Henry, my boy, look on me'-I raised my head. He held a letter in his hand, a letter from my uncle in Jamaica. It seemed he knew my affliction, and pitied it-he had therefore written, and in the most urgent terms, to send me to him—promised me every thing I wanted-with a beautiful description of his plantations, his groves, grounds, parterres, colonades, &c. &c.-concluding the whole with that privileged phrase of all rich uncles- he shall come.'

I read it.

And you will go, my boy?'

No, father, no. Why should I go to him? I would die herehere in my home-here in your arms-here with cousin Mary. No, father, no. I'll not curse him with a maniac-spare me.'

'But Mary shall go with you.'

I shook my head mournfully. Mary herself at that moment entered, and stood gazing at me.

Reader, if you have ever seen an angel just dropped down from heaven, to charm earth with visions of superhuman beatitude, then you can paint her. If you have ever seen a face, in which all the affections, sympathies, feelings, passions, that go to make up the best part of humanity, are depicted and blended together, and that face lit up with mind, and always accustomed to greet you with a smile, and always speaking for you, staying with you, loving you, looking with favor on your errors, smoothing over your faults, bearing with your humors, regretting and pardoning your peevishness, and doing this time and time again, and then doing it all as if she wearied not, but rejoiced to suffer for you, and would suffer more if you wished her to, and even seemed to invite it-if you have ever seen such a face, and in it such an expression, you may then know my feelings, as I raised my face, pallid thin and tearful, expressive of my agony, and met her's of love, weeping also, and bending over me.

Mary and me were betrothed long before, and I have nothing sentimental to say about it-indeed, if the reader would read nothing else, he had better stop at once. I have to tell him of something else-of-but let him read on, if he wishes it.

'Mary, Mary! have you, too, come to torment me, you so kind, you I love so, you I live for, pray for? what have I done to merit it?' My father had left the study. I sat there, my head on my hand, and that rested on the table.

Mary leant over my shoulder, lifted my head from its recumbent position, kissed my hot forehead-one of her tears rolled down on my cheek as she did so.

I looked up. I never saw so much affliction on one face before— it seemed the misery of an age was crowded into a moment, and all of it settled there to blast it.

And will it come back?'

'Whither has it gone? where are our bright days? your life, smiles, joy? Alas, Henry, you are wasting, murdering yourselfyou have strung your mind up to an unnatural pitch-the last oil you are burning of an almost expiring lamp-and those loving you, caring for you, depending on you-they, Henry, are drooping too. Will you murder me?'

I started You, Mary, murder you! I looked hard at hersurely, I had been blind. Where was the red lip, the bright eye, the sweet smile, the calm and expansive forehead of Mary Latimer? sure, that was not it, this was not her, thus thin, worn, wasted!

'You, Mary-murder you! I have been dreaming. I am a fiend, a villain, a devil. I have forgotten, been selfish, thought none ever felt but me, none were wretched but me, none were ever cursed with such a weight on their hearts but me. What, when, where, how shall I remedy it?'

This was what she wanted. I was a lamb now, and led as she wished.

Accept your uncle's proposals, throw away these deadly volumes, come out from these shadows, and be yourself again. Look out on life, look out as you ought, and drink in the bright and beautiful around you. Talk, laugh, be gay-look not upon things with this jaundiced vision of yours, but think of the better purposes of being, and be happy again. The vessel waits for us-I go with you and once out on the blue waters-once out of this wretched gloom and misery here, and we may yet hope for restored health, and that time will bring round better days and all will be well again. And the sea! O, the sea, Henry, the bright and beautiful sea, with its life and glory and action, with its storms and winds and sweeping waves, with its hues by day and fiery magnificence by night! And then all the stories of it-of its sparry realms and green grottoes, with its groves of coral and cavernous crystal, its beds of hyacinth and emerald and diamond, and-ah! there, I see you laugh again, and that's what I want, and you will go, Henry, you will go?'

Thus did this sweet girl, this angel, when her own heart was almost broken, put on the hollow mockery of gayety; and by talking, and rambling, and picturing up these little nothings, bring back something like harmony into my heart, and set it beating again with something of its accustomed music.

I need not say she prevailed, and that we were soon prepared for our journey. The reader may therefore, if he chooses, suppose us on the ocean.

The reader has doubtless guessed before this, the cause of the strange conduct recorded in the last chapter. The scholar, the sedentary man, need not be told of that morbidness, that blackness, that living murder, that protracted death, that hell on earth that's gendered by study and long confinement; that state of mind when day becomes night, light darkness; when Paradise were a desert, and the bright span of heaven,

Fretted with gold and curious workmanship,

were little else than a dungeon's dome bending down its rocky arms, to clasp one in its almost tangible horror; of those moments, when that leaden something lies on the heart like a mountain, crushing it and turning to gall its sweet founts of happiness, and we walk our rooms with streaming eyes, quivering lips, and the imaginations of fiends. He knows it all. Let him add to this already insupportable wretchedness, a deadly perseverance, a merciless disregard of nature's wants, as she keeps crying out in the pallid lip, the trembling hand, the unsteady pulse, the hot brow and ringing brain ; let him add a perseverance, until actual disease sets in, and the black spectre of incipient Insanity begins to brood over and get the mastery of the intellect, and he will then have no difficulties in understanding me, nor will the picture seem overdrawn.

We dropped down the channel with a light wind, in one of the most beautiful barques of the service, and passing between the green shores of Staten and Governor's Island, glided out on the expanse of heaving waters. The morning was one of brilliancy, the sky had scarcely a speck in it, save the low banks of white clouds that lay along the horizon, the waves swung to and fro with an easy motion, the sea gulls skimmed about us, and the gently indented ridges of the Jersey shore sunk in the distance, and were scarcely distinguished from the low line of the ocean.

The sea now began to look bluer, as is always the case as we leave shore, the breeze freshened, the sails filled, the larboard fore and aft main stays wore taughter and taughter, and while the waves grew rougher and angrier, and began to heave and hurry and splash about the bows, the gallant vessel bowed to her duty, and sprang through the element like a sea-bird just loosed from prison, and shaking its white pinions to the rush of the wind. The breeze continued, the bald tops of Neversink lost their outline, and by the middle of the morning's watch, the last of the land had vanished, and we felt ourselves alone upon the ocean.

Every man ought to go to sea once, for the sake of this moment. The beauty and solemnity of it together, make an impression not soon to pass away. Landsmen may speculate on it, may think themselves at sea, and try to conjure up something of the feeling they would have, as they saw the land shut out, and nothing under and around them but a rolling, growling, mutable element; but they need to be there, they need to stand on that deck, lean over that tafferel, hear that wind in the shrouds, and the thunder of the divided waters as the stout vessel battles with them; they need with their own eyes to look up to that heaven, with their own eyes to sweep that horizon, and see nothing but water, water, water, wherever they turn, and with their own ears to hear that water roaring like a blood-hound for blood, to get any thing of the true feeling which the scene inspires.

A man feels very much like one who leaves a crowd and goes into solitude, except a sense of vastness all the while following him, and filling his heart with a feeling that words are poor things for. He feels alone. He feels very much as we suppose a man might; and the speculations of certain philosophers were sane ones, viz. that man is properly an isolated being, that he was formed so, and were happier so, and that the restrictions and moral duties devolving on him in a social state, are at once prejudicial and unnatural. It is in such a state that the heart gets a freshness it can get no where else that old prejudices and habits break up, or are swept away by new thoughts and new objects of thought-that a new life is given to us, and a springiness, an activity, a poetry of action, so to speak, takes possession of us, and we are transformed into a new being. It is here a man finds the cords in his heart tighten to those about him, beyond what it will do elsewhere-that the social qualities manifest themselves in their most attractive manner-that the tenderness of all these relations is increased, and he better performs the duties that belong to him-that he most habitually appreciates his blessings, has a more immediate sense of his affinity to Heaven-in short, that it makes him better.

The effect upon me was electric. My mind, no longer at its former tension, loosed from old habits and my thoughts turned into new channels, the mists began to clear away, and a healthier action take place. A quietude succeeded not easy to describe. There was no lassitude in it, as might be expected from a reaction, but so easy, although rapid, was the transit to health, that I felt like a man climbing a hill towards the sunrise, when it breaks on him at once in the broad blaze of day. A freshness passed over my heart, like sunlight over a bank of summer flowers, giving it new beauty, besides increasing its sweetness. I am confident of this, that my society became more tolerable; for those who once had shunned me as a man whose mind was unsound, now gathered around me, and offered such little attentions as passengers in such cases offer inva

lids. I thanked them kindly; and a degree of affability spread round the ship, at once new and delightful; imparting animation to the dullest, and putting wit into some skulls, entirely innocent of such a thing before that, where it absolutely sparkled like the native ore.

Our skipper was a man worth a moment's notice. He was a tall, strong-boned New Englander, hardy as a pine knot, and not unlike one in color. His straight hair fell over a fine brow. He had a blue eye, rather too much so for the leathern color of his countenance, while a slight provincialism, now and then perceptible, showed him Maine-born and fitted to the ocean. He was such a man as you would not like to offend, if an enemy; and would have no fear of it, if a friend; one, whose honor you'd take his face as affidavit for, at any moment. He was a grand sailor, too; and sprinkled, withal, with a touch of that self-complacency in respect to his knowledge of nautical matters, which as often bespeaks high merit in a man as it does something not quite so praise-worthy; and there was an infinite fund of humor in him too, to which we always made reference when wanting amusement, which quality made him much valued by us all. His ship was called the Swan, and, indeed, under his management and a fair wind, she rode the sea like one.

I must also notice two others of the ship's company, while I am about it, as they will play a slight part in an interlude in the course of our drama. The one was a little man, a Chinese-been in this country two or three years for trade, and now bound to the West Indies. He was squint-eyed, pot-shaped, and bandy-legged, and in his feet, made but small pretensions to diminutiveness, either latitudinally or longitudinally; for his legs looked like sticks stuck in a pan-cake, such as I have seen school-boys of a summer's afternoon, making by a mud-puddle in the country. He was also very pert and techy; fond of talking, which he did continually, and with the most execrable intonations; and, like all loquacious gentlemen, he had the misfortune not to know it, so that on the whole he was very amusing and very troublesome.

The other individual was his antipodes. If the Chinese was short, this man was long; if the Chinese was thick, this man was thin. He would have passed for a walking stick by moon-light. He was green and ignorant, just come from the Captain's state, and first time on ship-board. His face was such a one as you would whittle from a stick with a jack-knife; his dress was not exactly a la mode, as his coat flapped about like a top-sail blown from the bolt-ropes, and his boots were absolutely tremendous. Every one thought of their toes as he passed them, and he thumped round the deck like a cat shod with walnut shucks-or, to raise the figure a little, he made a noise like half a dozen calkers thumping on the hulk of a line of battle ship.

These were the only curiosities of the ship-the rest were gentlemen.