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Who knows how many unsatisfied desires, how many vain wishes, how many fears, fancied as well as real, torment them? Do they not lose their friends?-suffer cold and hunger? -disease and death? Can we see farther into futurity than the clam? Is his world, when we rightly consider it, more circumscribed than ours? Have we advantages or disadvantages from birth? So has the clam. Consider the advantage of being born in softer mud, or sheltered by a friendly rock!

Wealth, rank, and dignities we struggle for, as these confer peculiar privileges. The clam's ambition may be to work himself to the upper or lower place (for we are unacquainted with what they consider the post of honor,) in the community.

In the present unenlightend age, so little is known of the habits and customs of the clam race, that of their civil polity and of their social arrangements, we at present can only vaguely conjecture. It is a pity, for the subject would doubtless be one of deep interest; and perhaps we might obtain from their little communities, if we understood them better, some valuable hints for our own government. Admirable lessons are learned from the bee-hive and the anthill, the beaver-dam and the bird-nest; why not from the clam-bed? In absence of exact information, we may conjecture that their government is a far more 'simple machine' than even our own simple democratic form; for each individual is protected by his own. shell; and occupying only his little bed, there can be no great accumulation of property. Special legislation for the protection of peculiar interests can hardly be known. Probably their government is a kind of hereditary republic; a confederacy of states, living in harmonious alliance; governed, patriarchally, by those whose fortunate birth gives them advantages to be appreciated only by clams.

We presume that they never engage in war; that they are unambitious and pacific. We infer that their taxes must be light. We hope they are not given to over-trading and speculation; that dishonored paper money is unknown to their bank.

Their clothes being furnished ready made by Dame Nature, they have no manufactures to protect; no tariff-no imports no strikes of journeymen-tailors. They 'toil not, neither do they spin.' They impoverish not their country by the importation of foreign luxuries. The 'balance of trade' is to them an unknown term. They drink no spirituous liquors !

It is time we should end. Let us gracefully shut up our clamshell. The subject is exhausted - like the patience of the reader.

A short time ago, an English paper asserted that a man, somewhere or other, had succeeded in taming an oyster, so that the testaceous pedestrian followed him about like a dog! With all due deference to the veracious print, I am inclined to doubt the whole story. It must have been a mistake.

But if it only had said A CLAM!

Your oyster is a parasite; an idle do-nothing, like all other parasites. He attacheth himself to rocks, to bushes, and even to the shells of other oysters. But, in our short-sighted ignorance, we know not yet the undeveloped powers of the clam. Is not his smooth, fine-textured, light armor better adapted to locomotion, than your

heavy, corrugated, thick-shelled oyster? It is true, he could not leap like your grey-hound, nor prance like your courser. His motions, we may suppose, would be slow, and performed with dignified deliberation; but we recollect the fable of the tortoise, which by slow and painful industry, beat even the fiery courser in a long race.

'Cursus non est levis.'

Nothing would be got in a speculation upon oysters. Their natural stupidity is impracticable. Your oyster is a fat, gorbellied animal, only made to be eaten.

Benedict, in his insolent contempt of love, says: 'I cannot tell but love may transform me to an oyster;' that is, to a very senseless thing; for, mark: but till he have made an oyster of me, he never shall make me such a fool.'

But an oyster may be crossed in love? Yes, to be sure; and still more likely, a clam! Your clam is much the more superior being; not upon thy palate, I grant, most hypercritical gourmand, for he wants the delicate tenderness, the rich oleaginous flavor of that most delicious of the mollusca; but Sir, your clam has a head!

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A NIGHT SCENE.

BY THE LATE J. HUNTINGTON BRIGHT, ESQ.

It is deep midnight. On the verdant hills,
In beauty spread, the broad white moonlight lies.
No sound is heard, save that the gray owl hoots
At intervals in the old mossy wood,

Or save the rustle of the aspen leaves,

That ceaseless turn upon their slender stems,
When not a breath is felt in all the heaven.

Standing upon an eminence, I see

The haunts of men around. The world is still!
The busy and the bustling are at rest;
Their mingled voices do not fill the air,

As when I wander here at noon of day.
The birds are silent now, and the tired beasts
Are sunk to rest. Almost beneath my feet
Stand cottages, the dwellings of the poor,
And prouder mansions of the rich and great.
The cottager and all his little ones

Are slumbering now. Theirs is a sweeter sleep
Than luxury or wealth can ever give.

Not distant far, upon a gentle swell,

With its back-ground of orchards and of woods,
And more immediate circle of green trees,

My much-loved home, my native dwelling, stands.
Its roof is glimmering in the white moonshine,
And all its inmates, save myself, at rest.

I see the little brook meandering there,

But do not hear its voice: the trembling light
Of the full moon falls on its shifting waves,
And glistens back, in flashes, on my eye.

How sweet the stillness of this midnight hour!
It banishes the cares of busy life:

The spirit of the Mightiest is abroad;

It fills the boundless air, the spreading wood,
The wilds, the lonely deserts of the earth,
And all her populous realms.

In a few hours

The rosy morn will break upon the hills,
And all these sleepers start to life again:
The gay to spend another day of mirth;
The housewife to her toil; the laboring man

To his accustomed task. The little birds

That perch in silence on these lofty trees,

Shall then break forth in songs,' wild woodland songs, Such as were chanted on the sixth day's morn,

In Eden's bower, to hail the birth of man;

And summer's morning wind shall breathe again,

And toss the dew-drops from the forest leaves,

And all this solemn stillness be exchanged

For universal motion.

