tom was seen, (we pledge ourselves that we are relating facts,) was that part of a frigate which seamen call "the eyes of her," directly under the foremost part of the forecastle, where the cables run through the hawse-holes, and through which the bowsprit trends. upwards. The whole place is called the manger. It is very often appropriated to the use of pigs until they take their turn for the butcher's knife. This was the strange locality that the ghost chose to honour with its dreadful presence.

From the united evidences of the many who saw this ghastly avatar, it appeared only to have thrust its huge head and a few feet of the fore part of its body through the hawse-hole, the remainder of its vast and voluminous tail hanging out of the ship over its bows. The frightful head and the glaring sockets of its eyes were distinctly marked in lineaments of fire. Its jaws were stupendous, and its triple row of sharp and long-fanged teeth seemed to be gnashing for something mortal to devour. It cast a pale blue halo of light around it, just sufficient to show the outlines of the den it had selected in which to make its unwelcome appearance. Noise it made none, though several of the spectators fancied that they heard a gibbering of unearthly sounds; and Mr. Littlejohn swore the next day upon his John Hamilton Moore, that it moved dolefully like a young bullock crossed in love.

To describe the confusion on the main-deck, whilst officers, seamen, and marines were gazing on this spectre, so like the fiery spirit of the Yankee sea-serpent, is a task from which I shrink, knowing that language cannot do it adequately. The first lieutenant stood in the middle of the group, not merely transfixed, but paralysed with fear; men were tumbling over each other, shouting, praying, swearing. Up from the dark holds, like shrouded ghosts, the watch below, in their shirts, sprang from their hammocks; and for many, one look was enough, and the head would vanish immediately in the dark profound. The shouting for lights and loaded muskets and pistols was terrible; and the orders to advance were so eagerly reiterated, that none had leisure to obey them.

But the cow herself did not present the least imposing feature in this picture of horror. She formed, as it were, the barrier between mortality and spirituality-all beyond her was horrible and spectral; by her fright she seemed to acknowledge the presence of a preternatural being. Her legs were stiff and extended, her tail standing out like that of an angered lion, and she kept a continued strain upon the halter with which she was tethered to a ring-bolt in the ship's side.

By this time several of the ward-room officers, and most of the midshipmen, had reached the scene of action. Pistols were no longer wanting, and loaded ones too. Three shots were fired into the manger, with what aim it is impossible to specify, at the spectre. They did not seem to annoy his ghostship in the least, unless an indication of his beginning to grow hungry might be deemed so. As the shot whistled past him, he worked his huge and fiery jaws most ravenously.

"Well," said the second lieutenant, "let us give the gentleman another shot, and then come to close quarters. Mr. Mitchell, you

have a pistol in your hand: fire!"

"In the name of the Holy Trinity!" said the superstitious first, "there!" Bang! and the shot took effect deep in the loins of the unfortunate cow.

At this precise moment, Captain the Honourable Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban rushed from his cabin forward, attired in a rich flowered silk morning gown, in which scarlet predominated. He held a pistol cocked in each hand: and, as he broke through the crowd, he bellowed forth lustily, "Where's the ghost? let me see the ghost!" He was soon in the van of the astonished gazers; but, disappointed Fitzalban! he saw no ghost, because, as the man says in the Critic, "'twas not in sight."

Immediately the honourable captain had gained his station, the much-wronged and persecuted cow, galled by her wound, with a mortal effort snapped the rope with which she was fastened, and then lowering her horned head nearly level with the deck, and flourishing her tail after the manner that an Irishman flourishes his shillelah before he commences occipital operations, she rushed upon the crowded phalanx before her. At this instant, as if its supernatural mission had been completed, the spirit vanished.

