the man-ropes, and immediately had the adventurous boy beside me, on the quarter-deck. He grasped my hand, and I felt him tremble all over with eagerness.

"You heard that song; the voice was that of my own sister! That shriek, too, was hers; do you wonder that I leaped overboard? I scarcely know how I reached the rock from which she was dragged. I climbed up and up, in the direction I supposed they must have taken, until I gained the very summit of one of the hills. I looked down, and as it were floating in the haze, many feet below me, saw the face of a rock reddened by the blaze of a fire opposite. I clambered from cliff to cliff, clinging to the branches of the trees, and letting myself down by the mountain creepers that hung like thick drapery over the descent, till all at once I dropped over the very mouth of a deep cavern. A massy vine fell in heavy festoons down over the rugged pillars that formed its portal. Securing a foothold among its tendrils, concealed by its luxuriant foliage, I bent over and looked in. A large party of fierce-looking men, with pistols in their belts and cutlasses lying by them, were seated round a rude table, feasting and making merry over their wine beakers. I paid little attention to them, for against the rough wall was an old woman, and leaning upon her—as I live, it is true—was my own, my beautiful sister, she whom I had left in England! I thought my heart would have choked me, as I looked upon her pale, sorrowful face, and heard her low sobs. In my tremor the vine shook; some loose stones were started, and went clattering down into the very mouth of the cavern. Two of the pirates sprang up, and seizing a flaming brand, rushed out. The red blaze flashed over her face as they passed, and I heard them threaten her with a terrible fate, if they were discovered through her means. At the first start of the rocks I drew back into the vines, where I remained breathless and still, while they scanned the recesses of the crag. 'We were mistaken, Jacopo,' at length said one of them, 'it was probably a guana, drawn hither by the fire.' Satisfied that no one was near, they returned to their comrades, who ridiculed them for their temerity.

"Again I listened, and heard them plan to cut the cable of the Dart, and run her into the breakers. If they failed in this attempt, they were to haul the Sea-Sprite out of her hiding place and leave the coast, trusting, with the aid of the fresh land-breeze, to get beyond pursuit before day-break.—The mist had come on, and knowing it impossible to reach the Dart over the rough precipices in time to give you warning, I remained in my concealment, undecided what course to pursue, when I saw a party of the pirates leave the cavern to go to their boats. Perceiving beneath me, on the bough of a wild tamarind, sundry articles of clothing, similar to those worn by the bucaneers, a bold thought occurred to me. When they had gone beyond the light from the cave, I cautiously lowered myself down, and drawing on a jacket and one of the caps, jumped with them into the boat, no one in the darkness suspecting me.

"To appearance we were in the very heart of the mountains. I am certain that rocks and foliage were piled up all around us.—After a short row we passed through what seemed to be a deep chasm, between two crags, which must have been very high, as the darkness between them was almost palpable, and in a few moments we were riding over the long swell of the open sea. We groped about in the mist for some time, till the position of the Dart was ascertained by the chafing noise of one of her booms, when, gliding softly up, with their sharp knives they cut her cable, and she began to drift astern. The strictest silence was enjoined upon us all, so that had I moved or made the least noise, as I had intended, my life had been the forfeit. However, I had just made up my mind to run all hazards, when the flame of the gun gleamed through the fog. One of the pirates fell dead in the bottom of the boat, and in the hurried stir which this produced, I contrived to slip into the water.

"Now let me conjure you to take measures for the rescue of my poor sister. How she came into their power is a mystery. But my heart will break if she is not soon freed from these lawless men."

I informed the captain of Ponto's discovery, but he saw at once that it would be madness to attempt any thing in our present situation, with sunken rocks around us, the breakers astern, and a thick mist wrapping all in obscurity.

At last, after a night of the most wearisome watching, the day dawned, and the mists returned to their mountain fastnesses. Burning for a brush with the desperadoes, we towed the Dart out of her critical situation and got her under sail. The launch and cutter were ordered out, but here we were at fault. The morning sunlight slept calmly on the forest clad ridges and gray cliffs, and every irregularity and indentation of the shore were strongly shadowed forth; but not the least sign of harbor or anchorage could be seen, except under the rocky promontory we had just left, and every thing looked as forsaken and solitary as a creation's birth. However, not doubting that we should be able to sift the mystery, the boats put off, with full and well-armed crews, and on nearing the shore discovered a narrow inlet, that wound in between the two lofty cliffs, the one projecting out with a magnificent curve, so as entirely to conceal the channel until we approached within a few rods of the shore.

"We've got on the right scent of the old fox now, I think," said Waters.

"Speak low, gentlemen; if discovered we may meet with a reception here not altogether so agreeable—I don't like the appearance of those grave looking fellows, yonder," said Dacres, pointing to four cannon mounted on a low parapet, with their muzzles bearing directly toward us.

"Why, the place is as silent as a grave-yard," muttered the old cockswain of the cutter.

We advanced softly up the inlet, and found it to branch out into a broad basin. Here was explained the mystery of the Sea-Sprite's sudden disappearance; this was the Pirate's Retreat, and from their escaping hither and into similar resorts known only to themselves, arose the many wild stories that were abroad respecting their supernatural prowess. Fifty well armed men might have defended the place against five hundred assailants, as there was only one point, the inlet, susceptible of an attack. The entrance was not more than thirty feet in width—only sufficient for one vessel to enter at a time; but the water was bold and deep, with a sandy bottom. An enormous cavern yawned at the farther extremity of the basin, which Ponto immediately recognized as that where the pirates held their revel the previous night. But now the place was evidently deserted; the Sea-Sprite had made her escape.

The crew of the barge were despatched on shore to explore the premises, while we, as a corps-de-reserve, lay on our oars, with fire-arms loaded, ready for any emergency. While waiting I had an opportunity of surveying the magnificent scene around me. We lay in the deep shadow of a beetling precipice of such immense altitude, that the snow-white morning clouds, as they floated onward, like messengers from heaven, swept its summit. Thousands of gray sea-birds were sailing around their eyries, along its dark craggy sides far above us, while its hollow recesses reverberated their shrill cries, till to our ears they sounded like one continued scream. The cliffs all around were tumbled about in the most chaotic confusion, as if they had been upheaved by some tremendous throe of nature. Stinted forest trees and brush wood, with here and there a wild locust or banana, had gained a footing in the seams and fissures of the crags, and thick masses of the lusty mountain creepers, intertwined with wild flowering jessamin and grenadilla, fell in gorgeous festoons down the embattled heights, draping their rough projections in robes of the most magnificent woof. Nearly opposite was a yawning ravine, filled with myriads of huge, shattered trees, ragged stumps, loose stones and gravel, which probably had been swept from the mountains, by the foaming torrents that rush down to the sea in the rainy months. The desolation of this scene was in a measure relieved by the quick springing vegetation that had found sustenance among the decayed trunks, and in the black earth that still adhered to the matted roots; so that green foliage, and wild flowers of the most brilliant dies in sumptuous profusion, were waving and nodding over prostrate trees, which perchance a year before, had stood up in the pride of primeval lustihood, on the mountain ridges. Further back, beyond this gorge, the sloping steeps were clothed with dark waving forests, stretching up their sides, till they faded into the blue haze resting on the mountain summits. The freshness of early day had not yet been dissipated. Among the undergrowth and brakes, on the tips of the tall, sweeping guinea grass, and in the cups of the wild flowers, the pure dews hung in glittering globules, sparkling with brilliant prismatic tints, as they flashed back the glances of the rising sun. Calmness and repose reigned over the unequalled sublimities of the place; and although the billows were madly beating and roaring against the outer base of the crescent-like promontory, within, the water was silent and unruffled by a breath, reflecting in its depths the wild and gorgeous array of rock and verdure around, almost as unwavering as reality itself; and had it not been for the tiny wavelets that rippled up a small sandy beach, adorning the water's edge with a narrow frill of foam, its likeness to a broad sheet of glass had been perfect.

At length, after the premises had been thoroughly reconnoitered, the crew of the cutter were permitted to go on shore. They were soon revelling amidst the costly merchandize and the luxuries, with which the cavern was gorged.

