The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-02 00:00:00

I am born in christal bower,
Where the despot hath no power
To.trail and turn the oozy fern,
Or trample down the fair sea flower.
I am born where human skill
Cannot bend me to its will,
None can delve about my root,
And nurse me for my bloom and fruit;
I am left to spread and grow
In my rifted bed below,
Till I break my slender hold,
As the porpoise tunableth o'er me,
And on I go—now high—now low—
With the ocean world before me.
I am nigh the stately ship
Where she loiters in the calm,
While the south, like love's own lip,
Breathes a sweet and peaceful balm.
Plashing oft with gentle grace,
Round the hull I keep my place,
While the sailor, through the day,
Leaneth o'er her side,
And idly watches me at play
Upon the drowsy tide.
She is staunch and she is stout,
With chain and cable girt about,
But I'll match my tendrils fine
With her shrouds and halyard line.
Now the red flash breaks,
The thunder volley shakes,
And billows boil with hissing coil,
Like huge snow-crested snakes.
The mad winds roar,
The rain sheets pour,
And screaming loud mid wave and cloud
The white gulls soar;
Diving deep and tossing high,
Round that same ship there am I,
Till at last I mount the mast,
In the tight reef hanging fast,
While the fierce and plunging sea
Boweth down the stout crosstree,
Till the sharp and straining creek
Echoeth the tempest shriek.
Another peal ! another flash !
Top-gallants start with snapping crash.
" Quick ! quick All hands !" one mighty sweep,
And giant guns are in the deep.
Hark the heavy axe beloiv,
Whirls and-rings with-blow on blow,
And I feel the timber quiver,
Like a bulrush on a river.
Still I twine about the pine,
Till a wild and bursting cry
Tells the fearful work is done;
The ship leaps up, the mast is gone,
And away with it go I.
Now I dance and dash again,
Headlong through the howling main,
While th lightning groweth stronger,
And the thunder rattleth longer,
Now I feel a hard hand clutch me,
With a wildly snatching hold ;
Who is he that dares to touch me,
With a gripe so strong and bold ?
'Es the sailor, young and brave,
Struggling o'er his yawning grave.
Does he think that he can cling
To the Seaweed's mazy string ?
Does he dream with frenzied hope,
Of floating spar and saving rope ?
He does, he does, but billows meet,
And form his close-wrapp'd winding sheet,
While I mingle with the wreath
Of white-foam gurgling through his tenth,
And twist and tangle in his locks,
As the mountain waters lift him,
And the frothy breakers drift him,
On the gray and iron rocks.

ROOD'S iIAGAZINE.
This Number opens with an amusing tale entitled
" Mrs. Peck's Pudding," which records the domestic
distresses of a penniless widow, blessed with five
small children, who, anxious to have a pudding of
orthodox richness and dimensions for Christmas-day,
sends her children to beg of their neighbours for the
requisite materials. Of course their mission is unsuc-
cessful, and the poor widowis in despair, but, luckily,
a good Samaritan takes pity ou tier delicate distress,
and gives her, not indeed the pudding, but the money
wherewith 't0...1454., ii`ppeara.r.ce at a very season-
able juncture. The folloWing pithy reflection, which
occurs towards the close of the narrative, is very
neatly expressed :—" In this motley world of ours,
some people have their happiness cut thick and
buttered on both sides; and some have it cut thin,
with no butter at all." A " Lounge in the Lands"
is a graphic description of that wild, desolate, unshel-
tered district in the neighbourhood of Bourdeaux.
The editor's story of " Our Family " improves in
interest as it proceeds. There are some skilful and
earnest touches of character in the present chapters.
The " Death-Seer "is a ghost. story admirably
adapted for a Christmas fire-side, when the sofa is
wheeled round to the fire, the flowing curtains are
drawn, and the wind is howling without. We sub-
join the fable of the " Lark and the Rook," chiefly
for the useful moral it inculcates:—
Once on a time—no matter where—
A Lark took such a fancy to the air,
That though he often gaz'd beneath,
Watching the breezy down, or heath,
Yet very, very seldom he was found
To perch upon the ground.
Hour after hour,
Through ev'ry change of weather hard or soft,
Through sun and shade, and wind and show'r,
Still fluttering aloft ;
In silence now, and now in song,
15p, up in cloudland all day long,
On weary wing, yet with unceasing flight,
Like to those Birds of Paradise, so rare,
Fabled to live, and love, and feed in air,
But never to alight.
It caus'd, of course, much speculation
Among the feather'd generation ;
Who tried to guess the riddle that was in it—
The robin puzzled at it, and the wren,
The swallows, cock and hen,
The wagtail, and the linnet.
The yellowhammer, and the finch as well—
The sparrow ask'd the tit, who couldn't tell,
The jay, the pie—but all were in the dark,
Till out of patience with the common doubt,
The Rook at last resolv'd to worm it out,
And thus accosted the mysterious Lark :
" Friend, prithee, tell rue why
You keep this constant hovering so high,
As if you had some castle in the air,
That you are always poising there,
A speck against the sky—
Neglectful of each old familiar feature
Of Earth that nurs'd you in your callow state—
You think you're only soaring at heaven's gate,
Whereas you're flying in the face of Nature !"
"Friend," said the Lark, with melancholy tone,
And in each little eve a dewdrop shone,
"No creature of my kind was ever fonder
Of that dear spot of earth
Which gave it birth—
And I was nestled in the furrow yonder
Sweet is the twinkle of the dewy heath,
And sweet that thytny down I watch beneath,
Saluted often with a loving sonnet ;
But Men, vile Men, have spread so thick a scurf
Of dirt and infamy about the Turf,
I do not like to settle on it !"

MORAL.
Alas ! how Nobles of another race
Appointed to the bright and lofty way,
Too willingly descecd to haunt a place
Polluted by the deeds of Birds of Prey !

DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE.
The ablest article in the Number before us of this
--by far the best Irish—periodical, is a critical one,
and the subject is " Eugene Sue," whose novels are
just now attracting the attention of continental
readers in no ordinary degree. The Reviewer, on the
whole, is highly favourable to Sue, and in support of
his opinion quotes some extracts from his " Mysteries
of Paris," which are certainly replete with pathos and
vigour, though there is a little too much of exagge-
ration about them. We have been struck with this
observation,which does credit to the Reviewer's sense
of literary propriety :—" A parent who has the mis-
fortune to see a son abandon himself to vice and in-
famy, does not so deeply lament his having brought
that wretched being into the world, as an intellectual
creator ought to deplore the having originated one
had seductive idea ; for when the vicious conversa-
tion of an individual corrupts at most those only
with whom be comes in contact, vice, winged by
genius, and multiplied by the Press, overspreads at
once .a w.hole continent." The "Pretended Patriarchal

Inscriptions of Arabia" is rather a heavy piece of
antiquarianism, which will be caoiare to the general
reader. The " English and the Irish Universities "
is a dexterously reasoned essay, penned in a more
temperate spirit than we should have expected. Our
readers will, no doubt, be entertained with the fol-
lowing extraordinary anecdote, which we extract
from " Major Lynch's Journal of a Residence
among the Ghilzies in 1839 and 1840 :"

4. A most horrid murder was perpetrated to day
close to this place, and which was discovered in the fol-
lowing singular way had ber.n calling on Captain
Macau ou businvss, and when leaving the tent in which