if you can't do better; but creep under his stern if can." you

He would not give us the opportunity, for as he saw us booming along, apparently aiming at him right amidships, as if we had thought we could have sawn him in two, the youth bore up and stood right for the bar.

"So, so," quoth Davie Doublepipe-"we are away on a party of pleasure together, I perceive, se

ñor?"

We carried on, but the Don, from superior sailing, kept well on our bow; and we were now, as we could judge from the increasing roar of the breakers, rapidly approaching the river's mouth.

At this time we had a distinct view, not only of our formidable antagonist, a large topsail schooner, and apparently full of men, but of the bar we were about to pass, in such uncomfortable fellowship.

The canal of deep water that our steady and most excellent master aimed at, was about fifty yards wide. In it there was depth enough to allow the swell from without to roll in, clear and unbroken, had it not been met by the downward current of the river, aided, as in the present case, by the land-breeze, which made it break in short foamcrested waves.

We carried on. All firing for the moment was out of our craniums on either side.

ter.

had been borne away in some phantom ship, that floated on white foam instead of water; while in the very channel we were running through, the heave of the sea from without was met by the rush of the stream downwards, and flashed up in numberless jets of sparkling water, which danced about in the moonlight, and curled, and hissed, and vanished, as if they had been white-shrouded, unreal midnight spectres. We ran on, the strange sail on our lee beam.

"Now is your chance," shouted old Pumpbolt; "jam him down against the long reef there-up with your helm, Mr Brail."

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"Ease off the sheets," chimed in the first-lieutenant. Handsomely, men-handsomely."

In an instant our broadsides were rasping.

"Starboard-shove him down, Mr Brail!" again shrieked the master; "hard-a-weather-ram him on the reef there or board him — time enough to luff when he strikes."

I was fully alive to all this. The whole scene was all this time brightly lit up by the glorious moon, and we could perfectly see what we were about. We sheered close aboard of the schooner.

"Fire, small-arm men-boarders, be ready."

He eschewed the combat, however, and kept off the wind also. A bright rainbow was at this moment formed by the moonbeams, in the salt spray-the blessed emblem of peace and forgiveness-here! Yes; the bow of the Immutable, of Him who hath said, "My ways are not like your ways!" spanned the elemental turmoil, the scene of the yet more fearful conflict of man's evil passions, in a resplendent arch, through which the stars sparkled, their bright rays partaking of the hues through which they shone. Oh, it was like the hope of mercy brooding o'er the gloom and troubled heavings of a sinner's deathbed!

"A good omen-a glorious omen!" shouted young De Walden in the excitement of the moment.

"Jam her on the reef!" again yelled the master.

I did so. Crash the schooner struck. Her foremast bent forward like a willow wand, the cordage and blocks rattling, and then went over the bows like a shot. The next sea

broke in smoke over her, and hove her broadside on upon the reef-another shock, and the mainmast was lumbering and rasping over the sides. She now fell off with her broadside to the sea, which was making a fair breach over her; and while the cries of the unfortunates aboard of her rent the air, and it was clear she must instantly go to pieces, we all at once slid out of the infernal tur. moil of dashing waves-" the hell of waters"-and rose buoyantly on the long smooth swell, that was rolling in from the offing. For a minute before not a word had been spoken by officers or men, all hands being riveted to the deck, looking out, and expecting every moment to see the vessel under foot driven into staves; but now, as each man drew a long breath, old Davie, with most unlooked for agility, gave a spang into the air, and while he skiffed his

old hat over the mast-head, as an offering to Neptune, the gallant little Midge bent to the freshening blast, like a racehorse laying himself to his work, and once more bounded exultingly" o'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,' as if the sweet little craft had been instinct with life, and conscious that she had once more regained her own proper element-the cloven water roaring at her bows, as the stem tore through it, like a trenchant ploughshare, dashing it right and left into smoke, until it rushed past us in a white sheet of buzzing water, that spun away in a long straight wake astern, in the small yeasty swirls of which the moon and stars sparkled diamond-like, but of many hues, as if the surface of the ever restless ocean had been covered with floating prisms." Hurrah-hurrah-we are once more in blue water!"