"Holloa, Price!" said Waters to a fellow mid, as he came out of the cave, dragging an old hag of a woman after him, apparently much against her will; "I've found the presiding goddess of the place. Isn't she a Venus?"

"Wenus indeed!" echoed the old beldame, "take that, young madcap, and larn better how to treat a lady!" administering a thwack on his ear that sent him staggering a rod from her.

Waters gathered himself together, and a general laugh took place at his expense.

"A fair representative of the amorous goddess—quite liberal with her love pats!" said Price in a tantalizing tone.

"Confound the old hag," muttered the discomfited mid, "if it were not a waste of good powder and ball, I'd make a riddle of her in the twinkling of a grog-can!"

This female and one man, found wounded and languishing on his pallet, were the only denizens of the place.

"Croesus! what hav'nt we here?" exclaimed Price, glancing over the medley of rich merchandize heaped together in one of the apartments of the huge cavern; "boxes of silks and satins, sashes, ribbons, lace, tortoise shell!—whew!—I say, Waters, what heathen are these pirates to let such a profusion of pretty gewgaws lay here, which ought to be setting off the fairy forms of the Spanish lasses! Now there's as handsome a piece of trumpery as one often sees," tying a delicate crimson silk manta about him—"as I'm a sinner I'll carry that home to Nell Gray!—Ha! Burgundy wine?

Inspiring—divine
Is the gush of bright wine;
'Tis the life, 'tis the breath of the soul,
'Tis the—the—

"Odds! but I must quicken my memory, and clear my pipes with a can of the critter to get into the spirit of song!"

He drew a beaker from the cask and took a deep draught.

"Capital, by Bacchus!" he exclaimed, smacking his lips,—"Try it, Waters, these fellows fare like princes."

"Bear a hand, Mr. Price, and don't set the men a bad example," thundered the first lieutenant, who had stationed himself as a sentinel outside.

In the meantime the men had not been idle. The sight of such a profusion of riches, all at their own mercy, had turned their brains, and the confusion that prevailed among the silks and finery would have rivalled that of a London milliner's shop on a gala day.

But the voice of the lieutenant, as if by magic, restored them to order, and Waters ordered the most costly of the goods to be carried to the boats.

"An 'ai'nt it Roary McGran 'as found a nest o 'the shiners," exclaimed a son of Erin, as he emerged, covered with dirt, from a small, deep cavity at the inmost extremity of the cavern, dragging after him a large bag of doubloons,—"'Ai'nt them the beauties, Misther Waters?—its what they're as plenty there as paraites in a parson's cellar."

Half a dozen similar bags were brought to light; besides which more than a score of boxes containing rix dollars, and a great many parcels of coin of different nations, silver and gold, tied up in old pieces of canvas, were discovered.

"Some sport in sacking such a fortress as this," observed Price,—"no blood and plenty of booty! By Jove, though, what a confounded pity it is we hav'nt a ship of some size, that we might load her with these silken goods? Our share of the prize money would be a fortune to us."

While the men were ransacking the cavern, I had climbed by a narrow foot-path to the top of a lofty bluff. A small telescope, found in a hollow that had been worked in the rock, assured me that this served as a look-out station. It commanded a wide view of the surrounding ocean, now tenanted only by the sun-beam and solitude, if I except the presence of the Dart, which sat lilting on the glittering swell, with her white wings outspread, like a huge sea-bird stretching his pinions for flight.

The boats shoved off, loaded gunwale deep with gold and silver, ivory, tortoise-shell and the most choice of the merchandise found in the cavern, and in fifteen minutes all was safely secured on board the schooner. After a short consultation it was agreed to run the Dart into the Pirates' Retreat, and there await the return of the Sea-Sprite, deeming that the bucaneers would scarcely be long absent from the chief depository of their treasures. She was soon safely anchored in the basin. A lookout was stationed at the mouth of the inlet, while Ponto and Percy undertook, with the consent of the captain, the task of watching from the cliff. Waters was then sent with a party of the men to explore the cavern more thoroughly, and before noon there was not a chink nor cranny of the place which had not been thrice overhauled. Immense treasures, in gold, silver and jewelry, were brought to light.

Toward the latter part of the afternoon, Percy gave the signal agreed upon for an approaching vessel, and directly after made his appearance on the beach, informing us that they had examined her carefully, and that there could be no mistaking her—it was the Sea-Sprite.

"Strange!" said the captain; "I knew that they were brave—fearless to desperation, but I did not expect to see them show such fool-hardiness. However, they shall meet with a welcome reception. Mr. Dacres, see that all the men are on board, and have things put to rights for a brush. If I mistake not, there will be desperate work ere the rascal receives his deserts."

In a few minutes every thing was ready; the boats were got out forward, and the Dart was towed to the mouth of the inlet, remaining concealed.

The Sea-Sprite, which could be seen from the outer edge of the rocks, stood gallantly in, driving a drift of snow before her, till within about a mile of the shore; when, as if she had discovered some signs of our presence, she wore round, hoisted her studd'n'sails, and stood away in a south-westerly direction.

"Pull away cheerily," said the captain to the men in the boats, who had lain on their oars in readiness.

Slowly the Dart emerged from her hiding place—the sails were squared round so as to present their broad surfaces to the wind, and away she darted in swift pursuit, like an eagle in quest of his prey. A stern chase is proverbially a long one; so it proved in this instance. The wind was light, and although we hung out every rag of sail, the sun was sinking beyond the sea when we approached within gun-shot of the rover. Not a soul could be seen on her decks,—she was worked as if by magic.

"Mr. Ramrod," said the captain, "clap a round shot into the long-tom, and let us see if we cannot make them show some signs of life."

Benjamin loaded the gun, and having got it poised to his fancy, applied the match. Away whizzed the iron messenger. The chips flew from the stern of the rover, and a swarm of grizzly heads, belonging to bona fide bodies, popped up above the bulwarks, and then settled down again, like so many wild sea-fowl disturbed in their nests.

"Well done, Benjamin!—I see you have not lost any of your skill for lack of practice."

The pirate, at length finding it impossible to escape us, shortened sail.

"Now my men," said the captain, "to your duty!—let every gun be double-shotted—a round shot and grape!"

By a well-timed manoeuvre, we ranged up under her stern. Our men stood with their arms extended, ready to apply their lighted matches.

"Fire!" thundered Satan West.

A storm of flame burst from our side, and the Dart reeled half out of water under the recoil of the overloaded guns. The iron shower raked the pirate fore and aft, hurling those deadly missiles, the splinters, in every direction, and doing terrible execution on their decks. Two more such broad-sides would have sent her to the bottom.

"Helm aweather—jam hard!" roared the captain.

"Ay, ay, sir!"—and we wore round so as to present our other broad-side to the enemy.

While this manoeuvre was going on, the bows of the Sea-Sprite had fallen off in the wind, so as to bring us side by side, within half pistol shot. She returned the fire with a vengeance, and several of our brave tars fell wounded or slain to the deck.

"Ready! blaze away!"—but the sound of our captain's voice was lost in the thunder of the heavy ordnance.

The battle now commenced in real earnest. The cannon bellowed, small arms rattled, the combatants yelled, the dying groaned, the iron thunder-bolt crashed, riving the vessel's oaken timbers, and a dense sulphur-cloud overspread the scene of furious commotion, so that we fought with an invisible enemy. We could see nothing save the streaming lightning of the cannon, or the fiend-like figures that worked our aftermost guns, begrimmed with powder and blood, stripped nearly naked, and sweltering in their eager toil. As the smoke occasionally lifted, however, the battered bulwarks of the enemy, and the glimmering streaks along her black waist, showed that our fire had been rightly directed; and the irregularity with which it was returned, told the confusion that prevailed on her decks. Several times we attempted to run her aboard, but they discovered our intentions in time to avoid us.

At length a discharge from the well-directed gun of old Benjamin, took effect in her fore-top. The topmast came thundering down with all its rigging, over the foresail. Having thus lost the benefit of her head sail, she rounded to, and her jib-boom came in contact with our fore rigging.

"Now is our time!—into her, boarders!" roared Dacres, leaping upon the pirate's forecastle deck.

