204 EVENING PRAYERS. sky, it too looked melancholy—and I returned on board ship, sick at heart at the many evidences I had met, both among the living and the dead, in the short walk of an hour, of the sin, and sorrow, and calamity, with which the world has been and still is filled! It was near sunset; and then came my last aðdress and my last prayer with the crew-not calculated, in the immediate and necessary association, to dissipate the gloom, had not the only source of true consolation and the brightness of an unchanging world, where "all tears shall be wiped from our eyes," and there "shall be pleasures for evermore," been sweetly brought to sight by the hymn of Moore containing these beautiful lines: "Oh! who conld bear life's stormy doom Did not thy wing of love Come brightly wafting thro' the gloom Our peace-branch from above? Then sorrow, touch'd by thee, grows bright, With more than rapture's ray; As darkness shows us worlds of light WASHINGTON ISLANDS. LETTER I. DEPARTURE FROM PERU. U. S. Ship Vincennes, off Callao, is no longer my THE Guerriere, dear Hhome, and I am once more afloat in the midst of strangers. The morning was to me a sad onespent chiefly, till the hour I expected to join this ship, in scribbling, by farewell notes to Commodore Thompson and Captain Smith, what I dared not trust to my lips when I should be called to give them the parting hand-and in passing from deck to deck to bid adieu, as I had opportunity, to the crew individually. The Vincennes was expected to weigh anchor at 12 o'clock, immediately after the firing of a national salute by each vessel of the squadron, in honor of the day; and, early after breakfast, Captain Smith kindly apprised me of an intention of seeing me on board my new home in his own gig. This he did-but not till my heart had been deeply touched, by a letter of much good will and affection from him Coming, utterly unexpected as it did, from one I had learned to admire as a man, and sincerely to love as a friend, but of whose cordial return of warm interest I was till then ignorant, the perusal of it affected me -under the circumstances-even to tears; and gave me the feelings of a child, when called immediately afterwards to exchange parting salutations with my shipmates of the steerage and fellow-officers of the gun-room. And when I came at last to Commodore Thompson, alone in his private apartment, I was incapable of uttering a word—to have opened my lips, in answer to his assurances of every kind regard, accompanied with a warm blessing, would have been to betray a weakness of which I should have been ashamed-and I left the cabin literally speechless. Different marks of honor are shown to different officers, according to their respective rank, both on coming on board, and on leaving a ship of war; and, as these are always paid when the individual receiving them crosses the gangway, the etiquette established is, that an inferior precede a superior in entering a boat alongside. Had I been alone, I should have been attended by two side-boys only at the ladder, and a boatswain's mate to "pipe over," as the phrase is but a captain is entitled to four side-boys, to the attendance of the boatswain himself, and to guard of marines presenting arms. When the boat was reported to the captain on the quarter deck as ready, I of course-bidding farewell to the officer in command-moved before him to the gangway, the boatswain at the foot of the steps beginning at the same time his whistle. By some means I had missed |