a pretty smart blow in the face as it came in contact with the head of the boiler, and I did not hesitate to drag my body after it the moment I recovered from this stunning effect, and ascertained my whereabouts. In a word, I crept into the boiler, resolved to pass the rest of the night there. The place was dry and sheltered. Had my bed been softer I would have had all that man could desire; as it was, I slept, and slept soundly.

"I should mention though, that, before closing my eyes, I several times shifted my position. I had gone first to the farthest end of the boiler, then again I had crawled back to the manhole, to put my hand out and feel that it was really still open. The warmest place was at the farther end, where I finally established myself, and that I knew from the first. It was foolish in me to think that the opening through which I had just entered could be closed without my hearing it, and that, too, when no one was astir but myself; but the blow on the side of my face made me a little nervous perhaps; besides, I never could bear to be shut up in any place-it always gives a wild-like feeling about the head. You may laugh, stranger, but I believe I should suffocate in an empty church if I once felt that I was so shut up in it that I could not get out. I have met men afore now just like me, or worse rather, much worse-men that it made sort of furious to be tied down to anything, yet so soft-like and contradictory in their natures that you might lead them anywhere so long as they didn't feel the string. Stranger, it takes all sorts of people to make a world; and we may have a good many of the worst kind of white men here out west. But I have seen folks upon this river-quiet-looking chaps, too, as ever you seee-who were so teetotally carankterankterous that they'd shoot the doctor who'd tell them they couldn't live when ailing, and make a die of it, just out of spite, when told they must get well. Yes, fellows as fond of the good things of earth as you and I, yet who'd rush like mad right over the gang-plank of life if once brought to believe that they had to stay in this world whether they wanted to leave it or not. Thunder and bees! if such a fellow as that had heard the cocks crow as I did -awakened to find darkness about himdarkness so thick you might cut it with a knife -heard other sounds, too, to tell that it was morning, and scrambling to fumble for that manhole, found it, too, black-closed-black and even as the rest of the iron coffin around him, closed, with not a rivet-hole to let God's light and air in-why-why-he'd a swounded

right down on the spot, as I did, and I ain't ashamed to own it to no white man."

The big drops actually stood upon the poor fellow's brow, as he now paused for a moment in the recital of his terrible story. He passed his hand over his rough features, and resumed it with less agitation of manner.

"How long I may have remained there senseless I don't know. The doctors have since told me it must have been a sort of fit-more like an apoplexy than a swoon, for the attack finally passed off in sleep. Yes, I slept; I know that, for I dreamed-dreamed a heap o' things afore I awoke: there is but one dream, however, that I have ever been able to recall distinctly, and that must have come on shortly before I recovered my consciousness. My resting-place through the night had been, as I have told you, at the far end of the boiler. Well, I now dreamed that the manhole was still open, and, what seems curious, rather than laughable, if you take it in connection with other things, I fancied that my legs had been so stretched in the long walk I had taken the evening before that they now reached the whole length of the boiler, and extended through the opening. At first (in my dreaming reflections) it was a comfortable thought, that no one could now shut up the manhole without awakening But soon it seemed as if my feet, which were on the outside, were becoming drenched in the storm which had originally driven me to seek this shelter. I felt the chilling rain upon my extremities. They grew colder and colder, and their numbness gradually extended upward to other parts of my body. It seemed, however, that it was only the under side of my person that was thus strangely visited. I lay upon my back, and it must have been a species of nightmare that afflicted me, for I knew at last that I was dreaming, yet felt it impossible to rouse myself. A violent fit of coughing restored at last my powers of volition. The water, which had been slowly rising around me, had rushed into my mouth; I awoke to hear the rapid strokes of the pump which was driving it into the boiler!

me.

"My whole condition-no-not all of itnot yet my present condition flashed with new horror upon me. But I did not again swoon. The choking sensation which had made me faint when I first discovered how I was entombed gave way to a livelier though less overpowering emotion. I shrieked even as I started from my slumber. The previous discovery of the closed aperture, with the instant oblivion that followed, seemed only a part of my dream, and I threw my arms about and

looked eagerly for the opening by which I had entered the horrid place—yes, looked for it, and felt for it, though it was the terrible conviction that it was closed- -a second time brought home to me-which prompted my frenzied cry. Every sense seemed to have tenfold acuteness, yet not one to act in unison with another. I shrieked again and againimploringly-desperately-savagely. I filled the hollow chamber with my cries, till its iron walls seemed to tingle around me. The dull strokes of the accursed pump seemed only to mock at, while they deadened, my screams.