But the order was useless—they were already hard on his track. A close and desperate struggle now took place. Pistols cracked, sabres gleamed, and deadly blows were dealt on either side, till a rampart of the slain and wounded was raised high between the furious combatants. Gloomy and dark as an arch-fiend, the pirate leader raged among his men, urging them on with threats and curses, in a voice of thunder, and sweeping down all opposition before his dripping blade. But Dacres, backed by his well-trained boarders, received them on the points of their pikes, with a coolness and bravery that made them recoil upon each other, like surges from a rock-ribbed coast. Thus the fight continued with various success, till the attention of the bucaneers was arrested by an unearthly shout in the rear, and the tall figure of Percy was seen, laying about him with whirlwind impetuosity, his long, untrimmed hair flying wildly in the commotion of the atmosphere, his features working with the madness that controlled him, and his dilated eyes flashing with a fierce, unnatural fire upon his opponents. All quailed before him. Wherever his merciless arm fell there was an instant vacancy. Although a score of cutlasses were glancing, meteor-like, around his person, as if by a spell, he remained uninjured. At length his eye detected the pirate leader. Dashing aside all before him, with one bound he was at his side. The fierce chief started in amazement at the sight of him whom he supposed many a league from the spot, if not dead, but quickly recovered his stern and gloomy bearing.

"Monster! where is she?" shouted Percy.

"Ask the sharks!" replied the captain, lunging at him with his sabre.

These were his last words. Percy, quick as thought, drew a pistol from his belt and fired into his face! He fell heavily to the deck, and the combatants closed around him, as tempest-waves close over a foundering ship!

The pirates, now that their leader was slain, fought with less spirit, and the victory was soon decided in our favor. Sooth to say, it was dearly earned; and many who sought the battle with a quickened pulse, and eager for the strife, were that evening consigned to the waves. Of all the pirate's crew, consisting of nearly a hundred men, but thirteen remained unharmed. Heavens!—what a ghastly spectacle her decks presented! Fifty stalwart forms lay there, stiffened in death, or writhing in the agony of their deep wounds, severed and mangled in every way imaginable; and so slippery was the main deck that we could hardly cross it, while the sea all around was died with the red waters of life, that gushed in a continuous stream from her scuppers.

On the forecastle deck, where the last desperate struggle had taken place, I recognized many of our own crew among the lifeless heaps. Poor old Ramrod, the gunner, lay there, with the black blood trickling over his swarthy brow, from a bullet hole in his temple. He had died while the might of battle was yet upon him—and the fierce scowl which he darted at his foes, still remained on his rigid features. His hand, even in the agonies of death, had not relinquished its firm grasp on his cutlass, and the gigantic form of a swart pirate, with his skull cloven down, close at hand, showed that it had been swayed to some purpose. Poor Benjamin! I could have wept over him. He had been in the service from his earliest days, and the scars of many a sanguinary fight were visible upon his muscular arms, and on his bronzed and powerful chest. My brave boy, Ponto, was there also, hanging pale and wounded over the britch of the bow gun. He had followed me when we boarded, like a young tiger robbed of his mate. Although faint and helpless with the loss of blood, which belched at every heave of his bosom, from a deep sabre wound in his shoulder, and which had completely saturated his checked shirt and his duck pantaloons, yet his firmness was unshaken. I ordered one of our men to take charge of him, until he could be looked to by the surgeon. "Not yet," faintly exclaimed the generous child, pointing to Mengs, the boatswain, who lay wounded over a coil of the cable, with three or four grim looking bucaneers stretched dead across his chest, the blood from their wounds streaming into his face and neck,—"look to him first, he may be suffocated."

"No, no, youngster," murmured the hardy Briton, "I'd do very well till my turn comes, if I had this ugly looking craft cast off from my gun-deck, and a can of water stowed away in my cable tier!"

After the prisoners were secured, I sought the cabin, where I had ordered Ponto to be carried. It was a richly garnished room, with berth hangings of crimson damask and amber colored silk, a gorgeous carpet from the looms of Brussels, and furniture in keeping. Opposite the companion-way hung a superb picture of the virgin mother and her infant, and over it a golden crucifix, while beneath, on a rose wood table, lay a guitar, implements for sketching, and various articles for female employ and amusement. Indeed, one might have supposed himself entering the boudoir of a delicate Spanish belle, rather than the domicil of a lawless rover. This I remember but from the glance of a moment. My attention was drawn to the occupants of the place. There lay my wounded boy, by the side of a silken sofa-couch, his face buried in the garments of a female stretched lifeless upon it, and over them bent the tall form of Percy, gazing upon the group with a fixed, vacant stare, which told that suffering could wring his soul no longer—desolation and madness had come upon him. His attitude, the expression of his features, and the low, convulsive sobs and broken murmurs of the boy, at once explained the scene. The one had found a wife, the other a sister, in that inanimate form. I advanced nearer, in hopes that life might not be altogether extinct. The sight was appalling, but beautiful. The pale, dead face, upon which the mellow radiance of sunset streamed through the sky-light, was lovely as a seraph's. Her eyes were closed as if in sleep; the long braids of her bright hair lay undisturbed upon her marble forehead, and there was no appearance of violence, save where the dress of sea-green silk had been torn back from her bosom, as if in her dying agonies, displaying a dark puncture, as of a grape-shot, just below the snowy swell of the throat, from which the crimson blood oozed, slowly trickling down over her white and rounded shoulder. She had probably been killed by our first raking broad-side.

"Fire! fire!" shouted a dozen voices on deck. I sprang up the companion-way. The fore-hatch had been removed, and a dense volume of smoke was rolling up from below. A glance was sufficient to show that no effort of ours could save the vessel, and preparations were speedily made to rescue the wounded, and abandon her to her fate. It being impossible for me to leave my duty on deck, I sent a trusty Hibernian to rescue my helpless boy and to inform Percy of our situation. He returned with a rueful countenance.

"Ochone! Mr. Hackinsack," said the tender hearted fellow, "it almost made the salt wather come intil my een, to see the poor man and the beautiful kilt leddy,—an' whin I tould 'em as how the schooner was burnin' and would be blown to Jerico in a twinklin' all he said was to give me a terrible, ferocious-like scowl and point with a loaded pistol to the companion; so I took his mainin' an' left 'em."

Two other messengers, sent to take him away by force, met with no better success.

The flames were ready to burst out on every side, and from each chink and crevice around the hatches—which had been replaced and barred down—the smoke was darting up with the force of vapour from a steam engine. The deck had become so heated that it was painful to stand upon it—the fire was fast progressing towards the run, where the magazine was situated. Thrice had the order been given to quit the burning vessel, but I could not forsake my friend without one more effort to rescue him from the terrible fate that awaited him, if left behind. He still held the loaded pistol in his hand and sternly forbade my approach. Poor Ponto had fainted from grief and loss of blood, and lay across his sister's body. I sprang forward and raised him in my arms, regardless of the maniac's threats. The pistol banged in my ear, but fortunately the ball passed over me as I stooped, and I regained the companion-way without injury. By this time, he had drawn another from his belt.

"Put away the pistol, and come with me," I urged,—"the vessel is on fire and will soon be blown to atoms."

He looked at me with a grim stare for a moment, then burst into an idiotic laugh. That wild laugh is still ringing in my brain. "Ha! ha! ha!—Fire? fire? here it is, wreathing and coiling!—here! here!" dashing his hand against his forehead.

Perceiving that it was vain to reason with his madness, and fearing for the life of the wounded boy in my arms, I reluctantly left the hapless man to his fate.

The boat had already put off for the last time, but I succeeded in prevailing upon them to return, and leaping in, soon reached the Dart in safety.

The night set in wild and black as Death. Disparted and ragged masses of cloud were rushing over the face of the heavens, where once and again, the soaring moon, and that same bright, solitary star, would show their calm faces through the reeling rack, apparently flying from this scene of turmoil and death. The increasing wind howled mournfully through the rigging, and our battered hull staggered along the inky main writhing and shuddering on the heave of the surge like a weary, wounded thing.

We followed in the track of the burning vessel as she fled along before the gale, awaiting in breathless suspense the consummation of her wild career. The black smoke, interfulgent with tortuous tongues of lurid fire, rolled in immense volumes over her!—the red flames darted up her masts, along the spars and rigging, and gushed in swirling sheets from her ports and bulwarks, while in their fierce gleams, the billows that ramped and raved about her, glowed like a huge seething cauldron of molten iron, and the gloomy clouds that lowered above were tinged in their ragged borders, as with blood. Occasionally the jarring thunder of her cannon, as they became heated to explosion, announced to us the progress of the insidious destroyer.

