I was leaving my mother, my brothers and sister, my friends and my country, for two years, and could only hear from them at monthly intervals.  I was going to work very hard, in a distasteful vocation, among strangers, from whom I had no right to expect the invariable kindness and indulgence my own people had favored me with.  My spirits were depressed by my father’s troubled fortunes, and I had just received the first sharp, smarting strokes in the battle of life; those gashes from which poor “unbruised youth,” in its infinite self-compassion, fancies its very life-blood must all pour away; little imagining under what gangrened, festering wounds brave life will still hold on its way, and urge to the hopeless end its warfare with unconquerable sorrow.  There is nothing more pathetic than the terrified impatience of youth under its first experience of grief, and its vehement appeal of “Behold, and see if any sorrow be like unto my sorrow!” to the patient adepts in suffering such as it has not yet begun to conceive of.  Orlando’s adjuration to the exiled duke in “As You Like It,” and the wise Prince’s reply, seem to me one of the most exquisite illustrations of the comparative griefs of youth and age.

                                  OFF SANDY HOOK, Monday, September 5. 
     MY DEAREST H——­,

We are within three hours’ sail of New York, having greeted the first corner of Long Island (the first land we saw) yesterday morning; but we are becalmed, and the sun shines so bright, and the air is so warm and breathless, that we seem to have every chance of lying here for the next—­Heaven knows how long!  In point of time, you see, our voyage has been very prosperous, and I am surprised that we have made such good progress, for the weather has been squally, with constant head-winds.  I do not think we have had, in all, six days of fair wind, so that we have no reason whatever to complain of our advance, having come thus far in thirty-two days.  You bade me write to you by ships passing us, but though we have encountered several bound eastward, we only hailed them without lying to; notwithstanding which, about a fortnight ago, on hearing that a vessel was about to pass us, I wrote you a scrawl, which none but you could have made out (so the fishes won’t profit much by it), and a kind fellow-passenger undertook to throw it from our ship to the other as it passed us.  She came alongside very rapidly, and though he flung with great force and good aim, the distance was too great, and my poor little missive fell into the black sea within twenty feet of its destination.  I could not help crying to think that those words from my heart, that would have gladdened yours, should go down into that cold, inky water....  I pray to God that we may return to England, but I am possessed with a dread that I never shall....

I have been called away from this letter by one of those little incidents which Heaven