A Letter from the Other Side of the Atlantic [pp. 18-21]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
And, when eve's shadows gather round,
We'll bow where Poesy's enshrined.
If honors sought invest our heads,
They shall by worthy means be earned;
If come petence our tables spreads,
We'll wealthi relinquish unconcerned;
And if, in arts or arms well learned,
Our service is by power repaid,
Their bright example who so yearned
Towards Freedom, in past days, shall aid.
But if, adown the humbler path
Of life, with poverty we wend,
WVe'll seek the bliss contentment hathl
And life in healthy labor spend.
And, freemen born, we'll proudly lend
Our suffrage, that in place may stand
Thb patriots, who can best defend,
And most advance, our native land.
No more we'll mourn the wasted past,
Nor hopes destroyed, nor ripened fear,
That o'er the pallid brow have cast
The furrowed lines that there appear.
Each passing hour will bring us cheer
If rightly we the time employ For lo! the bow-spanned arch is clear,
And every breeze is fraught with joy.
And now again, as in the hours
WVhen childhood's guilelessness could find,
Amid envenomed thorns, fair flowers
In depth of darkest woods enshrined,
WVell armed to meet, or wisely blind
To what the future hides, we'll seek
For music in the moaning wind,
And beauty in the lightning's streak.
We will admire His power who made;
(His power assures his guardian care.)
Nor from the future turn, afraid
Of ills He bade his creatures bear.
And, haply, we, by ardent prayer,
And sinless heart, and blameless hand,
May doubly triumph o'er despair,
And reach, at last, "the better land."
A LETTER
From the other side of the /tlantic.
BY ROBERT WALSH, Jr.
Paris, -- dltugust,
MY DEAR WI-,
After a passage of twenty-three days, I arrived at
Havre in sufficiently good case, though somewhlat
thinner than when I embarked at New York, an effect of that delightful concomitant of a voyage vwhlich
the French call " railadie de nme," and wljichll they
migh,t as truly term "maladie a Buc." Britannia, as
the poor writing master ejaculated, whilst leaning over
the sides of the steamer between Dover and Calais,
did not rule the waves as straight as she might have
done, and caused, in consequence, a good deal of intestine commotion on board of our vessel. I owe the
sickness, however, thanks in one respect, for in the outset, whilst I was experiencing the truth of Byronl's lines,
It is an awkward siaht
To see one's native land receding through
The growing waters; it unmanis one quite,
Especially when life is rather new;
and feeling as blue as thle wvaters of the ocean around
me, at leaving " friends and sacred home," it completely
released me from all such moral sufferings. One is apt
to care for little else vwhen revelling in the sensations
which the motion of the ship produces. But enough of
such reminiscences. Ot revietit toltjoetrs a ses premiters
amoturs, but not to one's first hates.
After remaining a day in Havre, I set offin the Diligence for Rouen. Being desirous, of course, of seeing
the country through which we passed, without imitating
the example of great Julius, who, according to the
school-boy's translation of the phrase, "Caesar venit in
Galliam sunima diligentih,"-came into Gaul " on the
summit of the Diligence"-I took my seat in the
Caupe, which being open on all sides save the one
where it is separated from the Interiectr, affords a very
good prospect of vlwhatever is to be seen. The road
between Havre and Rouen is generally very good. It
runs near the river Seine, the banks of which are quite
pretty, and through a finely cultivated and tolerably
well-wooded region. Some of the views which it presents to the traveller, embracing both sides of the river,
are beautiful. The villages situated upon it wear all a
squalid, decayed appearance. In all the habitations of
the inferior orders of people that I observed scattered
about the country or collected together in villages,
there is a lamentable want of that air of neatness and
comfort which renders the farm-houses and hamlets in
England so attractive. One dwelling that we passed
was of so unique a character that it deserves to be mentioned; it was constructed entirely out of an immense
rock which rested on the side of a high hill, and seemed
to possess every requisite for the residence of the poor
family by whom it was inhabited. It was rather singular to see smoke curling out of the top of a huge
mass of granite, before you came near enough to be
aware of its nature. At a short distance from L'Ilebonne, one of the villages through which we rode, are
the mnoss-covered ruins of a building of Roman date,
and of an old feudal chateau that wear a highly im pressive and venerable aspect. The sight of these
relics of former days constitutes one of the peculiar
pleasures of travelling through a country where, for
centuries, civilization in a greater or less degree, has
exercised sway. The mind contemplates with a spe cies of pensive delight the various monuments of by gone ages, slowly mouldering into the decay which
long since has overtaken the hands by which they were
constructed. For the student especially there is some thing intensely interesting in wandering through regions
thus pregnant with historical and romantic recollections,
where every antiquated structure, where almost every
spot off,rotnd Is its own story to tell, and affords food
for diversified reflection. Jow l he revels in the idea
that he is in a land
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breath'd around,
is
NITOR.