But a still more thrilling spectacle awaited us. In the height of the conflagration, the hapless Percy, bearing his dead wife in his arms, emerged as it were from the very midst of the flames, and took a stand on the companion-way. So strongly was the tall, dark-figure relieved against the glowing element, that his slightest gesture could not escape our scrutiny. While with one arm he spanned the waist of the supple corse, which apparently struggled to escape from his grasp, he waved the other on high as if exulting in the whirl and commotion around him. He seemed like the minister of some dark rite of heathenism, preparing to offer up a victim to the Moloch of his superstition.

At length arrived the dreadful moment! The black hull seemed to be lifted bodily out of the water. A volume of smoke burst over her like the first eruption of a volcano! A spire of flame shot up to the heavens, filling the firmament with burning fragments, while the clouds that overhung the sea, were torn and scattered by the tremendous concussion. A crash followed—a deep, bellowing boom, as if the solid globe had split asunder!—then all was darkness—dreary, void, silent as death!

TO M***, ON HER BIRTH-DAY.

By William Cutter.

What though the skies of winter
Look cold and cheerless now!
What though earth wears no mantle
But that of ice and snow!
Though trees, all bare and leafless,
Stretch up their naked arms,
In sad and mournful silence,
To brave the wintry storms!
There is enough of sunshine,
Fond memory will say,
Around this morning clustered—
This is thy natal day!

What though the birds of summer,
Flown far and long away,
In gentler climes are warbling,
Their loved and grateful lay!
What though, in field and garden,
No fragrant incense pours
From nature's thousand altars—
Her blossoms and her flowers!
There's music sweet as angels',
And fragrance sweet as May,
In the thoughts that breathe and blossom
Around thy natal day!

To me, the skies above us
Are bright as summer's noon!
And trees, in crystal blossoms,
More brilliant than in June!
There's music in the wintry blast—
There's fragrance in the snow—
And a garb of glorious beauty
On every thing below!
For oh! affection, wakened
With morning's earliest ray,
Has never ceased to whisper—
This is thy natal day!

RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION IN RULERS.

By John W. Chickering.

It is a great truth, and worthy of a place among the few grand principles which lie at the foundation of all wise and just government, that 'the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men.' This may be understood de jure, or de facto; and in either sense must be believed, not only by those who admit, on the authority of the prophet, that it was spoken by a divine voice, but by all who do not deny the whole theory of an overruling Providence.

That the almighty Ruler retains both a right and an agency in the management of terrestrial governments, is undisputed by all who recognize his right and his agency in any thing. It is the atheist alone who would insulate the kingdoms of the earth from the kingdom of heaven. None would banish Jehovah from the smaller empires his providence has organized and sustained, but those who banish him from the universe his power has created.

Thus atheism in philosophy is sole progenitor of atheism in politics; and it should not excite our surprise, that he who 'sees' not 'God in clouds nor hears him in the wind,'—who beholds in the great things of the earth, the air and the sea, no footsteps of divine power, and no finger-prints of divine wisdom, should be equally blind concerning the progress of civil affairs, and should so have perverted his mind, and so tortured the moral sense which God gave him, as to believe, and to rejoice, that without God, kingdoms rise and fall, and that it is not 'by him' that 'kings reign, and princes decree justice.'

But with the atheist, that moral monster,'—— horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum,' we are not now concerned. We leave him to the darkness he has brought upon himself through his 'philosophy and vain deceit,' and to the enjoyment, if enjoyment it be, of his dreary cavern, more dreary than that of Polyphemus,—a godless world.

We come to inquire, by way of preparation for the more direct prosecution of the object of this article, concerning the views entertained by the great mass of mankind who believe in the existence and providence of Jehovah, as to his particular connection with the subordinate governments on earth, and the station which it is his holy pleasure to occupy in their control and management. And here we find at once, wide and hurtful mistakes; occupying relatively, such is man's tendency to extremes, the position of antipodes. Some, overlooking the twofold agency, partly civil, partly ecclesiastical, by which the Most High promotes his own ends and the well being of his creatures, have resolved each into the other, making religion an affair of the state, and civil government a matter for ecclesiastical influence; producing in practice the unseemly compound, commonly called "church and state," but which might be more accurately characterized as the ruin of both.

As the fruits of this mistake, the world has seen profane monarchs invested with titles of religion and piety. In some countries, aided by ambition and intrigue, it has brought kings to kiss the feet of the professed ambassadors of Jesus Christ; and gained for them honors and power, which their divine but humble master declined for himself. This mistake has been confirmed, if it was not originated, by the organization of the great Jewish theocracy. This was, indeed, church and state. But it was under a divine administration.—And although the fact that the Deity not only attested and ratified the alliance, but condescended to be legislator, judge, and executive, might at once have prevented the inference; yet men have inferred that the civil and ecclesiastical powers ought always to be thus commingled. The consequences might have been anticipated. The history both of Christianity and of the world, is darkened by their melancholy shade. Religion, unguarded by the miraculous intervention of Him who, under a former dispensation, smote the offerers of strange fire, has been corrupted by those who would do her honor, and crushed by the embraces of false friends;—and her splendid sojourn in the halls of power, has been met by reverses not less striking, and far more disastrous, than Moses met after being the protege of royalty; while the civil rights of men, invaded by ambition and avarice, under the name of religion, and with the sanction of God's name, have been yielded up without a struggle, under the impression, that resistance would be "fighting against God." What would not have been demanded in the name of man, has been freely given in the name of God;—men who in defence of their rights, would have ventured cheerfully upon treason, have shrunk with horror from sacrilege.

Thus religion and liberty have well-nigh perished together, and their present resting-place on earth resembles rather the one found by Noah's dove on her second flight, than the broad home, illimitable but by the world's circumference, which as philanthropists we hope, and as Christians we pray, they may soon enjoy.

Others again, warned, perhaps, by the disasters consequent upon the policy last described, have gone to the extreme, not less hurtful, and far more presumptuous, of excluding religious motives and religious principles from all influence in the affairs of the commonwealth. They have thus become quoad hoc, practical atheists. Content indeed, that the Deity should keep our planet in motion, and regulate its seasons and its tides; and surround and cover it with the blessings of Providence, nor careful to forbid him a participation even in the internal concerns of Jupiter, or Herschell,—perhaps even willing to admit in theory, the truth of the statement from the inspired record with which this article commenced,—they yet deem it best for man, considered either as a governing or as a governed being, that the notion of a presiding Deity should be as much as possible excluded from his mind. The mere juxtaposition of the words "religion" and "politics," or any of their correlates, is sufficient to excite the fears of these scrupulous alarmists; and if they do not imitate the example of the French, who were seen near the close of the last century, rushing madly with the pendulum-like oscillation of human nature, from the bonds of religious despotism, into the very wilderness of atheism, and denounce Jehovah as a usurper, and his adherents as rebels against "the powers that be," they strive to separate all questions and acts of government from God and his laws, as if there were no God; thus making, if not an atheistic people, an atheistic government. Far otherwise, we cannot but pause here to remark, acted the noble men, the sifted wheat of three kingdoms, who were thrown by God's providence through ecclesiastical tyranny, upon these shores. If they for a time, with a strange tenacity of old habits, which showed that principle, not passion, led them, clung to the very usages respecting toleration, which had exiled them, they at least preserved the nation which they founded, from the character and the curse of a nation which despises God. Heaven grant, that the pendulum may not even now be swinging to the other extreme!

While we would have the affairs of the nation managed as if there were no church in the world, we would not have them managed as if there were no God in the world. Could our voices reach the millions of our countrymen, as Joshua's voice reached the thousands of Israel, we would say as he said, 'If the Lord be God, serve him.' In a word, while we believe that the civil and ecclesiastical departments ought to be distinct, and that their union is a departure from the intention of Him who formed both, and that it is fraught with the most disastrous consequences to both, we do not believe that the almighty Ruler has excluded himself from the control of either, or given the least permission that either should be managed on any other principles than the eternal principles of right, which are embodied in his character, and laid down in his word.

