No. 7. Beauties of Salathiel. 173 very drawing of our breath might give the alarm; not a limb was moved, and, like a galley of the dead, we floated on, filled with destruction. We were yet at some distance from the twinkling lights that showed the prefect's trireme; when, on glancing round, I perceived a dark object on the water, and pointed it out to the captain. He looked, but looked in vain. ous and misjudging world be suffered to expel and keep for ever at a distance those whom it has first betrayed?" His emotion got the better of him and his voice sank. He again approached me. "I am weary of this kind of life. Not that I have reason to complain of the men about me; nor that I dislike the roaming and chances of the sea; but, that I feel a desire to be something better-to redeem myself out of the number of the dis- "Some lurking spy," said he, "that was honored; to do something which, whether I born to pay for his knowledge." With a saillive or die, will satisfy me that I was notor's promptitude, he caught up a lamp, and meant to be-the outcast that I am." swung it overboard. It fell beside the object, a small boat as black as the waves themselves. "Then join us if you will," said I. Our cause demands the bold; and the noblest spirit that ever dwelt in man, would find its finest field in the deliverance of our land of holiness and glory. But, can you leave all that you have round you here?" "Not without a struggle. I have an infinite delight in this wild kind of existence. I love the strong excitement of hazard; I love the perpetual bustle of our career; I love even the capriciousness of wind and wave. I have wealth in return for its perils; and no man knows what enjoyment is, but he who knows it through the fatigue of a sailor's life. All the banquets of epicurism are not half so delicious, as even the simplest meal, to his hunger; nor the softest bed of luxury, half so refreshing as the bare deck to his weariness. But I must break up those habits; and, whether beggar and slave, or soldier and obtaining the distinction of a soldier's success, I am determined on trying my chance among mankind." A sheet of lightning covered the whole horizon with blue flame; and a huge ball of fire springing from the cloud, after a long flight over the waters, split upon the shore. "Now for the sentinel," were his words, as he plunged into the sea. The act was rapid as thought. I heard a struggle, a groan, and the boat floated empty beside me on the next billow. But there was no time for search. We were within an oar's length of the anchorage. To communicate the loss of their captain, (and what could human struggle do among the mountain waves of that sea?) might be to dispirit the crew, and ruin the enterprize. I took the command upon myself, and gave the word to fall on. A storm of fire, as strange to the enemy as if it had risen from the bottom of the sea, was instantly poured on the advanced ships. The surprise was total. The crews, exhausted by the night, were chiefly asleep. The troops on board were helpless, on decks covered with the spray, and among shrouds and sails falling down in burning fragments on their heads.Our shouts gave them the idea of being attacked by overwhelming numbers; and after a short dispute, we cleared the whole outer line of every sailor and soldier. The whole was soon a pile of flame, a sea volcano, that lighted sky, sea, and shore. The keenness of the sailor's eye saw what had escaped mine. "This was a lucky sealight for us," said he. "The Romans are lying|| under yonder promontory; driven to take shel- Yet only half our work was done. The ter by the gale, of course:-but for that fire-enemy were now fully awake, and_no_man ball, they would have escaped me." All hands were summoned upon deck; signals made to the other galleys; the little fleet brought into close order; pikes, torches, and combustibles of all kinds gathered upon the poop; the sails furled; and with muffled oars we glided down upon the enemy. could despise Roman preparation. I ordered a fire-galley to be run in between the leading ships; but she was caught half way by a chain, and turned round, scattering flame among ourselves. The boats were then lowered, and our most desperate fellows sent to cut out, or board. But the crowded decks drove The Roman squadron, with that precaution them back, and the Roman pike was an overwhich was the essential principle of their match for our short falchions. For a while matchless discipline, were drawn up in order we were forced to content ourselves with the of battle, though they could. have had no ex- distant exchange of lances and arrows. The pectation of being attacked on such a night. affair became critical; the enemy were still But the roar of the wind buried every other three times our force; they were unmoorsound, and we stole round the promontory un-ing; and our only chance of destroying heard. them was at anchor. I called the crew forThe short period of this silent navigation ward, and proposed that we should run the was one of the keenest anxiety. All but galley close on the prefect's ship, set them those necessary for the working of the vessel both on fire, and in the confusion, carry the were lying on their faces; we feared lest the" remaining vessels. But sailors, if bold, are as capricious as their element. Our partial repulse had already disheartened