re is nothing to
recall those brilliant days except the painted tiles on the chimney,
where there is a choice society of coquettes and beaux, priests and
conjurers, beggars and dancers, and every wig and hoop dates back to
the days of Queen Anne.

Sometimes when I stand upon this pier by night, and look across the
calm black water, so still, perhaps, that the starry reflections seem
to drop through it in prolonged javelins of light instead of resting on
the surface, and the opposite lighthouse spreads its cloth of gold
across the bay,--I can imagine that I discern the French and English
vessels just weighing anchor; I see De Lauzun and De Noailles
embarking, and catch the last sheen upon their lace, the last glitter
of their swords. It vanishes, and I see only the lighthouse gleam, and
the dark masts of a sunken ship across the neighboring island. Those
motionless spars have, after all, a nearer interest, and, as I saw them
sink, I will tell their tale.

That vessel came in here one day last August, a stately, full-sailed
bark; nor was it known, till she had anchored, that she was a mass of
imprisoned fire below. She was the "Trajan," from Rockland, bound to
New Orleans with a cargo of lime, which took fire in a gale of wind,
being wet with sea-water as the vessel rolled. The captain and crew
retreated to the deck, and made the hatches fast, leaving even their
clothing and provisions below. They remained on deck, after reaching
this harbor, till the planks grew too hot beneath their feet, and the
water came boiling from the pumps. Then the vessel was towed into a
depth of five fathoms, to be scuttled and sunk. I watched her go down.
Early impressions from "Peter Parley" had portrayed the sinking of a
vessel as a frightful plunge, endangering all around, like a maelstrom.
The actual process was merely a subsidence so calm and gentle that a
child might have stood upon the deck till it sank beneath him, and then
might have floated away. Instead of a convulsion, it was something
stately and very pathetic to the imagination. The bark remained almost
level, the bows a little higher than the stern; and her breath appeared
to be surrendered in a series of pulsations, as if every gasp of the
lungs admitted more of the suffocating wave. After each long heave, she
went visibly a few inches deeper, and then paused. The face of the
benign Emperor, her namesake, was on the stern; first sank the carven
beard, then the rather mutilat