1829, it appeared that the number of British vessels alone, lost during that period, amounted, on an average, to no less than one and a half daily, a greater number than we should have anticipated, although we learn, from Moreau's tables, that the number of merchant vessels employed at one time in the navigation of England and Scotland, amounts to about twentythousand, having, one with another, a mean burden of one hundred and twenty tons. Out of five hundred and fifty-one ships of the royal navy, lost to the country during the period above-mentioned, only one hundred and sixty were taken or destroyed by the enemy, the rest having either stranded or foundered, or have been burnt by accident; a striking proof that the dangers of our naval warfare, however great, may be far exceeded by the storm, the hurricane, the shoal, and all the other perils of the deep. Millions of dollars and other coins have been sometimes submerged in a single ship, and on these, when they happen to be enveloped in a matrix, capable of protecting them from chemical changes, much information of historical interest will remain inscribed, and endure for periods as indefinite as have the delicate markings of zoophytes or lapidified plants in some of the ancient secondary rocks. In almost every large ship, moreover, there are some precious stones set in seals, and other articles of use and ornament, composed of the hardest substances in nature, on which letters and various images are carved; engravings which they may retain, when included in subaqueous strata, as long as crystal preserves its natural form. It was a splendid boast, that the deeds of the English chivalry, at Agincourt, made Henry's chronicle

"As rich with praise

As is the ooze and bottom of the deep,

With sunken wreck and sunless treasuries."

TIME'S SONG.

O'ER the level plain where mountains greet me as I go,
O'er the desert waste where fountains at my bidding flow,
On the boundless beam by day, on the cloud by night,
I am rushing hence away! Who will chain my flight?

War his weary watch was keeping ;-I have crush'd his spear—
Grief within her bower was weeping;-I have dried her tear-
Pleasure caught a minute's hold;-then I hurried by,
Leaving all her banquet cold, and her goblet dry.

Power had won a throne of glory ;-where is now his fame ?
Genius said, "I live in story ;"-who hath heard his name?
Love, beneath a myrtle bough, whisper'd,-" Why so fast?"
And the roses on his brow whiten'd as I past.

I have heard the heifer lowing o'er the wide wave's bed;
I have seen the billow flowing where the cattle fed;
Where began my wanderings-Memory will not stay!
Where will rest my weary wings -Science turns away!

I HAVE ever held walking to be a principal pleasure. It is one, however, which, like health, is usually enjoyed with a most thankless indifference. We hold it cheap, because it costs nothing, while there are many things we prize, merely because we pay for them. Privation appears to be a necessary process, to give a man a just sense of the goods of existence. The original gift is never valued as the restored boon. Ask the convalescent what they feel in the renewed power of locomotion. Let such a one look back, and contrast past and present feeling on the point. Did he not once go forth with the free limb, the erect carriage, nerves braced, and spirits exhilarated; and did he pause to say to himself, This is pleasure-renovation to my physical and mental constitution-an assertion of one of the proud privileges that proclaim me lord of the animal world? See him now with his slow step, and faint brow, looking up with complacent gratification for the restored good, though it be in comparison to the original good what the far echo is to the original sound. I knew a lady who rarely walked without repining at fortune for depriving her of a carriage; but she never thought of rejoicing that nature had exempted her from crutches. If walking were taxed, how would the rich walk, and the poor envy them the privilege! How would people then repine at a restriction, which they now voluntarily impose upon themselves! What petitions would be presented to Parliament to remove the duty from this panacea

-this source of health and good spirits, this right of humanity, as it would then be contended for! Thus it is that the fruit for which we have but to put forth our hands, remains unplucked, while we risk every thing for the purchased enjoyments, popularly termed pleasures.

ing

RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND.

