WHY SHOULD WE SEVER? BALLAD STANZAS. BY MRS. C. BARON WILSON. Why should we sever? Why should coldness stealing Why should we sever? thou wert formed to hold me Why should we sever? Can the links be broken No!-should we sever !—should fate tear asunder, VOL. VIII. 41 A Welsh Bard and the Prophet Brothers. A Pilgrimage from Fontainbleau to Scotland. By Miss Harriott Pigott NEW YORK: CORNER OF BROADWAY AND PINE STREET. THE METROPOLITAN. No. CIV. DECEMBER, 1839. THE CORALLINES. BY EDWARD HOWARD, AUTHOR OF 66 IN THREE PARTS-PART FIRST. The Unexpected Volunteer. airs that stole along would not have been sufficient to have lifted the down off the RATTLIN Mountain thistle. Notwithstanding the rough and inhospitable appearance of this part of the coast, there were still two or three sandy bights, scattered at long distances, which afforded shelter to a few fishing boats, and supported each a small hamlet of huts, the inhabitants of which boasted of many callings, and some of these were not exactly accordant either with the letter or the spirit of the laws. "THE long, the graceful, the swan-like frigate slept upon the waters"-ah no-she did not sleep-the phrase is pretty, but inappropriate. There may be repose in the smile His Majesty's ship Amelia was a firstof conscious power, but there is no slumber. class frigate, mounting fifty guns, though at As to the real beauty of her aspect, she rest- that time rated only as a thirty-eight. In her ed upon the smooth sea like a sunbeam upon extreme length she was but a few feet shorta cloud, but there was a visionary menace of er than one of the smaller seventy-fours, and destruction in the bright tranquillity of her it was the boast of her gallant captain, that battery, as she lay upon the dark blue ex-in a brisk gale there was no two-decker bepanse. You looked upon her, and, awed by her majestic beauty, the mind spurned the dalliance of gentle imaginings, and dwelt only upon the lightning that destroys ere it is fully beheld, and the thunderbolt that crushes on the instant that its dreadful call of death resounds. longing to the enemy that he would not eagerly engage. Appearing, from her single gundeck, to lie much lower in the water than was actually the case, and all her upper works being painted of a jet black, gave her the remarkable appearance of length to which we have before alluded. One streak The moon shone in all the glory of its of the most spotless white, no broader than filled orb, and so brightly that night did she the port-holes of the main-deck, ran from the reign the acknowledged empress of the hea-figure-head to the quarter-gallery. From vens, that the multitude of courtier-stars this line of purity, the strong battery of fourshrank back into dimness and obscurity, and-twenty pounders looked grimly forth. and but few dared to tell of their existence The rest of her cannon were scarcely perin the effulgence of the abounding glory. ceived, as they were barely distinguishable The English coast off Cornwall, with its dark abrupt rocks and white patches of chalk, was accurately reflected in the almost still and midnight sea, that was only at intervals heard to sigh gently against the broken and iron-bound shores. It was calm or so nearly approaching to it, that the few, 42 VOL VIII. from the deep jet of the quarter-deck and forecastle bulwarks. There was nothing meretricious; no gilding, and, as the sailors term it, no gingerbread about her. The cutwater terminated in a simple and classical scroll, and every thing told of neatness and elegance. |
