I now understood his emotion. It was the yearning of nature, on taking a prospective farewell of the pleasant things that had made life happy. But why should his thoughts take such a direction? No man enjoyed better health, and none had more reason to be attached to life. He looked at the house which stood at a little distance, with its green balconies,and his thoughts wandered next to the angel of his paradise. "But it is a trifle," he continued, " 'tis nothing to another parting" -his look was more eloquent than words, and the mistiness in his eye gathered to a drop and fell. He was himself again before we entered the house. He threw himself on a sofa, and during the remainder of the evening there was a pensiveness in his manner and a softness in his voice that was touching. His wife was dressed in white, with purple flowers in her hair, and looked like a fairy. She came

and sat by his side, playing with his hair in her half childish way, and trying to dress it with flowers after the fashion of her own. He had been silent many minutes, and only looked up now and then to smile at her trifling.

"Are you thinking of our ride to Dover in the morning, Henry ?" she inquired, still engaged with his hair.

He started violently. "To Dover!" exclaimed he, "who told you I was going to Dover?"

"There," said she, "you have shaken off all the flowers."

"But Dover!" again said he.

Why, if you cannot go in the morning," said she, without observing his manifest agitation, "it can be postponed; but you know, my dear, you have been promising me a ride on Dover Beach these three weeks."

"Oh, ay-I recollect," said he.

"And will you go in the morning?"

"I cannot, possibly, my dear; for-I-have engaged to meet Captain Milne, at the Bay, by daybreak."

It was getting late, and I left them and returned home. Daybreak saw me on horseback, equipped for my usual ride. There is no portion of time so delicious as the hour from the dawn till sunrise. A spell pervades creation, and a silence so deep and holy, that to reason's ear the matin hymn of nature becomes audible. A West Indian evening has not much to boast of, for one can hardly venture forth under its heavy dews and dark vapors with safety. But the morning! that sweet hour of prime, match me it in the most favored climes of the Orient if you can. It was then that I was always abroad; sometimes turning my horse inland among the plantations, and meeting the cheerful salutations of the negroes, as they proceeded to the field, or with pails of water on their heads from the distant spring to the Bay; but more frequently along the shore, where my meditations would be unbroken, and they might go forth over the wide blue sea, free as the winds. I always loved the ocean. Its blue and restless waters mingle with my earliest recollections; and often have I stood upon its margin, watching the billows as they broke at my feet, till the lullaby of their many voices lapped me in a delicious reverie, and

their mystic motion would be arrested, and palaces would rise, and spirits move, upon the vasty deep, as at a magician's call; till the advance of some audacious billow would sweep away the baseless fabric of my vision, and compel a precipitate retreat. With such predilections, Dover Beach was generally selected for my morning rides. It stretched, for a league, to the eastward of Halfmoon, in a gentle curve. It was hard, smooth, and white, and strewed with a profusion of shells. I thought I had never seen so beautiful a morning. The sea was smooth as a lake, scarcely affording a sufficient swell to draw a delicate line of foam on the bed of rice shells and eye stones upon which it broke; and then so heavenly a blue! and such wonderful transparency! you might have seen a shilling upon its bottom at the depth of thirty feet, and detected all the movements of its finny inhabitants and creeping things, as distinctly as you can see the gold fishes in a lady's vase. And there was such an exhilarating freshness in the air; so silvery a hue in the misty drapery of the mountains; and withal, such a delicious calm spreading its wings over the heart! I threw the reins upon my horse's neck, and let him proceed at his leisure; and my eyes and thoughts were over the sea, when I heard the distant report of fire arms. About a mile ahead, I discovered several figures moving on the beach, and a wreath of smoke curling over them. Presently they were seen on horseback, and dispersing at full speed. One came towards me, with the velocity of a life and death errand. It was Gladding's boy, Philip. A dreadful light flashed upon my mind as I recollected "Dover." I felt sick, and had barely strength to stop him and inquire the matter.

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"Oh, massa Mark! massa Mark!" cried the poor little fellow, while the tears streamed over his face;" massa there kill; massa there kill!"

I waited for no more, but putting spurs to my horse, in three minutes I reached the spot where lay weltering in his blood the accomplished Henry Gladding. His eye was open, but glazed; his pulse was silent, and the blood upon his lips. He was dead. The murderer and his accomplices had fled, and I was there alone with him. Fif teen minutes brought the doctor and a hundred others. The ball had entered his right breast, making a wide and ragged wound. The people continued to arrive in crowds, and, notwithstanding his faults, there was not a man in all that multitude that looked upon Henry Gladding, as he lay there dead, and slaughtered like a beast of the field, who did not weep for him.

Fifteen minutes more brought his negroes in a body, rending the air, after the characteristic extravagance of their untutored natures, with the wildest cries of grief. But oh, they were sincere. With the clasped hand and true accent of sorrow, they would pause over the body, and murmur, " Poor Henry Gladding! See where Henry Gladding there lie dead!" and with such tears, and such looks of bereavement, as would have melted a heart of stone.

Shall I go on? for there was brought yet another mourner. But I cannot! My heart sickens at the recollection! By a species of in

tuition, it was known that Gladding had fallen in an affair of honor with Wentworth Bruce. His own pistol was clenched in his right hand, and not discharged. But I would have appealed to all then present, and confident am I, that not one, but would have united with me in execrating the wicked practice. Not one, but, over that bleeding body, would have forsworn it, and forever. We may sit by our firesides, and prose upon duelling as we may. But come and look at it upon the field of blood; let the victim be the brave, the good, and the friend of your heart-the life-stay of beauty and innocence ;view it as I viewed it on Dover Beach, and it comes home! and if you are not ready to embark on a crusade for its extirpation, then have I mistaken my fellow creatures!

