ited a mingled expression of disgust and compassion, on his companion, he added with reverence: 'Had you thought more of Him in fair weather, your case would be less to be pitied in this tempest.' 'Do you still think there is much danger?' asked Dillon.

'To them that have reason to fear death. Listen! Do you hear that hollow noise beneath ye?'

"Tis the wind driving by the vessel!'

"Tis the poor thing herself,' said the affected cockswain, 'giving her last groans. The water is breaking up her decks, and in a few minutes more, the handsomest model that ever cut a wave, will be like the chips that fell from her in framing!'

'Why then did you remain here?' cried Dillon wildly.

'To die in my coffin, if it should be the will of God,' returned Tom. These waves are to me what the land is to you: I was born on them, and I have always meant that they should be my grave.' 'But I-I,' shrieked Dillon, ‘I am not ready to die!—I cannot die! I will not die!'

'Poor wretch!' muttered his companion, 'you must go like the rest of us; when the death-watch is called, none can skulk from the muster.'

'I can swim,' Dillon continued, rushing with frantic eagerness to the side of the wreck. 'Is there no billet of wood, no rope, that I oan take with me?'

'None; everything has been cut away, or carried off by the sea. If ye are about to strive for your life, take with ye a stout heart and a clean conscience, and trust the rest to God.'

'God!' echoed Dillon, in the madness of his frenzy, 'I know no God! there is no God that knows me!'

'Peace!' said the deep tones of the cockswain, in a voice that seemed to speak in the elements; 'blasphemer, peace l'

The heavy groaning, produced by the water in the timbers of the Ariel, at that moment added its impulse to the raging feelings of Dillon, and he cast himself headlong into the sea. The water, thrown by the rolling of the surf on the beach, was necessarily returned to the ocean, in eddies, in different places favorable to such an action of the element. Into the edge of one of these countercurrents, that was produced by the very rocks on which the schooner lay, and which the watermen call the 'under-tow,' Dillon had un

knowingly thrown his person; and when the waves had driven him a short distance from the wreck, he was met by a stream that his most desperate efforts could not overcome. He was a light and powerful swimmer, and the struggle was hard and protracted. With the shore immediately before his eyes, and at no great distance, he was led, as by a false phantom, to continue his efforts, although they did not advance him a foot. The old seaman, who at first had watched his motions with careless indifference, understood the danger of his situation at a glance, and, forgetful of his own fate, he shouted aloud, in a voice that was driven over the struggling victim to the ears of his shipmates on the sands:

'Sheer to port, and clear the under-tow! Sheer to the southward!'

Dillon heard the sounds, but his faculties were too much obscured by terror to distinguish their object; he, however, blindly yielded to the call, and gradually changed his direction until his face was once more turned toward the vessel. Tom looked around him for a rope, but all had gone over with the spars, or been swept away by the waves. At this moment of disappointment, his eyes met those of the desperate Dillon. Calm and inured to horrors as was the veteran seaman, he involuntarily passed his hand before his brow to exclude the look of despair he encountered; and when, a moment afterward, he removed the rigid member, he beheld the sinking form of the victim as it gradually settled in the ocean, still struggling with regular but impotent strokes of the arms and feet to gain the wreck, and to preserve an existence that had been so much abused in its hour of allotted probation. 'He will soon meet his God, and learn that his God knows him!' murmured the cockswain to himself. As he yet spoke, the wreck of the Ariel yielded to an overwhelming sea, and after a universal shudder, her timbers and planks gave way, and were swept toward the cliffs, bearing the body of the simple-hearted cockswain among the ruins.

The Character of Falstaff

James F. Cooper.

Falstaff's wit is an emanation of a fine constitution; an exuberation of good-humor and good-nature; an overflowing of his love of laughter and good-fellowship; a giving vent to his heart's ease

and over-contentment with himself and others. He would not be in character if he were not so fat as he is; for there is the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury of his imagination, and the pam pered self-indulgence of his physical appetites. He enriches and nourishes his mind with jests, as he does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out his jokes as he would a capon or a haunch of venison, where there is cut and come again; and pours out upon them the oil of gladness. His tongue drops fatness, and in the chambers of his brain 'it snows of meat and drink.' He keeps up perpetual holiday and open house, and we live with him in a round of invitations to a rump and dozen. Yet we are not to suppose that he was a mere sensualist. All this is as much in imagination as in reality. His sensuality does not engross and stupify his other faculties, but 'ascends me into the brain, clears away all the dull crude vapors that environ it, and makes it full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes.' His imagination keeps up the ball after his senses have done with it. He seems to have even a greater enjoyment of the freedom from restraint, of good cheer, of his ease, of his vanity, in the ideal exaggerated description which he gives of them, than in fact. He never fails to enrich his discourse with allusions to eating and drinking; but we never see him at table. He carries his own larder about with him, and he is himself 'a tun of man.' His pulling out the bottle in the field of battle is a joke to show his contempt for glory accompanied with danger, his systematic adherence to his Epicurean philosophy in the most trying circumstances. Again, such is his deliberate exaggeration of his own vices, that it does not seem quite certain whether the account of his hostess's bill, found in his pocket, with such an out-of-the-way charge for capons and sack, with only one half-penny-worth of bread, was not put there by himself as a trick to humor the jest upon his favorite propensities, and as a conscious caricature of himself. He is represented as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton, etc., and yet we are not offended, but delighted with him; for he is all these as much to amuse others as to gratify himself. He openly assumes all these characters to show the humorous part of them. The unrestrained indulgence of his own ease, appetites, and convenience, has neither malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an actor in himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we no more object to the

character of Falstaff in a moral point of view, than we should think of bringing an excellent comedian, who should represent him to the life, before one of the police offices.

Hazlitt.

The Raven.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I ponderea, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber-door;
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber-door
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah! distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore -•
Nameless here for evermore.

Thrilled me

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating: "Tis some visitor entreating entrance at chamber-doorSome late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber-door; This it is, and nothing more.

my

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, -And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber-door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"-here I opened wide the door

Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word,

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before.
"Surely," said I-"surely that is something at my window lattice
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore―
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore.

'Tis the wind, and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed

he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber-doorPerched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber-doorPerched and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure

no craven,

Ghastly, grim and ancient Raven, wandering from the nightly shore

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore!' Quoth the Raven: "Nevermore."

Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber-door.....
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber-door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered-