Our anchor soon must change this lay of merry craftsmen here, For the "Yeo-heave-o," and the "Heave-away," and the sighing seaman's cheer; When weighing slow, at eve they go, far, far from love and home, And sobbing sweethearts, in a row, wail o'er the ocean foam. In livid and obdurate gloom he darkens down at last, O deep sea-diver, who might then behold such sights as thou? The hoary monsters' palaces! methinks what joy 'twere now To go plump plunging down amid the assembly of the whales, And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their Scourging tails! Then deep in tangle-woods to fight the fierce sea-unicorn," And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all his ivory horn; To leave the subtle sworder-fish 12 of bony blade forlorn, And for the ghastly grinning shark to laugh his jaws to scorn; 10 The cat is a combination of ropes and pulleys by which an anchor is slung up and secured to the cat-head, a strong beam projecting horizontally over the ship's bows. The narwhal. This mammal, which often attains the length of 20 feet, has two tusks when young, but retains only one in the upper jaw after a certain age. This single tusk, which projects from the head in a straight line, has caused the narwhal to be termed the sea unicorn. The upper jaw of the sword-fish terminates in a long sword-like spike about three or four feet in length, from which it obtains its name. The fish moves through the water with such velocity that it has been known to drive its spike through a ship's bottom, the spike being snapped off by the force of the blow and remaining fixed in the plank. It is thought that the fish must have taken the bottom of the ship for a whale, an animal with which it is sed to have frequent encounters. To leap down on the Kraken's 13 back, where, mid Norwegian isles, He lies, a lubber 14 anchorage for sudden shallowed miles; Till snorting, like an under-sea volcano, off he rolls, Meanwhile to swing, a-buffeting the far astonished shoals Of his back-browsing ocean calves; or haply in a cove, Shell-strown, and consecrate of old to some Undine's 15 love, To find the long-haired mermaidens; or hard by icy lands, 16 To wrestle with the sea-serpent, upon cerulean sands. O broad-armed fisher of the deep, whose sports can equal thine? The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons, that tugs thy cable line; And night by night, 'tis thy delight, thy glory day by day, Through sable sea and breaker white, the giant game to play; But, shamer of our little sports! forgive the name I gave, A fisher's joy is to destroy,—thine office is to save. O lodger in the sea-kings' halls, could'st thou but understand Whose be the white bones by thy side, or who that dripping band, : Slow swaying in the heaving wave, that round about thee bend, With sounds like breakers in a dream, blessing their ancient friend 13 Kra'-ken, an imaginary sea-animal of enormous length, supposed to be like a great serpent. Its haunts were said to be in the northern seas. It is the same as the sea-serpent of modern times, of which some very circumstantial accounts have been given, but which owes its origin more to imagination than reality. 14 Lub-ber, clumsy, ungainly. From the Welsh llob, an unwieldy lump. The word is used by the poets to denote anything huge and awkward, as the "lubber fiend" of Milton. 15 The Undiné was a water-nymph. The name is derived from the Latin unda, a wave. For the nature of these water-nymphs the reader is referred to "Undine," an exquisite romance written by the Baron De la Motte Fouqué. 16 Ce-ru'-le-an, blue, of the colour of the sky. From the Latin cæruleus, blue, from cælum, heaven. Oh, could'st thou know what heroes" glide with larger steps round thee, Thine iron side would swell with pride, thou❜dst leap within the sea! Give honour to their memories who left the pleasant strand, To shed their blood so freely for the love of Fatherland— Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy churchyard grave 18 So freely, for a restless bed amid the tossing wave THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW. GEORGE CROLY, A writer as famous for his prose works as his poetry. He was born in Dublin about 1780, and was educated at Trinity College. He entered into holy orders, and was ultimately made rector of St. Stephens, Walbrook, retaining the living until his death in 1861. He was justly celebrated as a popular preacher. His principal poem is " Paris in 1815," from which the following extract has been taken. His minor poems have been collected in two volumes. Besides these, he has written a satirical poem entitled "The Modern Orlando," and some dramatic pieces. His chief works of fiction are "Salathiel," a romance based on the legend of the Wandering Jew; "Marston, or the Statesman;" and "Tales of the Great St. Bernard." He also wrote a "Political Life of Burke," "The Personal History of King George the Fourth;" and, among various other theological works and pamphlets, a book on the Revelation, entitled "The Apocalypse of St. John, a new Interpretation." 