When we speak of a sense of religious obligation, we mean more than a general undefined belief that such an obligation exists. Such a belief is withheld, we trust, by comparatively few who hold important places in our national and State governments. But can it be doubted by any man who has accustomed himself to contemplate the distinction between mere intellectual assent, and the warm, practical conviction which reaches the heart, and controls the conduct, that this belief may coexist with as total an insensibility to the claims of Jehovah, as if it were William IV., or Nicholas of Russia, who performed them, instead of the Most High God?

Is it too much to desire, nay to infer, as a duty, from what has already been said, that our rulers in the executive, legislative, and judicial departments, both in the general and State governments, should have an abiding consciousness of accountability—should live under a felt pressure of obligation—to the Sovereign of the universe, which should assume, as it must where it exists at all, a practical, binding force? Is it too much to ask, that they should remember that they are the servants of God for good to this great people, and that to their own Master they stand or fall? That they rule by God's permission, and for his ends; and that a higher tribunal than any on earth awaits the termination of their responsibility to man? That they should remember their obligation, in common with those who elevated them to office, "whatever they do, to do all to the glory of God;" and the solemn truth, that a sin against God or man, whether of omission or of commission, whether committed in private, in the family circle, or in the high places of authority, is no less a sin, when committed by a judge, or a legislator, or a chief magistrate of a State or nation, than by the humblest of his constituents? In a word, do we claim too prominent a place for religious principle in the administration of public affairs, when we avow our desire that the rulers of a people, who are the nominal, and in a free government the real, representatives of the people, should be daily and practically aware, that they are accountable to a higher Power, thus realizing, if not in the highest and most Christian sense, yet in the literal signification, the picture of a good ruler drawn by the prophet, who, in the name of the almighty Ruler, declares, "He that ruleth over men, must be just—ruling in the fear of God!"

We cannot reflect without occasion for the deepest gratitude, that in contemplating the advantages of such a state of mind and of heart, as possessed by men in authority, we are not confined to a priori reasoning. England has had her Alfred, her Edward VI., and her Matthew Hale; Sweden her Gustavus Adolphus; our own most cherished and beloved country, a Washington, and a Wirt, with many others among the dead, and not a few among the living, to whom our readers may recur as we proceed, both for illustration of our meaning, and proof of our assertions.

Among the effects of this sense of obligation, which go to show its importance to every man in public life, we mention first, its influence in checking the love and pride of power. It will not be said by any man, who has acquired even a smattering of the science of human nature, that the simplicity of our republican institutions excludes all danger from this source. It is the great weakness of man, to desire power; and, having it, to be proud of it; and, in his pride, to abuse it. It matters not whether it be the power of a monarch on his throne, or of the humblest village functionary. If it be power, or even the semblance of power, it charms the eye of the expectant, and, too often, turns the head of the possessor.

True, in this land, power walks in humble guise. She rides in no gilded chariot—is clothed with no robes of state—is preceded by no heralds with announcement of noble titles—is decorated with no ribbons and stars. Nor is there an office worth seeking, as a matter of gain, except in some special cases, growing rather out of individual character and circumstances, than from design on the part of legislators. But who will deny, that rank, here, as elsewhere throughout the wide world, has its attractions? And who, that has thought upon the subject carefully, doubts that they are as strong, as if it were hereditary? As far as pride of heart in the possessor is concerned, undoubtedly the temptation is even greater. That rank is not hereditary, and is therefore attainable by individual effort, opens a fountain of ambition in a thousand hearts, which, under another constitution of society, would never have known ambition, but as a strange word, while the fact that it is ordinarily the prize of talent, attaches to it an additional power to tempt and seduce the mind. It need not be said, that so far as this love and pride of power exists, it tends to subvert all the true ends of government.

That the influence of a sense of subordination and accountableness to the Supreme Being, will be direct and strong in checking these tendencies of human nature, is so plain as to command assent without argument. Who can be proud in the perceived presence of infinite splendor and worth? How can ambition thrive under the overshadowing greatness of almighty Power?

It is recorded of Gustavus Adolphus, that being surprised one day by his officers in secret prayer in his tent, he said: "Persons of my rank are answerable to God alone for their actions; this gives the enemy of mankind a peculiar advantage over us; an advantage which can be resisted only by prayer and reading the Scriptures." This remark, though it does not specify the moral dangers to which the royal worshipper was exposed, has reference, undoubtedly, in part, if not mainly, to that pride and loftiness of heart, which are the unrestrained denizens of those high regions in the social atmosphere, which lie above the common walks of life. Let a man in one of the high places of the earth, be accustomed only to look down, and he is ready like Herod of old, to fancy the flattery, truth, which tells him he is a god;—let him look up;—there Jehovah sitteth above the water floods and remaineth king forever!

Another important effect of such views of religious obligation, will be seen in restraining the blind and ruinous excess of party feeling. He is a short-sighted politician indeed, who utters a sweeping denunciation of party distinctions. And if they may be harmless, and even in some cases form the very safety of the nation, then party feeling, without which parties could not exist, is, in some of its degrees and developements right and desirable. But like the lightning of heaven, while it purifies the political atmosphere, how easily and how quickly may it desolate and destroy! In its healthful action, it is like the gentle breeze, which refreshes man and fertilizes the earth; in its excess, like the tornado, which sweeps away every green thing, and even upturns the foundations of many generations.

When it is a modification of true-hearted patriotism, seeking the public good by party organizations, it is right and safe; but when it is the offspring of the wicked selfishness, already described, it is restrained by no bounds, and directed to no good end. When a public officer, of whatever rank, becomes the servant of a party, instead of being a servant of God, for good to the people, it is not difficult to foresee the consequences.

No argument is necessary to show that he who feels himself accountable to God, will be but slightly constrained by the bonds of party influence. So far as he regards the ends of a party as accordant with the true ends of government, which in some cases may be nothing more than the truth, and in others nothing less—his sense of religious obligation will of course not interfere with his diligent prosecution of those ends. But at that critical point, where ends zeal for party, for the sake of the common weal, and begins zeal for party, for the party's sake, and for ambition's sake, there a sense of paramount obligation, like the magnetic power, will still the whispers of selfishness, and counteract the tendencies of party commitment. The Christian politician knows no party but the party of patriots, or, if that party be divided, he seeks not the building up of either fragment for its own sake—but the building up on the best and most hopeful, or if need be, on the ruins of both, the great fabric of public welfare. Who does not desire to see a deep sense of allegiance to one who is our Master, pervading the leaders and the adherents of the great political parties, into which it is so common and perhaps necessary, for nations to be divided?—under such an influence, how might excesses be restrained, needless repellances be neutralized, and how soon, instead of fierce bands of brethren gathered in distinct and opposing array, like the dark clouds of summer, meeting over our heads, might we see the beauty and the strength of party organization, without its wide severance and its deadly hate, like the rainbow, which is not more beautiful in the variety of its colors, than in the grace with which the divine Painter has blended them.

It will be denied by none, of whatever religious or political faith, that public morals are, under a government like ours, the life-blood of national strength and safety. The day that shall behold us a nation of gamblers, or duelists, or profane swearers or drunkards, or Sabbath-breakers—will be the day of our political death. Armies, and navies, and enterprise, and numbers, with a sound hereditary government, may for a time give prosperity to a dissolute immoral people. But in a government like ours, where the laws and the administration of law, are as quickly and as certainly affected by the popular sentiment, owing to frequent elections, as the sunbeams are reflected from the summer clouds, prosperity cannot survive morality a single day. And who can tell how important, in this view, it is, that our public men should be public models of private virtue!

Oh, when, our hearts exclaim, when shall the evil example be unknown in the high places of power; and purity, truth, high-toned Christian morality, beam like another sun, from the seats of influence? The true answer to this question would afford another argument for the importance of that sense of religious obligation which has now been considered. The command of God is the only mandate in the universe which can effectually restrain human passions and desires. The voice which comes attended by the sanction, "Thus saith the Lord," is the only voice which can successfully say, "peace! be still," to the winds and the waves of wrong inclination. When our rulers shall "all be taught of God,"—and yield themselves to a constraining sense of his dominion, and their own accountableness—then, and not till then, will they as a body, be such models of private correctness and virtue, as many of them, both among the dead and among the living, have been, for the imitation of the young men, the hope and glory of our land.

