"When pushed hard for fresh provisions on a cruise in the West Indies, we took our lines and angled for the dolphin. One was at last hooked and brought on board. As this most beautiful fish of the ocean was dying, I observed an old sailor leaning over it and watching its spasms. As its complexion trembled through the successive colors of the rainbow, to the last one, when death set its seal, a big tear floated in the eye of the old tar, while his lips half unconsciously murmured, 'That's hard-that's hard!' He believes with SHAKSPEARE, that

THE poor beetle which we tread upon,

In corporal suffering feels a pang

As great as when a giant dies.'

'We had on board the CONSTELLATION a lamb, which became quite a pet with our crew, but from the fracture of one of its limbs by the falling of a belaying-pin it became necessary to kill it; but not a sailor who had played with it would touch a morsel of its meat. Eat TOMMY!' said JACK; I would as soon eat my own child!'

ANOTHER feature of character impressed on the sailor by his ocean life is a passionate fondness for excitement. The great element on which he moves is never at rest. If it be quiet at one point, storms are howling and breakers lifting their voices in thunder at another. Here, an iceberg, in mountain majesty, tumbles on its terrific way; there, a roaring water-spout seems as if emptying another ocean from the clouds; and yonder, the vast maelstrom draws whole navies down is whirling centre. Reared amid these stirring wonders, the sailor becomes impatient of repose.'

The well-written memoir of the author which closes the volume does no more than

justice to the excellent points of his character. We knew him well; and can bear willing testimony to his cheerful Christian spirit, his great conversational power, his keen perception of the humorous and the pathetic, and his love and practice of all that was noble and generous. The portrait which fronts the title-page is a most speaking likeness of our lamented friend.

SCENERY AND MIND. By Reverend E. L. MAGOON, D.D., Pastor of Oliver-street Baptist church, New-York. In one volume.

A WORK thus entitled is now passing through the press, upon types of an imperial breadth and fulness, impressed upon paper of linen, fine and white, with ample margin. We see, even from the few sheets before us, that the writer will treat the subject which he has chosen in a masterly manner. We annex a single passage: 'Man feels himself advanced to a higher scale in the creation, in being permitted to see and admire the grandest of Nature's works. All vigorous souls prize most highly that healthy and expansive exercise of mind which is attained chiefly by traversing rugged paths and scaling celestial heights, in order to breathe pure and bracing air. To the query whether beneficial effects actually attend such excursions, let SYDNEY SMITH reply: I, for one, strongly believe in the affirmative of the question; that Nature speaks to the mind of man immediately in beautiful and sublime language; that she astonishes him with magnitude, appalls him with darkness, cheers him with splendor, soothes him with harmony, captivates him with emotion, enchants him with fame. She never intended man should walk among her flowers, and her fields, and her streams, unmoved; nor did she rear the strength of the hills in vain, or mean that we should look with a stupid heart on the wild glory of the torrent, bursting from the darkness of the forest, and dashing over the crumbling rock. I would as soon deny hardness, or softness, or figure, to be qualities of matter, as I would deny beauty or sublimity to belong to its qualities.' Our friend still persists, we perceive, in the use of the vile phrase, Says SMITH,'' Says JONES,' 'Says THOMPSON, etc., at the beginning of a sentence. Please to discontinue that style of writing, reverend and dear Sir !' It is clumsy, ungraceful, and unnecessary. We have alluded to this defect once before, and must now adopt the imperative: Stop it! 'Don't let us speak to you thrice !'

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE STATE-ENGINEER AND SURVEYOR OF THE STATE OF NEW-YORK, on Rail-Road Statistics, and his like Report on the Canals of the State.' In two Parts: pp. 372. Albany: CHARLES VAN BENTHUYSBN, Printer to the Legislature.

