images of women and females which he raised in my fancy, he quieted me for a while. One time, and never but once, he told me that Jenny had promised to be his wife, if ever he came to England; but that he had his doubts whether he should live to get home, for he was very sickly. This made me cry bitterly.

I dwell so long upon the attention of this Atkinson because his death, which happened just before we got to England, affected me so much, and because he alone of all the ship's crew has engrossed my mind ever since; though, indeed, the captain and all were singularly kind to me, and strove to make up for my uneasy and unnatural situation. The boatswain would pipe for my diversion, and the sailorboy would climb the dangerous mast for my sport. The rough foremast-man would never willingly appear before me till he had combed his long black hair smooth and sleek, not to terrify me. The officers got up a sort of play for my amusement; and Atkinson, or, as they called him, Betsy, acted the heroine of the piece. All ways that could be contrived were thought upon to reconcile me to my lot. I was the universal favourite: I do not know how deservedly; but I suppose it was because I was alone, and there was no female in the ship besides me. Had I come over with female relations or attendants, I should have excited no particular curiosity I should have required no uncommon attentions. I was one little woman among a crew of men; and I believe the homage which I have read that men universally pay to women was in this case directed to me, in the absence of all other womankind. I do not know how that might be; but I was a little princess among them, although I was not six years old.

I remember, the first drawback which happened to my comfort was Atkinson's not appearing the whole

of one day. The captain tried to reconcile me to it by saying that Mr. Atkinson was confined to his cabin; that he was not quite well, but a day or two would restore him. I begged to be taken in to see him; but this was not granted. A day, and then another came, and another, and no Atkinson was visible; and I saw apparent solicitude in the faces of all the officers, who nevertheless strove to put on their best countenances before me, and to be more than usually kind to me. At length, by the desire of Atkinson himself, as I have since learned, I was permitted to go into his cabin, and see him. He was sitting up, apparently in a state of great exhaustion: but his face lighted up when he saw me; and he kissed me, and he told me that he was going a great voyage, far longer than that which we had passed together, and he should never come back. And, though I was so young, I understood well enough that he meant this of his death; and I cried sadly but he comforted me, and told me that I must be his little executrix, and perform his last will, and bear his last words to his mother and his sisters, and to his cousin Jenny, whom I should see in a short time; and he gave me his blessing, as a father would bless his child; and he sent a last kiss by me to all his female relations; and he made me promise that I would go and see them when I got to England. And soon after this he died: but I was in another part of the ship when he died; and I was not told it till we got to shore, which was a few days after; but they kept telling me that he was better and better, and that I should soon see him, but that it disturbed him to talk with any one. Oh, what a

grief it was, when I learned that I had lost an old shipmate, that had made an irksome situation so bearable by his kind assiduities! and to think that he was gone, and I could never repay him for his kindness!

When I had been a year and a half in England, the captain, who had made another voyage to India and back, thinking that time had alleviated a little the sorrow of Atkinson's relations, prevailed upon my friends, who had the care of me in England, to let him introduce me to Atkinson's mother and sisters. Jenny was no more. She had died in the interval; and I never saw her. Grief for his death had brought on a consumption, of which she lingered about a twelvemonth, and then expired. But in the mother and the sisters of this excellent young man I have found the most valuable friends I possess on this side of the great ocean. They received me from the captain as the little protégée of Atkinson: and from them I have learned passages of his former life; and this in particular, that the illness of which he died was brought on by a wound, of which he never quite recovered, which he got in a desperate attempt, when he was quite a boy, to defend his captain against a superior force of the enemy which had boarded him, and which, by his premature valour inspiriting the men, they finally succeeded in repulsing. This was that Atkinson, who, from his pale and feminine appearance, was called Betsy: this was he whose womanly care of me had got him the name of woman; who, with more than female attention, condescended to play the handmaid to a little unaccompanied orphan, that fortune had cast upon the care of a rough sea-captain and his rougher

crew.

POEMS.

EXISTENCE, CONSIDERED IN ITSELF, NO BLESSING.*

FROM THE LATIN OF PALINGENIUS.

The poet, after a seeming approval of suicide from a consideration of the cares and crimes of life, finally rejecting it, discusses the negative importance of existence, contemplated in itself, without reference to good or evil

Or these sad truths consideration had,

Thou shalt not fear to quit this world so mad,

So wicked: but the tenet rather hold

Of wise Calanus and his followers old,

Who with their own wills their own freedom wrought,

And by self-slaughter their dismissal sought
From this dark den of crime, this horrid lair
Of men, that savager than monsters are;
And, scorning longer in this tangled mesh
Of ills, to wait on perishable flesh,
Did with their desperate hands anticipate
The too, too slow relief of lingering fate.
And if religion did not stay thine hand,
And God, and Plato's wise behests, withstand,
I would in like case counsel thee to throw
This senseless burden off, of cares below.

* From the Athenæum, 1832.

Not wine, as wine, men choose, but as it came
From such or such a vintage: 'tis the same
With life, which simply must be understood
A blank negation, if it be not good.

But if 'tis wretched all,—as men decline
And loathe the sour lees of corrupted wine,—
'Tis so to be contemned. Merely TO BE
Is not a boon to seek, or ill to flee;
Seeing that every vilest little THING

Has it in common, from a gnat's small wing,
A creeping worm, down to the moveless stone,
And crumbling bark from trees. Unless TO BE,
And TO BE BLEST, be one, I do not see
In bare existence, as existence, aught
That's worthy to be loved or to be sought.

By

THE PARTING SPEECH OF THE CELESTIAL
MESSENGER TO THE POET.*

FROM THE LATIN OF PALINGENIUS, IN THE ZODIACUS VITE.

Bur now time warns (my mission at an end)
That to Jove's starry court I re-ascend;
From whose high battlements I take delight

To

Scan your

earth, diminish'd to the sight,

Pendant and round, and, as an apple, small,
Self-propt, self-balanced, and secure from fall
her own weight; and how with liquid robe
Blue Ocean girdles round her tiny globe,
While lesser Nereus, gliding like a snake,
Betwixt her lands his flexile course doth take,
Shrunk to a rivulet; and how the Po,
The mighty Ganges, Tanais, Ister, show

* From the Athenæum, 1834.