a colonel in any foreign army. We have said nothing here, of the necessity of an alteration in the gradations of rank in the navy, on the score of discipline; for the nation admits it in their laws. They have gradations already; and the same reason which renders it expedient to have a captain to command a ship, applies to the case of a fleet or a squadron. We only press the point of justice and obvious policy. The pay, which is also an object with every discreet man, is no more than a naked maintenance. Commodore Rodgers gets about half as much as a major-general in the army, and just half as much as one of the secretaries of the departments. He is precluded from trade, fettered by the most punctilious observance of decorum in his communications with his fellow citizens, ever to be in readiness to shed his blood and devote his time to the public; and yet is to be denied the meed, which other nations never fail to bestow on long and faithful service, and which this people does not hesitate to bestow on the other branch of the national defence. It really appears to us, that there has been, and still continues to exist in the republic, a most unreasonable and oppressive system as regards these gentlemen. It is said there has been peculation, and disgraceful prostitution of the flag to cover it. It would be remarkable if it were not so; for a man has no longer any inducement to strive for any thing but riches after he is a captain. He sees nothing else regarded in the country. Rank, in his profession, is unattainable; and its concomitants, honorable consideration and high circumpection in deportment, are unnecessary. Another feature in our complaints is, that we implicate a whole corps for the backslidings of a few; take the exceptions, which go only to prove the general purity of the service, as characteristic of a body of men; and complain, and in fact punish in gross, when we should rigidly do the latter, in detail.

We regret, exceedingly, that our limits will not permit us to treat this subject as it deserves. The navy has an importance in a point of view which is not generally considered. We are a people who are literally bound together by a tie no stronger than that of sentiment; for, it is incontestible, that our minute interests are too often conflicting. The Hartford Convention and the Missouri Question, show the fact in glaring colours. Still our union is immensely important, and will continue to be so for ages. We have but little national pride, the strongest of all bonds connected with sentiment; and the historian, the poet, the painter or the warrior, who adds a single leaf to the wreath of our glory, does more than assist to swell the list of renowned and boasted names; he adds a link to the chain of the confederation.

FROM THE ITALIAN.

THE Rose superb, in beauty's power,
Expands and smiles 'mid morning dews,
The young sun, at his earliest hour,

Her blushing charms delighted views,
And with his rays entwining bright,
Bathes all her leaves in crimson light.

Touched by each fine, prolific beam,
That plays her beauty to illume,
She glows in dazzling charms supreme,
Mid flowers unrivalled in her bloom;
As mid the glittering hosts above,
Still fairest shines the star of love.

Each humbler flowret that adorns

The sod beneath, its queen confesses;
Love points his arrows with her thorns,
Nymphs twine her spoils amid their tresses;
And shepherds for their sweethearts choose,
The young, the budding, blushing rose.

But ah! that sun who paints her cheeks,
And steeps them in the morning's dye,-
When central heaven his chariot seeks,
Bids his fierce darts around her fly;
Where glooms beneath the hawthorn spread,
She falls discoloured, pale and dead.

Ephemeral man! the pictured race
Whose tender blossoms thus we prize,
So lovely in their morning grace,
That charm even age's clouded eyes,
Are types of youth, so fair to view,
When the warm sun of life is new.

Beware its ardours; tempt them not;
When brightest, fiercest is their heat;
With treacherous glory they are fraught,
And death is in their fond deceit.
They yield thee, while the soul they kill,
For transient good, eternal ill.

HORACE, BOOK III. CARM. 18.

Wanton Faun! with frolick wooing,
Still the flying nymphs pursuing,
Seek my sunny fields, I pray,
With no malice in thy play;
Kindly on my treasures look,

Spare the younglings of the flock!

When the full year's at its wane,
Still the victim kid is slain;

The bowl, the friend of love and pleasure,
Still is crowned with pious measure;
Still the antique altar high

Sends perfumed volumes to the sky.

Still December's snows we hail;
Duly all thy rites prevail;
Thro' the fields in sportive play,
All the herds keep holiday;
Idly, o'er the grassy plain

Bound the heifer and the swain.

Then the caitiff wolf demure
Wanders thro' the flocks secure;
The woods their foliage shed for thee;
And the ploughman, labour-free,
Shakes, in respite of his toil,
Thrice, for joy, the cumbrous soil.

A RHAPSODY.

BY J. R. SUTERMEISTER.

Look, love, look on the evening star,
How it waits on the round moon there;

How it follows its silver light afar

Through the trackless paths of air.

So, love, so if thou'lt shine on me,

With thy moonlight looks of gladness;

My star of being will follow thee,

Till its orb shall set in sadness.

Then wheresoe'er my wand'rings stray,
Thy heavenly smile

Will ever beguile

My wearisome path and lonely way.

Look, love, look, as it decks our bower,
On the moss-rose bathed in dew;
How the west wind woes the gentle flower,
As it sighs the foliage through.
So, love, so if thou'lt bloom on me,
The rose in life's thorny vale;
My bosom will utter its sigh for thee,
While I breathe my passionate tale.
And when my ardent hopes are high,
The bright moon will bless,
With its loveliness,

The beautiful earth and joyous sky!

Look, love, look, with what touching grace,
The woodbine wreaths yon tree;

How it hugs the trunk in its close embrace,
In proud security!

So, love, so if thou'lt twine thy arms

Round me in life's weary way,

I'll shelter thy virgin and youthful charms
From the tempest's wintry sway.

I'll shield thee from the noontide sun-
In the night of ill,

I'll be with thee still,

To protect thee, thou confiding one!

Look, love, look how the soft clouds curl,-
How each wave through ether is driven;
How the moon sails on, like a bark of pearl,
Through the azure sea of heaven!
Oh! love, oh! if I were but there,

In that precious bark with thee,

We would range together, like spirits of air,
Thro' the blue immensity.

Then we would travel yon blessed plain,
And touch at each star,

Which glimmers afar,

But ne'er return to dull earth again!

New-York, May, 1824.

A RAMBLE IN THE INFECTED DISTRICT;

By a Student of Medicine.

In a melancholy mood, one gloomy morning, towards the latter end of August, 1822, I bent my steps down Broadway, towards what was called the Infected District.

The yellow fever had been raging for nearly a month in the lower part of the city, and the inhabitants had very generally removed to a healthier atmosphere. The seat of business had been transferred to Greenwich; and merchants, lawyers, doctors, shoe-makers, tinkers and tailors, were all crowded pellmell together, into barns, stables, cocklofts, and shanties; and happy was he who could get a shed, or a hovel, wherein to display his wares and merchandize by day, and rest his weary head at night. I had been fortunate enough to secure a small apartment of a washerwoman, who kept a boarding house pro tem. and who, determining to make hay while the sun shone, had let out her garret as a Printing office, and her cellar to a blacksmith. We had besides, in the family, a half-starved lawyer, a play-actor in the same predicament, two bankclerks, and a Methodist parson; and what with the printer's devils over head, who worked all night, the Vulcan below, who kept hammering all day, and the Methodist, who gave gratuitous exhortations at all times, Matthew's mail coach was a faint idea of the medley of strange noises thus produced. But "misery," as the old proverb says, "makes men acquainted with strange bed-fellows."

As I proceeded down the street, the bustle, and hum of business gradually faded on my ear; the throng of carriages and passengers became less and less dense; till, at last, the hurried tread of some solitary individual like myself, alone resounded from the pavement.

Around the City Hall, which seemed to be the last boundary of life and business, were collected a number of individuals, waiting to hear the daily report of new cases. Anxiety was depicted on every countenance. I approached a I approached a group, which seemed particularly agitated by some question of great moment, and found them betting upon the probable number of deaths for the day. I turned away in disgust from this inhuman mockery of griefs, and speculation upon misery. A little farther off, I recognized my old acquaintance, Harry Slender, perched upon a wheel-barrow, and with tears in his eyes, and a tone of great pathos, haranguing those about him. "Oh gentlemen! the fever's very bad"-I heard him exclaim, as I walked quickly away-" nineteen new cases of Black Vomit this morning. I held the basin for ten of them myself."

Though not quite as bad as Harry represented, yet so deadly had the atmosphere proved to many, who had been but slightly exposed to it, that it was deemed the height of presumption to venture into the lower part of the city. But an anxious desire to see a sick friend, and to hear from one or two patients of my master's Dr. Langlancet, who had been taken ill himself that morning, and, above all, a strong feeling of curiosity to revisit old haunts, led me to disregard personal safety. Besides, as I had previously been much exposed to the infection, in a professional capacity, I felt confident that I was not very susceptible of the action of the morbific matter.

I must here drop a tributary tear to the memory of my worthy and deeply-lamented preceptor. Notwithstanding his firm belief in the contagious nature of the disease, with a rash, though laudable boldness, he had visited, and phlebotomized several patients in the Infected District. Shortly afterwards, he was attacked with the premonitory symptoms of pains in the head and back, furred tongue, red eyes, &c. &c.; and in spite of large, and repeated bloodlettings, he rapidly grew worse, became delirious, was seized with black vomit, and expired on the fifth day from the attack, triumphantly asserting to the last the truth of his favourite doctrine of contagion, and only regretting that he had not been bled more copiously.

Nearly similar was the fate of his old antagonist Polypus, who on the appearance of the fever, fled in a panic to a village some hundred miles up the North River. Whether he had imbibed