WHAT NEXT?

"IF the Americans can show us the way to take Sebastopol, we should be quite ready to learn, and to give them every credit for the lesson."-London Times.

THE Comments of the British press on the scheme for raising recruits in this country to assist the Allies in their operations against Russia; or, to speak more plainly, to enable them to escape from the Crimea, furnish some interesting illustrations of character and give a considerable insight into the views of the English people, as well as into the opinions and fears of their rulers with respect to the war, into which they rushed with such a flourish of trumpets, and from the responsibilities of which they are now essaying so many ingenious means of escape.

It had become the essence of British policy to assume a tone of the haughtiest defiance and supreme confidence. The world had been taught, in song and story, to accept Britain's invincibility as a great fact. The American Revolution and its consequences have long since been placed to the credit of Britain's magnanimous forbearance. A persistent and systematic practice of ridiculing all other nations, always accompanied by self-laudatory allusions to "wooden walls" and "iron dukes," had produced their effect. To an Englishman's conceit the order, "Up Guards and at 'em!" would alone, and at any time, be adequate to insure a victory like Waterloo; and to produce results like those of Trafalgar, it would be but necessary to announce to the rulers of the waves, that "England expects every man to do his duty.”

But times change-and as the "meteor flag" of England wanes paler and paler before the walls of Sebastopol, the braggart changes his tone. The humiliating position he has been forced to assume before the world, and the perplexing straits to which he finds himself irresistibly driven, have very naturally brought John Bull to a sensible appreciation of his true position. Having, in this instance, but partially succeeded in his wonted practice of enlisting under his banners the prejudices of the world, which, like Swiss troops, may be engaged in any cause and are prepared to serve under any leader; having well-nigh exhausted his hypocritical cant about "the encroachment of Asiatic barbarism upon European civilization;" the puerile

cry about "the onslaught of Tartars upon the defenders of constitutional liberty" having become too transparent and palpable a hoax, we find the bully resorting to a new, although a characteristic, expedient-from blustering he turns to whining.

Truly, John Bull judged by himself, and John Bull judged by his neighbors, are two very different personages.

We shall not attempt to separate the farrago, from which we have given an extract at the head of this article, into parts, and examine and answer its components. It would be labor lost - le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle. Neither shall we attempt to describe the mingled feelings of surprise and disgust which came over us as we read this choicest specimen of flunkey composition. The smile of bitter scorn can be the only American response to such stupid and gratuitous evidence of transparent duplicity and patent poltroonery. This humiliating confession of weakness, or this contemptible attempt at swindling, whichever it may be termed, is addressed to Americans, whose ears for years past have been made familiar with the epithets, "freebooters," ," "pirates," "man-sellers," cowards." It is to them, in the hour of need, the boasting, bullying braggart appeals in the tones of another Aminidab Sleek-it is to Americans, who, during the Mexican war, were characterized as freebooters and land-pirates that this most modest of appeals is made.

Virtuously shocked by the conduct of Russia towards Turkey, John Bull suddenly becomes conveniently forgetful of the history of his own foreign policy of the last two hundred years. He forgets that before 1829, and the treaty of Adrianople, whoever took the side of Turkey was, in his eyes, a vile supporter of despotism, a friend of Asiatic barbarism, and an enemy not only of all light and progress, but of the Christian religion!

But times change, and this dreadful "Russian predominance" must be put down-Delenda est Carthago! It is to no purpose to say that Russia has as much right to keep up a military and naval force at Sebastopol, a fortified place in her own dominions, as England has to keep up a military and naval force in Portsmouth, which is a fortified place in England. John can not see the force of such reasoning. Russia, says he, makes herself "aggressively preponderant." And has John ever made himself any thing other than aggressively predominant? And what object has John in carrying on the present war if it be not the vindication and preservation of his own "aggressive preponderance"? Let him dismantle Gibraltar, a fortress. that is not exactly on his own soil; let him abandon Malta, and then, perhaps, he may find listeners to those moral lectures with which he is so fond of regaling his neighbors. If it be a crime for Russia to endeavor to obtain, by purchase or otherwise, Cattaro or some other port on the Mediterranean -if it be a crime for Russia to endeavor to exercise influence on that sea, can it be altogether praiseworthy for John Bull to hold on to Gibraltar, and to retain control over the straits that are under its guns? It is true, as John

tells us, that Russia is a northern power, and possesses no harbors south of those that are in the Black Sea; but, perhaps, we may be permitted to inquire, what coast is it of the British Islands that is washed by the waters of the Mediterranean?

