THE DREAMER. BY URIAH H. JUDAH. A poor seamstress, after having toiled from | meted out; -but hark again; her dream is the rising of the sun to the hour of midnight, seeks for rest on her pallet of straw. Her eyes, wet with continual weeping at the consciousness of her miserable portion in life, and the increasing sorrows still awaiting, soon become elosed in slumber, and she dreams, - but of what? that a change for the better will be wrought in her condition? No: Hark! she speaks "Not in the laughing bowers, Where, by green twining elms, a pleasant shade, And where swift-footed hours Steal the rich breath of the enamored flowers, To trace the smooth ascent from earth to heaven, "Not on the couch of ease, With all the appliances of joys at hand; "But where the incessant din Of iron hands, and roar of brazen throats, The time has been when this poor and suffering mortal was surrounded with affluence, and with joy, and when friends innumerable were at her command; but such is the uncertainty of human happiness, that the occupant of the stately mansion of to-day, may, on the morrow, be sheltered by the hovel of indigence, or be a homeless and weary wanderer, without friends, without fortune, without the favor of the great. not yet ended:"And, yet, I dream Dream what? Were man more just, I might have been Such is my dream. The ways of Providence are indeed beyond conception. Here is one of the feminine sex, delicately and nicely fashioned in the image of her God, possessed of every virtue that would adorn humanity, in the very flower of womanhood, with an intellect highly cultivated, and of feelings the most refined and sensitive, dragging out a most wretched existence, toiling on, and toiling on, without hope and without comfort, going to her midnight repose, ahungered and heartbroken, shivering in the severity of winter in her thin and tattered garments of summer, and soiling her work with the bitter tears as they fall from her red and swollen eyes.Great God! while this poor and afflicted lady is thus care-worn and poverty-stricken-thus tortured and desolate-how many villains throughout the land are basking in the sunshine of plenty, and revelling on the spoils wrested from honest industry! How many are rolling in their carriages, clad "in purple and fine linen," at the expense of the widow and orphan, and boasting of their riches, and their honor, and their character!-But again our dreamer speaks : 1 "And, yet, I dream I, the despised of fortune, lift mine eye, Cheerless poverty is the lot of thousands of estimable beings, whose only crime is, that when the storms rage, and the hill-tops are whitened with snow, they have no roof to shelter them from the pitiless blasts of the winds of winter-no place to flee to for safety or for Our dreamer has thus been subjected to the vicissitudes of life, having fallen from the enjoyment of the luxuries of wealth to the humble and dependant condition of a daily toiler, for the miserable pittance, which is so miserly | succor. And yet, it has, and will be so, from generation to generation. Ay! until the end of time. Rascality, and ignorance, and impudence, have prospered and fared sumptuously, while virtue, and talents, and moral worth, nave walked barefooted, and in a starving state of abject wretchedness. Have prospered! - Ay! in this life, to all appearances; but there will yet come a day of reckoning, when their plunderings will be of no avail; when they will be deprived of their trappings of vanity, and when that justice will be awarded to them which they have withheld from others. Dreamer! I would rather take thy place, and thy chance for eternal felicity in the kingdom of God, on that final day, when the hearts of all will be opened for inspection, than to possess the filthy gold of thy oppressors. If thou shiverest on the cold and uncovered floor of thy solitary chamber, at the hour of midnight-if thou art starving, and gradually dying of wretchedness and woe if thou art weary of the cares of life, and long to sink down into the tomb-thou hast the consciousness of reflecting that thy soul is untainted, and thy character uncontaminated. Though clouds to-day darken the earth and spread an increased gloom around thy pathway, to-morrow they may be dispelled by the glorious luminary, as he welcomes in beauty and in splendor the rising morn. True, thou art an orphan, and deprived of a father's protecting care, and a mother's enduring love but "our Father who art in heaven" will not desert his worthy children, and will extend his bounties to those who regard his mandates. True, the shades of eve have descended many a time and oft on this corrupted world, and thou without thy "daily bread," while others have been fattening on thy toil, and that of those like thee. She speaks again-list, reader list: "And, yet, I dream Dream of a sleep where dreams no more shall come, When I think of the countless sorrows which have fallen to the female portion of created mortality-when I ponder on the manifold trials which have been encountered by women since the first-formed of her race-I drop a tear of pity, that the noblest formation of His hand-the most beautiful specimen of His workmanship-should arrive at such a climax Framed by the Almighty in a gentle mould. and fashioned with more fragile limbs, mar should guard her with vigilant and unceasing care, and trample not on the sweetest flowCr of the field. The poet has eloquently conveyed the idea that, "Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn." Ah! how much greater and more afflicting has been his "inhumanity" to woman, and how many bitter tears has it caused to be shed in secrecy and in silence! How many graves of excellent ladies would now be tenantless and how many lacerated hearts would cease to bleed, had more kindly feeling been exercised toward helpless and dependent-loving and confiding woman! Life is but a dream, from which the slumbers of death will arouse us to a consciousness and a realization of its sad or happy realities There are others beside our poor seamstress that are dreamers that are slumberers in this "valley of tears"-that dream of riches and o honors which will never be theirs of length of years and of unchanging bliss. But who dreams of the injustice that is roaming in ou midst of the groans of anguish around-o the sorrows of the child of poverty of the hundreds who go supperless to bed of the empty tables about-of the shrieks of distrest -of the pains of sickness of the blighted hopes of the dying? "Ah, little think the gay licentious proud, Who cares for our heart-broken dreamer? While others are enjoying the sweet sunshine of heaven, she is enclosed within her dreary and forsaken abode, deprived of the pure air so requisite to health, and every stitch she takes brings her nearer and yet nearer to the tomb - that beautiful and placid repose of blasted hopes and abject misery. Her tomb!- the tomb of that dreamer.-Ah! when she yields her last breath in her poverty-stricken garret, who will then comfort her, when her soul raves round the walls of its clay tenement? Who smooth her passage to the mound as it opens to receive the spirit's leavings? Who will hie to her sepulchre at the still and pensive hour of eve, and bid the nightingale-sweet bird of song-chaunt a requium to her departed soul? And, when the lovely flowers of summer-the rose and the lily-shall perfume other graves with their richest fragrance, who will bid them blossom on her turf? The author of this truthful record of female sufferings, purports not to decry wealth, or to array the poor against the rich in enmity of that condition of affluence which cannot be attained by all. When riches are rightly bestowed on the kindly heart and the liberal hand-on those, who have "a tear for pity, and a hand open as day to melting charity"they become in their exercise a blessing to society, and confer, like "the quality of mercy," a twofold benefit. "No radiant pearl, which crested fortune wears, Dreamer! Awake! oh, awake from thy slum bers, and cast thy eyes toward Heaven, and fold thy hands in prayer.-"Give us this day our daily bread." One by one hath the glorious lights of night faded from my view, for I have outwatched the stars, and seen their fires grow dim, and the moon go down in peerless splendor. See, lady, see! yon golden harbinger of day has ushered in the morn, and the laborer is hastening to his toil. Wilt arise, and partake of thy scanty meal, and then ply thy needle with renewed vigor ? She hears me not! Her dream is ended-i hath no further change; she sleeps that sleej which knows no waking. When the last lin gering star was lost on the brow of day, and the ever-active luminary of heaven was bursting through the clouds, and imparting a matchless beauty to the sky, she-that afflicted child of sorrow-yielded up in pristine purity, without a murmur, or a groan, her noble immortality unto the God who gave it.. As the portals of heaven sprang open, "kindred spirits" were calling her HOME, in the sweetest strains of celestial harmony. Reader! As the last sound of that heavenly music fell on the ear of one who had drank deep of the cup of bitterness, it cheered her amid the feebleness of the dying hour, and gilded with HOPE her pathway to the tomb : "Come, come, come' Long thy fainting soul hath yearned THE AUTUMN WINDS. BY MISS M. E. WOOD. THE Autumn winds are sighing a requiem for the dead, The Autumn winds are sighing for the voices hushed and mute, PASSAGE OF THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR. A FEW LEAVES FROM THE LOG BOOK OF A VOYAGEUR. RY C. EDWARDS LESTER. rang merrily from the mast-head to the cabin below. We dressed ourselves "wi' right gude will," and hastened on deck, to unite in the general jubilee held on board every vessel, when, after a long voyage, she makes the main land. Our noble ship, which had outrode the storms, and borne us safely over that vast ocean which now rolls between us and our sweet homes, seemed herself to partake of the general gladness; and under a fresh breeze from the bold Spanish coast, which lifted its rugged bluffs over the sea, with all her canvas swelling to the wind, she dashed the bright waters from her bow as she ploughed her path up to the Straits. On our left lay the scene of Nelson's great victory of Trafalgar, where that illustrious Captain died in the midst of his triumph pr ting the finishing stroke to the power of En land, who was already "mistress of the sea It was yet early morning, but on our bow could distinctly see the rugged mountains two continents rising, black, jagged from t sea, almost locking their giant arms, as thou they had been burst asunder by some terril convulsion, leaving a narrow space of less th twelve miles for the world's commerce in ages to pass. Long before the sun rose, we could see h herald light kindled on those bald mountain as though their tops had been lit up with be con fires. As morning came on, and the clouds roll off, we saw the entire outline of the Europe and African coasts, with their bold projecti headlands and lofty mountains, rising pe above peak, far into the main land--the coas approaching each other at the Straits like t sides of a triangle-seeming like the fabl giants of antiquity, marching up on either si for battle. While we stood on the