IF there be a spell in words to raise high expectation and eager curiosity in the world of letters and politics, it consists in those at the head of this Article. But these Memoirs are UNPUBLISHED, AND INTENDED TO BE POSTHUMOUS! How, then, have we got a peep at their contents ? In the following manner:- Monsieur de Chateaubriand has but a short time ago regaled a select circle of his friends with the high treat of hearing him read these Memoirs at his retreat at the Abbaye au Bois. We need hardly say that they were heard with the liveliest sensations of delight, and moved his audience often even to tears. Of this favoured audience one-doubtless not without the permission of Monsieur de Chateaubriand-has communicated to the Revue de Paris certain passages and fragments of the MSS., from recollection, it is said. These recollections are most vivid, and have all the appearance of being faithful; but there is often more than recollections-whole extracts from the Memoirs themselves. These we are now about to lay before our readers. But we must not omit previously to notice the "Testamentary Preface of Monsieur de Chateaubriand, lately published in the Quotidienne. This is certainly the most eloquent pre

face that ever was written; in itself a piece of high biographical interest. If Monsieur de Chateaubriand's name were not alone sufficient, it would serve to shew the deep, varied, and entrainant interest of the legacy he is to bequeath to posterity. May this bequest be yet long delayed! May the illustrious testator continue long not only to serve his country by his splendid talents, but to adorn humanity by his brilliant example of whatever is high and chaste in enthusiasm, of whatever is pure and lofty in principle! The following is the preface. It is dated August 1, 1832, and has this motto prefixed:

"Sicut nubes, quasi navis, velut umbra."

"As it is impossible for me to foresee the moment of my end-as at my age the days granted to man are days of grace, or rather of rigour, I am about, lest Death should surprise me, to explain the nature of a work whose prolongation is destined to beguile the ennui of these last deserted hours, which interest no one, and of which I know not how to dispose.

"The Memoirs, at the head of which this preface will be read, embrace, or will embrace, the entire course of my life. They have been

begun since the year 1811, and continued till the present day. I have related in that which is finished, and I shall relate in that which is only planned, my infancy, my education, my early youth, my entrance in the service, my arrival in Paris, my presentation to Louis XVI., the commencement of the Revolution, my travels in America, my return to Europe, my emigration to Germany and England, my return to France under the Consulate, my occupations and my works under the Empire, my journey to Jerusalem, my occupations and works under the Restoration; and, finally, the complete history of the Restoration, and its fall.

"I have met almost all the men who, in my time, have played any part, small or great, both in foreign countries and at home, from Washington to Napoleon, from Louis XVIII. to Alexander, from Pius VII. to Gregory XVI.; from Fox, Burke, Pitt, Sheridan, Londonderry, Capo d'Istria, to Malesherbes, Mirabeau, &c. &c.; from Nelson, Bolivar, Mehémet, Pacha of Egypt, to Suffrien, Bougainville, La Perouse, Moreau, &c. &c. I have made part of a triumvirate which had never before an example. Three poets, of opposed interests and nations, found themselves, nearly at the same time, Ministers of Foreign Affairs-myself in France; Mr Canning, in England; and Martinez de la Rosa, in Spain. I have traversed, successively, the vacant years of my youth, the crowded years of the Republic, the pomps of Napoleon, and the reign of legiti

macy.

"I have explored the seas of the Old and New World, and trodden the soil of the four quarters of the globe. After having sheltered under the hut of the Iroquois, under the tent of the Arab, in the wigwams of the Hurons, in the ruins of Athens, of Jerusalem, of Memphis, of Carthage, of Grenada, with the Greek, the Turk, the Moor, among forests and ruins; after having donned the bear-skin casque of the savage, and the silken cafetan of the Mameluke; after having suf-, fered poverty, hunger, thirst, and exile, I have sat down minister and ambassador, embroidered with gold, and covered with decorations and ribbons at the table of kings, and the fêtes of princes and princesses,

only to fall again into indigence, and to experience the prison.

"I have been in relation with a crowd of personages, illustrious in armies, in the church, in politics, in the magistracy, in sciences, and in arts. I possess immense materials, more than four thousand private letters, the diplomatic correspondence of my different embassies, especially some relating to my appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs, among which are several remarkable pieces concerning particularly myself, hitherto unknown. I have carried the musket of a soldier, the stick of a pedestrian, and the staff of a pilgrim. A navigator, my destinies have shifted with the inconstancy of my sails. A water-bird, I have made my nest upon the waves.

