"In the devil's name,' said I, what d'ye call that?' "Nantucket,' replied my comrade.

We passed it in the winking of an eye, and away we went up Buzzard's Bay. The coast was lined with old whaling skippers, spying us with glasses; for certainly so strange a sight was never seen before or since,

"There she breaches!' cried some.

"There she blows!' cried others; but it was all one to them. We were out of sight in a jiffy.

"The coast of Massachusetts was right ahead. On, on we flew. Taborstown, the general receptacle for Tabors, stood before us. High and dry we landed on the beach. Still onward went the whale, blowing and pitching, and tearing up the sand with his flukes.

"My eyes!' said I, scarcely able to see a dart ahead, look out, or you'll be foul of the town pump!'

"Go it! Never say die! Hold fast, John Tabor!' shouted the old chap; and helter-skelter we flew down Main-street, scattering children, and women, and horses, and all manner of live stock and domestic animals, on each side. The old Cape Horn and plum-pudding captains rushed to their doors at a sight so rare.

"There she breaches! There she breaches !' resounded through the town fore and aft; and with the ruling passion strong even in old age, they came hobbling after us, armed with lances, harpoons, and a variety of old rusty whale-gear, the hindmost singing out,

"Don't you strike that whale, Captain Tabor!' and the foremost shouting to those behind, this is my chance, Captain Tabor!' while the old man with the long beard, just ahead of me, kept roaring,

"Stick fast, John Tabor! hang on like grim Death, John Tabor!'

"And I did hang on. As I had predicted, we fetched up against the town pump; and so great was the shock, that the old fellow flew head-foremost over it, leaving in my firm grasp the entire seat of his ducks. I fell myself; but being further aft, I didn't go quite so far as my comrade. However, I held on to the stern-sheets. As the old man righted up, he presented a comical spectacle to the good citizens of Taborstown. The youngsters seeing such an odd fish floundering about, got their miniature lances and harpoons to bear upon him, in a manner that didn't tickle his fancy much.

"The whale at length got under weigh again, and onward we went, with about twenty irons dangling at each side. I grasped the old man by the collar of his jacket this time. A shout of laughter followed us.

As long as I've been Captain Tabor,' said a chird, I never saw such a whale.'

"As sure as I'm Captain Tabor, he's bewitched,' observed a fourth.

"Captain Tabor, Captain Tabor! I've lost my irons!' shouted a fifth.

"Who's that aboard, Captain Tabor?' asked a sixth.

"That's John Tabor!' replied the seventh.

"John Tabor, John Tabor, hold fast!' roared the old man, and away we went as if possessed of the devil, sure enough. Over hills and dales, and through towns and villages flew we, till the Alleghanies hove in sight. We cleared them in no time, and came down with a glorious breach right into the Alle

ghany River. Down the river we dashed through steam-boats, flat-boats, and all manner of small craft, till we entered the Ohio. Right ahead went we, upsetting every thing in our way, and astonishing the natives, who never saw any thing in such a shape go at this rate before. We entered the Mississippi, dashed across all the bends, through swamp and canebrake, and at last found ourselves in the Gulf of Mexico, going like wildfire through a fleet of whalers. Nothing daunted, the whale dashed ahead; the coast of South America hove in sight. Over the Andes went we-into the Pacific-past the Sandwich Islands-on to China-past Borneo-up the Straits of Malacca-through the Seychelles Islands -down the Mozambique Channel, and at last we fetched up in Algoa Bay. We ran ashore with such headway that I was pitched head-foremost into the sand, and there I fastened as firm as the stump of a tree. You may be sure, out of breath as I was, I soon began to smother. This feeling of suffocation became so intolerable, that I struggled with the desperation of a man determined not to give up the ghost. A confusion of ideas came upon me all at once, and I found myself sitting upright in my catanda in the old hospital—

Here Tabor paused."

46

Then it was all a dream?" said I, somewhat disappointed. He shook his head, and was mysteriously silent for a while.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU.

Two of the most noticeable books in American literature on the score of a certain quaint study of natural history and scenery, are Mr. Thoreau's volumes on the Concord and Merrimack rivers, and Life in the Woods. The author is a humorist in the old English sense of the word, a man of humors, of Concord, Mass., where, in the neighborhood of Emerson and Hawthorne, and in the enjoyment of their society, he leads, if we may take his books as the interpreter of his career, a meditative philosophic life.