"At last I gave myself up. It is the struggle against our fate which frenzies the mind. We cease to fear when we cease to hope. I gave myself up, and then I grew calm!

"I was resigned to die-resigned even to my mode of death. It was not, I thought, so very new after all, as to awaken unwonted horror in a man. Thousands have been sunk to the bottom of the ocean shut up in the holds of vessels-beating themselves against the battened hatches-dragged down from the upper world shrieking, not for life, but for death only beneath the eye and amid the breath of heaven. Thousands have endured that appalling kind of suffocation. I would die only as many a better man had died before me. I could meet such a death. I said so-I thought so I felt so felt so, I mean, for a minute or more; ten minutes it may have been-or but an instant of time. I know not, nor does it matter if I could compute it. There was a time, then, when I was resigned to my fate. But, Heaven was I resigned to it in the shape in which next it came to appal? Stranger, I felt that water growing hot about my limbs, though it was yet mid-leg deep. I felt it, and in the same moment heard the roar of the furnace that was to turn it into steam before it could get deep enough to drown

one!

a few inches of me? I did; but the gurgling water that was growing hotter and hotter around my extremities made more noise within the steaming cauldron than did my frenzied blows against its sides.

"Latterly I had hardly changed my position, but now the growing heat of the water made me plash to and fro; lifting myself wholly out of it was impossible, but I could not remain quiet. I stumbled upon something; it was a mallet!-a chance tool the smith had left there by accident. With what wild joy did I seize it-with what eager confidence did I now deal my first blows with it against the walls of my prison! But scarce had I intermitted them for a moment when I heard the clang of the iron door as the fireman flung it wide to feed the flames that were to torture me. My knocking was unheard, though I could hear him toss the sticks into the furnace beneath me, and drive to the door when his infernal oven was fully crammed.

"Had I yet a hope? I had; but it rose in my mind side by side with the fear that I might now become the agent of preparing my. self a more frightful death. Yes; when I thought of that furnace with its fresh-fed flames curling beneath the iron upon which I stood-a more frightful death even than that of being boiled alive! Had I discovered that mallet but a short time sooner-but no matter, I would by its aid resort to the only expedient now left.

"It was this. I remembered having a marline-spike in my pocket, and in less time than I have taken in hinting at the consequences of thus using it, I had made an impression upon the sides of the boiler, and soon succeeded in driving it through. The water gushed through the aperture-would they see it? No; the jet could only play against a wooden partition which must hide the stream from view; it must trickle down upon the decks before the leakage would be discovered. Should I drive another hole to make that leakage greater? Why, the water within seemed already to be sensibly diminished, so hot had become that which remained; should more escape, would I not hear it bubble and hiss upon the fiery plates of iron that were already scorching the soles of my feet?

"Ah! there is a movement-voices-I hear them calling for a crowbar. The bulkhead cracks as they pry off the planking. They have seen the leak-they are trying to get at it! Good God! why do they not first dampen the fire? why do they call for the-the

"Stranger, look at that finger: it can never

regain its natural size; but it has already done all the service that man could expect from so humble a member. Sir, that hole would have been plugged up on the instant unless I had jammed my finger through!

"I heard the cry of horror as they saw it without the shout to drown the fire-the first stroke of the cold-water pump. They say, too, that I was conscious when they took me outbut I-I remember nothing more till they brought a julep to my bedside arterwards, AND that julep!—”

Cooling, was it?" "STRANNGER!!!"

Ben turned away his head and wept - He could no more.

THE SHADOW.

Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, love, on love's philosophy:
These three hours that we have spent
Walking here, two shadows went

Along with us, which we ourselves produced;
But now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,

And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
So whilst our infant loves did grow,
Disguises did, and shadows flow

From us and our cares; but now 'tis not so.

That love hath not attain'd the high'st degree
Which is still diligent, lest others see;
Except our loves at this noon stay
We shall new shadows make the other way.
As the first were made to blind
Others, these which come behind
Will work upon ourselves and blind our eyes.
If your love's faint and westwardly decline,
To me, thou falsely thine,

And I to thee, mine actions shall disguise.
The morning shadows wear away,
But these grow longer all the day:
But oh, love's day is short, if love decay.
Love is a growing or full constant light,
And his short minute, after noon, is night.
DR. JOHN DONNE.

