WRITTEN ON BEHOLDING THEM ON THE FIRST NIGHT OF A
NEW YEAR.

Knowest thou the ordinances of Heaven? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season, or canst thou

HAST thou ever, dear reader, seated thyself with the design of writing upon a subject about which thou knowest little or nothing? If so, then thou hast perchance found thyself in a predicament not unlike to that in which thy humble servant, the writer of this article, is now placed. Still, however, between our-guide Arcturus with his sons ? selves, it is some consolation to think that we are not the first among the genus of scribblers who have attempted to write upon subjects of which they were ignorant. And if others take such liberties, why may not we?

JOB XXXVIII.

FOREMOST and brightest of the "sisters seven,"
Fair ALCIONE,* that with purest light
Shinest unclouded in the upper heaven,

Keeping bright vigil through the wintry night!
From the blue zenith bending, thou dost seem
To watch us with a sleepless eye of love;
O'er mortal cares and life's uncertain dream
Shedding "sweet influences" from above,
Mingling with earth's ungenial atmosphere,
Light, mildness, beauty, from some better sphere.

Not all in vain the poets fabled thee,

In their vague dreams of old, as Atlas-born,†
What time on mountain-tops, with Pleioné
He watched the last stars vanishing at morn;

Be it known, then, to all concerned, that we have never seen the Hudson river-the noble Hudson-and, of course, know but little respecting it. Nevertheless, we can form some opinions of it. For instance, we can suppose that like other rivers which we have seen, it freezes over in the winter, (we are writing in a very cold room, reader, and ideas of freezing, ice, Greenland, and the Arctic regions generally, are uppermost in our mind,) and thaws in the spring-that innumerable sloops glide upon its bosom, and many a competitor steamboat splashes and foams unceremoniously in its waters; that its shores are lined with rocks, or mead-And named thee with thy sisters radiant, ows, or shade-trees, or adorned with many pleasant farms, country-seats, and villages; and that the inhabitants of said farm-houses, country-seats, and villages, are, in general, very clever people, seeing that many of them are subscribers to the Evergreen, which, we have learned, is quite a welcome visitor among them. So much for our opinions of the Hudson. We now give an extract from a popular writer.

“The Hudson, at Hyde Park, is a broad, tranquil, and noble river, of about the same character as the Bosphorus above Roumeli-bissar, or the Dardanelles at Abydos. The shores are cultivated to the water's edge, and lean up in graceful rather than bold elevations; the eminences around are clustered with the villas of the wealthy inhabitants of the metropolis at the river's mouth; summer-houses, belvideres, and water-steps, give an air of enjoyment and refreshment to the banks, and without any thing like the degree of the picturesque which makes the river so remarkable thirty or forty miles below, it is, perhaps, a more tempting character of scenery to build and live among."

VOL. II.

1

By names which love had rendered dear to him,
Sounds with paternal joys and sorrows blent,

Familiar tones in many a household hymn;
Seeking to fix, in Heaven's eternal dome,
Unfading symbols of his earthly home.

"Star of the Ocean!" thou, with mildest light,

When storm-winds howling through the moonless night,
Didst guide the ancient wanderers o'er the sea,
Foreboded shipwreck and calamity!

The anxious husbandman watch'd thy decline

Down the red west, sweet" Virgin of the Spring,"§

* Alcioné is the brightest of the cluster, and thence called the light of the Pleiades."

†They are fabled to have been the daughters of Atlas (prob. ably an ancient astronomer) and his wife Pleioné.

The Pleiades are so called from the Greek word pleein, to sail, because at this season of the year they were considered as the "star of the ocean" to the benighted mariner.

They are called "Virgins of the Spring," because the sun enters the cluster in the season of blossoms, on the 18th of May.