"Thank you, marm,' says I, managin' to give a bit o' a scrape on the deck, an' a touch o' my tarpaulin', 'it's a glorious kunfederation, vich has

666

Captain's orders, marm,' says I; 'an' they just tied him, hand an' foot, his blissed self, aft there.'

"With that, she blowed on a little pearl horn, with an amber mouth-piece, which hung round her beautiful neck, an' the rest o' em slid into the Psyche's channels, 'til fore an' aft both sides o' her wor full o' em. Hows'iver, the fust one keeps the mainchains to herself, on our side, an' soon becomes mighty sociable.

"What is your name, my man?' says she; 'an' who is that young gentleman with the gold band on his cap?'

"That's Mister Musters, marm,' I answers, as perlite as iver, as is an officer in His Britannic Majesty's sarvice, an' one o' the best families in the kingdom. He's a mighty promisin' young gentleman, as a little down in the mouth at presint, bein' dead in love with the great primer donna o' the Royal Hopera House.' This I says, you see, fur fear she'd take a likin' to him, seein' that she kipt her blue eyes sot on him, in a way which wor not over an' above modist, to say the truth. 'As fur myself,' I keeps on, 'my name is Benjamin Frog, a sheet-anchorman, at your marmaidship's sarvice,' says I, looking down at her fish-tail.

"Ah!' says she, smilin' like a bunch o' rosies, 'didn't some o' your ancisturs live in the time o' King Stork, accordin' to the fables?'

"Please you, marm,' I answers, not bein' quite up to my company yit, 'I niver had any ancisturs, as I knows o'; and, as for your fables

"Ah!' says she, smilin' on the midshipman agin, like the inside of a shell, 'it's a mistake, I perceive. You have a wife livin', I suppose, Benjamin ?'

"Four o' 'em, an' it please you, marm,' I answers, pilin' it on, fearin' she wor goin' to make a prize o' me, in spite o' the grog an' the shuffle-down—'an' a snug harbour I left the last moored in-two rooms on a deck-a spare cockloft, an' a bit o' garding-an' the dog's name wor Rose, an' the cat's Kitty Ann. You see, marm, I'm a free-born American, as was prissed into this tieranical sarvice,-though I shouldn't mind sarvin' King George, fur a change, if it worn't fur the Goddess o' Liberty;-hows'ever, I 'spects to be discharged when the cruise is up, an' is resolved to make aminds fur past errors, steerin' a straight course for Louse Harbour, with deep water in both pockets, if so I has luck. I has a spicial commission to execute fur this here young midshipman, to the primer donna I mentioned afore, if so you takes him down with you, which is to be doubted, seein' that he be n't o' age, an' has a father an' mother livin' in Regent's Square, number 2097, London,-nixt door to Lord Curlew's. Arter that, as I said before, I'm off fur the shades o' retiremint, an' niver intends to be caught afloat agin, unless duty calls, which every true Yankee must obey.'

"I wor going on fur to launch out more gammon, when she gits into a charmin' sort o' a

folks, as is sticklery fur state rites, an' others agin as will jew a sailor-man out o' his wages, an' can't swallow the price o' a niggur, purfesses to see trouble ahead.'

"Yes, yes,' says she, just as a feller as was lashed to the fore-riggin', sings out,' Hear him!' an' another gives three cheers; but I want you to attend to my fly-Nancy matters,-to make my bargains,' says she, seein' I wor puzzled,—' and keep my cash accounts. Call Ptero.'

"In a jiffy, up comes the same merman which settled Orringe-Flowers, an' an ugly dog he wor, in a jacket and breeches made o' a sort o' insen'glass, with a bunch o' keys, cut out o' rock crystal, at his belt. He takes off a cap o' the same, an' shows his grumpy face and mop o' hair, like a bunch o' dead kelp. An' 'Jump up,' says the marmaid, an' cut loose that 'ere young officer, as I've taken a fancy to, an' that 'ere bold Yankee sailor, which is a prissed man, an' comes from the land o' univarsal freedom, where the man which has the most picters o' the Goddess o' Liberty in silver an' gold is the best feller.'

