INTRODUCTION.

READER! Did you ever witness the launch of one of those gallant vessels which form the bulwarks of our country? You may have admired the gracefulness of her fair proportions, her noble form, combining so much strength with such perfect beauty, the construction which enables her to become the home of hundreds for months together, the provision made for the comfort and safety of her crew! You may have wondered at her grandeur and her strength, and thought that surely she would ride in safety through the roughest sea, and return unscathed from the perils of the longest voyage !

But alas ! a spark from a tiny lucifer may kindle flames which no human power can extinguish! A small leak may spring, and ere her crew can find safety she may fill, and dis

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appear beneath the waste of waters! Or she may, without being utterly destroyed, suffer such damage during even her first voyage that she may return utterly disabled into harbour, and serve henceforth no better purpose than to become firewood.

Is it possible to witness a launch without some such speculations and misgivings as these—to avoid thinking of the perils the ship must encounter from the rocks and shoals beneath her, the thunders of the heavens above, from foes without, and, perchance, mutiny within her bulwarks ? Can we, among all the works of man, find a fitter emblem of human life itself, and especially of the career of a young girl launched for the first time into the ocean of life? Up to that moment she has hardly had an existence of her own-her least action, and her most important one, have been alike dictated by others: now she claims the privileges of womanhood—she has become her own mistress; she is fairly launched in her career. And how bright looks the ocean through which her course is to be steered! How

light her heart, how gay her thoughts as she prepares for her experimental trip :

“And long with eye and heart as glad,
And brow as cloudless

may
she

gaze,
Nor mark how Vice, like Virtue clad,

Walks Empress of the giddy maze!
How high a pitch bold Cunning tries,

And grasps pale Merit's plunder'd meed!
How low the head of Genius lies-

How long Affection's wounds may bleed !
How Avarice, for her idol, gold,

Will all the Life of life destroy ;
How Envy sickens to behold

Another's peace, or hope, or joy.

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May she the Heaven-sent gift receive,

Life's dangerous balance to adjust !
Not all that glitters, to believe!

Nor all that darkens, to distrust!”

True, her impulses are doubtless good; her intentions are upright—but with her intellect still immatured-her mind undeveloped, her principles far from defined or settled, how shall she escape the dangers that surround her?

Not less numerous, nor less deadly, are the perils which encompass her than those which environ her prototype.