bow, gazing, with feeling never before awakened, upon this gra scene so new to us, and so rich in our recolle tions of the Ancient World, midway betwe "the Pillars of Hercules," the glorious sun, "Like God's own head," rose up from the calm waters of the Medite ranean, casting a flood of light upon an ocea a sea, and the mountains of two continents. As we sailed on, we saw more and mo clearly the little villages along the margin the sea on the Spanish coast, and in the bac ground green vineyards, with tiny peasant co tages scattered among them, rising in swe terraces far up the hills; while on the Africa side the bald mountains frowned down on without a tree or shrub or green thing, fro the dark-fronted cliffs that beetled over tl sea, to the sharp peaks in the distance cover with snow, but still all in a sublimity of grouping I never saw equalled. We all felt it an era worth remembering. and time-worn walls disclose the history of the past, what tales of reckless daring, of wild ambition and of deadly strife, might they not unfold! The walls along the water-side and the whole surface of the mountain around, are bristling with cannon, while others in long dark rows are looking out from galleries which have been blasted from the solid rock one thousand feet above the level of the sea. The excavations made by the British in the northern end of the Rock are equalled by few labors of ancient or modern times. A passage of half a mile in length and eight or ten feet square is blasted through the solid rock. It is about thirty feet from the outer surface, and at a short distance from each other are side-cuts, with chambers, where are from one to six guns with large piles of cannon balls near them. The main passage communicates, by means of spiral staircases through the large halls, with other galleries above and below. There are also vast magazines, filled with the munitions of war. It is computed that these excavations, will contain fifteen thousand men!" But we waited with deeper interest to catch the first sight of the Rock of Gibraltar, and when we saw this impregnable fortress, which has played so grand and gloomy a part in the world's history, we felt compensated for our long voyage. There it stood, a huge rock, rearing itself fifteen hundred feet above the sea, as it stood ages ago, when washed by the waves of the deluge. It has looked down on empires lost and won, and felt the shock of navies in battle-it has been scathed by the lightnings of heaven, but it has itself remained unchanged. But a word of description: "The Rock of Gibraltar is fourteen hundred and seventy feet high, and is composed of grey limestone, divided by perpendicular fissures, filled with calcareous concretions, containing an immense quantity of bones and shells. Many of the former belong to different sorts of deer, none of which are at present found in Europe. The town of Gibraltar lies near the northern extremity of the Rock. Next, south of this, are the parade ground and public garden, and still farther south is Point Europa, where many of the officers of the garrison reside, and having more the appearance of an English than a Spanish town. The western declivity of the Rock is mostly covered with loose broken fragments of limestone, among which herds of goats clamber about, feeding on the numerous wild shrubs and plants which grow there. The enstern side, which descends to the Mediterranean, and the southern end, are mostly precipitous cliffs. The northern extremity is a lofty perpendicular wall, while the summit of the Rock, along its whole extent, is a sharp waving ridge, higher at each end than in the middle. This outline of the summit has been compared in form to a bull--the northern bluff being taken for the towering neck and head, with which, as if in fighting attitude, this giant monster bids defiance to the world. On the side of the Rock, just above the town, is an old Moorish castle, which for a thousand years has We sailed by the Rock under a gentle breeze withstood the warring of the elements and the from the west, and by three o'clock we had shock of arms, and may yet for centuries to left the Straits behind us. We hoped to have come, look down upon the changing and event- heard the morning or evening gun from Gibralful scenes in the drama of empires lost and tar, but we knew we should be too far from won which shall be enacted there. What a the Rock at sundown. But while we were strange and varied succession of kings and mourning over our disappointment, and gazing heroes had in ages past contended unto death on the Rock in the distance, we saw the white to gain possession of that ancient tower, or to smoke slowly curling up its sides, and in a few repel invading foes! And could these battered | moments the thunder of cannon came booming I never conceived an idea of such impregnable strength from any other fortification. You know we are apt to be disappointed when we see objects and places which have been often described by the enthusiasm of travellers, but it was not so in this case. For I think had I never seen or heard of Gibraltar before, my impressions of it would have been the same. This vast Rock is almost a complete island, since it is united with the main land only by a narrow strip of low sandy beach, which is undermined the whole distance, and can at a moment's notice be blown into the air, thus cutting off all communication with the continent. So completely guarded is every pointso impossible to conquer is Gibraltar. And here "That power whose flag is never furled, Whose morning drum beats round the world," has planted her Lion and flung out her Unicorn in defiance to the world. |