demands a Muse of sterner stuff;
No more one bard, exempt from vulgar throng,
May sing through Roman towns the Ascraean song,
Or court in Learning's elmy bowers relief
From individual shame or general grief:
Silence is music to a soul outworn
With the wild clangor of the warlike horn,
The paltry fife, the brain-benumbing drum.
When, white Astraea! will thy kingdom come,--
The chaster period that our boyhood saw,--
Arts above arms, and without conquest, Law,--
Rights well maintained without the strength of steel
And milder manners for the gentle weal,--
That Freedom's promise may not come to blight,
And Wisdom fail, and Knowledge end in night?

NEW HAVEN, _August 8_.

* * * * *

PAUL JONES AND DENIS DUVAL.

Ingham and his wife have a habit of coming in to spend the evening with
us, unless we go there, or unless we both go to Haliburton's, or unless
there is something better to do elsewhere.

We talk, or we play besique, or Mrs. Haliburton sings, or we sit on the
stoup and hear the crickets sing; but when there is a new Trollope or
Thackeray,--alas, there will never be another new Thackeray!--all else
has always been set aside till we have read that aloud.

When I began the last sentence of the last Thackeray that ever was
written, Ingham jumped out of his seat, and cried,--

"There, I said I remembered this _Duval_, and you made fun of me. Go
on,--and I will tell you all about him, when you have done."

So I read on to the sudden end:--

"We had been sent for in order to protect a fleet of merchantmen that
were bound to the Baltic, and were to sail under the convoy of our ship
and the Countess of Scarborough, commanded by Captain Piercy. And thus
it came about, that, after being twenty-five days in His Majesty's
service, I had the fortune to be present at one of the most severe and
desperate combats that have been fought in our or in any time.

"I shall not attempt to tell that story of the battle of the 23d of
September, which ended in our glorious captain striking his own colors
to our superior and irresistible enemy." (This enemy, as Mr. Thackeray
has just said, is "Monsieur John Paul Jones, afterwards Knight of His
Most Christian Majesty's Order of Merit.") "Sir Richard [Pearson, of the
English frigate Serapis] has told the story of his disaster in words
nobler than any I could supply, who, though indeed engaged i