NOTHING can be more imposing than the magnificence of English park scenery. Vast lawns that extend like sheets of vivid green, with here and there clumps of gigantic trees, heapup rich piles of foliage. The solemn pomp of groves and woodland glades, with the deer trooping in silent herds across them; the hare, bounding away to the covert; or the pheasant, suddenly bursting upon the wing; the brook, taught to wind in natural meanderings, or expand into a glassy lake; the sequestered pool, reflecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on its bosom, and the trout roaming fearlessly about its limpid waters-while some rustic temple or sylvan statue, grown green and dank with age, gives an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion. These are but a few of the features of park scenery; but what most delights me, is the creative talent with which the English decorate the unostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest habitation, the most unpromising and scanty portion of land, in the hands of an Englishman of taste, becomes a little paradise. With a nicely discriminating eye, he seizes at once upon its capabilities, and pictures in his mind the future landscape. The sterile spot grows into loveliness under his hand; and yet the operations of art which produce the effect are scarcely to be perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees; the cautious pruning of others; the nice distribution of flowers and plants of tender and graceful foliage; the introduction of a green slope of velvet turf; the partial opening to a peep of blue distance, or silver gleam of water; all these are managed with a delicate tact, a pervading yet quiet assiduity, like the magic touchings with which a painter finishes up a favourite picture. The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy, that descends to the lowest class. The very labourer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. The trim hedge, the grass-plot before the door, the little flower-bed bordered with snug box, the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the lattice, the pot of flowers in the

window, the holly providently planted about the house, to cheat the winter of its dreariness, and to throw in a semblance of green summer to cheer the fire-side: all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources, and pervad ing the lowest levels of the public mind. If ever love, as poets sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an English peasant. The fondness for rural life among the higher classes of the English has had a great and salutary effect upon the national character. I do not know a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of the softness and effeminacy which characterize the man of rank in most countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, a robustness of frame and freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the open air, and pursuing so eagerly the invigorating recreations of the country. These hardy exercises produce also a healthful tone of mind and spirits, and a manliness and simplicity of manners, which even the follies and dissipations of the town cannot easily pervert, and can never entirely destroy. In the country, too, the different orders of society seem to approach more freely, to be more disposed to blend and operate favourably upon each other. The distinctions between them do not appear to be so marked and impassable, as in the cities. The manner in which property has been distributed into small estates and farms, has established a regular gradation from the nobleman, through the classes of gentry, small landed proprietors, and substantial farmers, down to the labouring peasantry; and while it has thus banded the extremes of society together, has infused into each intermediate rank a spirit of independence. This, it must be confessed, is not so universally the case at present as it was formerly; the larger estates having, in late years of distress, absorbed the smaller, and, in some parts of the country, almost annihilated the sturdy race of small farmers. These, however, I believe, are but casual breaks in the general system I have mentioned. In rural occupation there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it leaves him to the workings of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating of external influences. Such a man may be simple and rough, but he cannot be vulgar. The man of refinement, therefore, finds nothing revolting in an intercourse with the lower orders of rural life, as he does when he casually mingles with the lower orders of cities. He lays aside his distance and reserve, and is glad to waive the distinctions of rank, and to enter into the honest, heartfelt enjoyments of common life. Indeed the very amusements of the country bring men more and more together; and the sound of hound and

horn blend all feelings into harmony. I believe this is one great reason why the nobility and gentry are more popular among the inferior orders in England than they are in any other country, and why the latter have endured so many excessive pressures and extremities, without repining more generally at the unequal distribution of fortune and privilege. To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may also be attributed the rural feeling that runs through British literature; the frequent use of illustrations from rural life; those incomparable descriptions of nature that abound in the British poets-that

have continued down from "the flower and the leaf" of Chaucer, and have brought into our closets all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape. The pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid Nature an occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms; but the British poets have lived and revelled with her, they have wooed her in her most secret haunts,—they have watched her minutest caprices. A spray could not tremble in the breeze-a leaf could not rustle to the ground—a diamond drop could not patter in the stream-a fragrance could not exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning; but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate observers, and wrought up into some beautiful morality.

THE SONG OF BIRDS.

Now o'er the rural kingdom roves
Soft Pleasure with her laughing train;
Love warbles in the vocal groves,
And vegetation plants the plain.

DR. JOHNSON.

WE hail with rapturous and unmingled sensations of delight the return of genial spring, and listen with renewed satisfaction to that vocal choir which adorn our fields, animate our groves, and gratify every sense in succession, with their melody. In our early morning walks, we are saluted by the songs of our sweet little friends, the warblers, whether we love to trace the expansion of opening buds, or gaze with admiration on the bloom of blushing flowers. Those warblings which had been dumb during the period of dreary winter, now animate every hedge; and those songsters, who had been mute during the roar of wintry storms, vocalise every spray; every bush resounds with cheerful sounds of melody and loud tones of joy. The wild whistlings of the blackbird-the measured lays of the thrush-the" thick-warbled notes" of the skylark—the gentle, mellow, and dulcet tones of the friendly red-breast, that " ever