One of the candles set fire to the long locks of a fashionable youth standing near the bier. The priest who was sprinkling the holy water, dashed a shower of it upon his head, while a suppressed laughter shook the whole crowd. The prayers finished,—the bier was removed to the enclosure in the rear of the church, the body taken from the coffin, and thrown up into a niche in the wall, resembling a baker’s oven. It was tossed in head first, and the aperture being small and high, it required no little tact in the swinging and cant to secure it a proper lodgment. Lime and holy water were then cast upon it, and the orifice closed. Sooner than have such a burial as this, with scorching hair, laughter, an oven, and dissolving lime, let me glide from earth unnoticed and unknown, as a flower falls in the pathless wilderness, and let my grave be a sunless cave of ocean, only let me have there as mourner:—
The mermaid, whose elegiac shell
Shall pour its tender stave,
In many a wild and fond farewell
Around my sea-green grave.
Wednesday, Dec. 31. Visited to-day the Plymouth, under the command of Capt. Henry. She is one of the most finished specimens of naval architecture afloat; and the neatness of her internal appearance corresponds with her outward grace and beauty. Her light spar-deck, running flush fore and aft, unencumbered by a gun; her bulwarks sweeping from stem to stern without a breaking beam, and clouded into the hue of the pearl; her gun-carriages exhibiting through their hard varnish the native grain of the oak, and the guns presenting the hard polish of their cylinders; her stanchions of burnished iron, her sides and bends without a weather-stain, and her hammocks rising above their netting white as the snow-drift,—all have the finest effect. She reflects, in every aspect in which she may be viewed, the highest credit on the taste and professional skill of Captain Henry and his officers.
She came here from the Mediterranean, after having visited most of the ports in that sea, and paid her respects to the grand sultan at Constantinople. She was there, as she is here, the admiration of all who visited her. Such a ship as this, with the soft clime of Italy, the storied shores of Greece, and the classic associations of the Ægean isles, would be the perfection of cruising with the scholar, and would involve nothing incompatible with the sterner purposes of a man-of-war.
Thursday, Jan. 1, 1846. This is new-year’s day, and the anniversary of the discovery of the bay of Rio by Salis. The Brazilian flag is flying from the public buildings and the masts of all the vessels in the harbor. Salutes from fortifications and national ships are pouring their reverberating thunder among the hills.
Commodore Stockton has graced the occasion in the shape of a splendid dinner to the Hon. Henry A. Wise. Many ladies and gentlemen of Rio, with the officers of the English and American squadrons, were present. The most perfect good feeling prevailed; many patriotic sentiments went round; and many recollections of home melted their way into our hearts.
The honor of the occasion was for Mr. Wise; nor was it unworthily bestowed. He has been a firm, devoted friend to the navy; he has stood by her in her darkest hours, and found, in the triumphs of the past, a bright prophecy of the future. He has been, at the court of Brazil, the fearless champion of the rights and claims of humanity. He has shrunk from no efforts and no responsibility in crushing the slave-trade. Where selfish ease suggested silence, he has spoken; where timidity urged a temporizing indifference, he has resolutely acted. His moral firmness has made him the terror of every slaver, and of all connected with this accursed traffic. If he resigns his present post, may his successor, in this respect at least, tread in his footsteps.