them. I was met by murmurs and clamors for the captain. The clamors rose into open charges that I had, to get the command, thrown him overboard. I was alone. Jubal, worn out with fatigue and illness, was lying at my feet, more requiring defence than able to afford it. The crowd were growing furious against the stranger. I felt that all depended on the moment, and leaped from the poop into the midst of the mutineers. "Fools," I exclaimed, "what could I get by making away with your captain? I have no wish for your command. I have no want of your help. I disdain you:-bold as lions, over the table; tame as sheep, on the deck; I leave you to be butchered by the Romans. Let the brave follow me, if such there be among you." A shallop, that had returned with the defeated boarders, lay by the galley's side. I seized a torch. Eight or ten, roused by my taunts, followed me into the boat. We pulled right for the Roman centre. Every man had a torch in one hand, and an oar in the other. We shot along the waters, a flying mass of flame; and while both fleets were gazing on us in astonishment, rushed under the poop of the commander's trireme. The fire soon rolled up her tarry sides, and ran along the cordage. But the defence was desperate, and lances rained upon us. Half of us were disabled in the first discharge; the shallop was battered with huge stones; and I felt that she was sinking. "One trial more, brave comrades, one glorious attempt more! The boat must go down; and unless we would go along with it, we must board." I leaped forward, and clung to the chains. My example was followed. The boat went down; and this sight, which was just discoverable by the vivid flame of the vessel, raised a roar of triumph among the enemy. But to climb up the tall sides of the trireme was beyond our skill, and we remained dashed by the heavy waves as she rose and fell. Our only alternatives now were, to be piked, drowned, or burned. The flame was rapidly advancing. Showers of sparkles fell upon our heads; the clamps and iron work were growing hot to the touch; the smoke was rolling over us in suffocating volumes. I was giving up all for lost; when a mountainous billow swept the vessel, stern round, and I saw a blaze burst out from the shore. The Roman tents were on flame! Consternation seized the crews thus attacked on all sides, and uncertain of the number of the assailants; they began to desert the ships, and, by boats or swimming, make for various parts of the land. The sight reani VOL. II mated me. I climbed up the side of the trireme, torch in land, and with my haggard countenance, made still wilder by the wild work of the night, looked a formidable apparition to men already harassed out of all courage. They plunged overboard, and I was monarch of the finest war galley on the coast of Syria. But my kingdom was without subjects.None of my own crew had followed me. I saw the pirate vessels bearing down to complete the destruction of the fleet; and hailed them, but they all swept far wide of the trireme. The fire had taken too fast hold of her to make approach safe. I now began to feel my situation. The first triumph was past, and I found myself deserted. of devastation was in the mean while rapidly going on. I saw the Roman ships successively boarded, almost without resistance, and in a blaze. The conflagration rose in sheets and spires to the heavens, and colored the waters to an immeasurable extent with the deepest dye of gore. The deed I heard the victorious shouts, and mine rose spontaneously along with them. In every vessel burned, in every torch flung, I rejoiced in a new blow to the tyrants of Judea. But my thoughts were soon fearfully brought home. The fire reached the cables; the trireme, plunging and tossing like a living creature in its last agony, burst away from her anchors: the wind was off the shore; a gust, strong as the blow of a battering-ram, struck her; and on the back of a huge refluent wave, she shot out to sea, a flying pyramid of fire. Never was a man more indifferent to the result than the solitary voyager of the burning trireme. What had life for me? I looked at pain with instinctive dread; but the waves offered a ready refuge from the more hideous suffering, and a single plunge in the whirling foam at my side would be the complete and instant cure of all the pangs that besiege the flesh. I gazed round me. The element of fire reigned supreme. The shore-mountain, vale, and sand-was bright as day, from the blaze of the tents, and floating fragments of the galleys. The heavens were an arch of angry splendor-every stooping cloud that swept along, reddened with the various dies of the conflagration below. The sea was a rolling abyss of the fiercest color of slaughter. The blazing vessels, loosened from the shore, rushed madly before the storm, sheet and shroud shaking loose abroad, like vast wings of flame. At length all disappeared; the shore faded far into a dim line of light; the galleys sank or were consumed; the sea grew dark again; the lightnings were the only blaze of heaven. But the trireme, strongly built, and of immense size, still fed the flame, and still shot No. 7. Beauties of Salathiel. 