to come down and lodge in the cabin, the coming night. He received the command with the utmost indifference, and at eight o'clock, came down and turned in. He lay perfectly still, and to appearance, asleep, for two hours. I began to think that the fit would not come on that night, to observe which with my own eyes had been a principal motive with me in bringing him into the cabin. It was my watch on deck; consequently I had not turned in. I had been sitting by the table for more than an hour, leaning on my hand over a book, till I was almost fallen asleep, when I was startled by a most unearthly voice. "They are coming! They are coming!" cried Dodd. He was half sitting up, and grasping convulsively the forward part of the birth, and his look was most horrible. His eyes were started into view from their deep sockets, like pale fires from the tomb, and fixed on vacancy with such an unnatural light in them! "There!" he repeated, pointing with his finger," they are coming!" "Who?" said I. "At twelve o'clock," again he uttered, in a voice that was heard from the bottom of his chest, "At twelve! they are coming!"

I felt my blood curdle. "Lie down in your birth, Dodd,” said I, "and be quiet." He turned his eyes upon me with a glance, such as I have thought a dead man might give, had his eyes motion, and then groaned out; "Ah, I shall not trouble you long. They are coming, at twelve o'clock ! they are coming! they are coming!" he continued to murmur, as he shrunk down into the birth and huddled the clothes over him, his voice dying away like a sound retreating to a distance. I will confess that my blood did not resume its wonted flow for many minutes; especially, as the miserable man continued to lie before me, writhing and groaning in what I could not avoid considering the anticipated agonies of the damned. What could have been his crime? Thought upon the subject returned back upon itself, baffled and bewildered. A few minutes after eleven Dodd again raised himself in the birth, in a posture of deep attention. Then he whispered to himself and pointed with his finger. At the same moment, I heard loud voices on the deck.

"What is it Baxter ?" asked the man at the helm.

The answer came from a distant part of the ship and I did not hear it distinctly, but it was something about a light. The next® moment, the mate hurried down the stairs. "We have made a light, sir," said he in great alarm.

"A light in the middle of the Atlantic!" said I.

"Yes, sir, dead ahead, and not five miles off. If we were a thousand miles farther west I should swear it was Point Judith light."

I hastened upon deck. A little upon our weather bow, say half a point, and apparently six or eight miles off, was a bright steady light like that of a common light-house. "How long since you made it?" I inquired of the mate.

"It may be ten minutes, sir. I took it at first to be a ship's light, but it cannot be, for it bears now as when we first made it."

The night was overcast and dark, and it could not have been a star. "What is the nearest land ?" I again inquired of the mate. "The Western Islands are some three hundred miles to the southward, and Newfoundland three times that distance west."

The question had been put mechanically, rather than for information, for I knew by my own reckoning that our voyage was but little more than half completed. I studied the light attentively. It kept its first bearing exactly. I puzzled my invention as to what it might be. I looked at it again, and then at my men. Their eyes were fixed on my face; but I was obliged to shake my head and turn away in utter inability to solve the mystery. My eyes fell upon a figure seated by himself upon the binnacle. His hat was pulled over his eyes, his hands crossed before him, and his head dropped upon his breast, like a condemned criminal. It was Dodd. In spite of reason, the conviction flashed upon me that there was some mysterious connection between him and the strange light. I took up a convenient position with the determination of watching him narrowly. My eye wandered from his motionless figure to the light with the vague expectation of—I know not what. I took out my watch. It wanted just fifteen minutes of twelve. I fastened my eye firmly upon him, determined not to remove it till that hour which formed a link in the dreadful associations of his mind was passed. But how often in our eagerness to gain some end do we overleap it; and when there are in favor of our success an hundred chances to one, that fated one is

turned up to us. I had watched Dodd I presume more than twice fifteen minutes, when something, I could never tell what, called off my attention. I turned my eye from my left shoulder forward; the light was there, and bright and steady as before. I turned it back upon the binnacle. Dodd was gone; and then forward again; the light had vanished-and it was just twelve o'clock?

Search was made for Dodd all over the vessel, but never more was he seen on board the Charlotte. I cannot describe to you the dismay of my men, as they stood around me at that moment. They evidently felt that eyes not of earth nor heaven were fastened on them, and they clustered together, as if each feared that his turn would come next.

Strange as it may seem, no one had seen Dodd or the light at the moment of disappearance. They were gone-and that was all we knew. Had I communicated to the crew any intention of watching, we might have seen but to tell the truth, I was ashamed to let any one know the strange suspicions that haunted me. I do not pretend to say what the mysterious light was, nor what became of Dodd. The master of a ship has cares enough without tormenting himself with pointless speculations on the agency or non-agency of

malignant spirits. I state these therefore merely as facts that happened under my own observation, and which I confess my inability to explain.

Reader, this is no fiction. Captain Sharp is living only forty miles from the place where I am now writing, and " can be produced." But think not that I relate these facts to make proselytes to a creed of which you will perhaps set me down as the apostle. Far from it. Only, scoff not at things which thou dost not understand. "Thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit," nor in what fearful extent the sons of men may offend. Enough is it if we let not our belief in the marvellous sink into the superstition of the vulgar; and whether ghosts walk or not, whether the spirits of evil are ever permitted to claim their victims in this world, will never be worth the decision of a man who, according to his talent, endeavors to answer the end of his existence.

Westerly, R. I.

