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arose partly from memory, and partly from present observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moskoe-ström. By far the greater number of the articles were shattered in the most extraordinary way-so chafed and roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of splinters-but then I distinctly recollected that there were some of them which were not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this difference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were the only ones which had been completely absorbed that the others had entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or, for some reason, had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the case might be. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing the fate of those which had been drawn in more early, or absorbed more rapidly. I made, also, three important observations. The first was, that, as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their descent the second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical, and the other of any other shape, the superiority in speed of descent was with the sphere-the third, that, between two masses of equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly. Since my escape, i have had several conversations on this subject with an old school-master of the district; and it was from him that I learned the use of the words cylinder' and 'sphere.' He explained to me-although I have forgotten the explanation-how what I observed was, in fact, the natural consequence of the forms of the floating fragments-and showed me how it happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance to its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equally bulky body, of any form

whatever.

"There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them to account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed something like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of these things, which had been on our level when I first opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their original station.

"I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother's attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design-but, whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted of no delay; and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea, without another moment's hesitation.

"The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is myself who now tell you this tale

as you see that I did escape--and as you are already in possession of the mode in which this escape was effected, and must therefore anticipate all that I have farther to say-I will bring my story VOL. II.-35

quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour, or thereabout, after my quitting the smack, when, having descended to a vast distance beneath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid succession, and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong, at once and for ever, into the chaos of foam below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before a great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momently less and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. By degrees, the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-ström had been. It was the hour of the slack-but the sea still heaved in mountainous waves from the effects of the hurricane. I was borne violently into the channel of the Ström, and in a few minutes was hurried down the coast into the 'grounds' of the fishermen. A boat picked me up-exhausted from fatigue-and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and daily companions-but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hair, which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my storythey did not believe it. I now tell it to you-and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden."

CHARLES SUMNER.

CHARLES SUMNER was born at Boston, January 6, 1811. His father, Charles Pinckney Sumner, was high sheriff of Suffolk county, Massachusetts. Mr. Sumner was prepared for college at the Latin school, Boston, and graduated at Harvard in 1830. In 1831 he entered the law school of the same university, and while pursuing his studies, wrote several articles for the American Jurist,, and soon after became editor of hat periodical. He commenced the practice of his profession in Boston in 1834, was soon after appointed reporter to the Circuit Court, and published three volumes of reports. He also lectured during three successive winters at the Cambridge Law School, at the request of the Faculty, during the absence of Professors Greenleaf and Story.

C. Summer

In 1836 he edited "A Treatise on the Practice of the Courts of Admiralty in Civil Causes of Maritime Jurisdiction, by Andrew Dunlap," adding an appendix equal in extent to the original work. In 1837 he sailed for Europe, where he remained three years, enjoying unusual advantages of social intercourse with the most distinguished men of the day.

While in Paris, at the request of the Minister,

Loring's Hundred Boston Orators.

General Cass, he wrote a defence of the American claim to the north-eastern boundary, which was republished from Galignani's Messenger, where it originally appeared, in the leading American journals, and universally regarded as an able presentation of the argument. It was during the same visit to Paris that he suggested to Mr. Wheaton the project of writing a History of the Law of Nations. The impression made by Mr. Sumner in England may be judged of from the complimentary remark made by Baron Parke, on the citation in the Court of Exchequer, of Sumner's Reports, in a case under consideration, to the effect that the weight of the authority was not "entitled to the less attention because reported by a gentleman whom we all knew and respected."

After his return, he again, in 1843, lectured in Cambridge, and in 1844-6 edited an edition of Vesey's Reports in twenty volumes, to which he contributed a number of valuable notes, many of which are concise treatises on the points in question. He also introduced a number of biographical notices of the eminent persons whose names occur in the text.

After the death of Judge Story, in 1845, Mr. Sumner was universally spoken of as his appropriate successor in the Law School, an opinion in accordance with the openly expressed wish of the deceased. He, however, expressed a disinclination to accept the post, and the appointment was not tendered.

Mr. Sumner took an active part as a public speaker in opposition to the annexation of Texas, and in support of Mr. Van Buren for the Presidency in the canvass of 1848. In 1851 he was elected the successor of Mr. Webster in the United States Senate.

