be the willing agent of any villany. And such in fact is the character of many of these men. On the day following we overtook our emigrant companions, and thenceforward, for a week or two, we were fellow-travellers. One good effect, at least, resulted from the alliance; it materially diminished the serious fatigues of standing guard; for the party being now more numerous, there were longer intervals between each man's turns of duty. WRECK OF THE SEGUN TUM: A BALLAD. BY JAMES KENNARD, JR. THE Spanish ship Seguntum' was wrecked on the Isles of Shoals in the winter of 1813, and all hands on board perished. FAST o'er the seas, a fav'ring breeze The Spanish ship had borne ; The sailors thought to reach their port As sunk the sun the bark dashed on, They little thought their destined port As twilight fades, and evening shades And loudly now the storm-winds blow, 'Mid snow and hail they shorten sail; The straining ship drives through the seas, Close lying to the wind; The spray, on all where it doth fall, It strikes upon the shrinking face The shower comes fast and thick. *THIRTEEN in number. And with it comes the driving snow, The helmsman scarce the compass sees, A sound of fear strikes on the ear; It is the awful roar Of dashing breakers, dead ahead, Wear ship! hard up, hard up your helm!' Loudly the captain cries. Slowly her head pays off, and now Now on the other tack close braced, Ahead, to windward and to lee, 'We vow to lead a holy life!' Too late! alas, too late! Their vows and plaints to imaged saints They strike a rock; Oh, God! the shock! Through mast and shroud the tempest loud There lives not one to greet the sun, A winding sheet for sailors meet, The storm is o'er; the rocky shore Disfigured by the angry surf That still is murmuring hoarse, And thus the Spanish crew were found,* There, in unconsecrated ground, No mourners stood around their graves, Their graves are still to be seen on one of the Isles of Shoals. These islands lie off the harbor of Portsmouth, (N. H.,) nîne miles from the mouth of the Piscataqua. LOVE AND LOVE LETTERS. BY DAVID STRONO. THE passion of love, in its effects, curiously blends the serious with the amusing, the tragic with the comic. A faithful transcript of the mind under its influence would at least equal in interest, the movements of an opium eater, or in amusement, the antics produced by nitrous-oxide. This truth occurred to me with singular clearness this morning as I lingered over the contents of my escritoire. There, lay before me all the tokens of a score of 'loves.' And among them (more to my purpose,) were copies of my own letters written in the heat of passion and in the ardor of youth. They have hitherto been sacred-treasures that money could not buy, and for which I would not have thanked any one to tempt me with fame. But, time and untruth have robbed them of their sanctity; and the keen sense of the ridiculous they inspired me with this morning, has sealed their fate. With a reservation in favor of those addressed to one lady, they go into the fire. The record of thoughts made over to her has yet an interest for me. She was the last object that lingered on my gaze as I passed out from boyhood's land of dreams; her memory is the dim twilight of my day of sentiment gone by. She is another's now,' but my life is happier in the trust that she still recurs to our acquaintance with undiminished friendship. I the more cling to the hope, and foster the belief, from the falsehood I have met elsewhere. Once shake my faith in her and thereafter my trust in woman will be confined to the limits of my organs of vision. Indeed the rings, ringlets, ribbands, seals, valentines, billets, mottoes, and every other variety of the peace-disturbing arms of Cupid that lie scattered before me, are so many mute witnesses of the instability of woman's love. The history of the lock of hair that shades one corner of my paper, is the history of the rest. The story of one, is the story of all. Pledges given, and pledges broken. Therefore I do well to take fast hold on the faith of her who, giving no promises, has ever kept to the spirit of our friendship. It is well there is one. But to proceed: It has been said that a man of sense may love like a madman, but never like a fool.' The fact is self-evident; for a man would cease to be considered sensible who, for a considerable length of time, under any circumstances, continued to play the simpleton. Foolish acts however do not necessarily imply a total want of sense. No man conducts wisely at all times; and no man was ever known to do so under the influence of the tender passion. But a man may under its influence do brilliant things. It may be a ridiculous passion, as it has been termed, still it is a passion. In common with ambition, with avarice, with all the other passions, its life is fire; a fire which brightens while it burns. And in its strength lies the ridicule. Its efforts seem absurdly disproportionate to its ends. Not that they are, but that they appear so. Every one knows for himself that there is no holier nor happier state than to love and be loved; that life has nothing like unto it; but he ceases to be himself when he mixes with the world. The communion of hearts, with all its beauty, is not tangible; it is not a thing that the world either sees or worships. Man struggling for fame, or toiling in privation for wealth, are spectacles the world witnesses at least with respect. To be famous is to be worshipped; to be rich is to be powerful. Such ends seem worthy