S. H.

RETROSPECTION.

EARTH has been wearied with my vanity,

And Heaven has blushed at my enthusiasm

When the young heart was full, and proud, and free-
But what can fill up all the aching chasm

That youth and hope have left? Or who abide
The tameness which yields not to human pride?

All this were nought, had the keen power of feeling
But vanished with the wasted light of youth.
Touch but the heart, and wounds which mock the healing
Of all but growing strength and early truth,

Rankle forever in the soul bereaved

Of even the healing tears with which youth grieved.

I would not have again the rapturous joy

The deep delight—the luxury of love-
Which make all earth a heaven to the glad boy;
Yet I would be a martyr, but to prove,
Once more, the pure, the passion-bursting tears,
The glorious breathings of those hallowed years!

O, they are what would melt the iron soul
And give the unrequited passions vent
In utterance that despair could not control,
And poetry which never could be spent!
But I must bow to my stern fate's decrees,
And leave the fountain of my song to freeze
Cattskill, July 24.

G.

A WINTER SCENE IN NEW ENGLAND.

THE climate of New England, I verily believe, is one of the most beautiful in the world. It is so, because it combines, in a degree extraordinary and almost peculiar to itself, the manifold pleasures which are, in their turn, exclusively appropriate to every one of the seasons. Winter, indeed, reigns over us almost five months in the year; but it brings with it endearing, soul stirring delights, both of intellect and sense, that amply compensate for its coldness and gloom. And then, neither Spring nor Summer nor Autumn intrude upon each other's delightful jurisdiction, nor does either instantaneously disappear, or occupy at once the dominion of its dying predecessor. These periods come and go, are renewed and changed, in the constantly recurring and contrasted beauty of freshness and decay. They expire and melt into each other with a transition so gradual and graceful that the feelings are tinged at the same moment with regret for the glories which are passing away, and joy in the anticipation of those that are soon to be disclosed in the prime of their existence.

The dilettanti talk of an Italian sunset, and Byron tells us that the sun goes down behind the mountains of Greece,

Not as in Northern skies, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light ;-

but Byron's life had been passed in the foggy atmosphere of England, and neither he nor the dilettanti ever set foot in this glorious western world. I have no doubt that our summer sunset scenery is often as supremely brilliant and beautiful as that of Greece, Rome, or Naples. At all events there are Autumn hours of late and melancholy beauty, and there are winter scenes of wild brilliance and surpassing grandeur peculiar to our climate, which I would not exchange, enthusiastic as I am in my fondness of devotion to the charms of summer landscapes, for all the many-colored glory which nature has munificently lavished over the warm, sunny skies, and the vine-clad bills of Italy. It is one of these scenes which I have attempted to pourtray. None, who witnessed, can ever forget it. But no earthly language could accurately depict its glories to a stranger, or recal to the memory, in their primitive power and freshness, the feelings of astonished admiration that kindled at the scene of such unutterable and even unimaginable splendor. I shall first speak of its formation.

The

There was a light fall of snow, succeeded by a rain storm. next evening another light snow commenced falling, but was soon

converted into a cold, drizzling mist, which instantly became congealed on whatever object it touched. The next morning every thing appeared loaded with icicles. During the day there was the same "ceaseless, pitiless," drizzling, freezing mist, attended by a high, cold wind, and increasing, every instant, the thickness and clearness of the coat of ice, in which every object was already shrouded. That day it was really a melancholy sight. Every tree and shrub was bent down under a weight so great that it seemed as if any additional pressure must crush them to the ground. The branches of the lofty and beautiful elms, stiffened and rendered nearly inflexible with frost and ice, were swept to and fro by the violence of the wind, and one after another torn from their trunks by the mighty force. Sometimes the whole ramified portion of the tree was taken off at once, leaving nothing but the bare trunk, standing upright with the mangled boughs hanging in every direction around it.

ning however, the wind subsided and the mist ceased falling; and in the night the clouds disappeared and the weather cleared off cold and sparkling. The next morning what a scene of gorgeous glory burst upon our view!

We stepped into the air, and it was as if we had been suddenly transported into the midst of a new and glorious creation of the Deity. Every object on which the eye rested was covered with a thick coat of ice, pure as crystal, and glittering in the morning rays with a brightness almost intolerable. Not a particle of space in the whole wide view had remained untouched by the icy enchantment. The buildings were all encrusted by the clear glassy rime, and shone like palaces of burnished steel. The steeples of the public edifices presented an appearance singularly picturesque. The gilded vanes that were wont to gleam upon their summits, and every protruding portion of their architecture were shaggy with the hanging icicles, and sparkled as if they had been carved out from a solid diamond. The fences wore the same unusual mantle of cumbrance and shaggy magnificence. Every bush, every shrub, every spear of grass had been silently and thoroughly dipped in the brilliant incrustation. The process of its formation had been so gentle and gradual as to leave the minutest ramifications of each plant, from the most tiny to the mightiest, completely developed and perfectly visible. In the centre of the stalk of ice nearly an inch in diameter, you might see a fine vegetable stem, no larger than the smallest needle, which had formed a nucleus for the covering of icicle, and there lay imbedded as quietly and clearly as the little insects and bits of straw, which float in the bosom of a piece of transparent amber. The work of congelation had commenced simultaneously over the whole surface, rendering the plant immoveable in its position, presenting all its variety of form, and shooting off in a separate direction with every bud and twig that