experienced swordsman, at the imminent peril of his life, struck down his weapon, and sliced him through as one would a water-melon. Be wary when the deer stands at bay.

But whatever may be the constituents of either courage or cowardice, it is certain that while one passes through life with a composed peace of mind, another is perpetually intruded upon with misgivings and visions of anguish. In addition to the actual periods of risk which come to all, these victims of fright frequently think they find peril when in reality it does not exist. The unfortunate Mr. Fitzgerald is one of this sort. A more chicken-hearted creature never swaggered about under the mask of masculine attire. His fancy is always filled with horrid accidents. He enters the steam-boat with a presentiment that the boiler will burst in a few moments; and in a stage he eyes every steep declivity with a forlorn conviction that his time is come. In walking through the forest, he looks upon himself as a poisoned man if a strange leaf touches his hand, and flies the old logs and grapevines for alligators and sea-serpents. He once mistook the shrill whistle of a quail for the signal of a banditti; and in meeting a woodcutter with his axe, in a lonely glen, he was about to exclaim, "Take my money, but spare my life," when the intruder turned away by a side path. I was last summer walking with him in the city, when I felt him drawing me away with an expression of fright. A large, goodnatured dog, with his tongue lapping from his jaws, trotted directly toward him.

"He's mad!" said Fitzgerald: "he runs in a straight line." And then he followed his example, and also ran in a straight line, though in an opposite direction, which made me conclude he was quite as mad as the dog.

We were once fellow-passengers in a packet-ship from New Orleans, and were overtaken off Cape Hatteras by a hurricane. It was night; and, to say the truth, the tempest howled terrifically. Many of the sails, which we were compelled to raise to keep from shore, were torn into stripes. Apprehensions were entertained that the vessel would spring a leak or go to pieces on the shoals. The waves ran like mountains and broke over

the deck, and the whole ocean presented

a scene of tremendous fury, at once sublime and appalling. The ladies in the cabin were shrieking in despair, and uttering the names of husbands and parents, whom they never expected to see again, in agonizing fear; and the captain's voice, hoarse with exertion, could scarcely be heard amid the din and discord of the elements. It is one of the greatest weaknesses of a coward to bully and brag when danger is afar off; and Fitzgerald had worn that mask bravely during the first week of blue sky and gentle breezes. I could not but observe the change. A dim lamp was flaring in the cabin, and the few passengers were collected around the table and clinging to it. Most of them were pale and silent. One would occasionally venture a remark or jest, that fell dead from the lips that spoke it. Some people would joke in the jaws of the grave. Poor Fitzgerald did not happen to be among the number. When the morning broke, we went up the gangway and looked abroad. He had no sooner lifted his head into the air than his hat darted toward the sky like an arrow. The captain was bellowing through the trumpet. The billows had swept the decks. The drenched sailors were holding on to the ropes for their lives. The deck was almost as perpendicular as a wall. Should I live a thousand years I shall never lose the impression of his face as he stood by my side in the dim morning light: his starting eyeballs, rolling around upon the really awful scene, as the vessel went rushing, rocking, and thundering through the water: his hair was streaming in the wind: his features had the whiteness of marble: his very lips were bloodless and ashy; and as a billow some seventy or eighty feet in height, tumbling like an overturned mountain toward our stern, lifted the ship as if it would actually hurl it into the air, and then swept from our bow, leaving a chasm that seemed gaping to overwhelm us, he uttered a convulsive sound as if some hand had forced a dagger into his very heart, and clasping his white hands together, shrunk back into the cabin, the most abject, prostrated wretch that eyes ever looked on. I crawled out upon deck, and clinging to a rope, addressed a goodhumoured sailor who was holding on to a piece of the shrouds without any signs of anxiety.

"Good morning, sir," said he; "pretty stiff breeze: we go now finely: one can take some confort in such a ship as this."

"Comfort!" echoed I; "I don't know what you call comfort." (I was wet to the skin, and had not slept all night.)

"Why," said the man, laughing, "I was in a brig last month that went down under our feet, after we had been pumping her for twenty-four hours."

How did you escape?"

"A schooner hove in sight, and we got into the longboat."

