care about pictures, statues, and sumptuous buildings; and no more did he, when the time in which he must have inspected and admired them would have been taken from the work to which he had consecrated his life. His labours implied an inconceivable severity of conviction that he had _one thing to do_, and that he who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. His attention was so strongly and tenaciously fixed on his object, that even at the greatest distance, as the Egyptian pyramids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinctness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. It was so conspicuous before him that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement and every day was an approximation. As his method referred every thing he did and thought to the end, and as his exertions did not relax for a moment, he made the trial, so seldom made, what the utmost effect is, which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent; and, therefore, what he did not accomplish he might conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to the immediate disposal of Omnipotence.--_Foster’s Essays._ KISSING OFF SAILORS. An Irish Guineaman had been fallen in with by one of our cruisers, and the commander of his majesty’s sloop the Hummingbird made a selection of thirty or forty stout Hibernians to fill up his own complement, and hand over the surplus to the admiral. Short-sighted mortals we all are, and captains of men-of-war are not exempted from human imperfection. How much also drops between the cup and the lip! There chanced to be on board of the same trader two very pretty Irish girls, of the better sort of bourgeoise, who were going to join their friends at Philadelphia. The name of the one was Judy, and of the other Maria. No sooner were the poor Irishmen informed of their change of destination, than they set up a howl loud enough to make the scaly monsters of the deep seek their dark caverns. They rent the hearts of the poor-hearted girls; and when the thorough-bass of the males was joined by the sopranos and trebles of the women and children, it would have made Orpheus himself turn round and gaze. “Oh, Miss Judy! oh, Miss Maria! would you be so cruel as to see us poor crathurs dragged away to a man-of-war, and not for to go and spake a word for us? A word to the captain from your own purty mouths, and no doubt he would let us off.”