perchance—I tender much thanks to the unknown author, and wish "more power to his arm."

Quite crippled for the time being by rheumatism, I was in bad form for clambering about the sloping, slippery planks; nevertheless I did contrive to crawl up to the hurricane-deck just before sundown, about the crisis of the gale. I confess to being disappointed in the "rollers:" it may be that their vast breadth and volume takes off from their apparent height, but I scarcely thought it reached Dr. Scoresby's standard—from 26 to 30 feet, if I remember right, from trough to crest. One realizes thoroughly the abysmal character of the turbulent chaos, and there is a sensation of infiniteness around and below you not devoid of grandeur; but as an exhibition of the puissance of angry water, I do not think the mid-ocean tempest equal to the storm which brings the thunder of the surf full on the granite bulwarks of Western Ireland.

It must be owned, that the conversational powers of our small society were limited. Very often some selfishness mingled with my sincere compassion for the prostrated sufferings of my Philadelphian friend of the tug-boat; for whenever his weary aching head would allow of the exertion, he could talk on almost any subject, fluently and well. He was returning from a long visit to Paris, and a rapid tour through Germany and Southern Europe. Most of the countries, that he had been compelled to hurry over, I had loitered through in days past, and I ought to have been shamed by the contrast in our recollections—his, so clear and systematical—mine, so vague and dim. An intellectual American travelling through strange lands does certainly look at nature, animate and inanimate, after a practical business-like fashion peculiar to his race; but it would be unfair to infer that such minds are, necessarily, unappreciative. At all events, that concentrative, synthetical power, that takes in surrounding objects at a single glance, and retains them in a tolerably distinct classification, is rather enviable, even as a mental accomplishment.

We did not speak much about the troubles beyond sea, and the Philadelphian was rather reserved as to his proclivities. My impression is, that his sympathy tended rather southward (all his early life had been spent in Alabama), but he declined to commit himself much, nor do I believe that he was a violent partisan either way. On one point he was very decided: Falkland himself could not have wished more devoutly for the termination of a fatal civil war—fatal, he said, to the interests, present and future, of both the combatant powers—ruinous to every class, with two exceptions; the adventurers who, having little to lose, gained, by joining the ranks of either army, a social position to which they could not otherwise have aspired; and the speculators, who, directly or indirectly, fairly or unfairly, made gains vast and unholy, such as wreckers are wont to gather in time of tempest and general disaster. He scarcely alluded to the corruption and peculation prevalent in all high places, diluted in its downward percolation till sutlers and horse-thieves would strive in vain to emulate the fraudulent audacity of their superiors. It was well he spared me then, for soon after landing, my eyes and ears grew weary with the repetition of all these ignoble details. To illustrate how heavily the taxes were already beginning to weigh on the non-militant part of the population, my informant proved to me by very clear figures that, if he individually could secure permanent exemption from such burdens by the absolute sacrifice of one-tenth of his whole property, real and personal, the commutation, would be decidedly advantageous to him. True, he represented a class whose incomes exceeded a certain standard, and therefore suffered rather more heavily; but the same calculation, with very slight alterations, applied to all other subordinate ones.

Grave and mild of speech was the Philadelphian philosopher, without a trace of dogmatism or self-assertion in his tone; nevertheless, I judged him to be a man of mark somewhere, and I afterwards heard that, albeit not a violent or prominent politician, he had great honor in his own country.

Strong head-winds and a heavy sea baffled us till we had cleared the longitude of Cape Race; then the weather softened, the breeze veered round till it blew on our quarter, and we had clear sky above us all the way in. We sighted the first pilot-boat on the afternoon of January 3d, and, as she came sweeping down athwart us, with her broad, white wings full spread, our glasses soon made out the winning number of the sweepstakes, "22." It was long past dinner hour when the beautiful little schooner rounded to, under our lee, but all appetite just then was merged in a craving for latest intelligence.

It was a caricaturist's study—the crowd of keen, anxious faces round the gangway—as the pilot came aboard. He was a stout man, of agricultural exterior, looking as if he were in the habit of ploughing anything rather than the deep sea; but it is the fashion of his guild to eschew the nautical as much as possible in their attire. The "anxious inquirers" got little satisfaction from him—he seemed taciturn by nature, if not sullen—and they came back to where the rest of us stood on the hurricane deck, muttering discontentedly, "Gold at 46. No news." It seemed very odd—such a complete stagnation of affairs, military and civil—but we went to dinner in spite of our disappointment. Before we rose from table the truth began to ooze out. One or two New York papers, that had slipped on board with the pilot, were more communicative than he would or could be.

Thousands of corpses, the full tale of which will never be known till the day of judgment, lying rolled in blood, with a handful of earth raked over them under the fatal Fredericksburg heights; the finest army in Federaldom hurled back upon its intrenchments; nothing but darkness covering a disastrous, if not shameful defeat; the papers crowded with dreary funeral notices, showing how, to every great city of the North, from hospital and battle-ground, the slain are being gathered in, to be buried among their own people; a wail of widows and orphans and mothers, from homestead, hamlet, and town, overpowering with its simple energy, the bombastic war-notes and false stage-thunder of the press; rumors of a terrible battle in the far West, where, after three days' hard fighting, Rosecrans barely holds his own, and yet "there are no news!"

It is an excellent quality in a soldier not to know when he is beaten, but whether blind obstinacy will succeed when it influences the rulers and destinies of a great nation, is more than questionable. Pondering these things, I remembered how, four thousand years ago, a stiff-necked generation were brought to their senses and on their knees. It was on the morning after the visit of the Dark Angel, when Egypt awoke, and found not a house in which there was not one dead. If such fearful waste of life goes on here, with no decisive or final advantage on either side attained, that ancient curse may not be long in recurring.

I rose when the sun ought to have risen, on the following morning, intending to admire the famous harbor which Americans love to compare with the Neapolitan Bay. But long before we reached the Narrows,

Very soon we were buried in fog, dense and Cimmerian, as ever brooded over our own Thames or the Righi panorama. More and more slowly the paddles turned, till they stopped altogether. It was dangerous to advance, ever so cautiously, when the keenest sight could not pierce half a ship's length ahead. So there we lay at anchor for weary hours, listening to the church-bells chiming drowsily through the heavy air, till an enterprising tug ventured out for the mails, and sent another for the relief of the passengers.

The custom-house officers