As a native New-Yorker, we feel, in common with other citizens of our noble State, a just pride in the prosperity of our great public works, as set forth in these able reports of Mr. H. C. SEYMOUR, Our experienced and capable State-Engineer and Surveyor. Among the rail-road statistics here furnished, we have tables of all the railroads in operation in the State, their length, track, cost, original and continuous, returns, etc., with all other particulars of any importance. In the report upon the canals of the State, the length and estimated cost of the work under contract for the enlargement of the Erie Canal, and the amount done and remaining to be done at contract prices, are shown in elaborate tables, under each separate division. The condition of the other canals of the State is given with great precision and minuteness of detail. It would seem that the services required by the engineer department are not, under the existing regulations, confined strictly to their legitimate office as engineers, in charge of the construction of the canals, but embrace many and arduous duties, in the repairs of all the canals of the State, arising from decay, breaks, and other causes. They are also employed as agents and assistants to the Commissioners in the performance of the multifarious duties of those officers, extending over seven hundred miles of canals, and having relation to numberless interests requiring constant attention. They also prepare surveys and maps, and take care of the interests of the State in the adjudication of land damages before the appraisers. Altogether, we should judge the office of Chief Engineer to be no sinecure, however capable and energetic his numerous subordinate officers may be. But Mr. SEYMOUR has qualified himself by education and experience to perform the duties and meet and surmount the difficulties of his station. He has already won the reputation of an excellent officer. We should add that the canal-report contains two handsomelyengraved maps, one giving a statistical profile of the eastern division of the Erie Canal enlargement, and the other diagrams showing the comparative size of the boats used on the present Erie Canal, and those to be used on the canal when it is enlarged.

LECTURES ON THE LORD'S PRAYER. By WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, Pastor of Amity-street Church, New-York. Boston: GOULD AND LINCOLN.

It was a happy thought of the able author of these lectures to take up in order, for their several themes, the brief and sententious sentences, each one a sermon in itself, of the LORD's Prayer. No one can habitually have heard or repeated this prayer, without feeling how completely it embodies the true wants and the natural aspirations of the human heart. Dr. WILLIAMS has both realized and exhibited this, with conscientious feeling, and in a style often rising to genuine eloquence, in the volume before us. One of its most striking traits,' says a contemporary journalist, 'is its free and eloquent use of Scripture language and imagery, proving the power of a mind conversant with the rich treasures of the BIBLE, as well as the broad domain of literature and science. One thing we could have wished; and that is, that Dr. WILLIAMS had told us that Lead us not into temptation' could hardly have been the true translation from the original. Surely the ALMIGHTY would not lead' HIS children into temptation. It has always seemed to us that 'Abandon us not to temptation' must have been the real meaning of this portion of the LORD'S Prayer.

'COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE.'- We wish that our readers could look with us over the beautiful pages of a London work thus entitled, which now lies before us, the present of a valued friend. It is from the classic press of WILLIAM PICKERING, London, and is printed upon the old-fashioned types in vogue a hundred years ago, with all their quaint conjunction of consonants, and upon paper wire-laid and of the finest texture. But while the volume is a luxury in its externals, it is still a greater luxury in its interior beauties. The style is as pure as GOLDSMITH'S OF WASHINGTON IRVING'S. It possesses a winning simplicity, a natural grace and ease, that is as rare as it is beautiful. We shall not keep the reader waiting a moment longer for an introduction to its calm and thoughtful pages. The author commences by informing us that he lives in the country, and is much alone, and that as he wanders over downs and commons, and through lanes with lofty hedges, many thoughts come into his mind, oftentimes the same thoughts again and again, and so become his spiritual companions: Instead of suffering them to haunt me as vague faces and half-fashioned resemblances,' he says, 'I will make them into distinct pictures, which I can give away, or hang them up in my room, or be free to do what I like with them.' Many a reader, we are sure, has felt with the author in the sentiments which follow:

'WERE success in life the main object here, it certainly would seem as if a little more faculty in man were sadly needed. And it seems, when he looks back, as if such a little thing would have saved him: if he had not crossed over the road, if he had not gone to see his friend on a particular day, if the dust had not been so unpleasant on that occasion, the whole course of his life would have been different. Living as we do in the midst of stern, gigantic Laws, which crush every thing down that comes in their way; which know no excuses, admit of no small errors, never send a man back to learn his lesson and try him again, but are as inexorable as Fate; living, I say, with such creatures about us, (unseen too, for the most part,) it does seem as it the faculties of man were hardly as yet adequate to his situation here.

Such considerations as these tend to charity and humility; and they point also to the exist ence of a future state. As regards charity, for example, a man might extend to others the ineffable tenderness which he has for some of his own sins and errors, because he knows the whole history of them; and although, taken at a particular point, they appear very large and black, he knew them in their early days when they were play-fellows instead of tyrant-demons. There are others which he cannot so well smooth over, because he knows that in their case inward proclivity coincided with outward temptation; and if he is a just man, he is well aware that if he had not erred here, he would have erred there; that experience was necessary for him in those matters. But in considering the misdoings and misfortunes of others, he may as well begin at least by thinking that they are of the class which he has found from his own experience to contain a larger amount of what we call ill-fortune than of any thing like an evil disposition. For time and chance, says the Preacher, happen to all men.

