Ay, ay; bud sink that, I say. Didn't one of 'em call me as ugly an ould fish as ever swum? and another say I was a farh brecghoch,* an' ax me to let her stick me in her father's whate-field? An' that young fireship, Nance Dulhanty, didn't she-the craft wid the red lanthron at her poop, I mane— didn't she set my pig-tail a-blaze, at her ould granny's table! An' Kitty Doyle! I was a cruizin' on the top o' the hill, d'ye see me, an' she an' a fleet o' doxies wid her, at the bottom; an' she hails me to join company, an' I tacks to bear down on 'em; au' she an' they ties the long land-grass right across the "Ay, ay, shipmit; an ould sheer hulk on the channel, an' I strikes on id, and comes on my wather, goin' to pieces every say; but Irish-bame-inds-ay, over an' over, till the ould I mane English, heart iv oak, every plank o' me, howsomever."

good word, misther admiral," remarked Mrs. | that never says nothin' to gibe the ould say. Meehan. man,-never does, an' never did; ay, ay.” "Didn't mane you, jolly misthress; didn't "She'd make a nate, an' a clane, an' a nivir mane you; you're not one of the sort; I mane the young, light-deckers as skuds on every tack, in all weathers, sthramers flyin' in every breeze."

"Sure, then, we'll get one for you as ould as the hills, if you like," said Murty.

"An' that won't go down, neither, my hearty; luff, luff; two sheer hulks, bobbin' shivered planks together, every swell-never do; singin' out, too, avast, avast,' in every cap full o' wind-ay, or if there was ever gun left aboord, exchanging shots, I warrant you."

"Faith, an' you're a'most in the right, now, we b'lieve, though you did live so long on the wather, admiral," grinned Murty.

"Musha, an' I'm afeard he is, Lord purtect us," added Mrs. Meehan, more seriously. "But," resumed her honest man, "sure you don't see mooch o' the bobbin' or vastin', or toein' or scuddin', or singin', or shootin', betwixt Chevaun, here, an' my own sef, admiral ?"

"No, no, all fair sailin', in company, there, an' breeze right a-head."

"Well, an' wouldn't you like Chevaun's likes for a voyage, as you call id ?”

"Hallo, shipmit! goin' to change tack? only say the word, an' I'm for the cruize, in your stead, d'ye see me-ay, wid all my heart an' lights, my hearty!" and Terence spoke -we stake our veracious character on the fact-in perfect, simple seriousness.

laucky* wife, for the ould admiral," observed her prudent sister: "yes, an' you spoke to her later than you think, admiral; she was here the day o' the writin'."

"Whin you gave me sich a hail by my name, misthress, an' she an' you a-joinin' together? an' I never knew her, from the new cut of her canvass. But why wou'dn't she share a little say-store wid me! why sheer off in a rumpus, at only the sight o' the monies ?"

"Shy she was, may be, admiral, to take any help from a body that wou'dn't be a blood relation to her; don't blame the poor crature for that."

"Help! disthress aboord, then, though no signal hoisted? But why did you sing out, 'the Terry O'Brien a-hoy!' misthress, if I was to bear no hand, d'ye see me?"

Chevaun and her husband interchanged a look similar to that which had passed between them upon the very occasion alluded to. Evidently they thought Terence in some misconception.

"Never mind about the hoy, admiral, for the prasent; bud, yes, asthore,-disthress, sure enough, is come on poor Mary; the ould mother has a nice bit o' land, to be sure, only there's an ould arrear over id, ever since her husband died; an' she an' Mary will be turned out on the world-wide, this May, barrin' somethin' takes it off for 'em."

"Sent adhrift? sink my hulk, but they

"Ho, ho, ho, we couldn't manage that mat- sha'n't, though! Show me the loober that ther so asily-none iv us, admiral." "What jaw, then-what jaw ?"

"Why, God forgive you, man, sure isn't poor Chevaun an' mysef to be in company, as yoursef has id, till death does us part?” "Found her to ould Davy, then, an' lave the misthress-mate an' I say-room."

"We don't want to have a call to that fellow, I tould you afore, admiral.”

"Go aloft, then, you loober."

"An' I can't pleasure you that way, neither -at laste till we have the little peraties out o' the ground, asthore."

"Well-an' what port are you steerin' for, then ?"

"No port at all; I'll stay in the port where I am; an' Chevaun an' I will be pleasant company wid one another, these hundhred years to come, plaise God. Bud, admiral; there's one little Mary Moore, an' she's the born sisther o' Chevaun-nearer to her she couldn't be; an' she's very like Chevaun, only a younger girril; an' she's amost as purty as Chevaun-and she's amost as good as Chevaun-an' that's a great word."

daare think of id, an' if I don't blow him clean off the wather, at the first broadside, scuttle me for ould Davy."

