We smoothly glide below
The faintly glimmering worlds of light:
Day has a charm, and this deceptive night
Brings a mysterious show; --
He shadows our dear earth, -- but his cool stars are white.
_Two Years before the Mast._ A Personal Narrative of Life at
Sea.
New York: Harper and Brothers. 12mo. pp. 483.
This is a voice from the forecastle. Though a narrative of
literal, prosaic truth, it possesses something of the romantic charm
of Robinson Crusoe. Few more interesting chapters of the literature
of the sea have ever fallen under our notice. The author left the
halls of the University for the deck of a merchant vessel, exchanging
"the tight dress coat, silk cap, and kid gloves of an undergraduate
at Cambridge, for the loose entofDocumentsduck trowsers, checked
shirt, and tarpaulin hat of a sailor," and here presents us the
fruits of his voyage. His book will have a wide circulation; it will
be praised in the public prints; we shall be told that it does honor
to his head and heart; but we trust that it will do much more than
this; that it will open the eyes of many to the condition of the
sailor, to the fearful waste of man, by which the luxuries of foreign
climes are made to increase the amount of commercial wealth.
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