tion with the squadron in the Gulf and the government at home. On the 3d of February, the time of our sailing having been delayed beyond the hour first contemplated, all officers were on board. The cornet, that emblem which admits no apology for delay, when once it is seen floating from the mizzen-truck, had again been quivering in the air, during the afternoon of Tuesday; and the morning of the next day found all the ship's company, officers and men, in their places; the pilot also sleeping on board, ready to take early advantage of tide and the winds. There is a sound familiar to the sailor's ear, which seems ever to cheer the hearts of those within its hearing, though a few moments after, the heart may break in its memories and sadness. "All hands to up anchor, ahoy!" is the echo handed from boatswain's mate to boatswain's mate, through the ship, after the shrill note of his pipe has been twice blown, and long. A general movement is seen; the men to the capstan bars, the officers to their stations; the "idlers," who are the non-watch officers or civilians, to the quarterdeck to gaze on the scene, the land, the making sail, and to give the final look on fair hills, and happy homes, which one is soon to leave and lose in the distance, as the courser in a moment more will start from her goal to speed over the seas. It would be a sadder hour—to some a tearful, bitter hour, today, this 3d of February-did not the music of the band strike up its merry sound, and the tramp of the men chime to the time of the tune as the crew walk around with the capstan, and the clank of the coming-in iron chain tell that the ship is loosing her last hold on the ground, dear in our memories, our birth, and our loves, as our own native land. Thus was the anchor of the Cumberland soon atrip; the ship veered the sails fell-were sheeted home; and the frigate, like the stag in his wild freedom, exulting on her native element, bounded over the lesser wave and the increasing swell, until she was abroad on the wide and boundless ocean; and I, leaving the bustle of the upper deck, sought my room and wept my tears for those I love. If I write at all, why should I not write naturally? It is my own way which I am to trace; it is my own views and feelings, amid objects and scenes as contemplated by my own mind and heart, in their blended perception and emotion, which I am to develope. And the scene, at this moment of my leaving home, no one can know, as itl ay before my own vision, but the individual who has himself felt how lonely is life to him who has lost the dearest object of his heart which could bind him to that life; and has been placed in circumstances which of necessity forced upon him the bitter consciousness of that loss, as memories and emotions are awakened by the power of association, from the contrast of periods of time and similarity of occasions and scenes. At all other times when I have gone from my kindred, I was young, fond of adventure, elated in the prospect of change and anticipations of seeing the world as it is, and men as they are, in their different positions, races, governments, and contrasts. But what has the world for me, at this hour? I have seen a good part of it. I have made its circumference, and seen its varieties, animate and inanimate—its beauties and its deformities. Adventure no more has its charm; and though I look on the stately and the beautiful in the arts, the magnificence of nature, the policy, the power, and the prospects of nations, they wake not emotion as once they did; or if emotion swells the heart, it but carries it on to the consciousness of a lost interest in all that the world now possesses save in one object, and that my infant son; and to the reality that she who bore him, for whom I now had gazed with delight, has left this earth, and borne with her from me every zest for living, save in the one felt obligation of duty; and all desire for living, save only that I may guide the education of my child. Is there one, then, who, like myself, has known this vacuity in life-this absence of all excitement in livingthis joyless inanity and hopeless prospect for the future, because his emotions of happiness in the past have reached far higher above all that can swell his heart in all his life on earth that is to come? My brother, then hast thou indeed wept; and whilst thou shalt still weep, thou art to be pitied! Thy gold, however abundant, has become dimmed. Thy dwelling, however peaceful within, or lovely thy grounds around it, is still lonely. For thee, there is no resource in life but one only, as thou shalt still live on and still weep, and that is, to go forth among thy fellows AND DO THEM GOOD. "Wouldst thou from sorrow find a sweet relief? fold Close to its heart, the worm is wasting there Its life and beauty; not when all unrolled, Leaf after leaf its bosom rich and fair, Breathes freely its perfumes throughout the ambient air." THE DEATH OF A PASSED MIDSHIPMAN. The Cumberland had made two unsuccessful attempts to get to sea before the morning of the 3d of February; and it seemed a kind providence that the winds and tide prevented the frigate from getting an offing sufficiently early to stand on her course to sea. I say a kind providence, so at least it will have appeared to the kindred of young Ashton, a passed Midshipman, who, with a large number of the crew and officers, has been affected by a severe cold for days past in the severe climate of Boston; and still more so in the lamp atmosphere of shipboard at this season of the year. The frigate had put out of the Nantasket Roads on the 31st of January, but, a squall rising, and bad weather setting in, with a prospect of a snow storm from the north and east, the ship put back. Young Ashton, the night before, had become extremely ill, and now he lay insensible with congestion of the lungs and brain. He died a few moments after we had again came to anchor; and the next day being Sunday, his remains were sent to Boston for interment. We leave him to rest on the land, in his final repose, instead of giving his remains to course the far-down tides of the deep. How shall this, while the hearts of his kindred break as the sad intelligence shall meet them, serve, at the same time, to give them one alleviation for their bitter sorrow. They shall yet feel that their memories and their love may locate the resting-place of their departed one, instead of wildly following his remains with painful imaginations, as the currents of the sea would have borne them, in their unrest, through the deep waters of the ocean. God tempers the storm to the shorn lamb. May he give solace, which heaven alone can convey to the heart that aches in its bereavement, to the friends of Ashton. There was one, of whom it is not meet here to speak, to whom it is said the young Midshipman was engaged to be married. I had not known him, but stood beside him in his last hour, though he recked it not; and I closed the lids of his dark eye in its death sleep. As I thought of the relation last alluded to, I caused a lock of his hair to be severed, and retain it, to be conveyed to his kindred as opportunity befitting may present. THE FRIGATE ON HER PASSAGE SOUTH. Having put to sea, our ship stood on her course, doubling that crooked point of land somewhat of the shape of the one horn on the nose of a rhinoceros, by which. it is said, he moors himself for a night's sleep by hooking said appendage upon a bough of a tree, and thus supporting his huge head. for the night; but with which point there are associations of choicer memories, connected with a rough people who buffeted the storms and the waves, and finally landed with hearts that praised their God, and did them honor, on Plymouth Rock. These same people are sometimes abused, but are, of all the world, a beacon, at which the disciples of liberty and free thinking and independent action shall look, ages beyond the hour when their defamers shall have been forgotten. The May Flower bore on her decks stout hearts, and devoted to their God, as she doubled this same point of land, and dropped her anchor in the bay which this point forms. But that last point of land at which I looked, on the coast of New England, was soon lost, as the ship still stood on her way, trackless and bounding, and every moment seeming to behave herself handsomely as she bounded from blue billow to blue billows, which began to put on their crests of white as we reached farther out towards the currents of the Gulf Stream-currents which run northeasterly even from a point farther south than the extremest capes of Florida, and onward north and east to the banks of Newfoundland. Nothing, however, was inviting on deck for the first three days we were out, though on the evening of the 6th of February the weather became milder as we gained our southing; and I went abroad from my room to the poop deck, and felt that it was like olden times, as I gazed on the wide blue sea, saw the white crests comb over the blue surge and roll down the blue bank, while the ship, alone on the deep, bore us onward steadily and fleet, and the balmy though fresh breeze touched the cheek with health, expanded the heart with pleasure, and made us feel that there was beauty and grandeur about us. But fair and beautiful as was the sky of February the 6th, the storm began to brew during the night; and on Saturday the 7th |