"That wou'dn't be the way, admiral," said Murty; "the thing to be done is, to blow the arrears off o' the land. And now listen well to me; your honest goold could do that, if you an' Mary Moore was once man an' wife; ay' an' more than that; stock the farum, too, afther clearin' id, an' then all would go well to the world's ind."

"Ay, ay; but this little galley, the Marywould she be puttin' the ould hulk undher any new ordhers, short allowance o' grog, or sich like-d'ye see me, eh, shipmit?"

"Niver fear that, admiral; she wouldn't say one conthrary word to you, from year's end to year's end, an' I know her well."

"No squalls, at a hand's-turn, to get ould ship on her bame's inds?"

The dickens a squall she'd give, the creature! barrin' you gave her rason, admiral," asserted Murty; "an' you're not the man to do sich a dirty turn;-no, Mary is as quite as the lamb-no; bud she'd mind for you, an' "Ay, ay-I spoke wid Mary Moore, ship- she'd make for you-an' she'd sing a purty mit, the night o' my cruize to Nance Dul- little song for you at her wheel-on' you'd hanty's granny's wake-an' 'twas she put out have a house of your own, admiral-an' no the fire, boord ould hulk, when Nance set the one to cross or conthrary you-an' the stock rishlight to my pig-tail-ay, spoke wid her, an' the crops ud be thrivin' on the land-an', then, an' often afore an' since; ay, ay; an' in a rasonable time, there 'ud be little weeny now that I call to mind, that little craft, Mary, is the only one o' your jade-squadron |

Tidy and gracious.

admirals runnin' about your legs-an' they'd! be tumblin' over head an' heels, on the flure, to divart you; an' you'd be a 'sponsible man." "Hurrah!" cheered Terence, as the picture glowed before his ardent imagination.

"An' thin let me see the one that 'ud call you an ugly old fish, or tumble you down the hill, or put the fire to your pig's tail, or as much as snap an eye at you, my poor old admiral."

"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" again shouted the admiral, three times, distinctly, as we have noted it down,-now taking off his hat, and waving it round his head, while the deafening pitch of his voice startled the echoes in the little glen outside the house.

"It was finally settled that Terence should indeed go a-wooing-by proxy, however, in the first instance. He was loth to venture, as he intimated, out of "say-room," such as he was used to, into a strange unknown harbor, without taking soundings; for there might be rocks, or sands, or breakers, a-head, enough to make the best ship afloat go to pieces, and to baffle the steering skill of the ablest hand that ever grappled a helm or boxed a compass. In fact, Murty Meehan was deputed, and gladly accepted the commission, to break the business to Mary and her mother, while Terence O'Brien should await his return in the next public-house, administering to the thirsty wants of some of his neighbors, in return only for their decent attention to His stories of wondrous adventure on the ocean, containing many charms for them, doubtless, though deficient in that of novelty.

THE RAINBOW OF LIFE.

BY WASHINGTON BROWNE.

HOPE, through youth's sweet April tears,
Has the wondrous power to throw
O'er the fields of future years,
Her many-colored bow.

Only in the dewy time

Of our being's morning march, May we build with joy sublime, Life's triumphal arch.

One by one the colors show

In the landscape warm and wet, "Till complete the glory glow

On the clouds' far-travelling jet.
River, rock, and tower, and plain,
See! the gorgeous bow embrace,
Glorious pageant! look again,
All is empty space.

The poet's eye delights

Some inward vision fair,
The pen he seizes and he writes,
Then looks-it is not there.
VOL. IV.
- 20

The painter in some happy hour,
Sees in the earth and sky,
Glimpses of glory and of power,
And holds them in his eye.

But when to give them lasting life,
He toils from day to day,

He finds from that laborious strife,
The glory pass away.

The graces of the morning hour
Fade into common light:
The sunset, with its gorgeous power,
Dies down into the night.

Alas! all beauty that has birth,

All splendor that is given,
To cheer, to glorify the earth,
Is but a gleam from heaven.
New York, March 22.

A TALE OF THE BURMESE WAR.

IN the spring of the year the body of the Indian army at Sarrawa received orders to cross the Erawadi, and to march down to the assistance of the column besieging Donabew, on the right bank of the river. We were occupied five days in crossing, being obliged to make rafts before a single man could be taken over. The small corps under my command was the last that crossed, and as it was very late before we reached the shore, it was thought proper to rest that night, and follow the main body the next day. The rains had ceased for about three months, but in the course of the night a storm, such as usually ushers in the south-west monsoon, acccompanied by a tremendous shower, made the ground in our neighborhood impassable, and we were forced to take to the high land at some distance from the river. We were thus sepa- . rated from the main body, who had been able to advance rapidly on the low and clear rice grounds, while the whole day was passed by us in cutting through a pathless jungle of the rankest vegetation consisting chiefly of grass and reeds from ten to fifteen feet in height, where our utmost activity could barely enable us to get on ten miles. Indeed, we could not possibly have effected so much without the assistance of the Karians, the wretched inhabitants of these wilds, who, oppressed on all occasions by the cruelty and rapacity of the Burmese government, did not feel themselves forbidden by any motive of patriotism to help us by every means in their power. These poor people were easily induced to show us the parts where a passage could be most easily effected; and we were indebted to their kindness for a supply of food which