"So the grim beggar makes a great splashin' an' surgin' alongside, an lugs out his jack-knife, an' claps a flipper on the hammock-nettin', an' up he comes-blast him!—with his cold, fishy, briny-breath blowin' on my cheek, an' his dead, glassy eyes starin' like a ground-shirk's, as it might be, at a loggerhead-more 'specially, as the marman had teeth in his head as long as-" here Ben hung in the wind, a moment, in hopes to catch Jack Peak again;,finding, however, that his auditors were wide awake, every pair of eyes fixed fearfully on his, and every man's face, from the midshipman round, as fixed in its intent as the mainmast, he concluded the sentence with the familiar word, ' marlin'-spikes.' "Avast with your knife, old feller!' says I. And Mr. Musters tells him it wor agin orders. But the surly, old son-o'-a-sea-hag cuts the lashins' o' both o' us; an' the chorus begins agin; 'an' now's your time,' says he, pintin' outboard; an' I looks at Mister Musters, the music swellin' and meltin' in my ears; an' jest then the leftenant comes up an' makes a grab at the reefer; an 'Here I dip!' says he; and, in course, I dodges the doctor, an' follows.

"Down we goes, my hearts, like a shot; down, down, while the water gits darker an' heavier at ivery fath'm, 'till jest as I thinks I could stand it no longer, 'Here we are,' says the merman; an' sure enough we touched bottom. You may be sartin we wor nigh spint; but what does old Ptero do but claps a couple o' glass masks over our heads, an' blissed if we doesn't breathe, see, an' hear all right in a minute, an' feels nor more o' the heft o' the sea than if we wor walkin' up State Street. Now, my hearts, mayhap, some o' you thinks that the bottom o' the sea be full o' wricks, an' ships' cargoes layin' squandered about, an' guns, an' anchors, an' chain-cables, eaten up by rust, an' dead men's bones, an' sich like; others agin is fur conceitin' as how it be kivered with sea-snakes, an' crawlin' riptiles o' all sorts o' shapes, or beautiful shells, an' sea-flowers, an'

lots o' iligant coral growin' like trees, with a pritty sprinklin' o' gold an' silver; Spanish dollars dyed black, it mought be, by the salt-water, or pearls, or dimunts, rubies, imerals, an' other valable stones, all ready cut an' polished. It's all in my eye, do you see; fur blowed if we didn't walk with that ere old sea codger, fur a matter o' half a league, in a sort o' valley, 'tween two hills, an' niver a strange sight did we see but a few squids an' sea-stars, till all at once the marman tells us to look sharp, an' we comes to a blubbery fish coverin' nigh a half a acre, with eight hairy mouths as big as the main-hatchway, an' as many arms, fur all the world like lobster's claws, only nigh as long as the mainyard, to haul in its grub with. Arter we passed that chap, which would ha' made a full meal fur a school o' sparm, I sees a munstrus, shovil-nosed shirk swimmin' in our wake, an' the two pilots leadin'. Ptero tells us not to be skeared, as he wor blind as a stone, an' parfactly noxous, barrin' his tail, which he kept slappin' about as if he wor feelin' fur somethin', which, sure enough, wor a roll o' parchmint as had dropped out o' his mouth, when he wor taken with a fit o' the gaps. I seed the two pilots swimmin' down his hatchway with it, an' at the same time, I takes notice that he had niver a stump left o' all his bloody rows o' teeth, as made a feller's blood turn cold to think o'. 'He wor only a great sea lawyer,' says the marman, in a spiteful way; 'as is now a meddlin', crusty, disagreeable old dog, an' had ought to 'ave been in a fryin'pan long ago. The pigtails would give somethin' for his fins yit, and the nixt time that I go over to Chiny, I'll swop 'em off for cut tobacco to Bosting Jack, the Whampoa comperdoor.""

THE RED AND WHITE ROSE.

BY GEORGE H. THEOOP.

(See Engraving.)

HAVE you looked at them twice, good reader? If not, look again. If you have, why then, look again, and again; and, our life on it, the gaze will repay you. Which pleases you best? The better developed, more woman-like and charaoteristic face of the one, or the half-girlish features of the other, whose outline, after all, has something of the "mould heroical?" Hast thou a choice between the Roses ?

Even as they stand before us now, they stood, one evening in early summer, many years ago, completing a school-girl arrangement for future correspondence. They had just concluded a course of study at Madam C's establishment, which was then, as it now is, the pride of a pretty New England village. Examination-day, with all its horrors, had passed, and the two friends, who had been inseparable during their sojourn at H-, had strolled forth to a rude, but not ungraceful arbour, over which a vine trailed thinly, and around which was a profusion of shrubbery and flowers.