"And how did you feel, when you found you were going down, without the hope of help?""

"Why, when we knew that the old thing must go-what must, you know, must-so I made up my mind to it, and felt easy."

can

"Easy!" echoed I again, as I crept into the cabin; "and this is the way a plain, uninformed, ignorant man meet the ghastly apparition that frights the king on his throne, and the philosopher amid his books."

I am inclined to think that cowardice may be overcome by active life and some familiarity with danger; and certainly recommend the young to begin early to train themselves in the school of reflection, to meet the perils which environ the inhabitants of this earth. They should be accustomed to calculate upon the certainty of being, in the course of their pilgrimage, often thrown into painful and critical situations. They cannot escape from them always; and, at some time or other, must give up the existence which is only bestowed for a brief period. No one ought to live unprepared to die. It should be one of the earliest lessons of the father to his son: not taught by thrusting him into scenes of horror, but by gentle admonitions; not by bringing him suddenly to the bed

of the dying, but by musing with him sometimes in the receptacles of the dead, when the pleasant grass and trees are there, and he can touch his soul with tenderness and meditation, subdued melancholy and calm resignation; you may rely on it he will be better for it when he goes into the world. Passion will not so easily intoxicate, danger alarm, nor pleasure corrupt him. He who plunges headlong into the vortexes of society, conscious of no influences beyond those connected with this limited sphere, is a wretched gamester, who stakes his all on a throw, and who, if he wins to-day, may be irreparably ruined to-morrow. In triumph he possesses no restraint, and when trouble and peril surround him he is without support. But he who is correctly disciplined to reserve something in his own bosom from the demands of ordinary life, who moves through the adventures of the day with the full knowledge that they are passing and often vain, however he may participate in their joys, is not prostrated by their calamities. Experience also affords a secret consolation in the thought that half the threats of fortune, like her promises, are never accomplished. I remember many who have blamed that slandered goddess for visionary prospects of human bliss, but I cannot call to mind one who has praised her for dissipating numerous storms that hang over the wanderer's path but never descend upon his head. Shakspeare has a fine sentiment on the subject of cowardice :

What can be avoided,
Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should
fear,

Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

ARTICLE.

what about? not one jot forwarder was I after scribbling and erasing three hours than I was when I began. I looked into the fire and fancied a thousand images; I stared at the clouds till I saw all sorts of figures and scenes, but not one that I could imbody or record, not a single subject for an article. I started

and changed my position, with a vague hope that it might change the current of my mind, and introduce something or other to relieve me in my present emergency. With my legs crossed, therefore, and my eyes firmly shut, my elbow resting upon the table, and my finger placed contemplatively upon my nose, I determined so to remain until I had hit upon something fine. You may be sure, reader, I now had a great variety of charming objects passing before me; and several highly sensible remarks, and some very swelling sentences occurred; but they came by like birds around the head of a traveller by night, and I could not catch them for my life. Suddenly I started up with a thought. It was an original view of human nature-something which I had not seen in any author. "I'll give it," said I to myself, "in the style of Dr. Johnson. It shall flow on regularly, like the graceful and heaving billows of a gently agitated sea. I will commence with some general remarks upon the character of mankind, introduce an anecdote of ancient time, point the moral with keen satire, and round it off with a dignified quotation from Sophocles or Euripides."

Inspired with new hope, down I sat, dipped my pen in the ink, and began:

"That man is a creature of interest and the sport of fortune, that he desires to-day what he will forget to-morrow, and that his whole life is but a series of accidentally formed wants and beautifully contrived gratifications, no one, we presume, will deny. His mind is constructed of so subtle a material-if that which thinks can be called matter-that, like the air, whose elasticity occasions its perpetual changes, it is continually undergoing the most extraordinary revolutions. By a long concatenation of circumstances, he-" I paused a moment, drew my pen across what I had written, and made a different commencement.

"Eschines, the disciple of Socrates, informs us that Callias, the torch-bearer, having been accused of amassing immense wealth, while Aristides, his near relation, who had rendered important services to the republic, was left in poverty, proved that he had frequently offered that great man large sums, which he had invariably refused in such terms

as these:

"It better becomes Aristides to glory in his poverty, than Callias in his riches; for we see, every day, people make a good as well as a bad use of their riches; but it is hard to find one who bears poverty with a noble spirit, and they only are ashamed of it, who are poor against their will.'