of toil, of care, of restless nights, of any sacrifice. But to waste one healthful moment for love, is something the world, as a world, cannot understand. The sight of a full-grown giant expending all his strength to capture a shadow would not be one-half so ridiculous. If, during his efforts he stumble into a quagmire, the picture is complete.. There was a time, when by its association with deeds of lofty daring and of high renown, love-making was a popular pursuit, or rather it was a pursuit that commanded popular respect. In the days of chivalry love ruled the court, the camp, the grove.' The king and the peasant, the lord and the retainer, were all, each in his way, gallants. No knight appeared without a gage upon his lance; no page without a pledge; no squire without a token. The spirit of love reigned at the gay and costly tournament at home, and sent its influence with the soldier on the long and toilsome journey into Palestine. It was his angel in sickness and in sorrow. It cheered him in the hour of battle; and it was only when he had done his knightly devoir in the service both of GOD and his lady, that he could lie down composedly to die. Alas! those brilliant times have passed away, and the sentiments they fostered have departed with them! The world no longer bows to the conqueror of hearts. So far from it, that in these, our days, to escape ridicule, a courtship, must be conducted sub rosa. This is but natural. Love has many features provocative of mirth, that can only be subdued by associating it with something that the world reverences. The prominent and most comical of its attributes is blindness. The earnestness with which the lover asserts the existence of mental and physical beauty in his mistress, oftentimes, in the very face of fact, has been considered fit subject for the jest, the cavil and the 'sneer. Many a poor fellow has witnessed the mirth of his friends, when for his life he could not see what it was about. There is a simile in one of the letters already referred to that may serve to illustrate my meaning. I think it pretty, and written under any other circumstances, might pride myself upon it. But as it is, the pathos is too much. It is this: The future is as dull, and cold, and dark as the grave of an hundred years ago; and yet there comes a gleam of hope like twilight creeping over the tomb-stone. Is it the twilight of the morning or the night?" come intruder. There was something impressive and awful in the place and the hour; for I and the beasts were all that had life and consciousness for many a league around. Some days elapsed, and brought us near the Platte. Two men on horseback approached us one morning, and we watched them with the curiosity and interest that, upon the solitude of the plains, such an encounter always excites. They were evidently whites, from their mode of riding, though, contrary to the usage of that region, neither of them carried a rifle. Fools!' remarked Henry Chatillon, to ride that way on the prairie: Pawnee find them - then they catch it!' Pawnee had found them, and they had come very near 'catching it;' indeed, nothing saved them from trouble but the approach of our party. Shaw and I knew one of them; a man named Turner, whom we had seen at Westport. He and his companion belonged to an emigrant party encamped a few miles in advance, and they had returned to look for some stray oxen, leaving their rifles, with characteristic rashness or ignorance, behind them. Their neglect had nearly cost them dear; for just before we came up, half a dozen Indians approached; and seeing them apparently defenceless, one of the rascals seized the bridle of Turner's fine horse, and ordered him to dismount. Turner was wholly unarmed; but the other jerked a little revolving pistol out of his pocket, at which the Pawnee recoiled; and just then some of our men appearing in the distance, the whole party whipped their rugged little horses and made off. In no way daunted, Turner foolishly persisted in going forward. Long after leaving him, and late that afternoon, in the midst of a gloomy and barren prairie, we came suddenly upon the great Pawnee trail, leading from their villages on the Platte, to their war and hunting-grounds to the southward. Here every summer passes the motley concourse; thousands of savages, men, women and children; horses and mules, laden with their weapons and implements, and an innumerable multitude of unruly wolfish dogs, who have not acquired the civilized accomplishment of barking, but howl like their wild cousins of the prairie. The permanent winter villages of the Pawnees, stand on the lower Platte, but throughout the summer the greater part of the inhabitants are wandering over the plains, a treacherous, cowardly banditti, who by a thousand acts of pillage and murder, have deserved summary chastisement at the hands of government. Last year a Sioux warrior performed a signal exploit at one of these villages. He approached it alone in the middle of a dark night, and clambering up the outside of one of the lodges, which are in the form of a half sphere, he looked in at the round hole made at the top for the escape of smoke. The dusky light from the smouldering embers showed him the forms of the sleeping inmates; and dropping lightly through the opening, he unsheathed his knife, and stirring the fire, coolly selected his victims. One by one, he stabbed and scalped them; when a child suddenly awoke and screamed. He rushed from the lodge, yelled a Sioux war-cry, shouted his name |