The law of the land made it necessary to hold an inquest over the body. They came, with all the formality of the law; they examined the case with the profoundest sagacity, and the verdict was rendered with a gravity befitting the occasion, and in a tone like an oracle, "That Henry Gladding, of Frontier, came to his death by being shot by some person or persons unknown!" There was not a man in the two parishes of Saint Margaret's and Saint Mark's but knew that Gladding was shot by Bruce; but none could swear to it, for none had been present at the duel but the seconds, and two black boys, servants of the principals; and there was not a man of them that did not know that Robert Milne and Francis Bailey were seconds in the affair; but, again, no man could take his oath on it, and the boys were slaves and could not swear.

Such is the mockery that is made of law, in the face of reason; a cloak to shield the vices of society, under which the unprincipled may stab with impunity at the happiness of domestic life.-I said that the people came; they wept; but their tears were dried with the dew of that fatal morning, and their wounded hearts soon closed. But there were tears that ceased not to flow, till their fountain was exhausted; and a heart, whose wounds could not be bound up, for it was crushed, and bled inwardly. But I forbear. In a grove of oranges, at Frontier, stand two marble monuments; and the last tear I shed in my country, fell upon the grave of Harriet Gladding.

S. H.

I WOULD NOT LIVE ALWAYS."

Weep not that death draws nigh!

Oh! the spirit is faint with its feverish strife,
And waits for the fall of the twilight of life,
With joy in its upward eye.

Earth is its rayless cell

But then, as a bird soars home to the shade
Of the beautiful wood, where its nest was made,
In bonds no more to dwell;—

So will its weary wing

Be spread for the skies when its toil is done

And its breath flow free, as a bird's, in the sun
And the soft, fresh gales of spring.

Oh! not more sweet the tears

Of the dewy eve on the violet shed,

Than the dews of age on the 'hoary head,'
When it enters the eve of years.

Nor dearer mid the foam

Of the far-off sea, and its stormy roar,

Is a breath of balm from the unseen shore,
To him that weeps for home.

Bangor.

TRAVELS IN THE NORTH OF GERMANY, IN THE YEARS 1825 AND 1826. By Henry E. Dwight, A. M. New-York: G. & C. & H. Carvill. 1829. pp. 454.

THERE are few tasks which require such varied talent and accomplishment as first rate travel-writing. This peculiar department of the craft of letters has been so overrun and attempted by all sorts of locomotive people, that its original and proper standard has in a measure become debased. The interest we feel, not only in the chance information which any traveller may gather by mere contact with another nation, but always in that species of personal adventure which has the semblance of truth in proportion to the simplicity and want of refinement with which it is told, reconciles us to anything in the shape of a book of travels; and in this way, many narratives have sold largely, and become, to a degree, authentic references, whose authors are about as worthy of credit, and as limited in their knowledge, as a nearsighted soldier on a field of battle. We have only to imagine the author a stranger in our own country and our own city, to understand the qualifications necessary to acquire liberal information. There are as many different topics upon which investigation would be useful and interesting, as there are classes in society, or extended pursuits. He should be a scholar, to gain admittance to the haunts of literature, and appreciate its state of advancement. He should be a practical man, of sufficient general knowledge to compare the agriculture and rude arts of the country with his own; a connoisseur, to estimate its pro

gress in works of taste; a good observer, to judge of general manners, and separate national from individual peculiarities; a man of liberal and unprejudiced mind, to see and represent with fairness; and, above all, a gentleman, and of good address, to gain admittance to society, and form a fair opinion of its refinement and general tone.

With such a standard, it is not remarkable that a first rate book of travels is a rare thing. We know of no such by a stranger upon our own country, and but one among those of our own countrymen. Cooper's "Bachelor" is generally, we think, an enlightened and candid portrait of us, though we might concede to its objectors that it gives our best look. We have had but few Englishmen among us capable of appreciating either our manners or institutions, and never yet an author of an English book with any approach to candor. Most of those we see are entitled to anything but a place in society. We are willing to allow to England a superior degree of general refinement in manners and breeding;-but, in doing so, we condemn ninety-nine out of a hundred of those who come among us. Our own gentlemen, in the mass, are infinitely better bred, and better educated; and the exceptions to this remark, for the last six years, may be reckoned upon our fingers. We really believe the higher class of English gentlemen (the French obsequious politeness notwithstanding) to be the best bred class of men in the world; but, with the half dozen exceptions now within our recollection, the representatives of that country who have been among us, are, of all strangers, the most illiberal and ignorant of the common forms of society. Captain Hall has had, perhaps, the fairest opportunity of seeing us as we are. He was received into the very bosom of every polite circle in the United States. He was admitted to every institution, and furnished with every information necessary and desirable. He was treated with a hospitable and generous attention, which, if gratitude could do it, would blind his eyes even to our defects; but we shall be very-very wide of our mark, if his forth-coming book of travels do not prove the most specious and crafty injustice ever done our infant republic. He is not, if his deportment in this country is any criterion, the man to see anything without prejudice. His breeding upon the quarter-deck has brought with it none of the professional candor. He is, if we have not totally mistaken his character, a cold, shrewd, conceited man-brave, doubtless, and a good seaman—but no more fitted to judge of the refinements of society, and no more ready to suffer America to compare, however the truth may be, with England, than the bravest and dullest