It was over one hundred feet that I fell,down, down, with lungs collapsed as in death. Ten thousand pounds of shot seemed tied to my head, as the irresistible law of gravitation dragged me head-foremost and straight as a die toward the infallible centre of this terraqueous globe. All I had seen, and read, and heard, and all I had thought or felt in my life, seemed intensified in one fixed idea in my soul. But dense as this idea was, it was made up of atoms. Having fallen from the projecting yard-arm end, I was conscious of a collected satisfaction in feeling that I should not be dashed on the deck, but would sink into the speechless profound of the sea. "With the bloody, blind film before my eyes, there was still a strange hum in my head, as if a hornet were there; and I thought to myself, Great God! this is Death! yet these thoughts were unmixed with alarm. Like frost-work, that flashes and shifts its scared hues in the sun, all my braided, blended emotions were in themselves icy, cold and calm. "So protracted did my fall seem, that I can even now recall the feeling of wondering how much longer it would be ere all was over and it struck. Time seemed to stand still, and all the world seemed poised on their poles, as I fell, soul-becalmed, through the eddying whirl and swirl of the Maelstrom air. "At first, as I have said, I must have been precipitated head-foremost; but I was conscious, at length, of a swift, flinging motion of my limbs, which involuntarily threw themselves out, so that at least I must have fallen in a heap. "This is more likely, from the circumstance that when I struck the sea, I felt as if some one had smote me slantingly across the shoulder, and along part of my right side. "As I gushed into the sea, a thunderboom sounded in my ear; my soul seemed flying from my mouth. The feeling of death flooded over me with the billows. The blow from the sea must have turned me, so that I sank almost feet foremost through a soft, seething, foamy lull. Some current seemed hurrying me away; in a trance I yielded, and sank deeper down with a glide. Purple and pathless was the deep calm now around me, flecked by summer lightnings in an azure afar. The horrible nausea was gone; the bloody, blind film turned a pale green; I wondered whether I was dead, or still dying. But of a sudden some fashionless form brushed my side-some inert, coiled fish of the sea; the thrill of being alive again tingled in my nerves, and the strong stunning of death shocked me through. "For one instant an agonizing revulsion came over me as I found myself utterly sinking. Next moment the force of my fall was expended; and there I hung, vibrating in the mid deep. What wild sounds then rang in my ear! one was a soft moaning, as of low waves on the beach; the other wild and heartlessly jubilant, as of a sea in the height of a tempest. Oh, soul! thou then heardest life and death; as he who stands upon the Corinthian shore hears both the Ionian and the Egean waves, the life and-death poise soon passed, and then I found myself slowly ascending, and caught a dim glimmering of light. Quicker and quicker I mounted: till at last I bounded up like a buoy, and my whole head was bathed in the blessed air. "I had fallen in a line with the mainmast; I now found myself nearly abreast of the mizzen-mast, the frigate slowly gliding by like a black world in the water. Her vast hull loomed out of the night, showing hun dreds of seamen in the hammock nettings; some tossing over ropes, others madly flinging overboard the hammocks; but I was too far out from them immediately to reach what they threw. I essayed to swim toward the ship, but I was instantly conscious of a feeling like being pinioned in a feather-bed, and, moving my hands, felt my jacket puffed out above my tight girdle with water. strove to tear it off, but it was looped toge ther here and there, and the strings were not to be sundered by hand. I whipped out my knife, that was tucked at my belt, and ripped my jacket straight up and down, as if I were ripping open myself. With a violent struggle I then burst out of it and was free. Heavily soaked, it slowly sank before my eyes. I "Sink! sink! thought I; sink for ever! accursed jacket that thou art! "See that white shark!' cried a horrified voice from the taffrail, he'll have that man down his hatchway! quick! the grains ! the grains!' "The next instant that barbed bunch of harpoons pierced through and through the unfortunate jacket, and swiftly sped down with it out of sight. "Being now astern of the frigate, I struck out boldly toward the elevated pole of one of the life-buoys which had been cut away. Soon after one of the cutters picked me up. As they dragged me out of the water into the air, the sudden transition of elements made my every limb feel like lead, and I helplessly sunk into the bottom of the boat. "Ten