Mr. Sumner's name is prominently identified with the Peace party-some of his finest oratorical efforts having been made in favor of the project of a Congress of Nations as the supreme arbiter of international disputes.

Mr. Sumner's Orations and Speeches were collected and published in Boston in two stout duodecimo volumes in 1850. The collection opens with an oration delivered before the authorities of the city of Boston, July 4, 1845, entitled The True Grandeur of Nations, in which the speaker enforced his peace doctrines by arguments drawn not only from the havoc and desolation attendant on and following the conflict, but by an enumeration of the cost of the state of preparation, maintained, not in view of impending danger, but as an every-day condition of military defence. In the next oration, The Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, the Philanthropist, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard, in 1846, we have a feeling and eloquent memorial of John Pickering, Joseph Story, Washington Allston, and William Ellery Channing.

This is followed by a Lecture on White Slavery in the Barbary States, a curious and picturesquely presented chapter of history. We have next an Oration on Fame and Glory, occupied in a great measure by an argument on the superior honors of peace.

The Law of Human Progress, a Phi Beta Kappa Society Oration at Union College in 1848, follows, in which a history is given of the

gradual recognition of the doctrine of the progress of the human race, and a brilliant series of sketches of Leibnitz, Herder, Descartes, Pascal, Turgot, Condorcet, and others of its early advocates, presented. The address exhibits to advantage the speaker's varied learning, and his happy art in the disposal of his acquirements.

The second volume opens with an address before the American Peace Society, entitled The War System of the Commonwealth of Nations, in s portion of which the author has followed the plan of his last mentioned discourse by tracing through the record of history the progress of the cause, and the advocates to whom that progress was in great measure due.

The remainder of the work is occupied by a number of speeches delivered on various political occasions, touching on the Mexican war, the Free Soil party, the Fugitive Slave Law and other matters growing out of the slavery question, maintaining decided views with an energy and ability which have been followed by rapid political elevation.

In addition to the works we have mentioned, Mr. Sumner is the author of a small volume on White Slavery in the Barbary States.

Mr. George Sumner, the brother of Charles Sumner, is the author of An Address on the Progress of Reform in France, delivered in 1853, and of other similar productions. He has passed several years in Europe, and has acquired a thorough knowledge of the politics, social condition, and intellectual products of its leading states. He possesses a taste for statistics and unwearied industry in research, combined with the ability to place the results of investigation before the public in a pleasing and attractive form.

WAR.

I need not dwell now on the waste and cruelty of war. These stare us wildly in the face, like lurid meteor-lights, as we travel the page of history. We see the desolation and death that pursue its demoniac footsteps. We look upon sacked towns, upon ravaged territories, upon violated homes; we behold all the sweet charities of life changed to wormwood and gall. Our soul is penetrated by the sharp moan of mothers, sisters, and daughtersof fathers, brothers, and sons, who, in the bitterness of their bereavement, refuse to be comforted. Our eyes rest at last upon one of those fair fields, where nature, in her abundance, spreads her cloth of gold, spacious and apt for the entertainment of mighty multitudes or, perhaps, from the curious subtlety of its position, like the carpet in the Arabian tale, seeming to contract so as to be covered by a few only, or to dilate so as to receive an innumerable host, Here, under a bright sun, such as shone at Austerlitz or Buena Vista-amidst the peaceful harmonies of nature-on the Sabbath of peace—we behold bands of brothers, children of a common Father, heirs to a common happiness, struggling together in the deadly fight, with the madness of fallen spirits, seeking with murderous weapons the lives of brothers who have never injured them or their kindred. The havoc rages. The ground is soaked with their commingling blood. The air is rent by their commingling cries. Horse and rider are stretched together on the earth. More revolting than the mangled victims, than the gashed limbs, than the lifeless trunks, than the spattering brains,

are the lawless passions which sweep, tempest-like, | appointed Recorder of the Recorder's Court, through the fiendish tumult.

Nearer comes the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful

on.

Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost and who has won?

"Alas! alas! I know not; friend and foe together fall,

O'er the dying rush the living; pray, my sister, for them all!"

Horror-struck, we ask, wherefore this hateful contest? The melancholy, but truthful answer comes, that this is the established method of determining justice between nations!

The scene changes. Far away on the distant pathway of the ocean two ships approach each other, with white canvas broadly spread to receive the flying gales. They are proudly built. All of human art has been lavished in their graceful proportions, and in their well compacted sides, while they look in dimensions like floating happy islands of the sea. A numerous crew, with costly appliances of comfort, hives in their secure shelter. Surely these two travellers shall meet in joy and friendship; the flag at the mast-head shall give the signal of fellowship; the happy sailors shall cluster in the rigging, and even on the yard-arms, to look each other in the face, while the exhilarating voices of both crews shall mingle in accents of gladness uncontrollable. It is not so. Not as brothers, not as friends, not as wayfarers of the common ocean, do they come together; but as enemies. The gentle vessels now bristle fiercely with death-dealing instruments. On their spacious decks, aloft on all their masts, flashes the deadly musketry. From their sides spout cataracts of flame, amidst the pealing thunders of a fatal artillery. They, who had escaped "the dreadful touch of merchant-marring rocks"-who had sped on their long and solitary way unharmed by wind or wave-whom the hurricane had sparedin whose favor storms and seas had intermitted their immitigable war-now at last fall by the hand of each other. The same spectacle of horror greets us from both ships. On their decks, reddened with blood, the murders of St. Bartholomew and of the Sicilian Vespers, with the fires of Smithfield, seem to break forth anew, and to concentrate their rage. Each has now become a swimming Golgotha. At length these vessels-such pageants of the sea-once so stately-so proudly built-but now rudely shattered by cannon-balls-with shivered masts and ragged sails-exist only as unmanageable wrecks, weltering on the uncertain waves, whose temporary lull of peace is now their only safety. In amazement at this strange, unnatural contestaway from country and home-where there is no country or home to defend-we ask again, wherefore this dismal duel? Again the melancholy but truthful answer promptly comes, that this is the established method of determining justice between nations.

ROBERT T. CONRAD.

ROBERT T. CONRAD, the author of the highly succes-ful tragedy of Aylmere, was born in Philadelphia about the year 1810. After completing his preliminary education, he studied law with his uncle, Mr. Thomas Kittera; but in place of the practice of the profession, devoted himself to an editorial career, by the publication of the Daily Commercial Intelligencer, a periodical he subsequently merged in the Philadelphia Gazette.

In consequence of ill health he was forced to abandon the toil of daily editorship. He returned to the practice of the law, and was immediately

Philadelphia. After holding this office for two years, he became a judge of the Court of Criminal Sessions; and on the abolition of that tribunal, was appointed to the bench of the General Sessions established in its place.

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Mr. Conrad occupies a prominent place in, and is now Mayor of Philadelphia, having been elected to that office by the Native American party.

Mr. Conrad wrote his first tragedy before his twenty-first year. It was entitled Conradin, and performed with success.

Aylmere was written some years after. It is the property of Mr. Edwin Forrest, and has proved one of his most successful plays. The hero, Jack Cade, assumes the name of Aylmere during his concealment in Italy, to escape the consequences of a daring act of resistance to tyranny in his youth. He returns to England, and heads the insurrection which bears his name in history. The democratic hero is presented with energy, and the entire production abounds in spirited scenes and animated language. The tragedy was published by the author in 1852 in a volume entitled Aylmere, or the Bondman of Kent; and Other Poems. The leading article of the latter portion of the collection, The Sons of the Wilderness-Reflections beside an Indian Mound, extending to three hundred and seventy lines, is a meditative poem on the Indians, reciting their wrongs and sympathizing with their fate in a mournful strain. The remaining pieces are for the most part of a reflective character.

FREEDOM.

Whence but from God can spring the burning love
Of nature's liberty? Why does the eye
Watch, raised and raptured, the bright racks that

rove,

Heaven's free-born, frolic in the harvest sky?

The wind which bloweth where it listeth, why
Hath it a charm? Why love we thus the sea,
Lordless and limitless? Or the cataract cry,
With which Niagara tells eternity

That she is chainless now, and will for ever be!
Or why, in breathing nature, is the slave

That ministers to man, in lowly wise,
Or beast or bird, a thing of scorn? Where wave
The prairie's purple seas, the free horse flies,
With mane wide floating, and wild-flashing eyes,
A wonder and a glory; o'er his way,
The ne'er-tamed eagle soars and fans the skies.
Floating, a speck upon the brow of day,
IIe scans the unbourned wild-and who shall say
him nay?

