dared to look upon it while he worshipped. Such was the repose in which the pure taste of ancient Greece taught that perfect power was best to be adored-how much the rather by those who are taught to worship boundless mercy as the first attribute of boundless might! The sea! the sublime, the graceful, the lovely sea! The sea, which, if it separates friends for awhile, unites nations, and for ever!—which links together the great kindred of mankind, and which, even to those the most dearly loved between whom it rolls, is the conductor along whose connecting chain the cherished intercourse between heart and heart is still preserved, and spead, untouched by foreign hands, as the strains of sweetest music come unbroken across its waters. And look at that vessel, basking on its gentle swell, or hasting along before the breeze; that little gay bark in the distance, whose white sail only can be seen. Like the feather that skims across its surface, she stoops in acknowledgment to every breath; but her small frame is full of energy and resource, to grapple with the blast. The tall ship of war, that grand epitome of beauty, confidence, and strength; she seems as though alive to every impulse, and sentient of every duty. She bears herself as an imperial being; she moves as one fraught with intelligence to foresee, to protect," to threaten and command." "With all her bravery on," fit symbol of that glorious empire whose arm reaches forth to the remotest regions of the globe, wherever heaves the billow, wherever commerce courts, or danger presumes; whose "march is o'er the mountain wave, whose "home is on the deep." Though the black night be over the waste of waters, the ship is wakeful still. She speaks, she answers, with bright and glancing lights, and, through the day, with many-coloured flags, now soaring to the peak, and fluttering there awhile, now sinking again from sight, their task performed, as she catches the quick meaning, or imparts it to the attentive partners of her course. Her voice is heard, short, sullen, imperious, as of one who brooks not hesitation or delay, to demand attention to what she inquires, to what she enjoins. See her diminish or increase her various powers, steady under change, to effect the object she has announced. How gracefully she rounds to, to wait the act of obedience in the rest! She lowers her boat from her side. The venturous little messenger dares the deep alone. Unheeded? unprotected? No! for a watchful influence is o'er it still, to guard, to superintend, and assist. As the low, long galley leaves the shadow of her wing, as it mounts the swell or glides into the depths between, she marks its movements-she corresponds with her own. As an anxious mother's, her thousand cares are with him who is far away upon the wave. They cease not; they pause not; they speak in every gesture, till the returning wanderer is raised aloft to be received again within her sheltering bosom; and then she holds once more her free and onward way. And there has been war upon the sea, and haply there may be again. Again the wrath of nations may cast its red glare along those waters on which man should never meet his fellow man but in friendship and in aid. Shall we speak of war? A melancholy theme! an unnatural and fearful state of man, on which his mind, as it advances in those arts and virtues which embellish and ennoble peace, though it be fearless to the death for honour and for right, learns to reflect with less and less of pleasure or of pride. Yet those, who, not answerable for the continuance or cause of strife, have bravely done in war the duty of frank obedience to what their country claimed from its people, are not the less to be remembered with renown, and blistered be the tongue that will grudge to speak it. The laurel sits fairly on the sailor's or the soldier's brow, but dearer and more sacred is the cypress on his honourable grave, even though conquest may not have wreathed a crown to bedeck it. Sam L- was a lad of a temper as joyous and as kind as ever was wedded to a daring spirit. He was not of that class called nobly born. His name shed no lustre on his dawning fortunes; so, if recorded, it could add no interest to his story. His honest ambition was "to build, not boast" the credit of a name which he derived from an humble house; and, poor lad! he died too young to reap the glories to which his warm heart aspired. It is inscribed only on a small stone, raised in a foreign land, by the affections and esteem of his messmates who, "Still, thro' the wild waves as they sweep, With watchful eye and dauntless mein, And they loved him well, because they had known him nearly. At nineteen, he had passed for a lieutenancy; and, by that fortune which sometimes forms a young seaman's early fame, he was placed in command of a clipping privateer schooner, made prize of by the frigate on board of which he served. She had been captured on an enemy's coast; and his orders were to join, in her, the admiral's flag, which was flying some fifty or sixty leagues off on the station. And few, who have not felt it, can know the joy of a stripling's heart, who finds himself sole master of a separate command, and knows that he has skill and resources for it. For two days, nothing happened to vary the ordinary log of a beating passage in light winds. The third day was a thick fog, and, as it cleared up towards evening, with a rising breeze, a stranger was seen to windward under three topsails-and what could he do but trim the sails to reconnoitre? 'Tis true, he had no orders but to proceed with due diligence to his station. But to go about and stand on for an hour on the other tack, and so edge a little nearer the stranger, would by no means take him out of his course; and who is there but knows that one of a seaman's first duties in war time is, when not under orders positively to the contrary, to gain all intelligence of a suspicious looking sail? He had not gone upon the starboard tack above half an hour before he saw another large sail, hull down, on his lee bow; and the last sunbeam was now red in the west. It was plain that he could not hope to bring either of the ships within distance, before dark, to show colours; but they made more sail, and the headmost bore up a little, as to near him. He now tacked again, and, feeling that he had no right to run into strange company at night, he kept a point or two free, under easy sail, in a parallel to the course she was steering, trusting to a good sailing craft, and a commanding breeze, and a good look-out withal. As it became dark, he tried his night signals. For awhile there was no reply; and then the headmost ship showed lights, but her answer was unintelligible to him. The code of night signals in the British navy was, at that time, imperfect, and subject to many mistakes. At day-break, they were both on his weather quarter, the nearest about three miles off; but two more large ships showed their lofty sails on the horizon. It was a clear morning; and the leading frigate, for frigates the two first were, now signalized him; but her flags spoke a language as foreign to him as that of her lights had been the night before. Both had the ensign of England streaming from the peak. But it was most improbable that an English squadron should be cruising on that part of the coast. And now his private code was tried, in vain. And something there was in the cut of the sails, but more in their way of handling them, which almost convinced him that they were foreigners. The moment was an anxious one; but it was to Sam one more of mortification than anxiety for the fate of the charge entrusted to him. He had a good clean craft beneath his foot, and, let the weather but keep moderate, and not too much sea, come what would, he had reason to believe that, holding a steady luff, the schooner might yet weather upon their square sails, so as to get to windward of them without passing within gun shot. But he knew his duty was not to risk his prize, when nothing was to be gained; and little to be sure was to be gained by working up to overhaul two strange frigates, and two other ships of war, (proud though he was of his command) in a schooner mounting eight twelve-pounder carronades, and a long traversing gun amid ships. So now, shaking out the last reef from his foresail, he prepared to carry on, and a regu lar and eager chase began. For a time, he believed he was |