minutes after I was safe on board, and springing aloft, was ordered to reeve anew the stun'-sail-halyards, which, slipping through the blocks when I had let go the end, had unrove and fallen to the deck. "The sail was soon set; and, as if purposely to salute it, a gentle breeze soon came, and the 'Never Sink' once more glided over the water, a soft ripple at her bows, and leaving a tranquil wake behind." This is fine. We have often met with descriptions, some well painted enough, of dizzy aerial adventures, but never one like this. Our ears tingle as we read it. The air surges around us as we fall from that fearful height. The sea divides, the green mist flashes into a thousand hues, and we sit for an instant a stride of Death's balance. Weight, unut terable weight presses upon our shoulders, and we seem as if about to be crushed into nothingness. Then a sudden change. A revulsion which is accompanied with soft, low music; and we float upwards. We seem gliding through an oiled ocean, so smoothly do we pass. It breaks, it parts above our head. The next moment we shoot out from a cloud of feathers, and are battling with the waves. In Redburn, we find an account of the death of a sailor, by spontaneous combustion. Well described, poetically described, fraught with none of the revolting scenery which it is so easy to gather round such an end. In the last number of Bleak House, Mr. Dickens has attempted the same thing. He has also performed what he attempted. But, if ever man deserved public prosecution for his writing, he does, for this single passage. A hospital student could not read it withont sickening. A ghoul, who had lived all his days upon the festering corruption of the grave-yard, could have written nothing more hideously revolting than the death of Krook. It is as loathsome to read it as to enter one of the charnels in London city. We do not believe that a woman of sensitive nerves could take it up without fainting over the details. For ourselves, we fiing the book away, with an anathema on the author that we should be sorry for him to hear. Mr. Melville does not improve with time. His later books are a decided falling off, and his last scarcely deserves naming; this however we scarce believe to be an indication of exhaustion. Keats says beautifully in his preface to Endymion, that "The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted." Just at present we believe the author of Pierre to be in this state of ferment. Typee, his first book, was healthy; Omoo nearly so; after that came Mardi, with its excusable wildness; then came Moby Dick, and Pierre with its inexcusable insanity. We trust that these rhapsodies will end the interregnum of nonsense to which Keats refers, as forming a portion of every man's life; and that Mr. Melville will write less at random and more at leisure, than of late. Of his last book we would fain not speak. did we not feel that he is just now at that stage of author-life when a little wholesome advice may save him a hundred future follies. When first we read Pierre, we felt a strong inclina tion to believe the whole thing to be a well-got-up hoax. We remembered having read a novel in six volumes once of the same order, called "The Abbess," in which the stilted style of writing is exposed very funnily; and, as a specimen of unparalleled bombast, we believed it to be unequalled until we met with Pierre. In Mardi there is a strong vein of vague, morphinized poetry, running through the whole book. We do not know what it means from the beginning to the end, but we do not want to know, and accept it as a rhapsody. Babbalanja philosophizing drowsily, or the luxurious sybaritical King Media, lazily listening to the hum of waters, are all shrouded dimly in opiate-fumes, and dream-clouds, and we love them only as sensual shadows. Whatever they say or do; whether they sail in a golden boat, or eat silver fruits, or make pies of emeralds and rubies, or any thing else equally ridiculous, we feel perfectly satisfied that it is all right, because there is no claim made upon our practical belief. But if Mr. Melville had placed Babbalanja and Media and Yoomy in the Fifth Avenue, instead of a longitude and latitude less inland; if we met them in theatres instead of palm groves, and heard Babbalanja lecturing before the Historical Society instead of his dreamy islanders, we should feel naturally rather indignant at such a tax upon our credulity. We would feel inclined to say with the Orientals, that Mr. Melville had been laughing at our beards, and Pacha-like condemn on the instant to a literary bastinado. Now Pierre has all the madness of Mardi, without its vague, dreamy, poetic charm. All Mr. Melville's many affectations of style and thought are here crowded together in a mad mosaic. Talk of Rabelais's word-nonsense! there was always something queer, and