e skies to fan us home.

O bliss of friendship, bliss of heaven!
O heart of love, earth's angel leaven!
The speed of winds is in your feet,
Soon hands will join and lips will meet.

Now through our land roll far and wide
War's lurid flame and crimson tide;
But glory blushes through her woe,
And both to share with joy we go.

Farewell, grim North! Possess thy throne,
And reign amid thy bergs alone;
Now turn our hearts to truer poles,
To native shores and kindred souls.
Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;
The loved that wait shall wait no longer;
Our wake is white with happy foam,
And blithe the skies to fan us home.

_September 1._--The Gulf had waylaid us, with a fierce storm in
readiness. Our reckoning was wrong; we just escaped going ashore in the
pitchy darkness; and, to mend all, the ship took fire! The flames were
soon quenched, but St. Lawrence Neptune kept trying to put them out for
twelve hours afterward; and such a drenching! But here we are between
the shores of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Isle. Fort Mulgrave, two miles
away over the calm water and beneath the floods of sunshine, looks like
a little paradise, (painted white,) after all my reviling it. And
fields, too!--green fields and forests! Could one ever again wish more
pleasure than to look on swarded fields and wooded hills? Yes,--besides
this, the pleasure of _remembering_ Labrador!

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Possibly sienite. I omitted to make a note, and speak from
recollection. If sienite, very hard, the quartz element predominating,
as the feldspar does farther north.

NOTES OF A PIANIST.

III.

New York, _February, 1862._--One thing surprises me. It is to find New
York, to say the least of it, as brilliant as when I took my departure
for the Antilles in 1857. In general, the press abroad relates the
events of our war with such a predetermined pessimist spirit, that at a
distance it is impossible to form a correct estimate of the state of the
country. For the last year I have read in the papers statements to this
effect:--"The theatres are closed; the terrorism of Robespierre sinks
into insignificance, compared to the excesses of the Americans; the
streets of New York are deluged with blood" (I very nearly had a duel in
Puerto Rico for venturing to question the authenticity of this last
assertion, propounded by a Spanish officer); "in short, the North is in