we could not have procured from our own of his son's unworthy attachment prevented resources. They also abandoned their huts any reproaches that, under other circumstanto our use for the succeeding night; and ces, Williams might have received; but the though mere wooden boxes, mounted into struggle between pride and affection was too the air on bamboo poles, and accessible only much for his weakened frame, and the too viby a notched stick in lieu of stairs, we pass-sible effects of his son's imprudence completed ed a more comfortable night in them than his dissolution. Williams, who inherited all could have been expected; and many of us his father's feelings, could not resolve to marprobably owed the preservation of our lives ry the woman he had dishonored. He has conto our being thus elevated above the soaked fessed to me that had he been in a place earth and thick wet grass which must other-where they were unknown, he would not have wise have been our bed. hesitated, and that he even offered her his

The next day we arrived early on the hand, if she would retire with him to some bank of a river running into the Erawadi, distant spot; but with a pride equal to his along which we made our way over rice own, she refused it unless tendered openly, grounds, free from trees but flooded in great and insisted that he should make reparation part. After a miserable march, knee deep by marriage in the place which had witnessin water, we were relieved by the sight of ed her disgrace. This he could not agree to, our enemy, closely entrenched in a stockade. and after a few months she was delivered of It appeared that the body in advance of us, a dead child, which she soon followed to the having made their march nearer the great ri- grave. My poor friend was now miserable: ver, had missed seeing this fortification. The he looked on himself as a murderer, and enclosure was of considerable size, extending many days was in a state bordering on from the river all across the rice grounds to madness. During this time his poor the thick teak forest on the left. We were broken-hearted mother did all in her power very few, and our enemy was numerous: to console him, but without success. His they were armed and under cover, and we overwrought feelings at length grew less were exposed, with guns wet and almost use- acutely sensitive, and he became apparently less; but I think there was not a man with calm. The necessity of doing something for us who did not feel relieved by the prospect the maintenance of his mother roused him. of change, and confident of success. We After some useless endeavors he enlisted in were evidently not expected, by the bustle a regiment bound for India, sent his mother which our appearance caused among them; the bounty-money he received, and sailed, but they seemed determined on resistance, for Calcutta, where his good conduct soon oband with loud shouts and cries of late, laee, tained him promotion. (come, come,) invited us to the attack. We When I first saw him he was dejected to the were soon on the spot a half-finished ditch lowest degree, and though always ready to in front offered no resistance, and a palisad- oblige, and most attentive to his duties, reing, driven diagonally for greater strength, lapsing continually into a state of despondenwas soon passed. The stockade not more cy. Having little taste myself for the noisy than nine feet high, was surmounted in a very pleasures of my comrades, I courted his few moments, the enemy driven from the friendship, and we grew attached to each ramparts, and flying across the plains behind, other. He confided to me his little history, whence they plunged into the deepest recess and was evidently relieved by the communies of the jungle. We only lost three or four cation, and by my attempts to console him. men, but I was much afflicted to find they had Every thing that the most rigid economy carried off a prisoner with them. This was could spare he sent to his mother, to whom he an officer in rank below me, to whom I was wrote very regularly. He rarely mentioned united in the closest intimacy. I had been his mistress's name, and then it was in the with him four years in the same regiment, manner of a visionary; he spoke of her with and although he had risen from the ranks, his a superstitious feeling, and though he someeducation was that of a gentleman. Ilis sto- times smiled at his fancies, he always rery was not uncommon. He was the only son turned to the same strain. He said he often of a gentleman of good family, but reduced saw her in his dreams; he had had several circumstances, who had left the world to hide conversations with her on their past conduct, his poverty in a remote village. There Willi- and she had quite forgotten his refusal to ams conceived an attachment to a young wo- marry her; that she would see him once man of inferior connections and character, more before his death, when she would give and who, he himself has told me in his ra-him a sign that he should follow her in a few tional moments, although beautiful, was not by any means formed to attach him, had not their altered fortune thrown him into a situation that left him almost without a choice, and his Maria without a rival. This connection much affected his father, a kind though a very proud man, and who was already brought to the utmost despondency by the reduction of his means, which had been produced chief ly by his own improvidence. The consciousness that he was himself the remote cause

hours. He had long and anxiously expected the fatal sign, but it had not been given. That morning he told me he should not be long in existence. He had not received the fatal summons, but his Maria had told him they should soon meet. I could not help connecting this with the fate we feared he had undergone. The Burmese had hardly got rid of their horrible propensity to slaughter their prisoners, and many severe lessons were given them before they learned to act like civilised

