How much a watch afforded to an eye that loved nature! I have been bored so often by descriptions of scenery, that I am warned to put here a sharp check on my memory, lest it run away with me, and my readers seek escape by jumping off. I will forbear, therefore, any attempt at portraiture, and merely mention the superb aurora borealis which illuminated several nights of the autumn of 1859, perceptibly affecting the brightness of the atmosphere, while we lay becalmed a little north of the tropics. But other things I shall have some excuse for telling; because what my eyes used to see then few mortal eyes will see again. Travel will not reach it; for though here and there a rare sailing-ship is kept in a navy, for occasional instruction, otherwise they have passed away forever; and the exceptions are but curiosities--reality has disappeared. They no longer have life, and are now but the specimens of the museum. The beauties of a brilliant night at sea, whether starlit or moonlit, the solemn, awe-inspiring gloom and silence of a clouded, threatening sky, as the steamer with dull thud moves at midnight over the waste of waters, these I need not describe; many there are that see them in these rambling days. These eternities of the heavens and the deep abide as before, are common to the steamer as to the sailing-ship; but what weary strain of words can restore to imagination the beautiful living creature which leaped under our feet and spread her wings above us? For a sailing-ship was more inspiring from within than from without, especially a ship of war, which, as usually ordered, permitted no slovenliness; abounded in the perpetual seemliness that enhances beauty yet takes naught from grace. Viewed from without, undeniably a ship under sail possesses attraction; but it is from within that you feel the "very pulse of the machine." No canvas looks so lofty, speaks so eloquently, as that seen from its own deck, and this chiefly has invested the sailing-vessel with its poetry. This the steamer, with its vulgar appeal to physical comfort, cannot give. Does any one know any verse of real poetry, any strong, thrilling idea, suitably voiced, concerning a steamer? I do--one--by Clough, depicting the wrench from home, the stern inspiration following the wail of him who goeth away to return no more: "Come back! come back! Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back; The long smoke wavers on the homeward track. Back fly with winds things which the winds obey, _The strong ship follows its appointed way_."