thought might properly be employed in a work not immediately connected with my pastoral labors. In the recollection of the past portions of my life, I refer to these morning hours,-to the stillness and quiet of my room in this house of God when I have been permitted to "prevent the dawning of the morning" in the study of the Bible, while the inhabitants of this great city were slumbering round about me, and before the cares of the day and its direct responsibilities came upon me,-I refer, I say, to these scenes as among the happiest portions of my life; and I could not do a better thing in reference to my younger brethren in the ministry, than to commend this habit to them as one closely connected with their own personal piety, and their usefulness in the world. Life at Three-Score. ROBERT C. SANDS, 1799-1832. ROBERT C. SANDS was born in the city of New York, May 11, 1799. He entered the Sophomore class in Columbia College in 1812, and was graduated, with a high reputation for scholarship, in 1815. He soon after began the study of law in the office of David B. Ogden, entering upon his new course of study with great ardor, and pursuing it with steady zeal. He had formed in college an intimate friendship with James Eastburn, afterwards a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church; and in 1817 he commenced, in conjunction with his clerical friend, a romantic poem, founded on the history of Philip, the celebrated Sachem of the Pequods. But Mr. Eastburn's health began to fail early in 1819, and he died in December of that year, before the work was completed. It was therefore revised, arranged, and completed, with many additions, by Sands, who introduced it with a touching proem, in which the surviving poet mourned, in elevated and feeling strains, the accomplished friend of his youth. The poem was published, under the title of Yamoyden, at New York, in 1820, was received with high commendation, and gave Mr. Sands great literary reputation throughout the United States. In 1820, Mr. Sands was admitted to the bar, and opened an office in the city of New York; but his ardent love of general literature gradually weaned him from his profession. In 1822 and 1823, he wrote many articles for the "Literary Review," a monthly periodical, and in 1824 the "Atlantic Magazine" was established and placed under his charge. He gave it up in six months; but when it became changed to the "New York Review," he was engaged as an editor, and assisted in conducting it till 1827. He had now become an author by profession, and looked to his pen for support, as he had before looked to it for fame or for amusement; and when an offer of a liberal salary was made him as an assistant editor of the "New York Commercial Advertiser," he accepted it, and continued his connection with that journal until his death, which took place on the 17th of December, 1832; in the mean time editing and writing a great number of miscellaneous works. A selection from his works was published in 1834, in two volumes, octavo, entitled Writings in Prose and Verse, with a Memoir. FROM THE PROEM TO YAMOYDEN. Go forth, sad fragments of a broken strain, Friend of my youth! with thee began the love Of sacred song; the wont, in golden dreams, O'er haunted steep, and by immortal streams; Forever lit by memory's twilight beams; Where the proud dead, that live in storied page, There would we linger oft, entranced, to hear, Through Argive palaces shrill echoing stole; Or hold communion with the musing soul Friend of my youth! with thee began my song, But for thy sake such idlesse would deplore And swears to meditate the thankless muse no more. 1 "That American literature experienced a great loss in the early death of Sands, will be felt by the reader who makes acquaintance with his well-cultivated, prompt, exuberant genius, which promised, had life been spared, a distinguished career of genial mental activity and productiveness."-DUYCKINCK. A series of interesting papers on the early and unpublished writings of this "true son of genius" may be found in the twenty-first and twenty-second volumes of the "Knickerbocker Magazine." 2 Mr. Eastburn died December, 1819, on a voyage to Santa Cruz, undertaken to regain his health. ODE TO EVENING. Hail! sober evening! thee the harass'd brain 'Tis then the bard may hold communion sweet The silent hour of bliss! when in the west Her argent cresset lights the star of love:- Unseen return o'er former haunts to rove; Sleep, brother of forgetfulness and death, Round well-known couch with noiseless tread they rove, In tones of heavenly music comfort breathe, And tell what weal or bale shall chance the moon beneath. Hour of devotion! like a distant sea, The world's loud voices faintly murmuring die; While grateful hymns are borne from earth on high. And not grow purer from the heavenward view? Felt a new birth within, and sin no longer knew. Let others hail the oriflamme of morn, O'er kindling hills unfurl'd with gorgeous dyes! With holier thought, and with undazzled eyes; Where wealth and power with glare and splendor rise, Still Memory's moonlight lustre let me prize; The great, the good, whose course is o'er, discern, And, from their glories past, time's mighty lessons learn! From " Yamoyden." MONODY ON SAMUEL PATCH.1 "By water shall he die, and take his end."-SHAKSPEARE. Toll for Sam Patch! Sam Patch, who jumps no more, The vulgar pathway to the unknown shore Of dark futurity, he would not tread. 1 Samuel Patch was a boatman on the Erie Canal, in New York. He made himself notorious by leaping from the masts of ships, from the Falls of Niagara, No friends stood sorrowing round his dying bed; Behind his corpse, and tears by retail shed;– The mighty river, as it onward swept, In one great, wholesale sob, his body drown'd and kept. Toll for Sam Patch! he scorn'd the common way That some great men had risen to falls, he went Upbore him, like some sea-god on its wave; Fame, the clear spirit that doth to heaven upraise, Pleasant, as are to women lighted halls Sam was a fool. But the large world of such And less sublime. Of fame he soon got much, The kindly element to which he gave Himself so fearlessly, we had not heard That it was now his winding-sheet and grave, Nor sung, 'twixt tears and smiles, our requiem for the brave. I say, the muse shall quite forget to sound The chord whose music is undying, if She do not strike it when Sam Patch is drown'd. Leander dived for love. Leucadia's cliff The Lesbian Sappho leap'd from in a miff, To punish Phaon; Icarus went dead, Because the wax did not continue stiff; And, had he minded what his father said, And Helle's case was all an accident, As everybody knows. Why sing of these? and from the Falls in the Genesee River, at Rochester. He did this, as he said, to show "that some things can be done as well as others;" and hence this, now, proverbial phrase. His last feat was in the summer of 1831, when, in the presence of many thousands, he jumped from above the highest rock over which the water falls in the Genesee, and was lost. He had drank too freely before going upon the scaffold, and lost his balance in descending. The above verses were written a few days after this event. Nor would I rank with Sam that man who went I think he call'd himself. Themselves to please, To prove to all men, commons, lords, and kings, And while Niagara prolongs its thunder, Though still the rock primeval disappears, And nations change their bounds-the theme of wonder Those shall be precious which the adventurer shed Who would compare the mandlin Alexander, With Sam, whose grief we all can understand? With its own agony, when he the grand And, measuring the cascade, found not his courage quell'd But, ere he leap'd, he begg'd of those who made Should perish, such collection should be paid As might be pick'd up from the " company" To his mother. This, his last request, shall be Though she who bore him ne'er his fate should know- When all the streams have worn their barriers low, Therefore it is considered, that Sam Patch Shall never be forgot in prose or rhyme; Shall tell of him: he dived for the sublime, |