III. 'Soon we hear the glad cry of 'Town O!'- there she blows!' Cries the captain, 'My maiden lance soon shall she know!' ་ In with the gear, boys, IV. 'Our boat's in the water, each man at his oar Bends strong to the sea, while his bark bounds before, With fluke and broad fin, scorn the best of hard rowing: -- Or Pacific ocean, No matter what ocean; The song 'died away into an echo,' and we all confessed ourselves delighted with it - save and except the gallant knight of the sealclub. He indeed allowed the lay and the music to be well enough, considering the subject; but added: If you want to hear genuine, heart-stirring harmony, you must listen to a rookery of fur seal. many an hour, on the rocks round Cape Horn, have I sat thus, listening to these gentry, as they clustered on the shelving cliffs above me ; the surf beating at my feet, while For 'Come, come, my old fellow!' exclaimed the captain, interrupting the loquacious sealer; 'you forget the evening you are to have at Santa Maria. It is three o'clock in the morning, and more.' Bidding farewell to our social and generous entertainers, we were soon safely on board our ship, when we immediately made all sail to the north. To me, the evening had been one of singular enjoyment. Doubtless the particulars of the tale were in some degree highly colored, from the desire of the narrator to present his calling in a prominent light, and especially one that should eclipse the occupation of sealing. But making every allowance for what, after all, may be considered a natural embellishment, the facts presented may be regarded as a fair specimen of the adventures which constitute so great a portion of the romance of a whaler's life; a life which, viewing all the incidents that seem inevitably to grow out of the enterprise peculiar to it, can be said to have no parallel. Yet vast as the field is, occupied by this class of our resolute seamen, how little can we claim to know of the particulars of a whaleman's existence! That our whale ships leave port, and usually return, in the course of three years, with full cargoes, to swell the fund of national wealth, is nearly the sum of our knowledge concerning them. Could we comprehend, at a glance, the mighty surface of the Indian or Pacific seas, what a picture would open upon us of unparalleled industry and daring enterprise! What scenes of toil along the coast of Japan, up the straits of Mozambique, where the dangers of the storm, impending as they may be, are less regarded than the privations and sufferings attendant upon exclusion from all intercourse with the shore! Sail onward, and extend your view around New-Holland, to the coast of Guinea; to the eastern and western shores of Africa; to the Cape of Good Hope; and south, to the waters that lash the cliffs of Kergulan's Land, and you are ever upon the whaling-ground of the American seaman. Yet onward, to the vast expanse of the two Pacifics, with their countless summer isles, and your course is still over the common arena and highway of our whalers. The varied records of the commercial world can furnish no precedent, can present no comparison, to the intrepidity, skill, and fortitude, which seem the peculiar prerogatives of this branch of our marine. These characteristics are not the growth of forced exertion; they are incompatible with it. They are the natural result of the ardor of a free people; of a spirit of fearless independence, generated by free institutions. Under such institutions alone, can the human mind attain its fullest expansion, in the various departments of science, and the multiform pursuits of busy life. WHAT is fame, when the spade our last bed hath designed, An ovation decreed, though the hero be dead: Like the archangel's trump, it is blown o'er the dead; BY REV. WALTER COLTON, UNITED STATES' NAVY, AUTHOR OF SHIP AND SHORE,' ETC. You THE streets of Genoa, with a few splendid exceptions, are extremely narrow; and their confined, alley-like character is rendered seemingly still more restricted, by the altitude of the buildings. look up from the pavement as from the bottom of some deep chasm, and discover, with a feeling bordering on insecurity, the elevation of the aperture communicating with the blue sky; but you quite despair of reaching that place of freer respiration, except by some ladder little less in length than the one which rose on the patriarch's dream. You occasionally discover an arch thrown across from the balcony of one dwelling to another, though a youth of elastic limb would hardly need that giddy bridge to aid his transit, especially if winged by the impatient hope of meeting there the Madonna of his heart. The arch may perhaps sometimes be the mutual refuge or resting place of affection. I once saw on one of these, at the dead of night, between me and the moon, two clasping forms, so light, distinct, and soft in outline, you would have said the grave had given up the most beautiful of its tenants, or that two embodied spirits had stepped from their wandering cloud, to linger there in admiration of the splendor and silence which reign over the sleeping life of the city. But these slight arches, trod by love, are far less lofty than one connecting two more substantial elevations, within the precincts of the town. This springs bold and free over the tops of buildings, high enough up themselves to dwindle the jostling crowd in the street into dwarfs. From this the ruined in fortune and the broken in hope frequently cast themselves down, ending at once life and its pressing sorrows. This fatal step would less deserve our criminating rebuke, could they, in that fall, leap the life to come;' but they only pass to the fearful realities of that existence, from which, even in the last extremities of wo, there is no escape. Yet I never paused at the grave of a suicide, without a feeling more inclined to tears than maledictions. The bitterness of disappointment, the night of anguish, that can in themselves reconcile a man to death, and make him consent to become his own executioner, must have an energy which none but those who have some time or other partially harbored the frightful