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Thus far the story reads more or less | ashore, on the look-out; and, though the glibly; although here and there a suspicion obtrudes itself to cast a hazy shadow of doubt across its authenticity. Against unqualified credence comes the fact that the two children of the mysterious city have been made a show; and that the account of their origin is derived from their present keeper, who has translated enough of the narrative to explain the children's appearance at Boston: he says the remainder will be published as soon as Velasquez can place the manuscript in proper hands, and inquiries have been made among those who accompanied him.

In a country which boasts of a Barnum, we may be forgiven, therefore, for accompanying the above account of the mysterious city, and the equally mysterious children, with a caution. The friends of Mr. Huertis of Baltimore, and those of Mr. Hammond "of Canada," will doubtless be applied to by the curious in the States; and from them could at least be gleaned some materials for authenticating the exhibitor's statements. The existence of such a city is too curious and important to be allowed to remain long in doubt.

The children are described as having a tottering and feeble gait, and idiotic look. Their ages are respectively eight and ten.

It is said that the "Exhibition" is on its way from the United States to rival Madame Tussaud's, and the thousand wonders preparing for the coming Fair of the World. Let us hope that among the first visitors will be a categorical committee from the Ethnographical Society; and that a deputation from the Royal Geographical Society will exact from the showman a strict account of Don Pedro Velasquez's latitudes and longitudes.

From Dickens' "Household Words."

LIVES AND CARGOES.

A SHORT time ago, a vessel, crowded with passengers, was wrecked, in the night, on one end of the Goodwin Sands; and, a little after daybreak, another vessel, laden with a cargo of tin in sheets, copper in tiles and cakes, and lead in pigs, was wrecked at the other end of the sands. They were both descried by the glasses of sailors

wind was still blowing a gale, and the sea running high and wild, a crew of seamen put off in the life-boat from Broadstairs, determined to risk their lives in an attempt to reach one of the vessels. They took their course towards the vessel crowded with passengers, and which had been first wrecked. Soon afterwards a second boat, from another station, was launched into the bursting waves, and made its perilous way towards the other vessel, laden with the cargo of sheet-tin, tiles and cakes of copper, and pigs of lead.

The crew of the first life-boat managed to reach the vessel; and, by the numbers that crowded the deck, all crying out and praying to be saved, the boatmen immediately saw that there was a good deal more rough work chalked out for them. Two or three "trips," and the co-operation of their mates ashore, would be necessary, to save so many lives. They made up their minds to the task, and at once took as many as they could -landed them safely at Broadstairs, and then buffeted their way back to the same vessel again,-the sea often running clean over men and boat. This they repeated-a second life-boat from Broadstairs joining them in the exploit-and in the course of the day they succeeded in taking off every soul on board, and bringing them safely ashore. The vessel also had a number of casks of butter and lard in her hold, which the captain had ordered up on deck, all ready; but if the boatmen had taken these, they must have saved two or three lives less for each cask, according to weight, so the butter and lard were left to perish.

The crew of the boat that made its way to the other vessel, at the farthermost end of the sands, found that although there were but few lives to save, (only the captain, mate, and two "hands,") there was a much better thing, viz., a valuable cargo. No wild and unmanageable passengers-desperate men, half-frantic women, screaming children—all very difficult to get into the boat, and yet more difficult to prevent from leaping down into her in a crowd that would capsize or sink her, but four seamen, who assisted them in getting out of the hold cases of placid sheet-tin, patient tiles of copper, imperturbable solid cakes, and docile pigs of lead. They also found a mine of penny

pieces, in the shape of casks of copper nails, and a thousand copper bolts. They made their way back with as much as they could safely carry, and shortly afterwards returned with two other boats. They persevered in this "labor of love" till they had got out nearly all the cargo, and carried it safe ashore.

Now comes the question of remuneration for these two parties of bold sailors, and the wise condition of maritime laws in these very important cases. The sailors who had assisted in moving the sheet-tin, the tiles, and cakes, and casks, and bolts of copper, and the pigs of lead, received, each man, twenty pounds in the current coin of the realm; and the sailors who had risked their lives in saving the crowd of passengers in the other vessel, (having no lawful claim to any thing for only saving human lives,) received, by special subscription and consideration, half-a-crown each ! Had they saved the casks of butter and lard, that would have given them a legitimate claim to salvage; but as it was, they had no claim at all. It should be added that the sailors knew this at the time.