Again, and it is the last consideration we shall present, how powerful a tendency would such views on the part of our rulers, possess, to awaken the utmost vigilance in the guardianship of their sacred trust, and to elevate the mind and heart to the purest feelings, and the noblest efforts.

A sense of accountability, in some manner and to some tribunal, is essential to ensure fidelity under all temptations to indolence or perversion, in every case in which men are the recipients of any trust. Apply this principle to the case of him who holds some political station of high importance. He feels himself responsible, not only to men, but to God. He knows and remembers that he is the servant of God for good, to the people. This remembrance and impression is the sheet anchor of his steadfastness. Other principles might hold him amidst the storms and commotions of the popular sea, and of his own heart; this must. With what care will he watch the precious trust, which comes to him under the seal of heaven! How sedulously will he guard the doors of the temple of liberty, when he perceives within it the altar of God, and finds his sentinel's commission countersigned with the handwriting of Jehovah! His heart, too, will be filled with the purest and most exalted sentiments.

The fountain from which such a man daily drinks, sparkles with the elements of all that is grateful and refreshing.

The purest patriotism, the sweetest charities of domestic life, the most expansive and wise benevolence, all spring up in the heart together, the consentaneous and harmonious fruits of the love and fear of God. It was in the same school that Wilberforce learned to love the slave—Howard to love the prisoner—Wirt to love his country—and all to love the world. They feared and obeyed God—and all noble and generous emotions grow spontaneously in the soil of the heart thus prepared and enriched.

Nor is the effort less marked or less salutary upon the mind. Its thoughts are loftier, and its purposes deeper and more steadfast, for being conversant with the great subject of divine obligation. No man can think much of the Deity, and realize strongly His constant presence and inspection, without an elevation of views, and a growing consciousness of that mental power, for the right use of which he is accountable to Him who bestowed it. We were not made to inhabit a godless world, and we cannot make it so, in speculation and in practice, without a deterioration analogous to the dwarfish tendency of emigration to a region colder than our native clime. "God is a sun," to the mental as well as to the moral powers; and in the frozen zone of practical atheism, both degenerate and die. The noble motto, "Bene orasse est bene studisse," applies with hardly less force to secular, than to sacred studies.

With what energy must it arm the soul of the patriot statesman struggling against wrong counsels, and discredited dangers, to know that the God of truth and of right, sees and approves his course! With what new power does his mind grasp a difficult and embarrassed subject, when he feels that the Former of that mind, now demands from him an exertion of its highest powers! What exciting power, to call forth the most thrilling eloquence, can be found in the crowded senate-chamber, compared with the consciousness that for every word he must give account to Him, whose applause, if he fulfils his high behest, will surpass in value the shouts of an enraptured universe besides!

A NEW-ENGLAND WINTER-SCENE.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO A FRIEND IN ONE OF THE WEST INDIA ISLANDS.

By William Cutter.

I have sometimes almost envied you the perpetual summer you enjoy. You have none of the bleak, dark wastes of Winter around you, and have never to look, with aching heart, upon all fair, bright, beautiful things, withering before your eyes, in the severe frown of frosty Autumn. It is always green, and fresh, and fragrant, in your Islands of eternal June. Your gardens are always gardens, gay and redolent with sweet blossoms, and rich with ripe fruits, mingling like youth and manhood vying with each other, "from laughing morning up to sober prime," pursuing, without blight or dimness, the same gay round—blooming and ripening—ripening and blooming, but never falling, through all generations. Through all seasons, you have only to reach forth your hands, and there are bright bouquets, and mellow, delicious fruits, ready to fill them. Your trees have always a shade to spread over you; and they cast off their gorgeous blossoms, and their luxuriant load, as if they were conscious of immortal youth and energy—as if they knew they should never fade, become fruitless, or die. There is no frail, bending, withering age, in any thing of nature you look upon—no blasting of the unripened bud by untimely frosts—no falling prematurely of all that is beautiful and rare, to remind you daily that time is on his flight, and that you will not always be young. I wonder you do not think yourselves immortal in those everlasting gardens! Oh! that perpetual youth and maturity of every thing lovely!—how I have sometimes envied you the possession!

But I shall never envy you again. No—delightful as summer is, soft as its breezes, and sweet as its music, I would not lose the unutterable glory of this scene, that is now before me, for all the riches of your Island,—its unfading summer, and everlasting sweets. I wish I could describe it to you—could give you some faint idea of its celestial splendor. But, to do it any justice, I should have travelled through the fields of those glittering constellations above me, to borrow images from the host of heaven. The attempt will be vain—presumptuous—but I will try to tell you as much of it as I can.

The day has been dark, cold, and stormy. The snow has been falling lightly, mingled with rain, which, freezing as it fell, has formed a perfect covering of ice upon every object. The trees and shrubbery, even to their minutest branches, are all perfectly encased in this transparent drapery. Nothing could look more bleak and melancholy while the storm continued. But, just as evening closed in, the storm ceased, and the clouds rolled swiftly away. Never was a clearer, a more spotless sky. The moon is in the zenith of her march, with her multitude of bright attendants, pouring their mild radiance, like living light, upon the sea of glass that is all around us. Oh! how it kindles me to look at it! how it maddens me that I have no language to tell it to you! Do but imagine—The fields blazing out, like oceans of molten silver!—every tree and shrub, as far as the eye can reach, of pure transparent glass—a perfect garden of moving, waving breathing chrystals, lighted into unearthly splendor by a full, unclouded moon, and scattering undimmed, in every direction, the beams that are poured upon them. The air, all around, seems alive with illuminated gems. Every tree is a diamond chandelier, with a whole constellation of stars clustering to every socket—and, as they wave and tremble in the light breeze that is passing, I think of the dance of the morning stars, while they sang together on the birth-day of creation. Earth is a mirror of heaven. I can almost imagine myself borne up among the spheres, and looking through their vast theatre of lights. There are stars of every magnitude—from the humble twig, that glows and sparkles on the very bosom of the glassy earth, and the delicate thorn that points its glittering needle to the light, to the gorgeous, stately tree, that lifts loftily its crowned head and stretches its gemmed and almost overborne arms, proudly and gloriously to the heavens—all glowing—glittering—flashing—blazing—like—but why do I attempt it? As well might I begin to paint the noon-day sun. Give a loose to your imagination. Think of gardens and forests, hung with myriads of diamonds—nay, every tree, every branch, every stem and twig, a perfect, polished crystal, and the full, glorious moon, and all the host of evening, down in the very midst of them—and you will know what I am looking at. I am all eye and thought, but have no voice, no words to convey to you an impression of what I see and feel—No, I'll not envy you again! What a picture for mortal eyes to look on undimmed! The eagle, that goes up at noon-day to the sun, would be amazed in its effulgence. It is the coronation-eve of winter—and nature has opened her casket, and poured out every dazzling gem, and brilliant in her keeping, and hung out all her rain-bow drops, and lighted up every lamp, and they are all glowing, twinkling, sparkling, flashing together, like legions of spiritual eyes, glancing from world to world, in such unearthly rivalry, that the eye, even of the mind, turns away from it, pained and weary with beholding. There—look—but I can say no more, my words are consumed, drunk up in this unutterable glory, like morning mist when the sun looks on it!

LOCH KATRINE.

By N. H. Carter.

An eminence in the road afforded us the first view of Loch Katrine, a blue and bright expanse of water, cradled among lofty hills, though moderate both in point of altitude and boldness, when contrasted with those which had already been seen. The first feature that arrested attention, was the peculiar complexion of the water, which is cerulean, and differs several shades from that of the other Scotish lakes. Its hue is probably modified by the verdure upon the shores, as well as by the geological structure of its bed, in which there is little or no mud. Like some of our own pellucid waters, it is a Naiad of the purest kind, sleeping on coral and crystal couches. Its blue tinge was doubtless in some degree heightened by the distance whence it was first descried, as well as by the deep azure of the skies after the late storm.

Hastening to the shore, we waited some time for the oarsmen, who accompanied us from Loch Lomond, to bring out their boat from behind a little promontory, which for aught I know, was the very place where Rob Roy and Ellen Douglas used to hide their canoes. There is no house within several miles of the landing. The only building of any kind is a small temporary hut, of rude construction, serving as a poor shelter in case of rain. As this lake has become a fashionable resort, one would suppose the number of travellers would justify the expense of a boatman's house, which would relieve the oarsmen from the trouble of walking half a dozen miles, and the tourist from the vexation of paying for it.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, seven of us, including the boat's crew, embarked, and commenced a voyage to the foot of the lake, a distance of nine miles in a south-eastern direction. Winds and waves both conspired to accelerate our progress, and no Highland bark probably ever bounded more merrily over the blue billows. The cone of Ben-Lomond rapidly receded, and Ben-venue and Ben-an, on opposite sides of the outlet, came more fully in view. At the head, Glengyle opens prettily from the north-west, with serrated hills forming the lofty ramparts of the pass, in the entrance of which is a seat belonging to one of the descendants of Rob Roy M'Gregor. The width of the lake is about two miles, with deeply indented shores, which are generally bold and romantic, exhibiting occasionally scattered houses and patches of cultivation, particularly on the north-eastern borders. Our course was nearest the south-western side, touching at one little desolate promontory, to exchange boats, and often approaching so close, as to enable us to examine the scanty growth upon the margin.

In about two hours from the time of embarkation, we reached Ellen's Island, near the outlet; and half encircling the green eminence, rising beautifully from the bosom of the lake, our Highland mariners made a port in the identical little bay, where the far-famed heroine was wont to moor her skiff, fastening it to an oak, which still hangs its aged arms over the flood. This miniature harbor is also signalized, as the place where Helen Stuart cut off the head of one of Cromwell's soldiers. As the story goes, all the women and children fled hither for refuge. After a decisive victory, one of the veterans of the Protector attempted to swim to the island for a boat, with an intention of pillaging and laying waste the asylum; but as he approached the shore the above mentioned heroine, stepped from her ambuscade, and with one stroke of her dirk decapitated the marauder, thus rescuing her narrow dominion with its tenants from destruction.

The Island is small and rises perhaps fifty feet above the water. It rests on a basis of granite, covered with a thin coat of earth, through which the rocks occasionally appear, and which affords scanty nutriment to a growth of oak, birch, and mountain ash. The red berries of the latter hung gracefully over the cliffs, in many places shaded with brown heath. A winding pathway leads to the summit, which is beautifully tufted, and affords a charming view of the surrounding hills and waters.

In a little secluded copse near the top stands Ellen's Bower, fashioned exactly according to the description of the same object in the Lady of the Lake. Those who are curious to form a minute and accurate image of it, have only to turn to that picture. The exterior is composed of unhewn logs or sticks of fir, fantastically arranged, with a thatched, moss-covered roof, and skins of beasts converted into semi-transparent parchment for windows. Every thing within is in rustic style. A living aspen grows in the centre, and supports the ceiling. Upon its branches hangs a great variety of ancient armor, with trophies of the chase. Here may be seen the Lochaber axe, Rob Roy's dirk, and sundry other curiosities. A table strewed with leaves extends nearly the whole length of the bower. The walls are hung with shields, and the skins of various animals. Chairs and sofas woven of osiers fill the apartment. The chimney is formed of sticks, and the head of a stag with his branching horns decorates the mantlepiece. Half an hour was passed in lolling upon Ellen's sofas, and in examining her domestic arrangements.

Bidding a lingering farewell to the sweet little island, we again embarked and soon completed the residue of our voyage. The foot of Loch Katrine is very romantic and beautiful. Innumerable hills of moderate elevation raise their grey, pointed peaks around and above a deeply wooded glen, opening towards the south-east and forming the outlet of the lake. The highest of these are Ben-venue and Ben-an, rising on each side of the pass. Both are fine mountains, something like two thousand feet in height, with naked masses of granite overhanging wild and woody bases. From the great number of peaks or pikes which are crowded into this narrow district, it has been called the Trosachs, or bristled region. The lake is here reduced to less than half a mile in width, sheltered on all sides from the winds by high promontories, jutting so far into the water, as to appear like a group of islands.

Towards the north-west, the eye looks up the glen of Strathgartney, in which tradition says that the grey charger of Fitz-James fell. The boatman gravely informed us, that his bones are to be seen to this day! Such stories, and the sketches of certain topographers, have afforded us an infinite fund of amusement.

We landed at the foot of Loch Katrine, and after walking a mile and a half reached our hotel.

WORSHIP.

By Asa Cummings.

That heart must be desolate indeed, which is a stranger to devotion. Were it possible to remain undevout, and at the same time not be criminal, it were still a state of mind most earnestly to be deprecated. It is a joyless condition, to live without God in the world; to be unsusceptible to the attractions of his moral excellence; to pass the time of our sojourning in a world of trial, without ever communing with the Father of our spirits, or voluntarily casting ourselves on an Almighty arm for support, and breathing forth to the Author of our being, the language of supplication and praise.

And how is the effect of devotion heightened by the junction of numbers in the same service—even of the "multitude who keep holy day!" A scene, so honorable to Him "who inhabiteth the praises of Israel," so fit in itself, so congruous to man's social nature and dependant condition, so impressive on the actors and spectators, and so salutary in its influence,—awakened in the "sweet singer of Israel," the most ardent longings for the courts of the Lord, and constituted the glowing theme of more than one of his unrivalled songs. Nay, under the influence of that inspiration which prompted his thoughts and guided his pen, he does not hesitate to affirm:—"The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob."[1]

Far from us be the thought of casting upon the Psalmist the imputation of undervaluing himself, or of designing to lead his fellow-men to undervalue domestic or private worship. Every contrite heart is an abode where God delights to dwell—a temple where he abides and operates—a chosen habitation, where he reveals his love and displays his grace. It is a complacent sight to the Father of spirits, to behold one prodigal returning, to see an individual prostrate before him, and lifting up his cry for pardon and spiritual strength. It is pleasing in his eyes to see a family at their morning and evening devotions, pouring out their souls with all the workings of pious affection, and the various pleadings of faith. No sweeter incense than this, ever ascends to heaven. When, therefore, God expresses his preference for the worship of the sanctuary, it is not the quality which he regards, but the degree; not the kind of influence exerted, but the amount. In the sanctuary is the concentrated devotion of many hearts. Here are more minds to be wrought upon; here is a wider scope for the operation of truth; here a light is raised which is seen from afar, and attracts the gaze of distant beholders, as the temple on the summit of Moriah, "fretted with golden fires," arrested the eye of the distant traveller. Here is a public, practical declaration to all the world, that there is a God, and that adoration and service are his due.

In the sanctuary the Creator and the creature are brought near to each other. The character and perfections of God, his law and government, the wonders of his providence, the riches of his grace, the duty and destiny of man, are brought directly before the mind by the "lively oracles." "Beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image." Truth, enforced by the energies of the life-giving Spirit, "is quick and powerful." God "pours water on them that are thirsty;" and in fulfilment of the prophetic word, "young men and maidens, old men and children," awakened to "newness of life," spring up "as willows by the water-courses," and flock to the Refuge of souls, "as doves to their windows." A spectacle this, well pleasing to God, and cheering to the hearts of his friends on earth—none more so this side heaven. None produces such a commingling of wonder, love, humility, and gratitude; none calls forth such adoring thankfulness; none makes the songs of the temple below so like that new song of Moses and the Lamb, which is perpetually sung before the throne above. Heaven is brought down to earth—eternity takes hold on time; this world yields its usurped throne in the hearts of men, and Jehovah reigns triumphant, the Lord of their affections. "The power and glory of God are seen in the sanctuary."