Thus I thought in my walk this dull and dreary afternoon, till the rising of the moon and the return from school of the children with their satchels coming over the down warned me too that it was time to return home: and so, trying not to think any more of these things, I looked at the bare beech trees, still beautiful, and the dull sheep-ponds scattered here and there, and thought that the country even in winter, like a great man in adversity and disgrace, was still to be looked at with hopeful tenderness, even if, in the man's case, there must also be somewhat of respectful condemnation. As I neared home, I comforted myself, too, by thinking that the inhabitants of sunnier climes do not know how winning and joyful is the look of the chimney-tops of our homes in the midst of what to them would seem most desolate and dreary.'

Now how felicitously playful and affectionate is the following: and we read it, too, on the very morning that we expected a little notelet from 'Young KNICK.,' which came to town, but was not delivered from the pocket of the friend who brought it from DOBBS':

'TO-DAY, as the weather was cold and boisterous, I could only walk under shelter of the yew hedge in my garden, which some gracious predecessor (all honor to him!) planted to keep off the dire north-west winds, and which, I fear, unless he was a very hardy plant himself, he did not live long enough to profit much by. Being so near home, my thoughts naturally took a domestic turn; and I vexed myself by thinking that I had received no letter from my little boy. This was owing to the new post-office regulations which did not allow letters to go out from country places, or be delivered at such places, on a Sunday. To be sure, I knew pretty well what the letter would be:

'I HOPE you are well papa and I send you my love and I have got a kite and uncle GEORGE's dog is very fierce His name is NERO which was a roman emperor nearly quite white only he has got two black spots just over his nose. And I send my love to mamma and the children and I am your little boy and affectionate son, LEONARD MILVERTON.'

'Not a very important, certainly not a very artistic production, this letter, but still it has its interest for the foolish paternal mind, and I should like to have received it to-day.'

On another page we find the subjoined well-considered thoughts in illustration of the fact, that the miseries which the generality of men make for themselves do not tend to decrease unless kept down by a continual growth of wise and good thoughts, and just habits of mind. Let any man or woman look back, say on the first day of every year, at the thousand-and-one fancied annoyances of the previous twelve-month, and say how little they were worthy of making them ill at ease, or positively unhappy, even for a single moment. The subtle and stern despotism of such fancies is pregnant with too much evil, in a life which is but short at the longest:

Ir is a strange fancy of mine, but I cannot help wishing we could move for returns,' as their phrase is in parliament, for the suffering caused in any one day, or other period of time, throughout the world, to be arranged under certain heads; and we should then see what the world has occasion to fear most. What a large amount would come under the heads of unreasonable fear of others, of miserable quarrels among relations upon infinitesimally small subjects, of imaginary flights, of undue cares, of false shames, of absolute misunderstandings, of unnecessary pains to maintain credit or reputation, of vexation that we cannot make others of the same mind with ourselves. What a wonderful thing it would be to see set down in figures, as it wore, how ingenious we are in plaguing one another! My own private opinion is, that the discomfort caused by injudicious dress worn entirely in deference, as it has before been remarked, to the most foolish of mankind, in fact to the tyrannous majority, would outweigh many an evil that sounded very big.

Tested by these perfect returns, which I imagine might be made by the angelic world, if they regard human affairs, perhaps our every-day shaving, severe shirt-collars, and other ridiculous garments are equivalent to a great European war once in seven years; and we should find that women's stays did about as much harm, 1. E., caused as much suffering, as an occasional pestilence say, for instance, the cholera.'

The author goes on to say, that the ill-natured things men fancy have been said behind their backs cause more annoyance than even the income-tax; an annoyance, too, inflicted by the one ill-natured person who generally infests each little village, parish, house, or community. These meditations were suddenly interrupted and put to flight by a noise, the cause of which is thus pleasantly explained:

"THE children of my neighbors returning from school had dashed into my field, their main desire being to behold an arranged heap of stones and brick-bats which, after being diligently informed of the fact several times by my son LEONARD, I had learnt was a house he had lately built.

'There is a sort of freemasonry among children; for these knew at once that this heap of stones was a house, and danced round it with delight as a great work of art. Now, do you suppose, to come back to the original subject of my meditations to-day, that the grown-up child does not want amusement, when you see how greedy children are of it? Do not imagine we grow out of that: we disguise ourselves by various solemnities; but we have none of us lost the child-nature yet.

'I was glad to see how merry the children could be, though looking so blue and cold, and still more pleased to find that my presence did not scare them away, and that they have no grown-up feeling as yet about trespassing: I fled, however, from the noise into more quiet quarters, and broke up the train of reflections of which I now give these outlines, hoping they may be of use to some one."

We commend the brief passage which ensues to those pseudo-literary authors' who complain of 'neglect,' and fancy that the grand catholicon for their diseased

bantlings will be found in an international copy-right law; a most just and righteous measure, as we have always strenuously contended in these pages, but still of 'no consequence' to them: 'I have never talked loudly of the 'claims' of literary men, but have always maintained that for them, when they are of real merit, to complain of 'neglect' is absurd. A great writer creates a want for himself. No body wanted him before he appeared. He has to show them what they want him for. You might as well talk of LEVERRIER'S planet having been neglected in GEORGE the SECOND's time. It had n't been discovered - that's all. To these remarks, ELLESMERE,' the author's colloquist, adds: An idea strikes me. I see how literary men may be rewarded, literature soundly encouraged, and yet the author injured the least possible by his craft. Hitherto we have given pensions for what a man has written. I would do this: I would ascertain when a man had acquired that lamentable facility for doing thirdrate things which is not uncommon in literature, as in other branches of life, and then I would say to him: 'I see you can write; here is a hundred a year for you as long as you keep quiet. But such an offer is not always taken, as one of our popular publishers found to his cost' when he offered 'PUFFER HOPKINS' his cheque for a hundred and fifty dollars if he would withdraw one of his various 'writings' which in an unlucky moment, the evil eye' having been 'come over him,' he had been led to announce as 'in press.' But 'something too much of this.'

We take the liberty of asking those parents who are in the habit of multiplying little prohibitions to their children, until obedience to them becomes well nigh impossible, whether there is not much truth in the following remarks? Errors there are, doubtless, in the other extreme, but surely there can be a safe 'middle-way: '

'I Do not speak of 'spoiling children' in the ordinary sense, but rather of the contrary defect, which, strange to say, is quite as common, if not more so. Of necessity the ages of parents and children are separated by a considerable interval: the particular relation is one full of awe and authority; and the effect of that disparity of years and of that natural awe and authority may easily, by harsh or ungenial parents, be strained too far. Other persons, and the world in general, (not caring for the welfare of those who are no children of theirs, and, beside, using the just courtesy toward strangers,) are often tolerant when parents are not so, which puts them to a great disadvantage. Small matters are often needlessly made subjects of daily comment and blame; and, in the end, it comes that home is sometimes any thing but the happy place we choose to make it out in songs and fictions of various kinds. This, when it occurs, is a great pity. I am for making home very happy to children, if it can be so managed. Listen to the captious, querulous scoldings that you may hear, even as you go along the streets, addressed by parents to children. Is it not manifest that in after life there will be too much fear in the children's minds, and a belief that their father and mother never will sympathize with them as might even others? People of all classes, high and low, err in the same way.'

Speaking of the manner in which vice is engendered by the want of other thoughts, seizing hold not of the passionate, so much as of the cold and vacant mind, our author observes: The pleasures of the poor will be found to be moral safe-guards rather than dangers. I smile sometimes when I think of the preacher in some remote country place imploring his hearers not to give way to back-biting, not to indulge in low sensuality, and not to busy themselves with other people's affairs. Meanwhile what are they to do, if they do not concern themselves with such things? The heavy plough-boy who lounges along in that listless manner has a mind which moves with a rapidity that bears no relation to that outward heaviness of his. That mind will be fed; will consume all about it, like oxygen, if new thoughts and aspirations are not given it. The true strategy in attacking any vice, is by putting in a virtue to counteract it; in attacking any evil thought, by putting in a good thought to meet it. Thus a man is lifted into a higher state of being, and his old slough falls off him.' Hear also this humane and tender-hearted Christian-man, how he speaks of permitting one's servants to have human affections as well as their masters and mistresses: 'Masters and mistresses should recognize the fact, instead of needlessly discouraging it, that men and women love one another in all ranks; that MARY, if a pleasant or