Coast sailors are always well aware of the inhuman condition of the law in this respect; sometimes, their necessities urging, and a great occasion tempting them, they abandon the saving of life for the preservation of property-according to the direct teaching of the law;-but, in general, they will never see any fellow-creatures perish, if risking their own lives, without hope or chance of reward, can preserve others.

A striking instance-one of the many that take place every year on different parts of the British coast-has recently occurred at Broadstairs.

The "Mary White" of London, on her first voyage, was wrecked on the northeast part of the Goodwin Sands, on the sixth instant. The vessel was descried at daybreak from Broadstairs, and, at this time, a gale of wind was blowing from the northeast, which always causes a terrific sea. The life-boat was soon launched, and eight young men volunteered to risk their lives in an attempt to save the crew, if possible. It was evident to them, at first sight, that the vessel was doomed to destruction, as the sea was making a complete breach over her, and flying half-mast high. Be it clearly

understood that as the men saw that the vessel was sure to go down very speedily, their gallant venture was not for cargo and profit, but to save life at peril of their own. The men were provided with Ayckbourn's "life-belts," in case of being swept off into the sea; and, as events turned out, it was very fortunate for two of them that they had such assistance in being kept on the surface. The crew of the ill-fated vessel made an attempt, as it was afterwards known, to get out their long-boat, and one poor fellow got his wrist broken in the effort; but the sea continually swept completely over them, and rendered all chance of launching the boat quite hopeless.

In about an hour from the time of starting the crew of the life-boat neared the vessel, and having weathered her, they quickly made up their minds that the only chance of saving any of them would be to run through the heavy sea, and board her. This was a daring expedient, and the first sea made a rush clean over them, men and boat; but the boat rose like a wild duck out of the foam, and the crew getting her under the lee of the vessel, two of them succeeded in getting on board of her. Seven of the crew were rescued, and stowed safely in the life-boat; but the captain and two menby some extraordinary want of perception of the fate that awaited them-some yet more surprising mistrust-a panic, taking the form of obstinate perversity—or an invincible sense of duty-or something else in their minds quite inexplicable-actually refused to leave the vessel.

In vain did the two gallant fellows from the shore endeavor to persuade them—they persisted in remaining; and while this was going forward, the life-boat broke adrift from the vessel's side. The two of her crew still on board, seeing clearly that their only chance was to regain the boat, leaped over into the surging waves, and made every effort to swim towards her. In this most precarious attempt they were fortunate enough to succeed. The crew of the lifeboat made several ineffectual efforts to return to the vessel, but they could not near her again. In half an hour she heeled over on her beam-ends, and the captain and his two men who had refused to leave her, were seen to perish in the rigging.

There were three luggers, with their

crews, to leeward of the vessel; and they had exerted themselves to the utmost to near her, but in vain. The lugger, "Buffalo Gal," of Ramsgate, took the crew in from the life-boat, and towed her-the boat's crew being nearly exhausted-into Ramsgate harbor.

We now come to a very weighty matter. Where is the reward which these gallant fellows ought to claim for such a service? Nowhere. They have no claim. If they had saved leather or cheese, tobacco or bacon, there would have been a positive and definite claim-but as it was only human life, there is nothing. A " "subscription has since been originated;" but this is entirely a matter of private, or local, good feeling, and however excellent in itself, this is not the precarious way in which the due reward of such services ought to be left. Nobody for one instant can think so.

Now that the government is contemplating the establishment of regular life-boat stations at different parts of the coast, it is to be hoped (ought it not to be demanded?) that the question of reward should be remodified with some little consideration for the value of human life, as compared with casks of butter, bales of leather, cakes of copper, or pigs of lead.

DEATH AND THE DOCTOR.

(FROM LESSING.)

CORKS were drawn, and candles lighted, Who but Death came uninvited?

"You have drunk enough," said he; "Toper, you must come with me."

"Come with you! 'tis rather early!
Prithee, Death, don't look so surly;
But, if it must e'en be so,
Take a glass before we go!"

Death though an inveterate grumbler,
Took the hint, and filled a tumbler;
"Fill," said he, "and in Tokay
Let us toast the cholera."

Though at first much disconcerted,
Now I thought his wrath averted;

Till he snarl'd, "You fool! d'ye think
You could bribe old Death with drink?"

"Nay," said I; "but with permission, I will practise as physician;

Half my patients you shall have,
If you let me 'scape the grave."

