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purple color, which, when viewed through a microscope, glittered like silver, and were covered with little shell-fish so minute as to be invisible to the naked eye.

It was a lovely day. The lieutenant and his family were all on deck, and looked happy. That gentleman looked as usual. Toward evening, a breeze sprung up directly fair, and filled the sails, which all day had been clinging idly to the masts; and before midnight we were wafted along at the rate of nine knots an hour, "while round the waves phosphoric brightness broke," the ship seeming, as she cleaved the foam, to draw after her in her wake a long train of stars.

Next day we continued to proceed rapidly, with a fair wind, which we knew would soon bring us to the end of our voyage. The ladies' cabin was now littered with trunks and boxes, brought from the baggage room, that we might select from them such articles as we thought we should require when we went on shore.

We were going rapidly through the Narrows, when the bell rung for breakfast, which Captain Santlow had ordered at an early hour, as we had all been up before daylight. Chancing to look toward his accustomed seat, I missed that gentleman, and inquired after him of the captain. "Oh!" he replied, "that gentleman went on shore in the news-boat; did you not see him depart? He bowed all round before he went down the side."

"No," was the general reply, "we did not see him go." In truth we had all been too much interested in hearing, reading, and talking of the news brought by the boat.

"Then he is gone forever," exclaimed Mrs. Cummings-"and we shall never know his name."

"Come, Captain Santlow," said Mr. Fenton, "try to recollect it. 'Let it not,' as Grumio says, 'die in oblivion, while we return to our grave inexperienced in it."

"His name," answered the Captain, "is Sir St. John St. Ledger."

"Sir St. John St. Ledger!" was repeated by each of the company.

"Yes," resumed Captain Santlow, "and you see how difficult it is to say it smoothly. There is more sibilation in it than in any name I know. Was I not right in keeping it from you till the voyage was over, and thus sparing you the trouble of articulating it, and myself the annoyance of hearing it. See, here it is in writing."

1

The captain then took his manifest out of his pocket-book, and showed us the words, "Sir St. John St. Ledger, of Sevenoaks, Kent."

"Pho!" said Mrs. Cummings. "Where's the trouble in speaking that name, if you only knew the right way-I have heard it a hundred times and even seen it in the newspapers. This must be the very gentleman that my cousin George's wife is always talking about. She has a brother that lives near his estate, a topping apothecary. Why, 'tis easy enough to say his name, if you say it as we do in England."

"And how is that?" asked the captain; "what can you make of Sir St. John St. Ledger?"

"Why, Sir Singeon Sillinger, to be sure," replied Mrs. Cummings-" I am confident he would have answered to that name. Sir Singeon Sillinger of Sunnock-cousin George's wife's brother lives close by Sunnock in a yellow house with a red door."

"And have I," said the captain, laughing, "so carefully kept his name to myself, during the whole passage, for fear we should have had to call him Sir St. John St. Ledger, when all the while we might have said Sir Singeon Sillinger."

"To be sure you might," replied Mrs. Cummings, looking proud of the opportunity of displaying her superior knowledge of something.

In a short time a steamboat came alongside, into which we removed ourselves accompanied by the captain and the letter bags; and we proceeded up to the city, where Mr. Fenton and myself were met on the wharf, I need not tell how, and by whom.

DROPPING LEAVES.-MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

The leaves are dropping, dropping,
And I watch them as they go;
Now whirling, floating, stopping,
With a look of noiseless woe.
Yes, I watch them in their falling,
As they tremble from the stem,
With a stillness so appalling

And my heart goes down with them!

Yes, I see them floating round me
'Mid the beating of the rain,

Like the hopes that still have bound me,

To the fading past again.

They are floating through the stillness,
They are given to the storm-
And they tremble off like phantoms
Of a joy that has no form.

But the proud tree stands up prouder,
While its branches cast their leaves-
And the cold wind whispers louder,
Like a sobbing breath that grieves;
A heart that's long in breaking,
As a single flower may cling,
All wither'd, shorn, and quaking-
On the naked stalk till spring.

Then I thought that tree is human,
And its boughs are human too;
For while the leaves were wealthy
With kindling sap and dew-
While the sun shot golden lances
Through all its billowy green,
And the birds poured love and music,
Where the slanting rays had been-

Then its great roots gather'd fragrance,
Like wine-drops from the ground,
Till it sparkled through the foliage,
As faith fills the profound
Of souls that live together,

In kindred trust and love-
Till their union seems immortal,
As the burning stars above.

But the very dews of summer
Had left their own decay;
And change, a ruthless vampire,
That steals the soul away,
Came with the mellow autumn,

And touched those leaves with blight; Then the frost came stealing earthward, Like a ghost upon the night.

When the frost had done its death-work,
When the golden leaves were sere,
And the brown crept dimly on them
In the old age of the year;
Ah! the roots withdrew their nurture,
While the tree stood firm and high;
When the leaves had lost their greenness,
Lo, it cast them off to die!

Then I thought those leaves were weary,
And thrilled with human pain,
As they fell so cold and dreary
Beneath the beating rain.

While the boughs waved slow and grimly,
And shook them all away-
Those leaves that fell so dimly,
Like shadows on the day!

Then my soul went sadly after,
As they quivered from my sight,
And it followed faster, faster,

As my hopes had taken flight.
So I watched the pale leaves flutter,
Flutter downward from the stem;
And I said, the cold earth under
Is enough for me and them.

TO THE EVENING WIND-WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day!
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow;
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,
Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,
Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray,
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee

To the scorch'd land, thou wanderer of the sea!

Nor I alone-a thousand bosoms round

Inhale thee in the fulness of delight:
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;
And languishing to hear thy welcome sound,
Lies the vast inland, stretch'd beyond the sight.
Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth-
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth!
Go, rock the little woodbird in his nest,

Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse
The wide, old wood from his majestic rest,
Summoning, from the innumerable boughs,
The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast:
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,
And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass.

Stoop o'er the place of graves, and softly sway

The sighing herbage by the gleaming stone:
That they who near the churchyard willows stray,
And listen in the deepening gloom, alone,
May think of gentle souls that pass'd away,

Like thy pure breath, into the vast unknown,

Sent forth from heaven among the sons of men,
And gone into the boundless héaven again.

The faint old man shall lean his silver head
To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,
And dry the moisten'd curls that overspread
His temples, while his breathing grows more deep;
And they who stand about the sick man's bed,
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,
And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful, to his burning brow.

Go-but the circle of eternal change,

Which is the life of nature, shall restore
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range,
Thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more;
Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore;

And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.

THE MARINER'S HYMN.-MRS. SOUTHEY.

Launch thy bark, mariner!
Christian, God speed thee!
Let loose the rudder-bands-
Good angels lead thee!
Set thy sails warily,
Tempests will come;
Steer thy course steadily,
Christian, steer home!

Look to the weather-bow,
Breakers are round thee;
Let fall the plummet now,
Shallows may ground thee.
Reef in the foresail there!
Hold the helm fast!
So let the vessel wear-
There swept the blast.

"What of the night, watchman?

What of the night? "Cloudy-all quiet

No land yet-all's right!"

Be wakeful, be vigilant-
Danger may be

At an hour when all seemeth

Securest to thee.