Here, too, are ample provisions to meet all future wants—moral means to restore the wandering, to recover the spiritually faint, to refresh and fortify their souls to sustain the conflict with temptation, to inspire the heart with religious joy, to nourish that spiritual life which has dawned in their souls. Here is the "sincere milk of the word," on which they may "grow;" the significant ordinances, so quickening to the affections, so invigorating to man's spiritual nature. The Baptismal water affects the heart through the medium of the eye, and enforces the worshipper's obligation to abjure the world, and to be pure as Christ is pure. The Emblematic Feast, exhibiting "Jesus Christ set forth crucified before his eyes,"—while it affectingly reminds him of his lost condition as a sinner, contains an impressive demonstration of the power and grace of his Deliverer, "in whom we have redemption through his blood." His faith fastens itself on this sacrifice. He is loosed from the bondage of sin; his "soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness." His fellowship is with the Father, and with the Son. He has communion with the saints. He derives new support to his fainting faith, and goes on his pilgrimage rejoicing.

The entire exercises and scenes of the house of worship—the reading of the scriptures, the confessions, prayers, and praises, the songs of the temple—for "as well the singers as the players on instruments" are there[2]—the preaching of the gospel, the celebration of the sacraments,—all combine their aid to strengthen pious principle, holy purpose, virtuous habit, and to render the children of God "perfect, thoroughly furnished to every good work." The place, the day, the multitude, the power of sympathy, all conspire to give effect to truth, and to rouse them up to labor for God, for their species, for eternity: all combine to render the house of God "the gate of heaven," the image of heaven, and a precious antepast of the enjoyments of heaven!

"My willing soul would stay
In such a frame as this,
And sit, and sing herself away
To everlasting bliss."

THE VALLEY OF SILENCE.

By William Cutter.

It was a perfect Eden for beauty. The scent of flowers came up on the gale, the swift stream sparkled like a flow of diamonds in the sun, and a smile of soft light glistened on every leaf and blade, as they drank in the life-giving ray. Its significant loveliness was eloquent to the eye and the heart—but a strange deep silence reigned over it all. So perfect was the unearthly stillness, you could almost hear yourself think.—Katahdin.

Has thy foot ever trod that silent dell?
'Tis a place for the voiceless thought to swell
And the eloquent song to go up unspoken,
Like the incense of flowers whose urns are broken;
And the unveiled heart may look in, and see,
In that deep strange silence, its motions free,
And learn how the pure in spirit feel
That unseen Presence to which they kneel.

No sound goes up from the quivering trees,
When they spread their arms to the welcome breeze;
They wave in the Zephyr—they bow to the blast—
But they breathe not a word of the power that passed;
And their leaves come down on the turf and the stream,
With as noiseless a fall as the step of a dream;
And the breath that is bending the grass and the flowers,
Moves o'er them as lightly as evening hours.

The merry bird lights down on that dell,
And, hushing his breath, lest the song should swell,
Sits with folded wing in the balmy shade,
Like a musical thought in the soul unsaid.
And they of strong pinion and loftier flight,
Pass over that valley, like clouds in the night—
They move not a wing in that solemn sky,
But sail in a reverent silence by.

The deer, in his flight, has passed that way,
And felt the deep spell's mysterious sway—
He hears not the rush of the path he cleaves,
Nor his bounding step on the trampled leaves.
The hare goes up on that sunny hill,
And the footsteps of morning are not more still,
And the wild, and the fierce, and the mighty are there,
Unheard in the hush of that slumbering air.

The stream rolls down in that valley serene,
Content in its beautiful flow to be seen,
And its fresh flowery banks, and its pebbly bed
Were never yet told of its fountain head;
And it still rushes on—but they ask not why,
With its smile of light, it is hurrying by;
Still, gliding, or leaping, unwhispered, unsung,
Like the flow of bright fancies, it flashes along.

The wind sweeps by, and the leaves are stirred,
But never a whisper or sigh is heard;
And when its strong rush laid low the oak,
Not a murmur the eloquent stillness broke.
And the gay young echoes—those mockers that lie
In the dark mountain-sides—make no reply,
But, hushed in their caves, they are listening still
For the songs of that valley to burst o'er the hill.

I love society;—I am o'erblest to hear
The mingling voices of a world; mine ear
Drinks in their music with a spiritual taste;
I love companionship on life's dark waste,
And could not live unheard;—yet that still vale—
It had no fearful mystery in its tale;—
Its hush was grand, not awful, as if there
The voice of nature were a breathing prayer.
'Twas like a holy temple, where the pure
Might blend in their heart-worship, and be sure
No sound of earth could come—a soul kept still,
In faith's unanswering meekness, for heaven's will,
Its eloquent thoughts sent upward and abroad,
But all its deep hushed voices kept for God!

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE DIVINE BEING.

By Gershom F. Cox.

It is a difficult task to shadow forth spirit. The best emblems of the earth can give but faint and distant views of its incomprehensible nature. Our own consciousness, too, must fail to give us adequate notions of the mysterious traits of its character. Aided by the brightest images of earth, or the most subtle principles of philosophy, who can bring to view any tolerably good picture of a human soul!—who can draw the outlines of thought!—thought that is as immeasurable as the universe!—thought that could encompass, with more than the quickness of the lightning's flash, all that God has made!—thought that gives to us, at once, the gravity of the merest atom, the beauties and properties of the petal of a single flower, or the structure, density, size and weight of the worlds that border on the outskirts of our own universe; and when it has done its noble work, as if plumed for fresh conquests, stretches itself far beyond the material universe, into the deep solitudes of eternity, in quest of something more! Who, we ask again, can give the outlines of thought? Who can tell us of its yet hidden resources; or of a mind like that of Newton, or of Bacon, which, after they had taken from the arcana of nature some of her most hidden principles, "entered the secret place of the Most High, and lodged beneath the shadow of the Almighty?" How much less, then, can we give just descriptions of the Deity! How can we describe Him "who covereth himself with light as with a garment,"—whom no man hath seen, nor can see.

We are aware that every thing speaks of a God. All nature has its language; and however dark the alphabet, it still speaks, and speaks every where; for there is no place where he has not "left a witness." We acknowledge, too, that the only reason why the deep tones of nature are not more audible, may be found in the imbecilities or transgressions of man. But, while the babbling brook hath its story to tell of its Maker, and the willow that bends and sighs by its side, and the pebble o'er which the streamlet rolls;—while the glorious dew-drop has its power of speech—the soft south breeze, and "the hoar-frost of heaven;" while the deep vale may offer its chorus to the waving corn, or to the lofty summit by its side; while often may be heard the full notes of the angry tempest, and of the tornado as it sweeps by us, carrying fearful desolation in its path; although these may all speak forcibly of the power, of the goodness, of the wisdom, of the terrible justice of God; yet, without divine revelation, like the inscription at Athens, they only point to a God unknown. The awful precipice, where

"Leaps the live thunder,"

in the hour of the tempest, doth but stun the intellect of man with its overhanging and dizzy heights. And "the sound of many waters," or "the deep, lifting up his hands on high,"—although they may arouse every passion of the spirit, and address it as with the voice of God; yet, to man, these all want an interpreter. Lo! these are but "parts of his ways." But what a mere "whisper of the matter is heard in it, and the thunder of his power who can understand!"

Nature speaks—we repeat it—but her language, to us, is often indefinite; like the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, it may arouse the spirit to inquiry—agitate every passion to consternation; but without a Daniel to interpret her admonitions, "the thing is passed from us." Else why this gross ignorance of the character of God among even the enlightened, or rather civilized, nations of antiquity? Why did not Egypt, when all the "wisdom of the east" was concentrated in her sons, have some notions of the Deity that would have raised their minds above the serpent or crocodile, or some insignificant article of the vegetable creation? Why did not the savage, roaming in the freedom of his interminable forests, have some correct views of God? He had talked with the sun, and heard the roar of the tempest; the evening sky in its grandeur was an everlasting map spread out before him, and the broad lake mirrored back to him its glories. But how confused—how degraded were the loftiest notions of the Deity, among the most powerful of Indian minds!

But I have already strayed from my purpose. I intended only to give a specimen or two, of attempted descriptions of the Deity, for the purpose of showing the infinite superiority of those contained in the bible, above every other in the world.

It ought, however, to be recollected, that the descriptions we find among heathen authors, are doubtless more or less indebted to sentiments borrowed from the Jewish scriptures; although we believe the contrast will show that they have passed through heathen hands. One of the most sublime to be met with in the world, out of the bible, was engraved in hieroglyphics upon the temple of Neith, the Egyptian Minerva. It is as follows: