NOTES.

PAGE 123. That of our vices we can frame

A ladder.

The words of St. Augustine are, "De vitiis nostris

scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus.”

Sermon III. De Ascensione.

PAGE 127. THE PHANTOM SHIP.

A detailed account of this "apparition of a Ship in the Air" is given by Cotton Mather in his Magnalia Christi, Book I. Ch. VI. It is contained in a letter from the Rev. James Pierpont, Pastor of New Haven. To this account Mather adds these words:

Reader, there being yet living so many credible gentlemen, that were eyewitnesses of this wonderful thing, I venture to publish it for a thing as undoubted as 't is wonderful."

PAGE 141. And the Emperor but a Macho.

Macho, in Spanish, signifies a mule. Golondrina is the feminine form of Golondrino, a swallow, and also a cant name for a deserter.

PAGE 155. OLIVER BASSELIN.

Oliver Basselin, the "Père joyeux du Vaudeville,” flourished in the fifteenth century, and gave to his convivial songs the name of his native valleys, in which he sang them, Vaux-de-Vire. This name was afterwards corrupted into the modern Vaudeville.

PAGE 160. VICTOR GALBRAITH.

This poem is founded on fact. Victor Galbraith was a bugler in a company of volunteer cavalry; and was shot in Mexico for some breach of discipline. It is a common superstition among soldiers, that no balls will kill them unless their names are written on them. The old proverb says, "Every bullet has its billet."

PAGE 166. I remember the sea-fight far away.

This was the engagement between the Enterprise and Boxer, off the harbor of Portland, in which both captains