Germy & Thorean.

We find his name on the Harvard list of graduates of 1837. In 1849, having previously been a contributor to the Dial, and occupied himself in school-keeping and trade in an experimental way, he published A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. It is a book of mingled essay and description, occasionally rash and conceited, in a certain transcendental affectation of expression on religious subjects; but in many other passages remarkable for its nicety of observation, and acute literary and moral perceptions. It is divided into seven chapters, of the days of the week. A journey is accomplished in the month of August, 1839, descending the Concord river, from the town of that name, to the Merrimac; then ascending the latter river to its source: thence backward to the starting point. This voyage is performed by the author in company with his brother, in a boat of their own construction, which is variously rowed, pulled, dragged, or propelled by the wind along the flats or through the canal; the travellers resting at night under a tent which they carry with them. The record is of the small boating adventures, and largely of the

reflections, real or supposed, suggested by the moods or incidents of the way. There are a variety of illustrations of physical geography, the history of the interesting settlements along the way; in the botanical excursions, philosophical speculations and literary studies.

The author, it will be seen from the date of his publication, preserved the Horatian maxim, of brooding over his reflections, if not keeping his copy, the approved period of gestation of nine years.

His next book was published with equal deliberation. It is the story of a humor of the author, which occupied him a term of two years and two months, commencing in March, 1845. Walden, Walden, or Life in the Woods, was published in Boston in 1854. The oddity of its record attracted universal attention. A gentleman and scholar retires one morning from the world, strips himself of all superfluities, and with a borrowed axe and minimum of pecuniary capital, settles himself as a squatter in the wood, on the edge of a New England pond near Concord. He did not own the land, but was permitted to enjoy it. He felled a few pines, hewed timbers, and for boards bought out the shanty of James Collins, an Irish laborer on the adjacent Fitchburg railroad, for the sum of four dollars twenty-five cents. He was assisted in the raising by Emerson, George W. Curtis, and other celebrities of Concord, whose presence gave the rafters an artistic flavor. Starting early in the spring, he secured long before winter by the labor of his hands "a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trapdoors, one door at the end, and a brick fire-place opposite." The exact cost of the house is given:

The rest of the account from Mr. Thorean's

66

ledger is curious, and will show upon what meats this same Cæsar fed," that he came to interest the public so greatly in his housekeeping

By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the village in the mean while, for I have as many trades as fingers, I had earned $18 34. The expense of food for eight months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates were made, though I lived there more than two years, not counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of what was on hand at the last date, was

Yes, I did eat $8 74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers were equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no bet ter in print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish for my dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my beat field,-effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say, and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, how ever it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher.

Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates, though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to

$8.401

Oil and some household utensils, . . . 200 So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending, which for the most part were done out of the house, and their bills have not yet been received,-and these are all and more than all the ways by which money necessarily goes out is this part of the world,-were

I address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to get. And to meet this I have for farm produce sold

which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of $25 214 on the one side, this being

very nearly the means with which I started, and the measure of expenses to be incurred,-and on the other, beside the leisure and independence and health thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as I chose to occupy it.

He had nothing further to do after his "family baking," which, the family consisting of a unit, could not have been large or have come round very often, than to read, think, and observe. Homer appears to have been his favorite book. The thinking was unlimited, and the observation that of a man with an instinctive tact for the wonders of natural history. He sees and describes insects, birds, such "small deer" as approached him, with a felicity which would have gained him the heart of Izaak Walton and Alexander Wilson. A topographical and hydrographical survey of Walden Pond, is as faithful, exact, and labored, as if it had employed a government or admiralty commission.

As in the author's previous work, the immediate incident is frequently only the introduction to higher themes. The realities around him are occasionally veiled by a hazy atmosphere of transcendental speculation, through which the essayist sometimes stumbles into abysmal depths of the bathetic. We have more pleasure, however, in dwelling upon the shrewd humors of this modern contemplative Jacques of the forest, and his fresh, nice observation of books and men, which has occasionally something of a poetic vein. He who would acquire a new sensation of the world about him, would do well to retire from cities to the banks of Walden pond; and he who would open his eyes to the opportunities of country life, in its associations of fields and men, may loiter with profit along the author's journey on the Merrimack, where natural history, local antiquities, records, and tradition, are exhausted in vitalizing

the scene.

A CHARACTER-FROM WALDEN.

Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homerie or Paphlagonian man, he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here, a Canadian, a wood-chopper and post maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. He, too, has heard of Homer, and, if it were not for books," would "not know what to do rainy days," though perhaps he has not read one wholly through for many rainy seasons. Some priest who could pronounce the Greek itself, taught him to read his verse in the Testament in his native parish far away; and now I must translate to him, while he holds the book, Achilles' reproof to Patroclus, for his sad countenance." Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?"

Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia?
They say that Mencetius lives yet, son of Actor,
And Peleus lives, son of Eacus, among the Myrmidons.
Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve.

He says, "That's good." He has a great bundle of white oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morning. "I suppose there's no harm in going after such a thing to-day," says he. To him Homer was a great writer, though what his writing was about he did not know. A more simple and natural man it would be hard to find. Vice and disease, which cast such a sombre moral hue

over the world, seemed to have hardly any existence for him. He was about twenty-eight years old, and had left Canada and his father's house a dozen years before to work in the States, and earn money to buy a farm with at last, perhaps in his native country. He was cast in the coarsest mould; a stout but sluggish body, yet gracefully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and dull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasionally lit up with expression. He wore a flat gray cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and cowhide boots. He was a great consumer of meat, usually carrying his dinner to his work a couple of miles past my house,-for he chopped all summer,-in a tin pail; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which dangled by a string from his belt; and sometimes he offered me a drink. He came along early, crossing my beanfield, though without anxiety or haste to get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit. He wasn't a-going to hurt himself. He didn't care if he only earned his board. Frequently he would leave his dinner in the bushes, when his dog had caught a woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded, after deliberating first for half an hour whether he could not sink it in the pond safely till nightfall,-loving to dwell long upon these themes. He would say, as he went by in the morning, How thick the pigeons are! If working every day were not my trade, I could get all the meat I should want by hunting pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, partridges,-by gosh! I could get all I should want for a week and one day."

A BATTLE OF ANTS-FROM WALDEN.

One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of seve ral of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bull-dogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was-Conquer or die. In the mean while there came along a single red ant on the hill-side of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none

of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart; and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat from afar -for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red, he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttrick, "Fire! for God's sake fire!"-and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.

I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near foreleg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breast-plate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity, such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door.

Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. “Æneas Sylvius," say they, "after giving a very

circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that "This action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity. A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster'a Fugitive-Slave Bill.

ARTHUR CLEVELAND COXE. ARTHUR CLEVELAND Coxe is the son of the Rev. Samuel H. Coxe, of Brooklyn, the author of Quakerism, not Christianity; Interviews, Memorable and Useful, from Diary and Memory, reproduced; and other publications. He was born at Mendham, New Jersey, May 10, 1818. On his mother's side he is a grandson of the Rev. Aaron Cleveland, an early poet of Connecticut.

Mr. Cleveland was born at Haddam, February 3, 1744. His father, a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, dying when the son was but thirteen years of age, the latter received few educational advantages. He, how. ever, at the age of nineteen, produced a descriptive poem, The Philosopher and Boy, of some merit. He soon after became a Congregational minister. In 1775 he published a poem on Slavery, in blank verse. He was also the author of several satirical poems directed against the Jeffersonians. He died on the twenty-first of September, 1815.*

Mr. Coxe was prepared for college under the private tuition of Professor George Bush. He entered the University of the City of New York, and was graduated in 1838. During his freshman year he wrote a poem, The Progress of Ambition, and in 1837 published Adrent, a Mystery, a poem after the manner of the religious dramas of the Middle Ages. In 1838 appeared Athwold, a Romaunt, and Saint Jonathan, the Lay of the Scald, designed as the commencement of a semihumorous poem, in the Don Juan style.

Mr. Coxe soon after became a student in the General Theological Seminary, New York. While at this institution he delivered a poem, Athanasion, before the Alumni of Washington College, Hartford, at the Commencement in 1840. In the same year he published Christian Ballads, a collection of poems, suggested for the most part by the holy seasons and services of his church. Five editions of this popular volume have since appeared.

Mr. Coxe was ordained deacon in July, 1841, and in the August following became rector of St. Anne's church, Morrisania, where he wrote his poem Halloween, privately printed in 1842. lle was next called to St. John's church, at Hartford. During his residence at that place he published, in 1845, Saul, a Mystery, a dramatic poem of much greater length than his Advent, but, like that production, modelled on the early religious

Everest's Poets of Connectient.

plays. He is at present rector of Grace church, Baltimore.