It seems strange that Kate Rayner and Mary Brodie became such fast friends; for the former was a dark-eyed, impulsive Southern girl, who betrayed her character at a glance; restless, and somewhat exacting, yet affectionate and full of all high and generous impulses. The other was a native of the Bay State, and, while her nature was frank and open as the day, you felt, as you met the calm glance of her eye,-one of the

"Off soundin's intirely, your honour?" answered the narrator.

"How could you see, then, you porpoise?" asked the midshipman.

66

Why, bless you, sir," answered Ben, with a kind of smile, giving his whiskers another twitch; easy enough. There wor millions o' little loominus critters in the waters, which gives out a palish green light, as a feller might ha' seen to read by. Arter we got off o' a crop of young seaweed-as wor not as easy to walk upon as a brick pave-on to the sand an' shells, we could see ivery grain on the bottom as plain as day, an' the sea-urchins peepin' at us from behind the stones, an' the little crabs runnin' off sideways, to hide under a shell, an' ivery now an' thin some sort o' a fish would dart off from the bottom, leavin' a long track o' fire behind, and the old shirk would slue round in a parfact blaze to give chase, an' thin make sail arter us, as if he knew it wor no use." Here Frog paused, while four bells struck, to ask for a piece of tobacco. It was placed in his hand in silence; and the midshipman, glancing aloft, nodded his approval of the explanation, bestowing a few encomiums on Ben's style, and concluding with the usual mandate, "To heave ahead."

At this point, the reader will be content to rest a little in this wonderful narrative; so we will leave honest Ben to enjoy his quid for a time, and if, indeed, he ever brought it to a conclusion-the history of his observations and reascension, will grace a future number.-ED.

within, Reason kept the citadel; that you would fain see some test of so much imperturbable selfpossession. Most persons were unjust to both; for if Kate were passionate, she was not therefore fickle; and while Mary seemed passionless, her eye, too, could flash on occasion. "Will you forget me, Molly ?"

Try me, Kate."

"But did ever a boarding-school friendship survive a lustrum?"

"Ay, a lifetime."

"And yet, I prophesy that you'll be the first to break off the correspondence." "We'll see, Kate."

"Do you know you half vex me? You are not cold; you are not reserved; yet the manner, Molly, why is that so icy among Northerners! You say, 'Dear Kate!' and never move a muscle; while I can never say anything of the kind but Í must also throw my arms around you for a genuine hug. Why is it?"

me.

"I'm not a Kant or a Coleridge; so don't ask Enough that we have forgotten our prejudices. You shall love me despite my Northern phlegm, and be you sure that I love you none the less for an intensity of feeling that used to frighten me."

"Well, then, good night. We shall meet at Saratoga."

"I'll meet thee there!" exclaimed Mary, in tragi comic style. "There's the bell for prayers." They parted for the night.

Perhaps one reason why the two friends were so much attached to each other was, that both had known bereavement; Kate having, some years

before, lost her father; and Mary, more recently, her mother. Be the cause what it might, their friendship passed into an adage among their schoolmates.

On the following day, with renewed promises of frequent and regular correspondence, they bade one another farewell. Kate's fine face was deluged with tears; while Mary, betraying no emotion, save by a moist eye and quivering lip, repeated again and again:

"It will be but two months Kate."

"Two ages, Molly!" replied Kate; and she kissed her companion with a heartiness that left a particularly queer expression upon the deeply bronzed features of Mr. Tom Brodie, who had just returned from Calcutta, and had come that morning to H― to accompany his sister home. The two friends journeyed homeward; the one half frantic with the recent parting-life's hardest demand, as yet, on her passionate nature; the other pale, but seemingly collected; yet already beginning the struggle with impulse, as if she had all her life believed the ancient superstition that a man gains the strength of every enemy that he conquers. A day's ride, and Mary was at home. A week later came a letter from Kate.

"H, N.C., May 10th, 18

"It was just like you, dear Molly. Thank you, a thousand times, for your thoughtfulness in giving me so pleasant a surprise. I had not well got through my home greetings, in which I thought good old Dinah would have smothered me, when mother said to me, in the quietest way in life, Here's a letter for you, Kate.' "A letter?'

"It looks mightily like one.'

"Why, it's from Molly!' I exclaimed as I saw the well-known characters; whereupon I told them, as I have often done before, all about you. I was rattling on in a vain effort to tell them how much I missed you, and what plans we had laid for Saratoga, when in the midst of it all, a hand was laid very gently on my shoulder, and a somewhat gruff voice said:

"Who is this divinity, Kate? I must beg an introduction.'

