the Fair American, commanded by Captain Daniel Hawthorne, which fought a British snow, laden with troops, off the coast of Portugal, and whose exploits are recorded in a ballad of very considerable spirit, and evidently by one of the crew; and some others, who did not happen to have a poet on board or a laureate on shore, and are not embalmed in verse. To this period, however, belongs what is, perhaps, the very best of American sea songs. We do not know whether its authorship was of that time or not, although it probably was, and from internal evidence would seem to have been composed by one of the very crew of the Ranger, Paul Jones's ship, which escaped from a British squadron in the Irish Channel in 1778. It was first published by Commodore Luce, in his collection of Naval Songs, with the statement that it was taken down from the recitation of a sailor. It is one of the gems of forecastle song, has the full scent of the brine and the gale, and the ship does not manouvre as if she were a wagon on dry land, as was said of Allan Cunningham's account of Paul Jones's cruises. The title given is THE YANKEE MAN-OF-WAR. 'T is of a gallant Yankee ship that flew the stripes and stars, And the whistling wind from the west-nor'-west blew through the pitch-pine spars. With her starboard tacks aboard, my boys, she hung upon the gale, On an autumn night we raised the light on the old head of Kinsale. It was a clear and cloudless night, and the wind blew steady and strong, As gayly over the sparkling deep our good ship bowled along; With the foaming seas beneath her bow the fiery waves she spread, And bending low her bosom of snow, she buried her lee cat head. There was no talk of short'ning sail by him who walked the poop, And under the press of her pond'ring jib the boom bent like a hoop, And the groaning water-ways told the strain that held her stout main tack. But he only laughed as he glanced abaft at a white and sil very track. The mid-tide meets in the channel waves that flow from shore to shore, And the mist hung heavy upon the land from Featherstone to Dunmore; And that sterling light on Tusker rock, where the old bell tolls the hour, And the beacon light that shone so bright was quenched on Waterford tower. The nightly robes our good ship wore were her three topsails set, The spanker and her standing jib, the spanker being fast. "Now, lay aloft, my heroes bold, let not a moment pass!" And royals and topgallant sails were quickly on each mast. What looms upon the starboard bow? What hangs upon the breeze? 'T is time our good ship hauled her wind abreast the old Sal tees;