In addition to his poetical volumes Mr. Coxe has published Sermons on Doctrine and Duty, preached to the parishioners of St. John's church, Hartford, and numerous articles in the Church Review and other periodicals. He has also translated a work of the Abbe Laborde, on the Impossibility of the Immaculate Conception as an Article of Faith, with notes.

OLD TRINITY. Easter Even, 1840.

Thy servants think upon her stones, and it pitieth them to see her in the dust.-Psalter.

The Paschal moon is ripe to-night

On fair Manhada's bay,

And soft it falls on Hoboken,

As where the Saviour lay;

And beams beneath whose paly shine
Nile's troubling angel flew,
Show many a blood-besprinkled door
Of our passover too.

But here, where many an holy year
It shone on arch and aisle,
What means its cold and silver ray
On dust and ruined pile?

Oh, where's the consecrated porch,
The sacred lintel where,

And where's that antique steeple's height
To bless the moonlight air?

I seem to miss a mother's face
In this her wonted home;
And linger in the green churchyard
As round that mother's tomb.
Old Trinity! thou too art gone!

And in thine own blest bound,

They've laid thee low, dear mother church,
To rest in holy ground!

The vaulted roof that trembled oft
Above the chaunted psalm;

The quaint old altar where we owned
Our very Paschal Lamb;

The chimes that ever in the tower
Like seraph-music sung,

And held me spell-bound in the way
When I was very young;-

The marble monuments within;
The 'scutcheons, old and rich;
And one bold bishop's effigy
Above the chancel-niche;

The mitre and the legend there
Beneath the colored pane;

All these-thou knewest, Paschal moon,
But ne'er shalt know again!

And thou wast shining on this spot
That hour the Saviour rose!

But oh, its look that Easter morn,

The Saviour only knows.

A thousand years-and 'twas the same,
And half a thousand more;
Old moon, what mystic chronicles,
Thou keepest, of this shore!

And so, till good Queen Anna reigned,
It was a heathen sward:

But when they made its virgin turf,
An altar to the Lord,

With holy roof they covered it;
And when Apostles came,

They claimed, for Christ, its battlements,
And took it in God's name.

VOL. II. 42

Then, Paschal moon, this sacred spot
No more thy magic felt,

Till flames brought down the holy place,
Where our forefathers knelt:
Again, 'tis down-the grave old pile;

That mother church sublime!
Look on its roofless floor, old moon,
For 'tis thy last-last time!

Ay, look with smiles, for never there
Shines Paschal moon agen,
Till breaks the Earth's great Easter-day
O'er all the graves of men!

So wane away, old Paschal moon,
And come next year as bright;
Eternal rock shall welcome thee,
Our faith's devoutest light!

They rear old Trinity once more:
And, if ye weep to see,
The glory of this latter house
Thrice glorious shall be!
Oh lay its deep foundations strong,
And, yet a little while,

Our Paschal Lamb himself shall come
To light its hallowed aisle.

HE STANDETH AT THE DOOR AND KNOCKETH.

In the silent midnight watches,
List,-thy bosom door!

How it knocketh-knocketh-knocketh,
Knocketh evermore!

Say not 't is thy pulse is beating:

"Tis thy heart of sin;

'Tis thy Saviour knocks, and criethRise, and let me in."

Death comes on with reckless footsteps,

To the hall and hut:

Think you, Death will tarry, knocking,
Where the door is shut?

Jesus waiteth, waiteth, waiteth-
But the door is fast;

Grieved away thy Saviour goeth;
Death breaks in at last!

Then, 'tis time to stand entreating
Christ to let thee in;

At the gate of heaven beating,
Wailing for thy sin.

Nay,-alas, thou guilty creature!
Hast thou then forgot?
Jesus waited long to know thee,
Now he knows thee not.

THE VOLUNTEER'S MARCH.

March-march-march!
Making sounds as they tread,
Ho-ho! how they step,

Going down to the dead!
Every stride, every tramp,
Every footfall is nearer,
And dimmer each lamp,

As darkness grows drearer: But ho! how they march, Making sounds as they tread Ho-ho! how they step,

Going down to the dead! March-march-march!

Making sounds as they tread, Ho-ho! how they laugh,

Going down to the dead! How they whirl, how they trip, How they smile, how they dally, How blithesome they skip, Going down to the valley!