"Mathematicians have asserted,

that "

But here I stopped again. I could not help picturing to myself some sweet, careless, glowing girl, fresh in the ardour and innocence of her new feelings, running her beaming eyes over my dull and laboured page, and repeating with her half-smiling, half-pouting lips,

"Eschines-Callias-Socrates-Aris

trides-mathematicians, &c."

"Will she not," thought I, half in love with the image which my own mischievous fancy had conjured up, "will she not fling my learned nonsense away, and turn to some author whose sprightly style and sentimental images are better adapted to the brightness and tenderness of her own hopes and imagination ?"

"Something for the ladies," said I, "will be a thousand times better." I went to work once more.

So

"It was a soft moonlight night in summer. The radiant stars were silently shedding down their influence upon the world, soothing the feelings which had been all the preceding day agitated in the bustle of life. The noise of a distant torrent was just heard upon the air, which mingled harmoniously with the rustling of the breeze and the plaintive notes of the nightingale."

I wrote on

"The fragrant flowers were gradually bending down beneath the dew which had gathered upon their crimson bosoms, when a young stranger was observed riding gracefully down a hill with an aspect of "

Again I paused, and again folded my arms. I hummed a tune, got up, walked three times across the room, and at length flung down the pen in utter despair. I felt myself falling into the same old, beaten, tiresome track which bears the footprints of all would-be geniuses and newspaper scribblers since Adam. I had entered upon the old arena of love and valour. My hero had been introduced in the summer eve,

"Yes," replied the mathematician, "I conceive it to be quite probable. If we were to sow a large extent of country with plants, which, in their growth, would produce a triangle or any other figure, of certain colours which reflect the rays of the sun most forcibly, the inhabitants of the moon would perceive that we were intelligent beings, from the fact that we had drawn a mathematical figure; and they might reply in the same manner."

"Ay," replied the theologian, "but suppose they do not understand mathematics?"

"Why, then," said Gauss, slapping his hand angrily on the table, "let them go to the d-1.”

WE question whether any people in the world can boast a more uniformly correct pronunciation than the inhabitants of the United States. Although our country comprehends such a vast space, the traveller will distinguish by no means the same diversity of speech which may be discerned in passing through other nations, yet there are, notwithstanding, several instances, even in the first circles, of inelegant exceptions. Some arise from a want of proper familiarity with standard authorities, others from the desire to exhibit superior grace and accuracy in their elocution. One delivers his words with a too deliberate execution of each particular syllable, which, however it may enhance the distinctness, greatly diminishes the grace and ease of conversation. There is a difference to be observed between an orator addressing a crowded assembly, and a gentleman speaking to his friend or a private company. Some in a parlour, and treating upon trifles, ape the profound gravity of a tragedian. We have heard a person of this kind declare "I will thank you, madam, for another cup of tea," with as much effort at theatrical elegance, as if he were about to swallow poison instead of hyson; and another observe he was "fond of tripe," with a solemn dignity of expres

sion, rolling the r off his tongue in such a manner, that a foreigner, unacquainted with our language, might naturally conclude something very serious was going

on.

But this, although a fault among colloquists, is preferable to the practice which we must allow to be prevalent here, of giving words, however properly accentuated, a certain turn of an ungraceful character. There is a class of words to which this observation particularly applies, but we are scarcely able to make the reader understand by letters those precise distinctions of sound which we would here illustrate. In the proper manner of giving such words as ensue, suit, &c., there will be audible to an attentive ear a slight softening of the u, bringing it nearer to the same letter in unite. Our mother tongue contains many words of the same character, wherein there is room for one to discriminate nicely between the two extremes. We have now in our recollection a highly-accomplished lady, whose remarks are generally so full of intelligence and wit, that it is strange to hear them marred by so trivial a defect She tells you the doos of evening had scarcely fallen from the skoi when the koind gurl, at whose soote she had undertaken the journey, began to grow afraid of being pursood; but knoo nobody was