"Done! and done! Live till you're weary

Of your bottle and your deary;
None so surely work my will

As the men of drug and pill."

Now I scorn the grave's black portal,
Made by love and wine immortal;
Now a sworn ally of Death,
Freely can I draw my breath.

When to Boniface's thinking,
I have had enough of drinking;
When "You've loved enough," says Kate,
Gladly I will meet my fate.

THE PIMPERNEL.

LITTLE Scarlet Pimpernel,

None but thou can tell so well What the weather-change may be. None can tell so well as thee, All the roving one can see, None so wisely half as thee, When the welkin vapor's shroud Telleth thee the passing cloud; When in East the pallid dawn Heralds the coming of the morn, Then with joy thou spreadest out All thy little flowers about, Where in holt or upon wold Smiles thy little eye of gold. When with clouds the heavens frown, Then thy little head bends down. Little weather-prophet, say, Fair or foul the coming day? For thy eye on sun above Is fix'd, like lover on his love, Like supple courtier on his lord, Like Parsee on his god adored. Like kneeling Carib on the sun Thou gazest till his course is run; Ever, ever gazing on,

Never musing but of one.

Come what seasons there may be,
Still unchanged thy flower we see.
Like a pennon in the wind,
Fickle as the maiden's mind,
Ever veereth round thy head,
Till in western waves of red
Thy great monarch sinketh down,
Then, too, sinks thy tiny crown.
In thy little flower we see

Type of fix'd mobility.

Winds may blow, as they blow now;

Still for winds what carest thou?

Though with fury raging free
They may shake the giant tree,
Whatsoever be their power,
They will spare the little flower.
E'en the bud that gems the sod,
Overshadow'd is by God.
Little Persian songs of praise
Do thy flow'rets ever raise.
To thy God thou off rest up
Drops of dew in ruby cup;

And when sinks the king of light,
Thy violet eyes with tears beam bright;
Till the stars, with softer beam,
Like the sun's fair children seem.
Thine upon the meadow ground,
Where thy blossoms most abound;
Or where trailing through the grass,
All thy snake-like sprays do pass.
Little scarlet Pimpernel,
None can tell us half so well
What the coming change shall be.
None but such a one as thee!

INSTINCT IN A BIRD.

ONCE when travelling in Tennessee, Wilson was struck with the manner in which the habits of the pennated grouse are adapted to its residence on dry, sandy plains. One of them was kept there in a cage, having been caught alive in a trap. It was observed that the bird never drank, and seemed rather to avoid the water; but a few drops one day falling upon the cage, and trickling down the bars, the bird drank them with

great dexterity, and an eagerness that showed she was suffering with thirst. The experiment was then made whether she would drink under other circumstances, and though she lived entirely on dry Indian corn, the cup of water in the cage was for a whole week untasted and untouched; but the moment water was sprinkled on the bars, she drank it eagerly as before. It occurred to him at once, that in the natural haunts of the bird, the only water it could procure was from the drops of rain and dew.

DIAMOND DUST.

GOLD should never be made the god of our idolatry, but the agent of our benevolence.

THE victims of ennui paralyze all the grosser feelings of excess, and torpify all the finer, by disuse and inactivity.

To love one that is great is almost to be great one's self.

CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK.

IN A LETTER TO A COUNTRY FRIEND.

Or news, my dear fellow, I can tell you very little; or if I were to set it down upon the closing pages of a magazine, which by the stern necessities of the compositor and stereotyper, (professional terms for printing men,) must be put into lead at least ten days before it is come to your hand, it would be old, to nausea. So I must eke out my usual story with such gossip as comes floating across my thought, and which has not enough of the strong meat of news in it, to make it putrefy with a little over-age,

May-day, you know, is full of wonders for the uninitiate in the city; and a sad crop of wonders it furnishes-such movings, and sweepings, and breakage, and truckage, and topsy-turvings would fairly startle a country-liver out of his propriety. But now, thank heaven, the worst of the matter is over, and the metropolitan world is settled down into its occasional quietude.

No special stir is agitating the gay world; and since the redoubtable DODGE, (not of the Lorgnette,) has given his great concert, and hung his great face in yellow placards

on all the walls, there has been no sensation to speak of.

Quidnuncs are waiting for the new income of the JENNY.

Castle Garden, they say, has been fitted up in splendid garb—the seats new-ticketed, the walls new-hung, the sofas new-backed, and the ushers newly officered, for the advent of the warbling Swede.

