MUTILACION NOTED 161-166 11130163 HOT LOVE IS SOON COLD. 'Fie! fie! how wayward is this foolish love, Shakspeare. 'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.' Anon. In the mid-day of passion, young Pleasure was riding, 'Sweet maid, see my boy,' softly whispered young Pleasure; 'The urchin is languid with ardor-behold! Ah! cool in your bosom, the heat of my treasure!'But Prudence cried, ‘ Maiden, hot love can be cold!' Now Prudence was Virtue's poor, ancient, weak mother, And Pleasure had youthfulness, beauty, and gold; So Virtue took Love, as her parentless brother, Though Prudence said, 'Maiden, hot love will be cold!' Love guiltily slumbered in dreams of delight, Then Novelty lured Love and Pleasure to flight— Virtue wept, while exclaiming, 'Hot love is soon cold!' THE HAUNTED SHIP. SAILORS are called superstitious. Perhaps they are over-credulous in omens; for they live upon a changeful element, where mutations are often preceded by signs. Solitude in the midst of sublime scenes, inclines all minds to superstition; it is so easy when surrounded by the wonders of the material world, to add a few gratuitous marvels to the invisible. Hence highlanders, as well as sailors, passing life amid whirlwinds, avalanches, and that creator of strange sights, a mountain mist, believe in 'more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' I was, myself, a sailor for eighteen hard years of of life—' multum jactatus,' tempest-tost, wrecked, and rescued till I abandoned the treacherous element, that has such analogy with hope. When I left the realms of Neptune, it was to make a timid lodgement in the sunny borders of Apollo. In other words, I became a citizen of the Republic of Letters, and have for many winters been the acceptable instructer of the village school. In all that time at sea, I must have acquired the sailor's readiness to believe what is mysterious, if I have escaped the faith of believing a thing because it is impossible. Some faith a man must have in invisible things. It is implanted in him for devotion; though it is at the same time a part of well-directed reason. It, however, becomes superstitious when placed upon what has no existence. Men believe, generally, as others believe around them; the fatigue of thinking, has less attraction than the charm of credulity. Perhaps I might have been a fire-worshipper in Persia, or a hermit in Spain. With all our individual reason, we yet believe, as the warlike corporal argued, by platoons.' Hence it requires a mind of no common mould, to be in advance of its age and country. Yet with all our alacrity to credit wonders, having once seen, we reduce them to the grade of common occurrences, or explain them always so that the fact is separated from the mystery. In my first voyage 'before the mast,' in a sulphurous gale off the Cape of Good Hope, our crew had, as we conceived, a glimpse at the Flying Dutchman; or, at any rate, at the dim and dusky figure of a ship moving directly against the wind, unless there were two currents of air; for we were running before the wind in an opposite direction, eleven knots an hour. Yet, as man is a reasoning animal, we had convinced ourselves, when the next sun rose upon the waters, that we had seen but a cloud, or had been altogether deluded by fancy. Truly, philosophy as well as revelation teaches, that had one been sent from the dead to warn the brothers of Dives, they would not have believed the messenger. On another voyage, I beheld a spectre, as plainly as ever I saw myself in a glass, and more distinctly than man ever saw his shadow in the sun. I had been unlucky or unwise; had spent all my gains in Palermo, when I was fain to 'work the passage' home in the responsible office of cook's mate-responsible I call it, for I might have poisoned the whole crew; and as far as bad coffee went, I have something to answer for. There was among the sailors a sort of suppressed belief that the ship was unlucky, if not haunted by the spirit of a Maltese sailor who had been murdered in his hammock by a revengeful Sicilian. One still night, near Cape de Gat, while the sea was as calm as a mill-pond, the whole democracy of the forecastle was collected under the bow of the long boat, conversing in rude phrases upon metaphysical things. I related my story of the Flying Dutchman, and others had seen more hideous sights; yet there were sturdy skeptics who would believe no eyes but their own. The captain, who had been listening to us, now spoke and counselled us to speak |