But this dreadful "Russian predominance" must be put down: if rotten alliances and corrupt combinations prove ineffectual, the basest means, it would appear, must not be left untried. No doubt still meaner, and, if possible, more despicable measures are yet to be employed-more contemptible schemes will be concocted. Meanwhile we wait curiously to learn-WHAT NEXT?

TO COLUMBUS.

IRVING relates, that "long before the New World appeared in sight, Columbus was certain of its existence, by the beautiful perfume wafted by the land-breezes in the evening."

As erst to him, who his adventurous keel

Urged through Atlantic waves, (a man, I ween,
Full rich in evidence of things unseen,

Which to his soaring reason made appeal,)

The wished-for Continent did itself reveal,

Not by its towering hills and groves of green-
For still an Ocean wide did intervene―

But odors on his senses 'gan to steal
From the New World, by evening breezes brought,
More fragrant far than those he had left behind-
Then felt he that his deathless fame was wrought;
So he who has long his heavenward course inclined,
Feels, as he nears the end, his voyage fraught
With sweetest sense of things as yet unseen.

THE LAST BROTHER.

FAINT lay the boyish clusters of his hair,
With the chill shadow deepening on their gold;
And on the outline of the varying cheek,
And on the crimson of the curved lip,
The pallid death came settling, shade by shade,
Swimming along the azure of his eyes

That drooped within their lids, and oped no more.
The parted lips relapsed into a smile-
And he was dead.

Reverberant shut the passless gates of life;
Without the closed portals, lone we stand,
Our clasped palms eloquent in silent grief.
And dost thou send no sign? O loved, and lost!
Hast thou not seen through all thy nights of pain,
Through the swift darkness closing round thy way,
Thy sisters' souls go with thee to the shades?
The last faint clasp is loosed, and thou art gone
With thine unsandaled feet upon the path,
So dread and dark, where we can follow not.
Would we not fling this clinging life away,
Even as a faded festal robe, to share
The path that thou must tread companionless?

On what wild shore thou leavest us alone-
An unknown shore that stretches wide and dim,
Watching the latest ripple of the tide

That swift and dark bears thee from us, for aye.
And where will be thy gentle hand to guide
O'er rocks and treacherous sands, our feeble steps
Trembling at every shadow on the shore?
Thou beautiful!-can Hades wait for thee?
Thine was no vulgar being where the clay
Quenches in some rude mould the captive soul;
But like an antique statue formed and wrought
With all the breathing symmetry of limb.
The Grecian chisel shaped into the block,
Teaching its stillness to contain a soul—
A face e'en thus in boyhood, pale and high,

With the first shadow of unwoken power-
Beneath its clustering rings of dark brown hair
An eye of deepest beauty, and a lip

Haughty and curved, e'en such as might have been
Apollo's, when disguised among the hills,
He wore the shepherd's garb unrecognized.
How we went happy, singing in the sun,
Seeing no coming cloud in all our sky,
And dreaming of the brother tall and young,
Pacing his college halls with some old book,
While o'er the music of immortal words
The unquiet lip went murmuring, like the sea
Rippling along the golden shore at eve.
We said he forgeth armor for the strife,
In the thick-thronged arena of the world-

Like a young knight shall he come forth equipped
In all his shining arms, for his first field.
Alas! that morn of fight did never come.
Within the chapel where he watched the night,
The shining arms lie rusting on the ground.
How can the soul, immortal though it be,
Abide that untold hour that doth divide

Future and past, eternity and time,
When trembling on the shadowy verge, it sees
All it hath loved and known, receding far,

While up, and round, the whirling clouds divide,
And all the dread Eternal and Unknown,
Unfolds to view?

But lo! One goes before thee on the way.
As thou dost pass the closing gates of life
He takes thy hand-young spirit, fear thee not.
The beauteous one, with flowing garments on,
Garments of Bozra, dyed with crimson stain,
Cometh from Edom, his apparel red
Like them that tread the wine-press, and his face
Radiant, yet pale, illumes thy darkened way.
Young brother, fare thee well! awhile we part-
And yet we part not. Still thy memory lives
Serene and deep, a presence in our souls.
Even as a forest fountain, curtained in,
Amid the dark green wilderness of leaves,
Far o'er it, in the fluttering foliage high
Their summer songs the wand'ring wild birds sing
In the light sunshine, and the careless winds
Sing through the rippling leaves, but reach it not.

F. M.