The ideal having decamped, those concerned had to save themselves from the well followed up assaults of the real. The captain flew before the pursuing horns, d-ning the cow in all the varieties of condemnation. But she was generous, and she attached herself to him with an unwonted, or rather an unwanted, fidelity. Lanterns were crushed and men overthrown, and laughter now arose amidst the shouts of dismay. The seamen tried to impede the progress of the furious animal by throwing down before her lashed-up hammocks, and by seizing her behind by the tail; but, woe is me: the Honourable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban could not run so fast in his variegated and scarlet flowered silk dressing-gown as a cow in the agonies of death; for he had just reached that asylum of safety, his cabin door, when the cow took took him up very carefully with her horns, and first giving him a monitory shake, then with an inclination to port, she tossed him right over the ward-room skylight, and deposited him very gingerly in the turtle-tub that stood lashed on the larboard side of the half-deck. This exertion was her last; for immediately after falling upon her knees, and then gently rolling over, to use a Homeric expression, her soul issued from her wound, and sought the shades below appropriated to the souls of cows.

In the mean time the captain was sprawling about, and contending with his turtle for room, and he stood a very good chance of being drowned even in a tub; but assistance speedily arriving, he was drawn out, and thus the world was spared a second tale of a tub. But there was something in the spirit of the aristocratic Fitzalban that neither cows, ghosts, nor turtle-haunted water could subdue. Wet as he was, and suffering also from the contusions of the cow's horns, he immediately ordered more light, and proceeded to search for the ghost,-prolific parent of all his mishaps.

Well escorted he visited the manger, but the most scrutinizing search could discover nothing extraordinary. The place seemed to have been undisturbed, nor once to have departed from its usual

solitariness and dirt. There was not even so much as a smell of sulphur on the spot where the spectre had appeared, nor were there any signs of wet, which, supposing the thing seen had been a real animal, would have been the case, had it come from the sea through one of the hawse-holes. The whole affair was involved in the most profound mystery. The honourable captain, therefore, came to the conclusion that nothing whatever had appeared, and that the whole was the creation of cowardice.

Hot with rage and agueish with cold, he retired to his cabin, vowing all manner of impossible vengeance, muttering about courtmartials, and solemnly protesting that Mr. Mitchell, the first lieutenant, should pay him for the cow that he had so wantonly shot.

Blank were the countenances of many the next morning. The first lieutenant was not, as usual, asked to breakfast. There was distrust and division in his Majesty's ship Nænia, and the Honourable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban had several severe contusions on his noble person, a bad cold, and no milk for breakfast; an accumulation of evils that one of the aristocracy ought not to be obliged to bear. Though Mr. Mitchell did not breakfast with the Captain, Jack Small, alias Small Jack, alias Mr. Littlejohn, did. The only attempt of the Captain that morning at conversation was as follows. With a voice that croaked like a raven's at the point of death, evidence externe of an abominable sore-throat, the Captain merely said to the reefer, pointing his fore-finger downwards as he did the day before, "Milk ?"

Mr. Littlejohn shook his head dolefully, and replied, "No, sir." "My cow died last night," said the afflicted commander with a pathos that would have wrung the heart of a stone statue-if it could have heard it.

"If you please, sir," said the steward, "Mr. Mitchell sends his compliments, and would be very glad to know what you would have done with the dead cow."-" My compliments to Mr. Mitchell, and he may do whatever he likes with it. He shot it, and must pay me for it let him eat it if he will.”

The first lieutenant and the captain were, after this, not on speaking terms for three months. Several duels had very nearly been fought about the ghost; those who had not seen it, branding those who had with an imputation only a little short of cowardice; those who had seen it, becoming for a few weeks very religious, and firmly resolving henceforward to get drunk only in pious company. The carcass of the cow was properly dressed and cut up; but few were found who would eat of it, the majority of the seamen thinking that the animal had been bewitched; the captain of course would take none of it unless Mr. Mitchell would permit him to pay him for it at so much per pound, as he pertinaciously pretended to consider it to be the property of the first lieutenant. Consequently, the animal was nearly shared between the midshipmen's berth and the mess of which Joseph Grummet, the captain of the waist, was an unworthy member.

The day following the death of the cow, Joseph Grummet was found loitering about the door of the young gentlemen's berth.

Any milk to-morrow, Joseph ?" said the caterer." No, sir,” with a most sensible shake of the head.