"Pare che guerra porti al mare."

men. His body was not found in the stock-ried from the dreadful spot, glad to escape ade; he was therefore carried into the jungle, even to the wilderness, and within another and the horror felt at his too probable fate mile we reached an opening in the jungle on was only equalled by the pain which the our left, through which the broad and rapid utter impracticability of any means of saving Erawadi appeared, swollen with the rain of him produced in us. Indeed the difficulty we the preceding night. It was still rising, for had experienced of forcing our way through although the storm had ceased, and the sun the tough elephant grass, nearly twenty feet was shining bright and beautiful over our in height, and the dreadful maladies occasion. heads, the lands in the upper country were still ed by being deluged by the water with which sending down their tribute. It might have it was loaded, prevented the boldest of us been deemed a sea, for to our eyes it was boundfrom a voluntary attempt at entering the fo- less; the low land of the opposite bank was rest; and the provoking activity displayed beneath the horizon, but the rapid downward by the natives, and almost instinctive know- current, bearing trees, wrecks of boats, porledge they had of those parts where alone a tions of bamboo huts, and the rude furniture passage could be forced, combined to render used by the natives, gave ample testimony of the tracking them impossible. We resolved, a river in flood, and it might be truly said of in consequence, to pass the night within the it what the poet more fancifully conceived of stockade, and resume our march the next his native Po, morning; satisfied at having found so desirable a resting-place, as the heavy rain which set in with the night, and continued for seven Whilst all were contemplating the scene hours without intermission, would have made with various feelings, and in mine I confess fearful havoc with our small party. We set the comfort of having an open path before us out before sunrise, and had some difficulty in absorbed most other considerations, somecrossing the river, which was now swollen; thing was indistinctly seen in the midst of the we then directed our course in a line nearly current, fixed, though all around was in moparallel with the Erawadi, but approaching it tion. On application to my pocket telescope, as much as the nature of the jungle admitted. it showed me it was a man. The seeming This was much less dense than the one we impossibility that a human being could swim had traversed the day before, and had we in such a place, immediately gave rise to the not been dreadfully annoyed with the water suspicion that the body had been exposed falling on us from the loaded grass, shaken there by the Burmans, who are known someby our endeavors to get through it, we might times to fasten great criminals to some stake have got forward comfortably. In about an or island when the water is low, and the rehour we arrived at another stockade, which turning tide slowly overwhelms them. On had been visited by our advanced body; this occasion it appeared they had fixed the they had left fearful marks on their passage; object of our attention to a bank in the midand although there were a few persons in dle, considerably above the usual height of motion about it, it was abandoned instantly the river, in order to protract the sufferings of on our approach. None were left behind but their victim; but the heavy rain had so raised the dead, or those who were soon to be so. the water, as to render it probable that their The groans of those wretches whose remain-cruelty would be disappointed by the speedy ing strength was barely enough to enable them to keep off the dogs and birds that were prowling around them, the stench of the corpses, and the sight of some unfortunate wretches crucified by their cruel chiefs, and fixed on the stakes which formed the stockade, whose only crime most probably was a too close imitation of the cowardice of their lords, excited our horror and disgust, though used to shocking scenes in this barbarous country. The very dogs were tearing cach other for their dreadful prey, or rolling glut ted on the sand. One faithful creature I saw, keeping guard over the dead body of his master, savagely repel the attacks of his fellows; but this was the only instance.

death of the poor wretch, who was now almost covered. The climate and exposure having had its usual effect upon my eyes, I handed the telescope to my attendant, who almost instantly exclaimed that it was a European, and in a few moments after, to my horror, that it was Williams. By this time curiosity had drawn a number of our party near us, and as soon as the name of Williams was pronounced, an Indian of slender, but muscular figure, stripping off his coat and shoes, threw himself into the fierce stream, and divided the waves with wonderful strength and rapidity. We all looked on with silence and intense interest. He proceeded in a straight line, as though drawn by a tightened cord, and while The Burmese, barbarous as they were, had all around him was whirled down the stream, not neglected the last duties to their compa- he alone, as by magic, kept an even course, nions. The new-inade graves gave evidence with the current driving against him, as that they had removed many of their compa- against a rock fixed in the bed of the river, nions from our sight, and had they not been and rising in angry foam against the obstacle. interrupted by us, all the dead would without Once he disappeared, apparently overwhelmdoubt have been interred. Food and water ed by a mass of wood that came rolling upon were placed by those who had any remain- him; we were breathless and silent; but he ing life, but no other means of assistance ap- had only dived to avoid the shock, and again peared to be afforded them, and indeed they he rose, keeping on the same unvaried line. were all beyond the succor of art. We hur-I now asked the name of this bold swimmer,