stern-line became jammed, and held them in their perilous position. Through the use of swords the fast was finally cut, and by a hearty shove the Intrepid moved from her critical situation as the roaring flames ran hissing up and through the rigging, licking up the melting tar that oozed from her cordage, and enveloping the frigate in a sheet of glowing flames.

The sweeps of the Intrepid were manned, and two or three hearty strokes of the oars swept her from the flame-mantled frigate. To this moment not one unnecessary sound had been made by the Americans, when the rowers dropped their oars, and, as with one voice, gave three triumphant cheers. The cry had barely ceased when a galley, two corsairs, and the batteries opened fire upon the Intrepid. The oars were taken again, eight on a side, and with a favorable breeze the Intrepid dashed out of the harbor.

The scene at this moment was both grand and beautiful. The whole bay was gleaming with the reflected rays of the conflagration; Tripoli was in a state of clamorous confusion, and the roar of Tripolitan guns was incessant. The burning ship was a magnificent spectacle, while her cannons, as they became heated, belched a retributive volley upon the Turks, as responding to a shift in the wind, one of her broadsides discharged itself toward the town, and. the other in the direction of Fort English. A singular sight was presented by the flames ascending the rigging and masts, and gathering under the tops, then falling over, gave "the whole the appearance of glowing columns and fiery capitals."

The rapid discharge of the heavy artillery of the Tripolitan batteries awoke the American prisoners confined in the capital. The situation of their prison gave them a view of the burning frigate. Capt. Bainbridge was particularly gratified at this spectacle, since he had suggested the plan that led to it, and now saw removed from his sight the beautiful ship the possession of which he daily grudged the Bashaw.

As the Intrepid dashed out of the harbor, the shot continually splashed the spray about them or went whistling over their heads. The only feeling they created in these gallant heroes' hearts, although they were within a half-mile of the heaviest guns of the enemy, was one of admiration of the brilliant jets of water the balls produced as they rolled and bounded along upon the surface of the sea. One shot only hit the Intrepid, and passed through her top-gallant sail.

Near the mouth of the harbor the Siren's two boats were met, coming to cover the retreat of the Intrepid. As soon as the ketch was out of danger, Lieut. Decatur entered one of the Siren's boats, and went aboard the brig to report his success to Lieut.-commandant Stewart.

The two vessels lay by each other for almost an hour, when a stiff and favorable breeze rising, they made sail for Syracuse, which they reached on the 19th.

The Americans at home generally applauded the exploit, and Decatur received for it a captain's commission. Most of the midship

men also who were in the action were promoted.

The Intrepid did not lose a single man. Twenty were reported

killed on the Philadelphia. One boat of Tripolitans is said to have got off, whilst others swam to the shore. It is supposed some secreted themselves in the ship, and perished with her. One prisoner only was taken, a Turk, who near the close of the action jumped into the ketch. Although his orders were to give no quarters, the merciful as well as gallant Surgeon Heerman, who then had charge of the ketch,. seeing the Turk was severely wounded, and the necessity of making no prisoners no longer existing, humanely spared his life. For this he was applauded by Decatur.

E. S. RILEY, JR.

THE DAIMIOS' DAUGHTERS.

O

VER blue rounding of billowy waters,
Over high mountain and over wide lea,
Over a wall that imprisons the free,
Have journeyed the Daimios' daughters.

Dear to their kin is each almond-shaped eye,

And heavily touched was the parting with sorrow;
But hope from the golden-edged rim of to-morrow
Illumined the sad good-bye.

A thousand years by Niphon's brave waters,
Sleeping a sleep almost supreme,

Dreaming the colorless ghost of a dream,
Had slumbered the Daimios' daughters -

When Progress, inspired by her powers to do,

Broke with her pinion this passionless dreaming,
And mirrored herself in the depths slow gleaming,-
While rose to each waking view,

Dim-lined in the crystal of picturing waters,

A vision of women unloosed from the night-
West women untrammelled in Liberty's light ;
And they murmured, these Daimios' daughters:
We will shatter the shackles which hamper our way,
We will sail to the land of the West so golden,
And the East-land so feeble by which we are folden
Shall know us no more for a day;

We will banish regret for the Orient waters

(The waters that felt the first kiss of the sun), We will rest nevermore till the guerdon is won, Said the Daimios' hopeful daughters.

And now from their sleep of a thousand years,
With the latent roses of youth unfaded,

Or ere by a weakness or fear dissuaded,
They come to inquire of their peers.

Shall they learn on the shore of our luminous waters
(The waters which hold in a long embrace
The last fond look of the sun's warm face),
Shall they learn, these Daimios' daughters,
That the freedom of woman exceeds Love's plan?
Shall they lift as their standard for stern endeavor
The myth that will cheat them forever and ever,
That hers is the province of man?

Nay, maidens of strength by the Western waters,
Whose power is apart from the sceptre of place,
Whose wand of dominion is womanhood's grace,
Show this to the Daimios' daughters,

And wisdom shall freight the home-bound ship
Of her whose bosom with truth is laden-
The open-eyed, magnetised Eastern maiden
With oracle on her lip-

Till heaven's reflection upon the waters
Of East and West in a twin-souled tide
Shall spread the evangel far and wide
Taught to the Daimios' daughters:
That there is but the one infallible way

Of love to quicken the lands with glory-
God's way, who sees through the ages hoary
A thousand years as a day:

God's way revealed by the margin of waters
That earliest swelled with great tidings of joy,
Glad tidings of blessing without alloy

To all of His sons and daughters:

That of Woman and Spirit inbreathed from above
Is the Christ, the Divine and the Human.

Ah, blessedest portion of woman,

To mould, and to yield unto, Love!

MARY B. DODGE.

PE

PEACOCK'S "HEADLONG HALL."

EACOCK was the most eminent English satirist of the time of Charles Lamb, Theodore Hook and "Father Prout." He produced other works of merit besides the pungent satire I am about to introduce the reader to. Maid Marian is generally considered his best novel, but he wrote besides The Misfortunes of Elfin, Gryll Grange, Nightmare Abbey, and Crotchet Castle. His satire is universal, attacking all manner of human eccentricities, and is penetrated with a rich sense of humor which overflows in a riant delight in depicting the wildest extravagances of character. His style is clear, vigorous and scholarly, and full of musical grace. There is not in his books a single phrase perhaps which can be noted as exhibiting that careless slovenliness of expression which abounds in some of the foremost works of our own time. All his work has the strength of perfect form, the result of accurate thought and deliberate choice of phraseology. He has neither the breadth of sympathy nor the tender feeling of Thackeray, while of course his works are but sketches compared with that great artist's elaborate creations; but his sketches are done in a freer hand, and are bold, strongly marked outlines. His satire comes wholly from the intellect, and appeals to the principles of good taste and sound common-sense to justify its trenchant force; Thackeray's, in his later works especially, is largely from the heart as well, and is founded upon that large charity of judgment which it is the mission of Christianity to instil into man. Both are excellent models of good English, but Peacock's is the English of the Georgian period, and is largely imbued with the Latin element.

Let us now take up Headlong Hall, of which the publishers of the edition before me truly say: "There is scarcely a topic upon which men have thought and written in this much-vexed age which is not here embodied and set forth; every one has his hobby and rides it at full tilt, while the author stands by, like the man conducting the whirligig at the fair, setting all in motion, apparently indifferent to either."

It was first published in 1816, the year after Napoleon's final fall, the year in which Sir Walter Scott began to publish The Tales of My Landlord, the year before the first issue of Blackwood's Magazine, the year in which Sheridan died and Byron left his native land forever. England was therefore just at this time in a ferment with contending opinions, political, religious, social, literary and philosophical, and there was abundant material for the satirist. Peacock was a little over thirty years of age, and had already gained some experience as a writer, his first work being, I believe, the poem Palmyra. His books are full of scattered songs, some of them of considerable sweetness. Considering the stirring and fruitful period in which he won his first fame, and the great age to which he lived (he died as short a time ago as 1866), his "Recollections," if he has left any behind him, would

be as great a boon to us as were those of Crabb Robinson, Sir Henry Holland, and the Youngs.

Headlong Hall is the seat of a Welsh squire who has turned philosopher and man of taste, and gathers kindred spirits around him, at the time the narrative opens, to pass their Christmas at his house. The party consist of Mr. Foster, a believer in the perfectibility of the human race; Mr. Escot, a believer in their deterioration; Mr. Jenkison, who thinks a great deal is to be said on both sides of this and of any question; the Reverend Doctor Gaster, who believes in "cakes and ale"; Marmaduke Milestone, Esquire, a professor of picturesque landscape gardening; Mr. Cranium, a phrenologist; Mr. Panscope, an encyclopædist; Messrs. Nightshade and MacLaurel, poets and bad critics; Messrs. Gall and Treacle, reviewers and bad poets; Miss Caprioletta Headlong, the Squire's sister; Miss Philomela Poppyseed, a writer of novels "written for the express purpose of supporting every species of superstition and prejudice "; Miss Cephalis, Mr. Cranium's daughter; Miss Tenorina and Miss Graziosa Chromatic, with their father, Mr. Cornelius Chromatic, an amateur fiddler; and Sir Patrick O'Prism, a dilettante painter. The piece might well be styled, in imitation of Ben Jonson's comedy, Every Man in his Humor.

These characters are all fairly introduced in the first three chapters. The fourth and fifth chapters bring them well into play, contrasting their oddities with much humor. During the dinner on the first day Mr. Chromatic sings a fine drinking-song, after which Mr. Panscope, coming out of a deep reverie in which he had been plunged, makes a protest against the views advanced in the previous conversation, fortifying it with a whole catalogue of learned names whimsically thrown together in wild disorder. To whom rejoins Mr. Escot:

"I presume, Sir, you are one of those who value an authority more than a reason.

"Mr. Panscope. The authority, Sir, of all these great men, whose works as well as the whole of the Encyclopædia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Classics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes with irrefragable refutation against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous by the futile process of analytical dialectics to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition. and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categorically certain, and syllogistically demonstrable.

"Squire Headlong.- Bravo! Pass the bottle. The very best speech that ever was made.

"Mr. Escot. It has only the slight disadvantage of being unintelligible.

"Mr Panscope.-I am not obliged, Sir, as Dr. Johnson observed on a similar occasion, to furnish you with an understanding.

"Mr. Escot. I fear, Sir, you would have some difficulty in furnishing me with such an article from your own stock.

"Mr. Panscope.-'Sdeath, Sir, do you question my understanding?