Who should it be but my madcap brother, John! He was not expected for a week to come; but, as he very lucidly explained it, he had got tired of college and therefore had come home! Be prepared to like him, Molly; for he's a noble fellow. He goes with us to Saratoga. Well, good night! This is but a note of acknowledgment. Expect a very formidable-looking letter, in a day or two. Meanwhile, I leave a thousand things unsaid that I long to say, and commend you most devotedly to the gentleness of all the gods.'

"P.S.-By the by, has your brother gone to sea again? Such a life as it must be! a year, and more, away from home! I'm quite sure I could never marry a sailor. Could you?"

The two months have passed, and one of our new-fledged heroines is at Saratoga. Have you been there, good reader? You have. Well, you see that lady and gentleman at the door of the United States" just ready for a gallop. It is Kate Rayner with her brother. You see what a not of admirers she has already. That elderly

lady, near her, is her mother. There come the horses, and Kate is hardly able to repress some of her school-girl manifestations of delight. Her foot is in the stirrup. She is in the saddle. She sits well. Now for a sight of an accomplished horsewoman. But stay. An arrival. A plain, and somewhat old-fashioned family carriage halts at the door. Tom Brodie, for a hundred! Yes, and there is Molly; and that gray-haired old gentleman must be her father. Kate has dis mounted, and the two friends are in each other's arms. Tom wears a look very strikingly similar to that which his handsome features expressed at the boarding-school parting!

A ball at Saratoga. A gala night, indeed. Do you see our sun-browned sailor acquaintancejust by that chandelier? That is certainly a somewhat earnest style of talking, Mr. Tom Brodie, for so short an acquaintance. But, then, the manner of sailors is always so hearty! The topic should be an interesting one; for Kate is ruining her bouquet. By the by-not to gaze at them too long-there is Mary and Mr. John Rayner at the head of the set. He is somewhat absent, apparently; for Mary has just reminded him of his part in the dance. He evidently admires her; though she is too calm to please him very much. Her heart has yet to be ruffled; and, young as she is, she is not a woman with whom he can flirt. He is piqued ;-don't you think so?—at her imperturbable réténue. Has she a heart, after all?

A week after the ball, the two families left Saratoga for the White Mountains. Mr. Brodie and Madam Rayner occupied one carriage, while the other was monopolized by the young folk. We beg Mr. Tom Brodie's pardon for saying that he indulged in some looks and tones, as the horses plodded lazily along in the hot, grating sand, which, could the pines tell tales, would put to the blush my poor attempt at description. Words were uttered, too low, even to disturb the dreamy, Sabbath-like stillness of the wood-hedged highway; and Isaiah Tubbs, the driver, hummed monotonously a low strain, as if to persuade himself that he was really awake. His look of unconsciousness, however, was far too laboured to be real; and if he were not "takin' notes," why the fault was his own. When he had reached the foot of a considerable hill, which, as everybody knows, must be climbed in going from Sandy Hill to Lake George, our elderly friends had already crossed the ridge. Of course, they were out of sight. Now, it so happened,-how, I do not know,-that Tom declared himself weary of that particular mode of travelling, and proposed to the rest that they should walk up the hill. The proposition found favour. It is a fact worthy of record, however, that our sailor friend and his companion were so engrossed by some few wildflowers by the wayside, as to fall considerably in the rear. Out of all question, too, their conversation took a mineralogical turn; for Kate held her head very perseveringly down, as they ascended the hill. This was unlucky; for Isaiah Tubbs gave way to some half-muttered and very profane comments on the delay, which it is not proper to set forth in this history.

It was nightfall when they reached Caldwell. There was a look of mystification on the features of Mr. Tom Brodie, while Kate seemed gayer

so great a portion of her after renown. The city was assailed before the grass had well time to grow on the mound of the pomarium, which Remus was punished for laughing at. Romulus and his rapparees-the latter resembling those who came about David at the cave of Adullam,-not being considered respectable enough to marry into the families of the neighbouring people, took violent measures and seized the Sabine maidens at the games of Consualia-their "festival terms" being drawn swords. The consequence was, the advance, after a time, of Titus Tatius on Rome, leading the angry landwehr of the combined Latins. The Tarpeian hill was fortified, but Tarpeia, daughter of the governor, betrayed the place, stipulating with the enemy for what the soldiers wore on their left arms. When they got in, however, they threw their shields on her and killed her by a deadly equivoque. They then rushed to encounter Romulus and his forces in the low grounds. A fight ensued; the Romans were forced back, and Romulus invoked Jupiter Stator to stay the retreat. This was effected by the sudden apparition in the mêlée of the poor Sabine women, who had become Roman matrons against their will. They implored their parents and their husbands to suspend their blows, checked the combat, and led to a conference which terminated in a union of the Latins and Romans and the joint authority of Tatius and Romulus. This, it will be seen, can scarcely be reckoned among the disasters of Rome. But it was the first of those storms which were destined to lay her desolate in the end.