"Oh!-the cow has given up the ghost!"-" And somebody else too!" This simple expression seemed to have much relieved Joe's overcharged bosom: he turned his quid in his mouth with evident satisfaction, grinned, and was shortly after lost in the darkness forward.

There never yet was a ghost story that did not prove a very simple affair when the key to it was found. The captain of the Nænia never would believe that anything uncommon was ever seen at all. He was, however, as much in the wrong as those who believed that they had seen a ghost. The occurrence could not be forgotten, though it ceased to be talked of.

Two years after, the ship came to England, and was paid off. Joseph Grummet bagged his notes and his sovereigns with much satisfaction; but he did not jump like a fool into the first boat, and rush ashore to scatter his hard-earned wages among Jews, and people still worse he stayed till the last man, and anxiously watched for the moment when the pennent should be hauled down. When he saw this fairly done, he asked leave to speak to the captain. He was ushered into the cabin, and he there saw many of the officers who were taking leave of their old commander.

"Well, Grummet," said the skipper,

"what now?"

"Please your honour, you offered five guineas to anybody who would tell you who milked the cow."

"And so I will, gladly," said the captain, pleasantly, "if the same person will unravel the mystery of the ghost." And he turned a triumphant look upon the believers in spirits who stood around

him.

"I milked your cow, sir."

"Ah! Joseph, Joseph! it was unkindly done. But with your hands?"-"We widened a pair of Mr. Littlejohn's kid-gloves, sir."

"I knew that little rascal was at the bottom of it! but there is honour in the midshipmen's berth still. What is the reason that they thus sought to deprive me of my property?"-" You wouldn't allow them to take any live stock on board that cruise, sir."

"So-so-wild justice, hey? But come to the ghost."-"Why, sir, I wanted to have the cow unwatched for a quarter of an hour every middle watch; so I took the shark's head we had caught a day or two before, scraped off most of the flesh, and whipped it in a bread-bag, it shone brighter in the dark than stinking mackerel ;so I whips him out when I wants him, and wabbles his jaws about. I was safely stowed under the bowsprit from your shot; and when your honour walked in on one side of the manger, I walked, with my head under my arm, out of the other."

"Well, Joseph, there are your five guineas; and, gentlemen," said the Honourable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban, bowing to his officers, "I wish you joy of your ghost!"

OLD AGE AND YOUTH.

BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.

OLD Age sits bent on his iron-grey steed;
Youth rides erect on his courser black;
And little he thinks in his reckless speed
Old age comes on, in the very same track.
And on Youth goes, with his cheek like the rose,
And his radiant eyes, and his raven hair;
And his laugh betrays how little he knows
Of AGE, and his sure companion CARE.
The courser black is put to his speed,

And Age plods on, in a quieter way,
And little Youth thinks that the iron-grey steed
Approaches him nearer every day!

Though one seems strong as the forest tree,
The other infirm, and wanting breath;
If ever YOUTH baffles OLD AGE, 'twill be
By rushing into the arms of Death!
On his courser black, away Youth goes;
The prosing sage may rest at home;
He'll laugh and quaff, for well he knows"
That years must pass ere Age can come.
And since too brief are the daylight hours
For those who would laugh their lives away;
With beaming lamps, and mimic flowers,
He'll teach the night to mock the day!

Again he'll laugh, again he'll feast,
His lagging foe he'll still deride,
Until when he expects him least-
Old Age and he stand side by side!
He then looks into his toilet-glass,

And sees Old Age reflected there!
He cries, "Alas! how quickly pass
Bright eyes, and bloom, and raven hair!"
The lord of the courser black must ride
On the iron-grey steed, sedate and slow!
And thus to him who his power defied,

Old Age must come like a conquering foe.
Had the prosing sage not preach'd in vain,
Had Youth not written his words on sand,
Had he early paused, and given the rein

Of his courser black to a steadier hand:

Oh! just as gay might his days have been,
Though mirth with graver thoughts might blend;

And when at his side Old Age was seen,

He had been hail'd as a timely friend.