Though the burden of this poem is ostensibly a tale of love and shipwreck, the writer hesitates not to solicit the youthful reader to accompany him in all his digressions, as he winds the mazy path he has chosen to arrive at the denouement. He trusts that he has had a higher aim than the simple rehearsal of a story of love and peril. The ramble will be found a varied one, diversified with cloud and sunshine, the rugged upland and the blooming dell. He hopes to awaken and vivify for after good some of the best feelings and sentiments of the youthful breast;-to touch some of its chords to answering music; that the GOD of Love and Purity may be glorified in the blissful lives of the noblest and fairest of His creation, heralding and accelerating the advent of that promised day, when "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose."

(2) "And now they prayed who never prayed before."

This is verified by various and indubitable testimony. Not to speak of the gay and thoughtless, hopeful and buoyant under the generous impulses of youth, as yet untainted by pernicious principles and guiltless of

fatal error, but in whose bosom conscience is still sensitive, and the claims of duty acknowledged :—not to mention such, the incorrigibly vile, the daring rebel against GoD and Truth, in the sudden confronting of danger and death, where bravado and prowess are equally impotent, is fain to become a suppliant from the constraints of fear, not the humility of penitence. Surely if the bold blasphemer is thus unmanned to the very trembling of guilt, when forced to realize that there is but a plank betwixt him and death,-alike shrinking back from the grave with the comparatively innocent,-it were well, at least in view of a possible contingency, to bend the ear to the voice of Wisdom, and early make preparation for that most important event in life,—its termination.

(3) There is a path, which, taken in life's prime,

Leads to a vale of verdure, fruits, and flowers."

I would earnestly impress upon the youthful reader of either sex, commencing life, the absolute necessity, if they would propose to themselves even a moderate terrestrial felicity, of starting aright. No postulate is more self-evident to the understanding and conscience, than that there are but two paths through the land of temporal existence,— the right, and the wrong. It is not less obvious, that these are as diverse and adverse to each other as light and darkness, summer and winter. Let youth beware, too, of presuming on the future; of flattering themselves, that after having roved all the bowers of pleasure, sported away the golden hours of time, and indulged to satiety the imagination, appetites, and passions, that they can return at will from the errors and the romance, to the constancy and realities of existence. Too often will it be found, that the will itself has parted with its own volition ;-that the violated being, enervated and diseased in all its faculties, is left to its fate, with no desire to recover, or power to make the effort.

(4) "Well the PULASKI had herself sustained

For to the noble Pole her name she owed."

COUNT CASIMIR PULASKI. He defended, to the last, the independence of his country against Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and went into exile when that was overthrown, and Poland dismembered. He came to America shortly after the breaking out of the War of the Revolution, received from Congress the appointment of Brigadier General, and fell, in the course of that memorable contest, a martyr to liberty, in the assault on Savannah, 1779. In the course of his military service in this country, he raised a corps of men, styled the Pulaski Legion, which he commanded in person.

(5) "How beautiful is night upon the sea."

The recollection of these tropic nights at sea, is invariably one of pleasure. The "watch on deck" is accustomed to pass the first hours of evening in song, or the rehearsal of tales and anecdotes connected with the sea. In pleasant weather, and the ship under a topsail breeze, nothing can be more cheering. The eye is agreeably entertained with the brilliant sparkling of the surging waters, the course of the flying-fish as they rise from the wave,-frequently, when pursued by the dolphin, falling on shipboard, the blowing of the unwieldy grampus, as it lazily ploughs the billows, and the occasional gleam of the snowy pinion of the tropic bird, in devious flight, apparently as restless by night as by day.

(6) "The Booby sleeps upon the quarter-rail."

This is a marine bird, about the size of a pigeon. It has received the significant sobriquet of "Booby" from seamen, from its apparently drowsy and listless nature, invariably closing its eyes, and sinking into a

slumber, immediately upon alighting. This bird frequently visits vessels in the warm latitudes, when it is readily captured by the seaman.

The incongruity of unequal unions between youth and old age has been happily illustrated by contrasting December with May. Young women are too often rendered miserable for life, by the ungenerous association of unequal years. Temper and mind may be brought gently and gradually to harmonize and assimilate; but to approximate in years where a wide disparity exists, is hopeless. It is greatly to be regretted, that in marriages a correspondency in this respect is not more peremptorily insisted on. This unnatural association is undoubtedly, in many instances, improperly influenced, on the one part by pecuniary, on the other by more reprehensible motives; and the blame of error and abuse may justly attach, in no inconsiderable degree, to fashionable men, who, having dissipated their youth in a whirlwind of criminal indulgence, and grown callous and unprincipled in their unmanly selfishness, are prepared to tempt innocence to the vortex of their own ruin, and blast the hope and the beauty of Nature in the immolation of the loveliest of her children.

(8) "To wealth he cringed not, nor to office bowed,

Which knaves and cowards do, to their disgrace."

There could be but one opinion among intelligent and upright men, in respect to most political leaders, did they look upon them as they really are, without permitting party predilections to blind and pervert the judgment, viz., a general acquiescence and consent to the conviction, that these mouthing patriots are but another class of gamblers, destitute of intrinsic worth, and relying upon none of the nobler principles and motives of action to form and establish a reputable character. The

demagogue loses nothing in the cast of the ballot, his own stake being but cunning and duplicity, too often successfully exerted to win the support of the credulous, the uninformed, and the careless; while, if he be fortunate in climbing to power, the public purse, the only incentive to his ambition, becomes his certain prey. I desire more particularly to lead the attention of young men to these facts, as respects the mass of aspirants after popular favor and office, because matured youth is the time, if ever, to call the sagacious element of the mind into action, when the physical man, conscious of power, is preparing to test his perfected vigor. This period is emphatically the commencement of the march of life, the anterior condition of childhood and youth developing only the preparatory discipline-and which, to prove successful in securing the great prizes of fortune, fame, and honor, must, from the outset, be under the guidance of a discretionary, a lucid, and disciplined judgment. A young man, thus early accustomed to habits of thought, comparison and circumspection, will scarce become the dupe of the political demagogue: -he will take his platforms, his asseverations, his empty eloquence, all at their true value, and be neither misled by prating parrots, nor overreached by cunning foxes.

(9) "There are who barter Truth for Mammon's hire,
The heart's integrity for yellow dross."

The writer has felt himself compelled to notice, and at considerable length, the fearful tendency of the age to a debasing corruption of manner and life, springing chiefly from an inordinate, and not unfrequently criminal, craving after riches, the reprehensible passion for luxury and display, and a dishonorable strife for political distinction and emoluments:—as it were a triple union of demoralizing agents, disturbing the social elements, tossing them like a troubled sea, and soiling society, near and remote, with the mire and dirt evolved by the tempest of a moral apostasy.