WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

I ROSE and prepared to leave the abbey. As I descended the flight of steps which lead into the body of the building, my eye was caught by the shrine of Edward the Confessor, and I ascended the small staircase that conducts to it, to take from thence a general survey of this wilderness of tombs. The shrine is elevated upon a kind of platform, and close around it are the sepulchres of various kings and queens. From this eminence the eye looks down between pillars and funeral trophies to the chapels and chambers below, crowded with tombs; where warriors, prelates, courtiers and statesmen lie mouldering in their "beds of darkness." Close by me stood the great chair of coronation, rudely carved of oak, in the barbarous taste of a remote and gothic age. The scene seemed almost as if contrived, with theatrical artifice, to produce an effect on the beholder. Here was a type of the beginning and the end of human pomp and power; here it was literally but a step from the throne to the sepulchre. Would not one think that these incongruous mementos had been gathered together as a lesson to living greatness ?-to shew it, even in the moment of its proudest exaltation, the neglect and dishonour to which it must soon arrive; how soon that crown which encircles its brow must pass away; and it must lie down in the dust and disgraces of the tomb, and be trampled upon by the feet of the meanest of the multitude. For, strange to tell, even the grave is here no longer a sanctuary. There is a shocking levity in some natures, which leads them to sport with awful and hallowed things, and there are base minds, which delight to revenge on the illustrious dead the abject homage and grovelling servility which they pay to the living. The coffin of Edward the Confessor has been broken open, and his remains despoiled of their funeral ornaments; the sceptre has been stolen from the hand of the imperious Elizabeth, and the effigy of Henry the Fifth lies headless. Not a royal monument but bears some proof how false and fugitive is the homage of mankind. Some are plundered; some mutilated; some covered with rihaldry and insult-all more or less outraged and dishonoured!

The last beams of day were now faintly streaming

me;

through the painted windows in the high vaults above the lower parts of the abbey were already wrapped in the obscurity of twilight. The chapels and aisles grew darker and darker. The effigies of the kings faded into shadows; the marble figures of the monuments assumed strange shapes in the uncertain light; the evening breeze crept through the aisles like the cold breath of the grave; and even the distant footfall of a verger, traversing the Poet's Corner, had something strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly retraced my morning's walk, and as I passed out at the portal of the cloisters, the door, closing with a jarring noise behind me, filled the whole building with echoes.

I endeavoured to form some arrangement in my mind of the objects I had been contemplating, but found they were already falling into indistinctness and confusion. Names, inscriptions, trophies, had all become confounded in my recollection, though I had scarcely taken my foot from off the threshold. What, thought I, is this vast assemblage of sepulchres but a treasury of humiliation; a huge pile of reiterated homilies on the emptiness of renown, and the certainty of oblivion! It is, indeed, the empire of death; his great shadowy palace; where he sits in state, mocking at the reliques of human glory, and spreading dust and forgetfulness on the monuments of princes. How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name! Time is ever silently turning over his pages we are too much engrossed by the story of the present, to think of the characters and anecdotes that gave interest to the past; and each age is a volume thrown aside to be speedily forgotten. The idol of to-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of to-morrow.

MASTER HENRY HUDSON.

IN the ever memorable year of our Lord, 1609, on a Saturday morning, the five and twentieth day of March, old style, did that "worthy and irrecoverable discoverer (as he has justly been called,) Master Henry Hudson," set sail from Holland in a stout vessel called the Half Moon, being employed by the Dutch East India Company, to seek a north-west passage to China.

Henry, (or as the Dutch historians call him, Hendrick) Hudson was a seafaring man of renown, who had learn ed to smoke tobacco under Sir Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been the first to introduce it into Holland, which gained him much popularity in that country, and caused him to find great favour in the eyes of their High Mightinesses, the lords states-general, and also of the honourable West India Company. He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighbourhood of his tobacco pipe.

He wore a true Andrea Ferrara tucked in a leathern belt, and a commodore's cocked hat on one side of his head. He was remarkable for always jerking up his breeches when he gave out his orders, and his voice sounded not unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet, owing to the number of hard north-westers which he had swallowed in the course of his seafaring.

Such was Hendrick Hudson, of whom we have heard so much and know so little; and I have been thus particular in his description, for the benefit of modern painters and statuaries, that they may represent him as he was; and not, according to their common custom, with modern heroes, make them look like Cæsar, or Marcus Aurelius, or the Apolla of Belvidere.