A LOVER'S THOUGHT.

Thou wert the morning star amongst the living, Ere thy fair light had fled;

Now, having died, thou art, as Hesperus, giving New splendour to the dead.

PLATO, translated by SHELLEY.

THE CALTON HILL, EDINBURGH.

Edinburgh and its surrounding scenery have been celebrated by English and Scottish poets and prose writers; and their enthusiasm is acknowledged to be more than deserved by every one who gazes for the first time upon the site of the northern capital. The picturesque heights of Arthur Seat, the Castle Rock, and Calton Hill-which, according to Hugh Miller, once formed a group of islands covered by boreal vegetation-give the city a character that fully merits to-day as much as in Marmion's time the eulogy of Scott

"Still on the spot Lord Marmion stay'd,
For fairer scene he ne'er survey'd.
When seated with the martial show
That peopled all the plain below,
The wandering eye could o'er it go,
And mark the distant city glow

With gloomy splendour red;
For on the smoke wreaths, huge and slow,
That round her sable turrets flow,

The morning beams were shed,
And tinged them with a lustre prond,
Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud.
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
Where the huge Castle holds its state,

And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,
Mine own romantic town!

But northward far, with purer blaze,
On Ochil mountains fell the rays,
And as each heathy top they kiss'd,
It gleam'd a purple amethyst.
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;
Here Preston Bay, and Berwick Law;

And, broad between them roll'd,
The gallant Frith the eye might note,
Whose islands on its bosom float.

Like emeralds chased in gold.
Fitz-Eustace' heart felt closely pent;
As if to give his rapture vent,
The spur he to his charger lent,

And raised his bridle-hand,
And, making demi-volte in air,
Cried, 'Where's the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land!'"

Burns, the Ettrick Shepherd, and Thomas Campbell (in his fragment The Queen of the North) pay their tribute to the beauty and grandeur of the scene that may be witnessed from any of its eminences; and all appeal with pride to its historical associations.

At the beginning of the present century the Calton Hill was a solitary eminence distinguished only by the Observatory and the Bridewell. A walk, little frequented save by strangers, winded round the verge of the

precipitous hill, and showed, in pleasing suecession, a noble view of the Forth, with the mountains beyond it-of Leith and its shipping

of Musselburgh Bay and the fine eastern crescent of land, terminated so happily by North Berwick Law,-of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags, with the towers of the old palace, and its huge quadrangular court, lying close under the eye of the spectator-of the massive and high-piled buildings of the Old Town, terminated by the castle, and backed by the blue range of the Pentland Hills,-and, finally, as the spectator returned towards the point from which he set out, he commanded a view of the New Town, with the turrets of the Register House and the grand arches of the North Bridge. The promenade was solitary, however, and little frequented until the daring spirit of modern improvement suggested the magnificent plan of leading the principal approach to Edinburgh from the eastward along the verge of this commanding eminence.

In 1815 the Calton Hill was rendered a thoroughfare by the formation of a road connecting the New Town directly with the eastern district of the country. A lofty bridge was thrown from the east end of Prince's Street to the western face of the hill; the corresponding road was cut, partly through primitive rocks, and partly through a burial-ground, which presented obstructions of a different, but not less difficult nature: there was also an immense hollow to be filled up. Nevertheless, the whole was in time perfected, so as to form one of the noblest approaches that any European city can boast of. Before this period the hill exhibited two solitary buildings of opposite enough character; the Bridewell, which somebody compared to a Bastile, and a monument to Lord Nelson, for which there were more ungracious comparisons. But pure Grecian architecture was now beginning to be studied in its best models, and as this craggy hill seemed to offer sites equal to the Athenian Acropolis itself, various structures of that kind have been erected upon it. First appeared an Observatory, of simple but elegant design, situated towards the top on the north-west side of the hill. At the south-east angle of the court inclosing the Observatory, there has been erected a monument to Professor Playfair, who was chiefly instrumental in obtaining for Edinburgh the benefits of this scientific structure. The monument is a square mass surrounded with columns, and altogether formed in pure Grecian taste.

It was now suggested that a monument should be erected to the many Scottish officers who had fallen in the war of the French Revolution