dition that Providence has assigned, and which seeks happiness in the fulfilment of life's duties as they arise. "Cœlum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt."

We change the scene, but not ourselves, when we run across the sea and seek forgetfulness in foreign lands.

3* *

THE SHIPMASTER.

"Cape Cod, our dearest native land,

We leave astern, and lose

Its sinking hills and lessening sands,
While zephyr gently blows."

IT has been well said of our city of Boston, that "she sitteth very gloriously in the midst of the sea, enriching the kings of the earth with the multitude of her riches and her merchandise." She can boast of her merchant princes, as honorable and as munificent as the world has ever afforded, from the days of ancient Tyre and Sidon to the illustrious merchant of Florence, who founded the celebrated house of Medici, and from which descended Lorenzo the magnificent and Leo the Tenth. Those who have gone "down to the sea in ships, and done business on the great waters," have been those who have by their intelligence and energy amassed some of the largest fortunes which our city can boast. The American shipmaster has always been something more than a good navigator and sailor. His ambition has been to

be also a good merchant. A social rank has been accorded to him far above that which belongs to those engaged in the same employment in England and other nations of modern Europe. He has sprung often from our most respectable families, and, led by the spirit of enterprise and adventure, fascinated by the romance of the sea, and ambitious to acquire competence and wealth, he has sought every land and every sea, not as elsewhere in the pursuit of a particular profession, but with the ambition to become himself the owner and director of other ships, that he may occupy at home the position to which his enterprise and his wealth entitle him.

The American youth, born within the sound of the "ever sounding sea," takes to the water as naturally as the duck seeks its congenial element. He has listened in rapt attention and delight to the stories of his father, his uncles, or his brothers, of their adventurous lives and hair-breadth 'scapes by flood and field. He longs to follow in their steps, as did Young Norval to "follow in the field some warlike lord," and heaven soon grants him what his sire denies he takes the matter into his own hands, runs away, ships before the mast, from which humble position he rises through all the grades to the honorable position of captain and owner. How wonderful is the attraction of the sea! Of all objects in nature it is the most poetical, and most allures the imagination.

It is the truest image of sublimity. From its vast extent, its unknown depths, its ceaseless motion, its purity, its placid face when no breeze ruffles its surface, and its terror when lashed to fury by the storm, "boundless, endless, and sublime," it has a hold upon the human mind such as belongs to no other scenery, whether of river, cataract or mountain. The earth remaining always the same, the ocean is ever changing, ever new; it rolls with ceaseless murmur, charming and soothing our senses with its melody, or in a moment its waves dash over us in the wildest fury, and threaten to engulph us in its unfathomable depths. The most beautiful description of natural objects of which we are acquainted, comes from that truest child of genius, in his description of the ocean.

The lines are familiar, but, like the ocean itself, they are ever new, fresh and sparkling, and will endure as long as "the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls its waves:

"Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,—

Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,

Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime,

Dark heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime,

The image of eternity, the throne

Of the invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.