175 back. I heard the voice once more; and once more resolved to make an effort for life; flung a burning fragment over the side, to help me through the waves. But the time was past. The fragment had scarcely touched the foam, when a sheet of lightning wrapped sea and sky; the flying vessel was gone. My eye looked but upon the wilderness of waters. The flash was fatal to both. on through the tempest, that fell on her more furiously as she lost the cover of the land.The waves rose to a height that often baffled the wind, and left me floating in a strange calm between two black walls of water, reaching to the clouds, and on whose smooth sides the image of the burning vessel was reflected as strongly as in a mirror. But the ascent to the summit of those fearful barriers again let in the storm in its rage; the tops of the bil-It had struck the hold of the trireme, in which lows were whirled off in sheets of foam; the wind tore mast and sail away; and the vessel was dashed forward like a stone discharged from an engine. I stood on the poop, which the spray and the wind kept clear of flame, and contemplated, with some feeling of the fierce grandeur of the spectacle, the fire rolling over the forward part of the vessel in a thousand shapes and folds. was stowed a large freightage of the bitumen and nitre of the desert. A column of flame, white as silver, rose straight and steadily up to the clouds; and the huge ship, disparting timber by timber, reeled, heaved, and plunged headlong into the bosom of the ocean. I rose to the surface from a prodigious depth. I was nearly breathless. My limbs were wasted with famine and fatigue; but the tossing of the surges sustained and swept me on. The chill at last benumbed me, and my limbs were heavy as iron; when a broken mast rolling by, entangled me in its cordage. It drove towards a point of land round which the cur While I was thus careering along, like the genius of fire upon his throne, I caught a glimpse of sails scattering in every direction before me I had rushed into the middle of one of those small trading fleets that coasted annually between the Euxine and the Nile.-rent swept. Strongly netted in the wreck, I They flew as if pursued by a fiend. But the same wind that bore them, bore me; and their screams, as the trireme bounded from billow to billow on their track, were audible even through the roarings of the storm. was dragged along, sometimes above the water, sometimes below. But a violent shock released me, and, with a new terror of the death that I had so long resisted, I felt myself go down. I was engulphed in the whirlpool! They gradually succeeded in spreading Every sensation was horridly vivid. I had themselves so far, that the contact with the the full consciousness of life, and of the unflame must be partial. But, on one, the fathomable depth into which I was descendlargest and most crowded, the trireme bore ing. I heard the roar and rushing of the wainevitably down. The hunted ship tried ev-ters round me; the holding of my breath was ery mode of escape in vain; it manoeuvred with extraordinary skill: but the pursuer, lightened of every burden, rushed on like a messenger of vengeance. torture; I strained, struggled, tossed out my arms, grasped madly around, as if to catch something that might retard my hideous descent. My eyes were open. I never was I could distinctly see the confusion and mis- less stunned by shock or fear. The solid ery of the crowd that covered the deck; men|| darkness, the suffocation, the furious whirl of and women kneeling, weeping, dying; or in the eddy that spun me round its huge circle the fierce riot of despair, struggling for some like an atom of sand, every sense of drownwretched spoil, or equally wretched indul-ing, passed through my shattered frame with gence, that a few moments more must tear from an individual and successive pang. all alike. But among the fearful mingling of sounds, one voice I heard that struck to my soul. It alone roused me from my stern scorn of human suffering. I no longer looked upon those beings as upon insects that must be crushed in the revolution of the great wheel of fate. The heart, the living human heart, palpitated within me. I rushed to the side of the trireme, and with voice and hand made signals to the crew to take me on board. But at my call a cry of agony echoed through the vessel. All fled to its farther part, but a few, who, unable to move, were seen dropt on their knees, and in the attitudes of preternatural fear, imploring every power of heaven. Shocked by the consciousness that, even in the hour when mutual hazard softens the heart of man, I was an object of horror, I shrank I at last touched something, whether living or dead, fish or stone, I know not; but the impulse changed my direction, and I was darted up to the surface. The storm had gone with the rapidity of the south. The stars burned brightly blue above my head. The pleasant breath of groves and flowery perfumes came on the waters. A distant sound of sweet voices lingered on the air. Like one roused from a frightful dream, I could scarcely believe that this was reality. But the rolling waters behind gave me sudden evidence. A billow, the last messenger of the storm, burst into the little bay, filled it to the brim with foam, and tossed me far forward. It rolled back, dragging with it the sedge and pebbles of the beach, with an enormous noise. I grasped 176 Home-The Desolated Widow-Life-Lines. the trunk of an olive, rough and firm as the rock itself. The retiring wave left me; I felt my way some