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ORIENTAL FRAGMENTS.

FROM THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS OF A TRAVELLER IN THE EAST: BY J. S. BUCKINGHAM.

NUMBER TWO.

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DEPARTURE FROM SUEZ. FEBRUARY 23d. Our camels having drank their fill of water on the preceding evening, our charges of living having been paid, and every provision made for our journey, we left Suez as early as the dawn, passing round Kolzoum to the northward, leaving on our right, ' Geziret el Yahoudi,' or the Island of the Jews, and travelling along the shore of 'Hor el Yahoudi,' or the Creek of the Jews, at the termination of which we entered the bed of the ancient canal, which discharged itself into the head of the Red Sea. Neither in the course of our route, however, nor here at its mouth, could we distinguish any thing which could lead to a satisfactory decision as to the remains of Arsinoë; so that the idea I had entertained on the summit of the mount of Kolzoum, was rather confirmed than otherwise.

While halting for the purpose of examination, we found here a small party of Arabs, four in number, who were returning to Egypt through the tract of El Ouadi; and as they professed themselves perfectly acquainted with the desert, we agreed to let them share our coffee, tobacco, and protection, for their services as guides, on condition that they were to make any deviation from the common route which I might command.

For the first hour of our journeying in company with these Arabs, we were entertained with the traditional history of the pursuit of Moses by Pharaoh, of the miraculous escape of the fugitives, and the complete destruction of the pursuing host. As their knowledge of the subject was merely traditional, neither of them being able to read, it was not to be wondered at that they should differ in their relations of this event; but various as their accounts were, each varied but little from that received among us. They all agreed, however, in pointing out the scene of this event at some miles north of Suez, adding, that in those days the sea extended farther into the desert than it does at present.

I may add, that during all my journey along this part of the coast, I could discover none of those natural phenomena, which many have supposed sufficient to account for the passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites, and the subsequent destruction of Pharaoh's hosts, by what are called natural means; there being nothing in the configuration of the land, or the flowing of the tides, or the prevalence of particular winds, that could produce the separation of the waters, as described by the sacred historian; so that the integrity of its miraculous history stands unimpeached by any circumstances visible on the spot, at all calculated to take away from its miraculous character.

From the equalityof levels between the sandy plains and the surface of the Red Sea, the water flows northward of Suez for some distance through the bed of the ancient canal; and the rains also finding a reception in its hollow bed, without the power of drawing it off, as the sands are firm, and in some places even mixed with clay

and gravel, the whole of the channel appears as though but recently left dry.

In page 474 of his Illustrations of the Geography of Herodotus,' Major Rennell has the following paragraph on the subject of the ancient canal communicating between the Red Sea and the Nile: 'It is confidently reported that the traces of the eastern extremity of the canal are also visible near Adjeroud, and thence toward the Bay of Suez. Adjeroud, as we have seen, stands at no great distance from the hilly tract which extends to the northwest from the shore of that bay.' Pococke says, (vol. 1, p. 134,) Part of the way from Adjeroud to Suez is in a sort of fossée, that is thought to be the canal of Trajan, and seems to have run close to the west end of the old city;' (by which it may be concluded Kolzoum is intended; although, in page 133, he seems to consider these ruins as belonging to the ancient Arsinoë.) M. Niebuhr remarked the same appearance, but was in doubt whether it was a part of a canal, or the bed of a torrent; for, by the herbage growing in it, water must have recently flowed through it. (Voyage en Arabie, vol. 1, p. 204.)

Dr. Pococke also says, page 132, 'From Adjeroud we went on south toward Suez, in a sort of hollow ground, in which, as I shall observe, the sea might formerly come.' And he remarks afterward, page 180,If Heroöpolis was on the most northern height I have mentioned, (he having supposed Adjeroud to be the site of that city,) the Red Sea must have lost ground; and, indeed, by the situation of places, there is a great appearance of it; the valleys and the high ground, with broken cliffs, looking very much like such an alteration.' M. Niebuhr, in his Description de l'Arabie,' p. 354, and Volney, in his Travels in Egypt and Syria,' vol. 1, chap. 14, describe the same kind of hollow to the extent of four or five miles to the northward of Suez, (Volney says two leagues,) and which, from all accounts, must be the deserted bed of the sea, or rather that bed filled up with sand, to a height above the ordinary level of the sea, in the course of its gradual retreat since the earliest times.

The error of Dr. Pococke, in supposing Adjeroud to be the site of Heroöpolis, is more than manifest from its relative situation only; beside which, there is nothing even in its neighborhood which could indicate the remains of an ancient settlement there. His description of the fossée, or hollow ground, between that place and Suez, is, however, perfectly correct; though, from its extreme breadth, irregularity, and general form, the supposition of its being the canal of Trajan must have been extremely forced. Niebuhr, in remarking the same appearance, more reasonably supposed it to be the bed of a torrent; but the observations of Volney, and the conclusions of Rennell, are still more satisfactory, in conceiving it to be the deserted bed of the sea; though even then, a period must be assigned to such gradual retreat as anterior to the existence of Kolzoum, the remains of which are at this moment so close to the water's edge, that since the destruction of that city, no farther retreat of the sea can have taken place.

Having this fossée, and Adjeroud also, considerably on our left, we rode, for upward of three hours, beyond its mouth, and at least four hours beyond Suez, in the very bed of the ancient canal itself,

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