odd, and funny, gleaming through his unintelligibility. But Pierre transcends all the nonsense-writing that the world ever beheld. Thought staggers through each page like one poisoned. Language is drunken and reeling. Style is antipodical, and marches on its head. Then the moral is bad. Conceal it how you will, a revolting picture presents itself. A wretched, cowardly boy for a hero, who, from some feeling of mad romance, together with a mass of inexplicable reasons which, probably, the author alone fathoms, chooses to live in poverty with his illegitimate sister, whom he passes off to the world as his wife, instead of being respectably married to a legitimate cousin. Everbody is vicious in some way or other. The mother is vicious with pride. Isabel has a cancer of morbid, vicious, minerva press-romance, eating into her heart. Lucy Tartan is viciously humble, and licks the dust beneath Pierre's feet viciously. Delly Ulver is humanly vicious, and in the rest of the book, whatever of vice is wanting in the remaining characters, is made up by superabundant viciosities of style. Let Mr. Melville stay his step in time. He totters on the edge of a precipice, over which all his hard-earned fame may tumble with such another weight as Pierre attached to it. He has peculiar talents, which may be turned to rare advantage. Let him diet himself for a year or two on Addison, and avoid Sir Thomas Browne, and there is little doubt but that he will make a notch on the American Pine. "IT is FROM VENICE TO VIENNA is time to get up," shouted Bison, my western friend, shaking me vigorously by the shoulders, as I snored under the sheets of the Albergo Reale at Venice. "But why get up?" muttered I, rubbing my eyes which had only an hour or two before closed upon the brilliant promenades of the piazza of St. Mark. But I sprang out of bed and made the matutinal ablutions by lamp-light, without waiting for his reply. Bison was in full rig, with a mackintosh and Kossuth hat, and an immense pair of boots, "The Archie duco Frederico," said he, "sails at four o'clock, and it now wants five minutes." We were soon in the gondola pushing towards the steamer, which stood champ-. ing its bits and pawing the water, halfway over towards the Lido. It was a raw drizzly morning, though there had been nothing but sunshine in Venice for more than a month. As the passengers came on board, they looked blue and dismal, and a steam of unsavory vapors curled out of their overcoats. Ugh! what shocking nasty weather!" exclaimed an Englishman, addressing no one in particular, and shaking his bearskin like a poodle who had just emerged from a duck-pond. Very," remarked Bison, disposed to scrape an acquaintance, at the same time taking out a segar, nine inches long, and black as a stick of liquorice, which he had purchased in the Estates of the Church, with no probable prospect of smoking it, but as a kind of distant memento of the native American weed. As for myself, I spread my paletot in the cabin, and slept profoundly-one, two, three hours, when the waiters removed me for breakfast. In the meantime the clouds had cleared away, and a day like the first dawn in Paradise, shimmered far and wide over the blue waters of the Adriatic. Venice, with its islands and palaces, was still in sight. It rose dreamily out of the waters, in green, and golden, and red, like a waver ing many-colored exhalation of the morning. "Heavens!" I ejaculated, emerging from the cabin, and joining Bison and the Englishman, who seemed to be in conversation-"how beautiful is this!" "A fairy scene, sir," remarked John, with a positive emphasis, as if somebody was going to dispute his opinion, and he was ready to defend it," a fairy scene, the nicest in the world." "Then you have seen the Bay of Naples," I modestly interposed. Or, continued Bison, "the Bay of NewYork, which I hold to be the most glorious ever invented." "The towering cone of Vesuvius may lend a single superiority to Naples," the Englishman replied in a milder tone, perhaps discovering that we, too, had travelled; "but for my part, these broad lagunes, with their thousand islands, bristling with forts, or laughing in the midst of rich luxuriant gardens-imposing structures rising on every side, and the bright blue skies bending down to the embrace of waters as blue and bright as themselves, have an indescribable enchantment." 