BARNUM-Who knows at what literary emporium to get the writing of his letters -has addressed his dear Clientelle, (that is to say-ourselves,) in most complimentary and entreating way-promising more than he has ever promised before; and engages to stewardize such concerts as will never be heard again.

So, if you wish strains in your ear, that will not die till they are caught again after death-come to town!

Of the successes of BARNUM and suite in his winter vacation through the provinces, (always excepting from this term the staid Philadelphia and theatrizing New Orleans,) there are various accounts.

Some say the monster showman has bagged | est in a trowser of white stuff, girt at the gold enough to buy half the city, and others ankle with lace? hinting that the sale of his show place of Iranistan is to go toward balancing the deficit. I incline between the two, and reckon enough upon his Yankee shrewdness to feel assured that he has counted his venture, and will build-if he builds again-a palace to out-orientalize his palace of Bridgeport.

As for other coming amusements they are promised in floods. Even now the blithe and graceful ROUSSETS are showing their dainty study of Terpsichore at Niblo's, and a splendid Vision of the Sun is drawing full benches to the gas-smelling theatre of Broadway.

The Havana singers are spied here and there, in their citizen costume, about the streets, and there is promise of new operas, and new triumphs.

We are all looking for a chapter on the matter from that veteran of modes, bijouterie, and æsthetics-the Home Journal. Were we (and here I speak in the plurality of a magazine) in the way of giving Fashion pictures, we should surely light up this subject with a deft picture of the newly-ordered habit. It would certainly be a pleasant shopping costume, for the walking that follows upon May showers.

They say that the Fair-I mean the London fair-is to inaugurate (notwithstanding all the bluster of the ticket-buying Genin) a new hat for the men:-replacing our straight, talltopped, stove-piped structures with the graceful contour of a broad-brimmed, slouching sombrero. Pray, why should not the ladies take the same occasion to economize silk, and multiply their charms? So-it would come to be recorded in the chronology of the century:-"the year '51 gave sombreros to the men and trowsers to the women.”

I am running on, garrulous upon nothing; but the misty days of spring feed inertia, and the political squabbles of the winter are dead till autumn.

Cuba has come again upon the tapis; and we hear of poor Havanese soldiers sleep ing on their arms, and faint-hearted Havanese ladies crying in their nurseries at thought of the blood-thirsty marauders, who, at home, are disquieting-only their bail. A weakribbed old steamer is lying at our docks under martial surveillance; and a corps of stout marines is keeping guard on the pumps, a keg or two of powder, and a score If you see the Tribune, and it is a far-goof hydrostatically pressed soldiers' blankets.ing paper-you will have noted a little talk This is a godsend for the idlers: and troops of women and boys gape in amazement at the prodigious military display, and at the energetic executive power which keeps the feeble Cleopatra at her dock, and which has asked of her ANTONY-$3000, in bail.

Talking of Cleopatra reminds me of womanly vanity and of womanly fickleness. What do you say to new dresses for the street-going ladies à la Turque? Yet the matter is bruited; and they say that a hero of an editress, somewhere in the northern borders of the State, has even assumed the loose trowsers, and the short skirts of the Circassian women. And report says that the fashion has been followed up by all the pretty-ankled ladies of the town. In this, the country is a step, (if not a leg length,) before the people of the city. Yet, after all, the idea is as pretty as novel. Why under heaven should rich silks sweep the streets, when they can be looped up so charmingly as the Eastern pictures tell us of? And what is there essentially immod

about a certain IDA PFEIFFER-German enough by name-who has travelled almost over the world. She must be as much of a heroine as the enterprising editress of Seneca Falls. And I drop into my letter this account of her from a British Journal. It will quicken your eye for the bravery of the sex.

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"This lady, of a humble, simple appearance, but endowed with uncommon qualities, has arrived in London. She has distinguished herself by her extensive travels in distant lands; and, strange to say, she has gone immense distances without her companion, overcoming the greatest difficulties by her unaided genius, and penetrating into the midst of what Europeans are pleased to call the most uncivilized nations,' passing through them unscathed, without any other protection than her harmless disposition and her firm confidence in Providence. Mrs. Pfeiffer is a native of Vienna. Her travelling propensity manifested itself from her by roaming about in the neighborhood of earliest childhood, and she gratified it then that city. It was only late in life that she was able indulge more fully in her predominant propensity. During the earlier part

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