If Freedom thus o'er earth, sea, air, hath cast
Her spell, and is Thought's idol, man may well,
To star-crowned Sparta in the glimmering past,
Turn from the gilded agonies which swell
Wrong's annals. For the kindling mind will dwell
Upon Leonidas and Washington,

And those who for God's truth or fought or fell,

When kings whose tombs are pyramids, are gone. Justice and Time are wed: the eternal truth lives

on.

Ponder it, freemen! It will teach that Time

Is not the foe of Right! and man may be All that he pants for. Every thought sublime

That lifts us to the right where truth makes free, Is from on high. Pale virtue! Yet with thee

Will gentle freedom dwell, nor dread a foe!
Self-governed, calm and truthful, why should she
Shrink from the future? 'Neath the last sun's
glow,

Above expiring Time, her starry flag shall flow!
For, even with shrinking woman, is the Right
A cherished thought. The hardy hordes which

threw

Rome from the crushed world's empire, caught the light

That led them from soft eyes, and never knew Shame, fear, nor fetter. The stern Spartan drew, From matrons weeping o'er each recreant son, His spirit; and our Indian thus will woo

The stake-his forest Portia by-smile on, Till the death-rattle ring and the death-song is done. Fame is man's vassal; and the Maid of France, The shepherd heroine, and Padilla's dame, Whose life and love and suffering mock romance, Are half forgotten. Corday-doth her name Thrill you? Why, Brutus won eternal fame: Was his, a Roman man's, a bolder blow Than that weak woman's?

same

For the cause the

Marat a worse than Cæsar. Blood may flow In seas for Right, and ne'er a holier offering know!

The desert rock may yield a liberty

The eagle's; but in cities, guarded Right Finds her first home. Amid the many, she

Gives union, strength, and courage. In the night Of time, from leaguered walls, her beacon light Flashed o'er the world. And Commerce, whose white wing

Makes the wide desert of the ocean bright,

Is Freedom's foster nurse; and though she fling Her wealth on many a shore, on none where fetters ring!

And weath diffused is Freedom's child and aid.
Give me such is her prayer-nor poverty,
Nor riches! For while penury will degrade,

A heaped-up wealth corrupts. But to the free

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FREDERICK WILLIAM THOMAS.

F. W. THOMAS was born in Baltimore about the year 1810. In 1830 he removed to Cincinnati, and on his descent of the Ohio composed a poem of some six or eight stanzas, which appeared in the Commercial Daily Advertiser on his arrival at his destination. This he subsequently enlarged and recited in public, and in 1833 published with the title The Emigrant, or Reflections when descending the Ohio.

In 1835 Mr. Thomas published the novel of Clinton Bradshaw. The hero of this story is a young lawyer, who is brought in the course of his pro rofessional pursuits in contact with criminals, while his desire to advance himself in politics introduces him to the low class of hangers-on and wire-pullers of party.

The publication made a sensation by the spirit and animation with which it was written and the bold delineations of character it contained. It was followed in 1836 by East and West, a story which introduces us in its progress to the two great geographical divisions of our country, and possesses animation and interest. An account of a race between two Mississippi steamboats, terminating in the usual explosion, is deservedly celebrated as a passage of vigorous description.

In 1840 Mr. Thomas published Howard Pinckney, a novel of contemporary American life. He is also the author of The Beechen Tree, a Tale told in Rhyme, published by the Harpera, and of seve

ral fugitive poems of merit. The song which we quote has attained a wide popularity.

'TIS SAID THAT ABSENCE CONQUERS LOVE.

"Tis said that absence conquers love!
But, oh! believe it not;
I've tried, alas! its power to prove,
But thou art not forgot.
Lady, though fate has bid us part,
Yet still thou art as dear-
As fixed in this devoted heart,
As when I clasped thee here.
I plunge into the busy crowd,

And smile to hear thy name;
And yet, as if I thought aloud,

They know me still the same;
And when the wine-cup passes round,
I toast some other fair;-
But when I ask my heart the sound,
Thy name is echoed there.

And when some other name I learn,
And try to whisper love,
Still will my heart to thee return,
Like the returning dove.
In vain! I never can forget,
And would not be forgot;
For I must bear the same regret,
Whate'er may be my lot.

E'en as the wounded bird will seek
Its favorite bower to die,

So, lady! I would hear thee speak,
And yield my parting sigh.

"T is said that absence conquers love! But, oh! believe it not;

I've tried, alas! its power to prove
But thou art not forgot.

HORACE GREELEY.

HORACE GREELEY, a prominent journalist, was born at Amherst, New Hampshire, February 3, 1811. He received a limited common school education, the deficiencies of which he, however, in some measure supplied by unwearied activity from his earliest years in the pursuit of knowledge. At the age of fourteen, his parents having

Heroce Eve ly

in the meantime removed to Vermont, he obtained employment as an apprentice in the office of the Northern Spectator, Pultney, Vermont. In 1830, the paper was discontinued and he returned home; but soon after made a second engagement to work as an apprentice in Erie, Pa., for fifty dollars a year, out of which he saved enough in a few months to expend twenty-five or thirty dollars for his father, then a farmer on the line between Chautauque county, New York, and Pennsylvania, and pay his travelling expenses to New York, where he arrived in August, 1831, "with a suit of blue cotton jean, two brown shirts, and five dollars in cash." He obtained work as a journeyman printer, and continued thus employed for eighteen months. 1834, he commenced with Jonas Winchester, afterwards the publisher of the New World, a weekly paper of sixteen pages quarto, called the

In

New Yorker. It was conducted with much ability as a political and literary journal, but was not successful. Its conductors gave it a long and fair trial of several years, and were finally compelled to abandon the enterprise. While editing this journal Mr. Greeley also conducted, in 1838, the Jeffersonian, published by the Whig Central Committee of the State, and the Log Cabin, a “campaign" paper, published for six months preceding the presidential election of 1840.

Mr. Greeley's next enterprise was the publication of the New York Tribune, the first number of which appeared on Saturday, April 10, 1841. It soon took the stand which it has since maintained of a thoroughly appointed, independent, and spirited journal. In the July after its commencement, its editor formed a partnership with Mr. Thomas McElrath, in conjunction with whom the paper has been since conducted.

In 1848 Mr. Greeley was elected a member of the House of Representatives. In 1851 he visited Europe, and was chosen chairman of one of the juries of the World's Fair at London. Ilis letters written during his journey to the Tribune, were collected on his return in a volume, with the title Glances at Europe. In 1853 he edited a volume of papers from the Tribune, Art and Industry as Represented in the Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, New York. A number of addresses delivered by him on various occasions have been also collected in a volume, with the title of Hints towards Reforms.

Mr. Greeley has been fortunate in securing, during an early stage of his career, a biographer who combines in an unusual degree the essential characteristics of enthusiasm, research, and good sense. Mr. J. Parton has presented to the public in The Life of Horace Greeley, a volume well balanced in its proportions, and attractive in style.

ANDREW PRESTON PEABODY,

THE present editor of the North American Review, was born in Beverley, Mass., March 19, 1811. He was graduated at Harvard in 1826; studied at the Cambridge Divinity School; remained a year at the college as mathematical tutor in 1832 and 1833; and was ordained in the latter year pastor of the South Congregational Church in Portsmouth, N. II., to which he is still attached.

In the course of his ministerial life he has published in 1844, Lectures on Christian Doctrine, and in 1847, Sermons of Consolation. He has written memoirs, and edited the writings of the Rev. Jason Whitman, James Kinnard, Jr., J. W. Foster, and Charles A. Cheever, M. D. His published sermons and pamphlets are numerous. It is chiefly as a periodical writer that Mr. Peabody has become generally known. He was for several years one of the editors of the Christian Register, and has been for a long time a promi

nent contributor to the Christian Examiner and North American Review, of which he became the editor on the retirement of Mr. Francis Bowen, at the commencement of 1854.*

To recapitulate the different editorships of the North American, from a passage to our hand in the recently published "Memoirs of Youth and Manhood," by Prof. Sidney Willard, of Harvard. Mr. William Tudor commenced the work in

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