66 "Yes," rejoined I, chiming in, much to the discomfort of Bison, who looked at me with an ill-concealed sneer, as though I were turning traitor to the first duties of patriotism, "New-York or Naples may be grander or fairer than this, but here surely is the very home and cradle of romance. Does it not seem, now, as the slant sun comes up out of the waves, and we wind about among these sparkling islands, each a gem on the bosom of the sea, as if we were leaving some ideal world, and hurrying back to stern and cold. realities ?" Bison turned away disgusted; and yet, I had a deeper reason than he saw for that last remark. I was leaving Italy, never perhaps to look upon it again, and my soul, not unmoved by the immediate scene, was yet more completely possessed by the sadly glorious memories of that sweet land. The fresh day was falling in floods across the waves, gay villas and massive fortifications crowned the islands, stately war-ships, with the pennants of all navies streaming from their mast heads, rode at anchor-innumerable gondolas, filled with contadini, hastened inward with their morning supplies of country cheer, and far off shone the majestic turrets and domes of the still sleeping city; ah, no! I could not be insensible, but as these faded away, one after the other, a feeling of melancholy, like some deep undertone of sorrowful music, crept into my heart. It was then that I appreciated in their full force the mournful lines of Filicaja: Italia, oh Italia, hapless thou, Who didst the fatal gift of beauty gain, "Well, while you have been dreaming," interrupted Bison, his face quite black with coal smoke-" Bête!" I screamed. not allowing him to proceed, "don't you see that we are leaving Italy for ever? Italy, dear alike to our imaginations, our intellects and our hearts; the land of Dante, Michael Angelo, and Mazzini, the cradle and the grave of religion and art, the pilgrim-shine to which the earth's weary wanderers turn for consolation and balm, and strength, and peace!-how can we quit her beautiful shores, without dropping a tear at the recollection of her glories, her vices and her woes ?" "But, as I was saying," pursued the imperturbable Bison, "while you were in your dreams, I have been examining this steamship. It is a tolerably fair specimen, well-built, well-appointed, and well-managed, made of iron, and belongs to Mr. Austrian Lloyd. know why it does so well?" But do you "No," said I, "nor do I care." "I'll tell you, then it was built in England, and is managed by a Scotchman!" Seeing that I made no note of his ob-. servation, the indefatigable tormentor continued, "It is one of the blasting effects of these despotic governments, that they not only prevent the development of enterprise, but that they absolutely wither the talents of the people. All over the Continent, the management of the great in dustrial undertakings is committed to the hands of foreigners. The Mediterranean steamboats, you will remember, had English or Yankee engineers, and the Russian and Austrian locomotives, I am told, are mostly American, or at any rate, were made by American mechanics." "It would seem, then, Bison," said I submissively, "that men unaccustomed to the exercise of their political rights, have few or no motives to the exertion of their skill and enterprise." "Just so; the infernal knaves who usurp the rule here, take every thing to themselves, and will no more allow a man to build a steamboat or a railroad, than they will allow him to vote. Isn't it a shame?" We had a delightful sail, and at about two o'clock in the afternoon were landed at Trieste. A capital dinner awaited our hunger at one of the principal hotels on the wharf; but we had scarcely entered the saloon, before we knew that we were approaching Germany, for the smell of decayed tobacco smoke was horrible. Nor was the soup more than off the table when half the company had their stinking meerchaums in full whiff. Clouds of smoke soon rose above the popping of corks, while the piles of exhausted bottles and platters put hors du combat, conveyed an image of some miniature battle-field. I deserted the ground early, to get a passing peep at the town. Trieste, like many other European places, has an old part and a new,the former dating back to the time of the Romans, and the latter having come in with the railroads. It crouches in the lap of lofty hills, with the great moles stretching out like paws into the harbor, which is well filled with shipping, and well defended by forts on the heights. Austria has no other outlet for its trade, so that it drives a thriving business. The language spoken by the people is a cheerful miscellany of Italian, German, English, French, and the Oriental dialects, while the costumes worn are equally va rious in their origin, with a copious embroidery, as in all sea-ports, of the native dirt. But, though promiscuous, they are not picturesque, if we except some of the Sclavic countrymen who loiter about the market in faded Hungarian dresses, and the Dalmatian sailors. Leaving Bison to count the linen rags, and pitch-barrels, and to gauge the Maraschino and Rosoglio bottles,-in other words, to gather the statistics of the commerce, I wandered towards the slope of the hills, where there is a dishevelled castle, older than Julius Cesar, and near by, a still older