17 English sailors who have perished by shipwreck, starvation, and battle, and have found a resting-place at the tranquil bottom of the deep sea, where they must remain till the last day when both land and sea must give up their dead. 18 Recent discovery has shown this idea of restlessness by commotion at the bottom of the ocean similar to that which is generally going on at the surface to be erroneous, for, from the bottom of some of the deepest waters that have been fathomed, tiny shells have been brought up in a perfect condition, which could not possibly have been so had they been rubbed against each other by the motion of the water. [The atrocities of the French Revolution in 1789, the murder on the scaffold of Louis XVI. and the unfortunate Marie Antoinette in 1793, the wild political doctrines which republican and godless France sowed broadcast through the continent, crowned by the imperious arrogance of Napoleon I. in seeking to domineer at pleasure over every European state, made every government, who could do so with comparative safety, seek to put a check to a state of things which was literally turning Europe upside down, for Napoleon made and unmade when and how he liked, and rubbed out political landmarks and traced them anew where he would with as much ease as a boy draws lines upon his slate. By 1812, Italy, Austria, Prussia, Belgium, Holland, and Spain had all suffered severely from Napoleon's self-assumed dictatorship over Europe. England had never suffered from invasion, but had been compelled to lavish men and money to keep the horrors of war from her shores by attacking Napoleon in Spain and Egypt, and furnishing funds to many of the continental powers to enable them to continue the struggle. Up to this time Russia had played fast and loose with Napoleon, being at one time in alliance with him under treaty, and at another sending armies, under the fire-eater Suwarrow and other generals, to aid the Austrians in Italy and elsewhere, as well as the Prussians; but, like England, Russia had not been compelled to witness the presence of French troops within her boundaries, and to suffer from the outrages with which the presence of hostile troops is inevitably attended. In the month of April, 1812, Russia, which had been at peace with Sweden under the treaty of Fredericksham, concluded September 17, 1809, entered into a coalition with this country against France. Napoleon, though the war fought out by England on Spanish soil was a heavy strain on the population and resources of France, determined on humiliating Russia, and prepared and set in motion an army numbering about 270,000 men, with about 1500 auxiliaries, consisting of Germans, Poles, Italians, and Prussians. With this unwieldy force he crossed the Niemen on June 24 and 25, and entered Lithuania, the Russian armies everywhere retreating before him towards Smolensk, and not venturing to hazard an engagement, although portions of the respective armies came into collision at Mohilow and Witepsk in July. Napoleon, however, did not conduct his advance without loss, for during the time that elapsed between the passage of the Niemen and his entrance across the Dnieper into Russia Proper, he lost about 100,000 men from his crowded ranks by disease and sickness and the raids of the Cossacks, who hovered round the line of march on all sides, carrying off many of the stragglers into captivity. It was time, thought Napoleon, to push on and strike a decisive blow at Moscow, to procure suitable winter quarters for the army, and a position from which future operations could be conducted; so he advanced in haste to Smolensk, which he reached on August 16, just as the Russian rearguard was evacuating the town after having set it on fire. Napoleon followed the Russians up without delay, and having come up with them near Borodino, a village on the banks of the river Moskwa, a sanguinary engagement ensued, in which the advantage remained with the French, the Russians having quitted the field during the night. This was on September 7; a week after, the French army entered Moscow, which had been hastily evacuated by the Russians of all ranks and grades of society, and on the 15th Napoleon had the satisfaction of dating his dispatches from the Kremlin, the palace of the ancient Czars of Muscovy. On September 14, a fire broke out in Moscow, which was with difficulty got under by the French. This was succeeded by others which continued to burst forth mysteriously in different parts of the city, until, on the evening of the 19th, four-fifths of the city was in ruins, and useless to the French as winter quarters. By the French it was alleged that this was the work of incendiaries who had been set on to burn the city by Rostopchin, the governor of Moscow. Rostopchin, on the other hand, denied this, saying that a few houses were set on fire by their owners, who would rather see them burnt than in the hands of the French, and that the rest was the fruit of the excesses of the French soldiery. Judging, however, from the fact of the Russians having set Smolensk and other places on fire as they retreated before the French, it is only fair to suppose that the Russians burnt Moscow to render it untenable by the French. For five weeks Napoleon remained at Moscow seeking to bring the Emperor Alexander to terms, and at last, on October 19, he began his famous retreat with about 120,000 men. About November 6, the winter set in with unexampled severity, and the men and horses, pinched with cold and famished with hunger, sank on the road by hundreds to die where they dropped. Added to this were the constant attacks of the Cossacks, who hovered about the army like whirling clouds of cavalry, cutting down thousands who were too weak to strike a blow in self-defence. When Napoleon quitted Smolensk on Novem |