"I have been concerned in peace and in war; I have signed treaties and protocols, and published in the midst of them (chemin faisant) numerous works. I have been initiated in the secrets of parties of the Court and the State. I have witnessed, not afar off, but near, the greatest reverses, the loftiest fortunes, the most sounding celebrities. I have assisted at sieges, at congresses, at conclaves, at the re-edification and demolition of thrones. I have made essays on history, which I could have written; and my life, solitary, dreamy, and poetic, has traversed this world of catastrophes, tumult, and noise, with the sons of my dreams, Chactas, René, Eudore, Aben Hamet; and with the daughters of my fantasy, Atalla, Amelia, Blanca, Velleda, and Cymodocia. On my age, I have exerted, perhaps without wishing it, and without seeking for it, a triple influence, religious, political, and literary.

"I am no longer surrounded but by three or four contemporaries of a long renown; Alfieri, Canova, Monte, have disappeared. Of its brilliant days, Italy preserves only Pindemonte and Manzoni. Pellico has lingered out his best years in the dungeons of Spielburg; the talents of the country of Dante are condemned to silence, or forced to languish on a foreign shore. Lord Byron and Canning died young. Walter Scott seems about to leave us. Goethe has just quitted us, full of glory and of years. France has almost nothing of her past, so rich in talent.

She is commencing a new era; I remain to inter my age, as the old priest in the sack of Beziers, who was to sound the knell to entomb himself after the last citizen had expired.

"When Death shall have let down the curtain between me and the world, my drama will be found to be divided into three acts. From my earliest youth, to 1800, I was soldier and traveller; from 1800 to 1814, under the Consulate and the Empire, my life has been literary; since the Restoration to the present day, political. In my three successive careers I have proposed to myself a great task; as a traveller, I aspired to the discovery of the Polar world as an author, to re-establish religion on its ruins; as a statesman, I have striven to shew to nations the representative monarchic system, with its several liberties. I have at least aided to attain that which is worth them all, which replaces them, and holds the place of a constitutionthe liberty of the press. If I have often failed in my designs, it was a failure of destiny. Foreigners who have succeeded in their designs, were seconded by fortune; they had behind them powerful friends and a tranquil country. I have not had this happiness.

"Of all contemporary modern French authors, I am the only one whose life resembles his works; traveller, soldier, poet, legist, it is in the woods that I have sung of the woods, in vessels that I have described the sea, in camps that I have spoken of armies, in exile that I learnt of exile, and in courts, in affairs, in assemblies, that I have studied princes, politics, laws, and history. The orators of Greece and Rome were involved in the public cause, and partook of its fate. In Italy and Spain, towards the close of the middle age, the first genius of letters and the arts participated in the social movement. What stormy and splendid lives are those of Dante, of Tasso, of Camoens, of Ercilla, and Cervantes!

"In France, our ancient poets and ancient historians sang and wrote in the midst of pilgrimages and of combats. Thibault, Count of Campagne, Villehardouin Joinville,borrowed the felicities of their style from the adventures of their career. Froissard

sought for his history on the highroads, and learnt it from the knights and abbots whom he met. But from the reign of Francis L., our writers have been isolated individuals, whose talents might be the expression of the mind, but not of the facts of their epoch. If I am destined to live, I will represent in my person-represented in my Memoirs-the principles, the ideas, the events, the catastrophes, the epopoeia of my time; and this the more faithfully, as I have seen a world begin and end, and the opposed characters of this beginning and this end are mixed in my opinions. I meet myself, as it were, between two ages, as at a confluence of two streams; I have plunged into the troubled waters, borne with regret from the old bank where I was born, and swimming with hope towards the unknown shore, on which new generations will arise.