purpose, can fully comprehend. What man of intellect and sensibility could rail at the grave of the author of 'Lacon? Even merited reproach falters at a recollection of his transcendent powers, and erring charity veils the terrors of his suicidal guilt. Near this bridge of death, as if to lure the despairing to the light and promises of a better hope, stands the beautiful church of Čarignano. A dome of graceful spring lets in the soft light upon the worshipper, as he kneels in the low nave, amid the breathing statues of those who, like himself, have meekly wrestled with their lot. He feels here not utterly forsaken in his sorrows; around him are those who once wept, trusted, and triumphed; here is the sweet face of Her whose all-pitying eye sheds encouragement over the broken heart of the penitent; and here too is the boundless compassion of HIM whose merits and mercy are the refuge of a ruined world. To this altar let me come: but alas! I have no offerings to bring, except the blighted remains of betrayed purposes and violated vows; these, bathed in tears, I lay down, with a blush of contrition and shame. May the strength of higher and holier resolves brace me to the responsibilities which gather wide and deep over this deathless soul! I have slumbered too long; the fresh hours of the morning have passed from the dial of my life; the meridian have come, and nothing yet has been attempted worthy of myself, or the duty I owe to my God and my fellow-men. Awake, my heart! though pulseless, prostrate, and cold, awake! The bent reeds, where the tempest hath been, have risen; the fettered earth, on which the winter had cast its icy chain, has opened into blossom and song; but thou, like one on whom the grave hath closed, stirrest not. In rallied life and strength, awake! though it be but to struggle, bleed, and die! Though these confessions and self-reproaches flow unbidden from my inmost heart, yet I must turn to objects in which the reader can find a more immediate interest. Leaving the statues which adorn the nave of Carignano, and which are the work of Puget, the Michael Angelo of France, we went to the cathedral which derives its interest less from its architectural pretensions, than its venerable age. The exterior is cased with alternate layers of white and black marble, distinctly and strongly marked. When these lines shall rush together, and blend into one color, the amalgamating schemes of abolition phrenzy may perhaps triumph. The shores of my native land will then be shaded with that material twilight, which even the freshly risen stars cannot change! In one of the chapels of the cathedral, dedicated to John the Baptist, we were shown the iron urn supposed to contain the ashes of that saint. As this righteous man was sacrificed to the frivolous whim of a wanton female, none of her frail sex are allowed to approach his shrine. We found here also the celebrated emerald vase, reputed to have been presented to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, and which was taken from the infidels at Cesarea, by the battling hosts that went out for the rescue of the Holy Land. I cannot but regret that the recent tests of sceptical science have decided this splendid trophy to be only a composition of polished glass! Life itself is only an illusion, and why break the bubbles that float on its breath? A monumental group in this church struck me as one of the most delicate and pleasing efforts of Canova's genius. Grief, in the likeness of a weeping angel, is looking down with tender resignation on the tomb; while Hope, in seraphic beauty, with the earnestness of an unfaltering faith, is looking up to that anchor which piety hath cast within the veil. Never before has death appeared to me so disarmed of its terrors. Say what we will against the visible representation of spiritual existences, they certainly affect us the most deeply in this tangible shape. In the one case, we have form, substance, sympathy; in the other, only a vague ideal conception, that addresses itself to no outward sense. Think you the multitude would linger so around that statue which enchants the heart,' if there were nothing there but the invisible creation of some poetic dream? I think not; hence the advantage which the Catholic faith derives from its striking palpable symbols, and which it must ever possess, so long as men are influenced more by their outward senses, than their mental abstractions. The church of St. Stephen derives its leading interest from a representation of that first martyr, by Raphael, as he bows himself, in the forgiving spirit of his Master, to the violence of his murderers. His very look of innocence and meekness were enough, one would suppose, to disarm the most savage breast of its malice. But man, when he persecutes in the name of religion, seems only the more steeled against the kindlier impulses of his nature. He lights his profane brand at the altar of heaven, and then kindles up a conflagration at which hell might shudder. The church of the Annunziata is splendid in its marbles, but frightful in the malefactor of Carloni, broken on the wheel; while the Ambrozia, of less ambition in design, and richness in ornament, has the milder and deeper attractions derived from the life-imparting pencil of Rubens and Guido. But of all the sanctuaries here, none charmed me more than the chapel of the Carmelite nuns. This is small, simple, chaste, and in harmony with the noiseless habits of those who here enshrine their timid hopes of immortality. Would that she were here, who weeps within the walls of Santa Clara, here to kneel, to hymn her vesper prayer, and then with the wings of a dove to flee away and be at rest! But into whatever quarter of the heavens she might pass, I should watch her flight as one that would pursue. But, Maria, that the wing of the turtle were lent thee, and a pinion granted me of equal fleetness, yet whither could we fly? Where escape from the all-shadowing upas that blights this earth? There is no isle in the most sunny clime, that sorrow hath not touched, no shore in the remotest sea, where death hath not his empire. The pall, the |