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profound and acute Schlegel, that even in the most spiendid models of the Greek literature, there is a lamentable deficiency, a lack of a certain indefinable charm and shadowy delicacy of tint, which characterize the best literature of a social state, wherein woman, holding her just place, and enjoying a proper culture, tinctures with her peculiar influence the springs of thought, sentiment, and feeling, in the popular mind.

It was reserved for chivalry, embodying the spirit of christianity, to demolish this old, moss-grown bastile of the social state, and restore its captives to freedom, and the rights and prerogatives of freedom. An institution having for its avowed aim to redress the injured and protect the weak, could not, of course, overlook the wrongs of a whole sex, reduced, through its mere weakness, to a slavish subjection. And herein did it give expression to the spirit of that religion, which proclaimed itself the friend of the friendless, and the helper of the helpless, and which assigned to moral qualities an everlasting superiority over physical force.

The first result of these efforts in behalf of the sex was, naturally enough, a strong reaction in its favor, and from a slave woman was exalted to a demi-goddess, and more invested with the sanctity of worship, than approached with the freedom of equal companionship. But this exaggeration of sentiment gradually wore away, without carrying with it the valuable results of which it was the factitious accompaniment.

And so chivalry bequeathed to the world the woman of modern society; the equal associate and friend of man; the ornament of his prosperity, and the immoveable pillar of his adversity; his counsellor in straits, in despondency his availing consolation; the life and charm of the social group, and the queen and presiding genius of that little happiest of kingdoms, home; the nurse, guardian, and inspiration of the rising age, and the missionary bearing refinement and humanizing influences to the remotest nooks and recesses of society.

Such are in part the benefits for which modern times stand indebted to chivalry. The institution, in its outward form, has departed with the age that gave it life. But its spirit yet lives, for it was of a higher than mortal strain. Nor lives alone. Its name is no longer Jacob, but Israel, for it has mightily prevailed. It now wears not one, but a thousand forms; for wherever you witness disinterested, self-denying endeavors put forth in behalf of man, there you see impersonated the spirit of chivalry. Wheresoever you behold the missionary, having no breast-plate but that of righteousness, no shield but that of faith, no helmet but that of salvation, and no sword save the sword of the Spirit, going out to encounter the giant shapes of superstition and vice, for the rescue of oppressed and degraded man; wherever you behold a Howard 'plunging into the depths of dungeons, and diving into the infection of hospitals, in his circumnavigation of charity;' wherever you behold a Fry rising superior to the shrinking delicacy of her sex, to bear a message of love and redemption to the debased and lost; wherever you behold a man of God penetrating the squalid recesses where hopeless Poverty hides itself, and presenting the key that unlocks treasures which no rust can cor

rupt and no thief steal; wherever you behold a Lafayette exiling himself from all the heart holds dearest, staking the hopes and aspirations of his youth, and putting life itself in imminent jeopardy, to break the oppressor's rod, and set the oppressed stranger free, there you behold, incarnate and shining with a far greater than its primitive effulgence and beauty, the genuine spirit of chivalry!

A benison, then, lie evermore on the chivalry of the olden time! Like a dream it hath passed away. But, like a dream of heaven, it leaves us inspired with noble impulses and high resolves for the accomplishment of the tasks, and the encounter of the trials, of earth!

SPEARING.

BY ALFRED B. STREET, ESQ., AUTHOR OF THE FOREST-WALK, ETC.

THE lake's gold and purple have vanished from sight,

And the glimmer of twilight is merged into night.
The woods on the borders in blackness are massed,

And the waters in motionless ebony glassed;

The stars that first spangled the pearl of the west,

Are lost in the bright blazing crowds of the rest;

Light the torch!-launch the boat! -for to-night we are here
The salmon, the quick-darting salmon, to spear.

Let us urge our light craft, by the push of the oar,
Through the serpent-like stems of the lilies near shore:
We are free turn the prow to yon crescent-shaped cove
Made black by the down-hanging boughs of its grove.
The meek eddy-gurgle that whirls at our dip,
Sounds low as the wine-bead which bursts on the lip.
On the lake, from the flame of our torch, we behold
A pyramid pictured in spangles of gold,

While the marble-like depths, on each side of the blaze,
Is full of gray sparkles, far in as we gaze.

From his bank-sheltered nook, the loon utters his cry,
And the night-hawk darts down with a rush, from on high:
In gutturals hoarse, on his green, slimy log,

To his shrill piping tribe, croaks the patriarch frog;
And the bleat and the bark from the banks mingle faint
With the anchorite whippoorwill's mournful complaint.

We glide in the cove-let the torch be flared low,
And the spot, where our victim is lurking, 't will show ;
Mid the twigs of this dead sunken tree-top he lies,
Let the spear be poised quick, or good-bye to our prize.
Down it darts -to the blow our best efforts are bent,
And a white bubbling streak shows its rapid descent;
We grasp it, as upward it shoots through the air,
Three cheers for our luck! our barbed victim is there!
Give way, boys! give way, boys! our prow points to shore,
Give way, boys! give way, boys! our labor is o'er.
As the black mass of forest our torch-light receives,
It breaks into groups of trunks, branches, and leaves;
On his perch in the hemlock, we've blinded with light
Yon gray-headed owl- - see him flutter from sight!
And the orator frog, as we gild with the glow,
Stops his speech with a groan, and dives splashing below,
One long and strong pull-the prow grates on the sand,
Three cheers for our luck, boys! as spring we to land.

SONG.

WRITTEN BY COLONEL WILLIAM L. STONE, FOR MR. HENRY RUSSELL.

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IN the course of a voyage home from England, our ship had been struggling, for two or three weeks, with perverse head-winds, and a stormy sea. It was in the month of May, yet the weather had at times a wintry sharpness, and it was apprehended that we were in the neighborhood of floating islands of ice, which at that season of the year drift out of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and sometimes occasion the wreck of noble ships.

Wearied out by the continued opposition of the elements, our captain at length bore away to the south, in hopes of catching the expiring breath of the trade-winds, and making what is called the southern passage. A few days wrought, as it were, a magical 'sea change' in every thing around us. We seemed to emerge into a different world. The late dark and angry sea, lashed up into roaring and swashing surges, became calm and sunny; the rude winds died away; and gradually a light breeze sprang up directly aft, filling out

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every sail, and wafting us smoothly along on an even keel. The air softened into a bland and delightful temperature. Dolphins began to play about us; the nautilus came floating by, like a fairy ship, with its mimic sail and rainbow tints; and flying-fish, from time to time, made their short excursive flights, and occasionally fell upon the deck. The cloaks and overcoats in which we had hitherto wrapped ourselves, and moped about the vessel, were thrown aside; for a summer warmth had succeeded to the late wintry chills. Sails were stretched as awnings over the quarter-deck, to protect us from the mid-day sun. Under these we lounged away the day, in luxurious indolence, musing, with half-shut eyes, upon the quiet ocean. The night was scárcely less beautiful than the day. The rising moon sent a quivering column of silver along the undulating surface of the deep, and, gradually climbing the heaven, lit up our towering top-sails and swelling main-sails, and spread a pale, mysterious light around. As our ship made her whispering way through this dreamy world of waters, every boisterous sound on board was charmed to silence; and the low whistle, or drowsy song, of a sailor from the forecastle, or the tinkling of a guitar, and the soft warbling of a female voice from the quarter-deck, seemed to derive a witching melody from the scene and hour. I was reminded of Oberon's exquisite description of music and moonlight on the ocean :

Thou rememberest

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;.

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.'

Indeed, I was in the very mood to conjure up all the imaginary beings with which poetry has peopled old ocean, and almost ready to fancy I heard the distant song of the mermaid, or the mellow shell of the triton, and to picture to myself Neptune and Amphitrite with all their pageant sweeping along the dim horizon.

A day or two of such fanciful voyaging, brought us in sight of the Bermudas, which first looked like mere summer clouds, peering above the quiet ocean. All day we glided along in sight of them, with just wind enough to fill our sails; and never did land appear more lovely. They were clad in emerald verdure, beneath the serenest of skies: not an angry wave broke upon their quiet shores, and small fishing craft, riding on the crystal waves, seemed as if hung in air. It was such a scene that Fletcher pictured to himself, when he extolled the halcyon lot of the fisherman:

Ah! would thou knewest how much it better were

To bide among the simple fisher-swains:

No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here,
Nor is our simple pleasure mixed with pains.

Our sports begin with the beginning year;
In calms, to pull the leaping fish to land,

In roughs, to sing and dance along the yellow sand.

In contemplating these beautiful islands, and the peaceful sea around them, I could hardly realize that these were the still vexed

Bermoothes' of Shakspeare, once the dread of mariners, and infamous in the narratives of the early discoverers, for the dangers and disasters which beset them. Such, however, was the case; and the islands derived additional interest in my eyes, from fancying that I could trace in their early history, and in the superstitious notions connected with them, some of the elements of Shakspeare's wild and beautiful drama of the Tempest. I shall take the liberty of citing a few historical facts, in support of this idea, which may claim some additional attention from the American reader, as being connected with the first settlement of Virginia.

At the time when Shakspeare was in the fulness of his talent, and seizing upon every thing that could furnish aliment to his imagination, the colonization of Virginia was a favorite object of enterprise among people of condition in England, and several of the courtiers of the court of Queen Elizabeth were personally engaged in it. In the year 1609, a noble armament of nine ships and five hundred men sailed for the relief of the colony. It was commanded by Sir George Somers, as admiral, a gallant and generous gentleman, above sixty years of age, and possessed of an ample fortune, yet still bent upon hardy enterprise, and ambitious of signalizing himself in the service of his country.

On board of his flag-ship, the Sea-Vulture, sailed also Sir Thomas Gates, lieutenant-general of the colony. The voyage was long and boisterous. On the twenty-fifth of July, the admiral's ship was separated from the rest, in a hurricane. For several days she was driven about at the mercy of the elements, and so strained and racked, that her seams yawned open, and her hold was half filled with water. The storm subsided, but left her a mere foundering wreck. The crew stood in the hold to their waists in water, vainly endeavoring to bail her with kettles, buckets, and other vessels. The leaks rapidly gained on them, while their strength was as rapidly declining. They lost all hope of keeping the ship afloat, until they should reach the American coast; and wearied with fruitless toil, determined, in their despair, to give up all farther attempt, shut down the hatches, and abandon themselves to Providence. Some, who had spirituous liquors, or comfortable waters,' as the old record quaintly terms them, brought them forth, and shared them with their comrades, and they all drank a sad farewell to one another, as men who were soon to part company in this world.

In this moment of extremity, the worthy admiral, who kept sleepless watch from the high stern of the vessel, gave the thrilling cry of land!' All rushed on deck, in a frenzy of joy, and nothing now was to be seen or heard on board, but the transports of men who felt as if rescued from the grave. It is true the land in sight would not, in ordinary circumstances, have inspired much self-gratulation. It could be nothing else but the group of islands called after their discoverer, one Juan Bermudas, a Spaniard, but stigmatized among the mariners of those days as 'the islands of devils! For the islands of the Bermudas,' says the old narrative of this voyage, as every man knoweth that hath heard or read of them, were never inhabited by any chris tian or heathen people, but were ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and inchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes,

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