Master Robert Juct.

As chief mate and favourite companion, the commodore chose Master Robert Juet, of Limehouse, in England. By some his name has been spelled Chewit, and ascribed to the circumstance of his having been the first man that ever chewed tobacco; but this I believe to be a mere flippancy; more especially as certain of his progeny are living at this day, who write their names Juet. He was an old comrade and early school-mate of the great Hudson, with whom he had often played truant and sailed chip boats in a neighbouring pond, when they were little boys; from whence it said the commodore first derived his bias towards a seafaring life. Certain it is, that the old people about Limehouse declared Robert Juet to be an unlucky urchin, prone to mischief, that would one day or other come to the gallows.

He grew up as boys of that kind often grow up, a ram

bling heedless varlet, tossed about in all quarters of the world-meeting with more perils and wonders than did Sinbad the sailor, without growing a whit more wise, prudent, or ill-natured. Under every misfortune he comforted himself with a quid of tobacco, and the true philosophic maxim, that "it will be all the same thing a hundred years hence." He was skilled in the art of carving anchors and true lovers' knots on the bulk-heads and quarter-railings, and was considered a great wit on board ship, in consequence of his playing pranks on every body around, and now and then even making a wry face at old Hendrick, when his back was turned.

To this universal genius we are indebted for many particulars concerning this voyage, of which he wrote a history, at the request of the commodore, who had an unconquerable aversion to writing hinself, from having received so many floggings about it when at school. To supply the deficiencies of Master Juet's Journal which is written with true log book brevity, I have availed myself of divers family traditions, handed down from my great great grandfather, who accompanied the expedition in the capacity of cabin boy.

A Dutch Voyage of Discovery.

SUFFICE it then to say, the voyage was prosperous and tranquil the crew being a patient people, much given to slumber and vacuity, and but little troubled with the disease of thinking-a malady of the mind, which is the sure breeder of discontent. Hudson had laid in abundance of gin and sour crout, and every man was allowed to sleep quietly at his post unless the wind blew. True it is, some slight dissatisfaction was shown on two or three occasions, at certain unreasonable conduct of Commodore Hudson. Thus, for instance, he forbore to shorten sail when the wind was light, and the weather serene, which was considered among the most experienced Dutch seamen, as certain weather breeders, or prognostics, that the weather would change for the worse. He acted, moreover in direct contradiction to that ancient and sage rule of the Dutch navigators, who always took in sail at night; put the helm aport, and turned in; by which precaution they had a good night's rest, were sure of knowing where they were the next morning, and stood but little chance of running down a continent in the dark. He likewise prohibited the seamen from wearing

more than five jackets, and six pair of breeches, under pretence of rendering them more alert; and no man was permitted to go aloft, and hand in sails, with a pipe in his mouth, as is the invariable Dutch custom at the present day. All these grievances, though they might ruffle for a moment the constitutional tranquillity of the honest Dutch tars, made but a transient impression; they ate hugely, drank profusely, and slept immeasurably; and being under the especial guidance of providence, the ship was safely conducted to the coast of America; where, after sundry unimportant touchings and standings off and on, she at length, on the fourth day of September, entered that majestic bay, which at this day expands its ample bosom before the city of New-York, and which had never before been visited by any European.

LETTER

FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN,

To Asem Hacchem, principal Slave-driver to his Highness the Bashaw of Tripoli.

THOUGH I am often disgusted, my good Asem, with the vices and absurdities of the men of this country, yet the women afford me a world of amusement. Their lively prattle is as diverting as the chattering of the redtailed parrot, nor can the green-headed monkey of Timandi equal them in whim and playfulness. But, notwithstanding these valuable qualifications, I am sorry to observe they are not treated with half the attention bestowed on the before-mentioned animals. These infidels put their parrots in cages and chain their monkeys; but their women, instead of being carefully shut up in harems and seraglios, are abandoned to the direction of their own reason, and suffered to run about in perfect freedom, like other domestic animals: this comes, Asem, of treating their women as rational beings, and allowing them souls. The consequence of this piteous neglect may easily be imagined;-they have degenerated into all their native wildness, are seldom to be caught at home, and, at an early age, take to the streets and highways, where they rove about in droves, giving almost as much annoyance