cathedral, in the round Byzantine style. Its walls are black with age, heavy and incrusted with mud, and here and there a Roman inscription is leering out at the puzzled antiquaries. Worn mosaics and damaged frescoes about the altar, once told the history of St. Justus, its patron, doubtless an excellent man in his day. Poor Wincklemann, whose fine studies of ancient art I remember to have strained my eyes over, before that handsome translation of them was published in Boston, lies buried in the neighboring cemetery. You know his story: how he was the son of a poor shoemaker of Steadel in Altmach; how the schoolmaster of the place became attached to him, and took him into his family, and drilled him in Greek and Latin; how he begged his way on foot to Hamburg, and there begged money to buy some worm-eaten classics; how he passed through the University of Halle, on a wretched stipend contributed by some friends; how he went to Rome on a pension of one hundred dollars for ten years, from good Father Rauch, King's confessor in Poland; how his learned studies got him many friends; how beautifully he wrote on the Beautiful, and the History of Ancient Art, and how he became at last one of the foremost literary men of literary Germany. Goethe, who never wearied of doing good and great things, has spoken worthily of him in a treatise named Wincklemann und Sein Jahrhundert. But you will ask how he came to get buried in Trieste ? Once, in the year 1768, after visiting Vienna, where he was received with distinction by the Empress Maria Teresa, known for other less commendable deeds, she bestowed valuable treasures upon him, which he took with him on a journey to Rome. At Trieste he fell in with an Italian named Francesco Archangelo, a fallen archangel, indeed, for he had been condemned to death at Vienna, but spared on condition that he quitted the country. The villain wormed himself into the unsuspecting Wincklemann's confidence, and one day asked to see his gold medals. Wincklemann bent over from the table where he was, to open the box which contained them, when the Italian inflicted five mortal stabs on his body. It is some satisfaction to be told by the Cicerone that his ancient countryman was broken for it on the wheel. 66 They have tied the horses to the diligence, with several bits of rope," said Bison as we met at the inn, "and all is ready for Adelsberg." "But we have not seen the Palazza di Ricardo, where Richard Coeur de Lion was imprisoned, nor the Casino, nor the three theatres, and many wonders besides!" "Never mind that," replied he, "I have got some genuine Havana segars, which I rowed off to an American man-of-war to borrow. They are prime,-the first I have had since leaving London. Try one." We sprang into the diligence, Bison, the Englishman and I, and in a few minutes were winding up a broad, smooth, well-constructed road, that twines like a great white snake around the hill of Optschina. This is a spur of the Illyrian Alps, rude, stony, and uncultivated, with all the houses by the wayside completely covered with the limestone dust, that looks like ashes. Two hours of toilsome ascent brought us to the top, and then we were just over the town still. An expert Sam Patch might have jumped into any of the neighbors' chimneys. A squad of rosy-checked, squalid little beggars, followed the coach all the way up, asking alms in a kind of chant, which was not half so distressing as the whine of the Italian beggars. The surly postilion gave them a lash with his whip now and then which excited Bison's ire, and at every cut, he threw out a kreutzer, which Bull thought a mistaken benevolence. "No," said Bison triumphantly, "there is something sacred in childhood, though in a beggar's garb;" flinging out a whole handful of pieces. Bison had an object in his philanthropy; for when, shortly afterwards, the postilion was to leave us, and he came for his customary drink money, the good American drily observed, "Alas, my dear fellow, I gave all my spare change to the beggars-a kreutzer a cut. The next time don't use your whip so freely." Cospetto," muttered the retreating figure of the postilion. "Precisely," shouted the exemplary Bison. From the top of the hill, the outlook over the Adriatic is grand. The eye sweeps from the plains of Italy, with Aquilia and Grado on the west, to the long tongues of headland, projected one beyond another, as far back as Čapo D'Istria on the east, where the purple Frioulian Alps form the horizon. The mountains are bold and bare, but the valleys are filled with thick southern vegetation, with olives, and chestnuts, and figs. It is a pity the custom-house, perched two or three miles further on, on the borders of Illyria, where they detain you at least an hour to inspect your baggage and passports, was not nearer the hill; for in that case the landscape would com |