"Lars Porsenna of Clusium,

By the Nine Gods he swore,
That the great house of Tarquin

Should suffer wrong no more."
MACAULAY.

II. About two centuries and a half after the building of the city, it underwent another siege. Not from Coriolanus and the Volcii; for that cannot be called a siege; but from the Tuscans. Tarquin the Superb, the last king of Rome, having been driven out for his tyrannical behaviour in general, and particularly for the conduct of his son, Sextus, to the wife of Collatinus, had applied to the powerful lord of Clusium for aid to reinstate him on his forfeited throne. Lars Porsenna felt for his brother king, put his army in motion, and marched to Rome, where he suddenly showed himself before the fortress of the Ianiculum. Those who guarded it fled over the Sublician bridge into the city-all but Cocles, Larcius, and Herminius, who still kept their faces to the Etruscan soldiers, and held them back. Cocles sent his comrades to aid those behind in breaking down the bridge, himself standing alone for a time, and taking a storm of darts on his buckler. When the bridge fell, he leaped, accoutred as he was, into the Tiber, and swam across to the city. Porsenna then pitched his camp, and the Romans soon began to suffer from famine. Whereupon, Mutius Scævola, bearing a concealed dagger, passed from Roine into the hostile camp, designing to kill the king. He slew an officer instead, and was seized and carried before Porsenna. He avowed his purpose, said there were three

hundred others who had sworn to destroy the Tuscan chief, and on being menaced with torture, held his hand calmly in the flame of an altar. Porsenna, terrified or touched with respect by such courage, let the left-handed Mutius go, and made proposals of peace. Seeing, probably, that Tarquin's chance of restoration was feeble against the Scævolas of Rome, he only proposed that the Romans should give back the lands they had taken from the people of Veii, and took hostages in the matter,-ten young men and ten maidens. One of the latter, Clelia, after coming to the Tuscan camp, urged her companions to escape from it; whereupon they all leaped into the Tiber and swam to the city. They were sent back; and Porsenna, not to be outdone in generosity, liberated Clelia with gifts and as many of her companions as she desired to take with her. Porsenna, before he went away, gave the city his well-furnished camp; and the Senate, in return, gave him a throne of ivory, a crown, sceptre, and robe. Thus pleasantly was raised the second siege of Rome, the particulars of which were taken from the poetic annals of Ennius, the Wace or Barbour of Rome, and from Fabius Pictor, the Venerable Bede of her elder history, implicitly followed by Livy, Ovid, and others, and thus read by us in the "Goldsmith" of our own "Consulship of Plancus." But the German, Niebuhr, whose name we have since learned to pronounce, throws a deadly doubt on that siege. He says it is but a part of the "Lay of the Tarquins" -not a whit more authentic than the "Lay of the Nibelungen!" He raises a mist of criticism, in fact, which covers all the preceding history of Rome, and throws the well-defined persons and kings of the old belief into shadow, wavering on the boundary of mythology and fact. Porsenna is a myth; so is Romulus. No Rhea Silvia-no Mars-no Twins; not even any truth in the wolf! But it is depressing to think of this iconoclasm. Leo the Isaurian did not exceed Niebuhr in his way. After all, what good has the German done? What has he given us instead of the old ideas and images, so interwoven with the texture of literature so tessellating the poetry of the world? He might as well have left us in the enjoyment of our ancient faith. We feel now, like the man described by Horace, who being cured by some pleasant illusions, bitterly reproaches his restorers for bringing him back to the blank sobriety of fact:

"Pol, me occidistis, amici;

Non servastis, ait; cui sic exhorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error."

We are glad, however, that Macaulay wrote his ballad before he came to Niebuhr, that he drank at the ancient wells of Pictor undefiled before he heard of the hellebore. Even supposing Ennius and the rest did draw on their imaginations for their facts of this siege, they were admirably fitted to instil principles of high honour and devoted patriotism. They must have produced a great effect on the republican Romans, when they could warm the lyric blood of the hyperborean Macaulay, like the sound of a trumpet, even though that of Porsenna should be considered as giving forth a somewhat " uncertain sound" after all.