paces among the trees; cast myself down, and worn out with fatigue, had scarcely touched the earth, when I fell into that profound sleep, which is the twin brother of death. [To be continued.] Written for the Ladies' Garland. When in a foreign land, Amid strange scenes we roam; Can sever those sweet ties. And wasting cares appear, Then home is doubly dear. By burning fever wrought; How pure of home each thought. "Tis home in the desert bare, Where the hot simoom blows: How low soe'er his doom; For the Ladies' Garland. P. R. G*** THE DESOLATED WIDOW. Many days and nights, full dreary, In this humble cot I've spent, Often lonesome, sad and weary, None to hear my sore lament. Once my days were filled with pleasures, Nor could night a sorrow bring:Friends and home, my fond heart's treasures, Then to hope and joy gave spring: Then a Husband's warm affection Sweetened every passing hour, But, O, saddest recollection! He has withered like a flower: Then a Son, in youthful vigor, Heightened expectation's glow, But disease, with awful rigor, Bade him from his parent go. Other friends, who then delighted Through that lone, sepulchral ground, VOL. II. Where those hearts, once filled with gladness, LIFE. BY BARRY CORNWALL. We are born; we laugh; we weep, Ah! wherefore do we laugh, or weep? Who knows that secret deep? Why doth the violets spring Why do the radiant seasons bring We toil through pain and wrong We love; we loose: and then, ere long Oh, Life! is all thy song For the Ladies' Garland. LINES ADDRESSED TO TWO BROTHERS. Nature has been profuse in gifts, Of rich and rare, to you; It knows no grave—it seeks no fame, Love is a false bewildering light, That chills the heart with sorrow's blight, Oh for His sake, whose path on earth, And when life's transient scene is o'er, Baltimore, August 20th, 1838. Vol. II. THE LADIES' GARLAND A WREATH OF MANY FLOWERS. A STORY OF REAL LIFE. Ir wealth is full of pleasure, it is also full of danger. I should wish my son to possess riches, but not until after he had suffered poverty. A man can best examine human nature from a low hovel, or beneath an humble dress. No. 8. cruel, so that now he appears one of the most degraded of men. To the conclusion which we naturally draw from this occurrence, there are doubtless many exceptions. The rich are not necessarily bad, nor the poor great, but we speak only of the influences of the two circumstances of being. He will then make a thousand discoveries, which are secrets to those bred up in luxury. George and Thomas were friends at school. He will detect the worthlessness of much that Both were young, clear-headed, and good-huis showy, and find greatness of soul and beaumored, neither being remarkable for any qualtiful displays of virtue and talent where he ity of person or mind. They were just like least expected. The flatterer pulls off his other boys, having nothing in their bearing to mask when he comes into his presence. The indicate whether they were to turn out corvirtues of the good and the meek shine out to sairs, poets, or orators. If there was observhis eyes with their true lustre. The deceits, able any thing worthy of remark, it was the the hollow show, and all the artificial appear- general similarity of their tastes, minds and ances kept up before the powerful, are laid dispositions. They were both satisfied to beat aside for the humble, who see them in their the hoop, fly the kite, and spin the top, withreal shapes and color. Wealth exercises out wearing out their school books by any several bad influences upon young men. It useless application, for both would rather have deprives them of the stimulus to severe ap- their ears boxed than study a lesson. The plication, and crowds their path with tempta- two boys at school were, however, early handtions to pleasure. How many strong intel-ed over to the different influences which colects must have lain idle thus, like laborers in the sunshine, their work undone because their wants were supplied! How many noble characters, now seen through past history, would have gone down to obscurity undistinguished, but that want urged them to ex ertions, in the course of which their talents were developed, and their integrity brought to the test! Plutarch relates that when Mark Antony was in adversity, he voluntarily yielded to the severest toils and privations to which the meanest of his troops were subjected, and discovered so many noble qualities, that had we seen no more of his life, we might justly set him down as a great and virtuous hero; but when the tide of fortune again turned in his favor, he became enervated, licentious and GAR.-Vol. II.-No. 8. 177 lored their future career, and these were not long in becoming perceptible in their conduct and character. George and Thomas were placed at school by their parent at about the same period. Thomas was brought by his mother. The carriage door was opened by a footman, who helped the young master down the steps with particular care, paying him at the same time the most respectful deference. "I have brought you my boy Master Thomas, Mr. Robertson," said the fond parent to the conductor of the academy, while her eyes glistened with maternal affection. "I have brought you my boy, and I shall leave him in your care, I hope, for several years.” "We will do all we can to repay your confidence, Mrs. Green. What are your partic |