"My Memoirs, divided into books and parts, have been written at different dates and in different places. These sections naturally introduce sorts of prologues, which recall the events which have happened since the last dates, and point out the places where I resume the thread of my narration. The varying events and changing forms of my life, thus reciprocally cross each other. It happens sometimes that in my moments of prosperity, I have to speak of my unhappy days, and that in my days of tribulation I retrace those of my happiness. The different sentiments of the various periods of my life, my youth interpenetrating my age, the gravity of my years of experience saddening my years of gaiety; the rays of my sun from its dawn to its setting, crossing each other and blended together, like the scattered reflex lights of my existence, giving a sort of indefinable unity to my work; my cradle has something of my tomb, my tomb something of my cradle; my sufferings become my pleasures; my pleasures griefs, and one will not be able to discover whether these Memoirs are the work of a head bald or covered with locks.

"I say not this to praise myself, for I know not whether it be good or whether it be bad, but it has so happened, without premeditation, by the inconstancy of the tempests which have been unloosed against

my back, and which have often left me only the raft of my shipwreck, to write such or such a fragment of my life.

"I have felt a paternal affection in the composition of these Memoirs. The notes which accompany the text are of three sorts; the first, at the end of the volumes, consist of explanative and corroborative pieces; the second, at the bottom of the pages, are of the same epoch as the text; the third, also at the bottom of the pages, have been added since the composition of the text; they bear the date of the time and place in which they were written. A year or two in solitude, in some corner of the earth, will suffice for the accomplishment of my task. I have had no repose but during the nine months that I slept in the bosom of my mother; and it is probable that I shall only regain this ante-natal repose in the bosom of our common mother after death.

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Many of my friends have pressed me to publish at present a part of my history; but I cannot yield to their wish. First, I should be, in spite of myself, less frank and less true; then I have always imagined myself writing from my coffin. The work has hence taken a certain religious character, which I could not divest it of without injury; it would cost me much to stifle this distant voice issuing from the tomb, which is heard throughout the whole course of the recital. It will not be found strange that I preserve some weakness, and that I am anxious about the fate of the poor orphan, destined to remain after me upon the earth. If Minos judges that I have suffered enough upon this earth to be a happy shade in the next, a little light from the Elysian fields, shed over my last picture, will render the defects of the painter less salient. Life sits ill upon me, Death perhaps will sit better."

It is with reluctance that we stop here, previous to giving our readers a foretaste of these Memoirs, which promise to be so splendid and of such fascinating interest-to make a remark upon the apparent egotism of this preface. This must not be confounded with petty vanity, nor still less with selfishness, of which egotism is generally the sign; for there is a class of genius of which a

spiritual and abstract egotism is the very essence. Of this kind was the genius of Rousseau and Byron; and of this kind, only refined by high moral and religious tendencies, is the genius of Chateaubriand. This class of genius only sympathizes with the outward universe, as it reacts upon its proper identity. It is an acuteness of sensibility which absorbs in itself all the powers of reason and observation, and individualizes every thing by making it part and parcel of its own essential being. A genius of this kind will always be the prominent figure in every picture he may design; every other figure would be to him a nonentity, but for the influence, the lights or shadows it casts upon himself, the reality amidst the shows. He therefore groups all things about himself; he cannot stir out of the circle of self, nor is it to be desired he should, for this self reflects humanity. This is the key to the egotism of Monsieur Chateaubriand, which is more or less apparent in all his works. To quarrel with it, is to quarrel with a peculiar character of genius, which, if not of the highest order, has at least the strongest hold upon our sympathies. For our own parts, we love to behold this vivifying principle, not only in his works, but even when it appears more broadly, and takes the semblance (though it may be far removed from it in reality) of vanity. We love to figure to ourselves the chivalrous and enthusiastic old poet and statesman, collecting about him of an evening, in the old aristocratic religious building of the Abbaye au Bois, his select circle of friends, and reading aloud the adventures of his youth, and vicissitudes of his life, himself the author, the hero, and the reciter of his narrative. We fancy the enthusiasm with which he recites the story of his juvenile years, (yet retaining their buoyant spirit,) when he found a fairy land in the savage wilds of America, when he roamed its boundless forests, committed himself, a wanderer, with heaven above him and in his heart, to its broad streams, visited in solitude, his "best society," the appalling Falls of the Niagara, and, borne along by ecstatic fancy, and its sudden joys, as it were with wings, lived, as he advanced, unharmed and cherished among suc