Is not the male sex somewhat scandalously neglected in this matter? Why should not a noble ship, daring and adventurous--a merchant-_man_, perhaps an India-_man_--belong to the masculine gender? If _it_ be female, why not be grammatically consistent, and talk of merchant-_woman_, and India-_woman_? If it be necessary that inanimate structures be sexed, why not do it with some reference to their qualities? Let a ship be called _she_, by all means; for a lady is beautiful, and a ship bearing steadily away over the waters, is beautiful to look upon, too; and a lady, though not freighted down with bales and packages by the ton, yet is she burthened with those articles in the dry-goods line which are worn by _the ton_. Streamers wave from the flag-staff of the one, and ribbons flutter gaily from the main-top of the other. Therefore, let a ship and a woman be of the same sex. But let there be some limits to the license. We take it, there is nothing that floats, which looks less like our own dear sweet-heart, than an old worm-eaten canoe, scooped out of a dead trunk; and yet, when a paddle is applied to the ugly thing, you look at it and say, '_She_ moves!' We admit and feel the romance and propriety of sexing 'the poetry of heaven.' Blessings be yet again on benighted Egypt, for she taught us to speak of Osiris and Isis, instead of the sun and moon! Blessed for ever be the spirit of him who first conceived the idea of sexing the starry hosts, from the Cynosure to Sirius! How much more poetical is night in consequence--especially such as Moore speaks of in the Epicurean: ----'Sweet nights, When Isis, the pure star of lovers, lights Her bridal crescent o'er the holy stream!' All who have been in love, feel that the soft influence which comes down from the face of Isis is feminine in its witchery. She is friendly to love affairs, although Miss Diana, when in Greece, would have nothing to do with the masculine deities; and although she banished Calisto, and transformed Acteon, yet did these same Greeks scandalize the virgin, by reporting that she forgot her fastidiousness when she was smitten by the charms of an Endymion on the Carian Mount. To return. We are glad that the poets of the olden time sexed the stars pretty much as their fancies thought proper, and that we Christians still perpetuate these beautiful fictions of their mythologies; for there is a charm in the classical association which now comes upon the mind, when viewing the heavens, that we should regret to part with, however heathenish and anti-utilitarian it may be.