Jist look out of the door, said the Clockmaker, and see what a beautiful night it is, how calm, how still, how clear it is, beant it lovely?—­I like to look up at them are stars, when I am away from home, they put me in mind of our national flag, and it is generally allowed to be the first flag in the univarse now.  The British can whip all the world, and we can whip the British.  Its near about the prettiest sight I know of, is one of our first class Frigates, manned with our free and enlightened citizens all ready for sea; it is like the great American Eagle, on its perch, balancing itself for a start on the broad expanse of blue sky, afeared of nothin of its kind, and president of all it surveys.  It was a good emblem that we chose, warn’t it?  There was no evading so direct, and at the same time, so conceited an appeal as this.  Certainly, said I, the emblem was well chosen.  I was particularly struck with it on observing the device on your naval buttons during the last war—­an eagle with an anchor in its claws.  That was a natural idea, taken from an ordinary occurrence:  a bird purloining the anchor of a frigate—­an article so useful and necessary for the food of its young.  It was well chosen, and exhibited great taste and judgment in the artist.  The emblem is more appropriate than you are aware of—­boasting of what you cannot perform—­grasping at what you cannot attain —­an emblem of arrogance and weakness—­of ill-directed ambition and vulgar pretension.  Its a common phrase, said he, (with great composure) among seamen, to say ’damn your buttons,’ and I guess its natural for you to say so of the buttons of our navals; I guess you have a right to that are oath.  Its a sore subject, that, I reckon, and I believe I hadn’t ought to have spoken of it to you at all.  Brag is a good dog, but hold fast is a better one.  He was evidently annoyed, and with his usual dexterity gave vent to his feelings, by a sally upon the Blue Noses, who he says are a cross of English and Yankee, and therefore first cousins to us both.  Perhaps, said he, that are Eagle might with more propriety have been taken off as perched on an anchor, instead of holding it in his claws, and I think it would have been more nateral; but I suppose it was some stupid foreign artist that made that are blunder, I never seed one yet that was equal to ourn.  If that Eagle is represented as trying what he can’t do, its an honorable ambition arter all, but these Blue Noses wont try what they can do.  They put me in mind of a great big hulk of a horse in a cart, that wont put his shoulder to the collar at all for all the lambastin in the world, but turns his head round and looks at you, as much as to say, ’what an everlastin heavy thing an empty cart is, isnt it?’ An Owl should be their emblem, and the motto, ‘He sleeps all the days of his life.’  The whole country is like this night; beautiful to look at, but silent as the grave—­still as death, asleep, becalmed.  If the sea was always