Hold! 
You are young,—­I am old,—­
You’ve a wife, too—­and children?—­O God! he is gone
Straight into destruction!  The pipes, men!  On, on,
Play the water-stream on him,—­full—­faster—­the whole! 
And now—­Christ save his soul!

    III.

               —­I stifle—­I choke;
        And he,—­Heaven grant that he smother in smoke
        Ere the fearful explosion comes.  Hark!  What’s the shout?
               —­Is he saved?—­Is he out?
        —­Did he compass his purpose,—­the Hero?—­(One name
        To-night we shall write on the records of fame,—­
        The perilous deed was so noble!) Why here
                On my cheek is a tear,
        Which not a whole city in ashes could claim! 
        —­His name, now:  Can nobody tell me his name?

M. J. P.

UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM LORD NELSON TO LADY HAMILTON.

[It has been a matter of congratulation that the destruction by the Boston fire was confined to buildings and other property representing simply the wealth of the city, and did not extend to its monuments or its artistic and literary treasures.  The exceptions are, in fact, comparatively small in amount, yet they are such as must excite a general regret.  The contents of the studios in Summer street, and the collection of armor, unique in this country, bequeathed by the late Colonel Bigelow Lawrence to the Boston Athenaeum, and temporarily deposited at 82 Milk street, could not perish without awaking other feelings besides that of sympathy with their past or prospective possessors.  A similar loss was that of many of the books and manuscripts amassed by the historian Prescott, and comprising the collections pertaining to the Histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru and of Philip II.  The manuscripts were comprised in some thirty or forty folio volumes, and consisted of copies or abstracts of documents in the public archives and libraries of Europe, in the family archives of several Spanish noblemen, and in private collections like that at Middle Hill.  The printed books, of which there were perhaps a thousand, included many of great value and not a few of extreme rarity.  A large mass of private correspondence was also consumed.  We are not yet informed whether the same fate has befallen a small but very choice collection of autographs, embracing letters written or signed by Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V., Pope Clement VII., Prospero Colonna, the Great Captain, and other sovereigns and eminent personages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  Very few modern autographs were included in this collection, the only examples, we believe, being notes written by Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the duke of Wellington, and a longer letter addressed by Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton.  This last, which we are permitted to print from a copy made some time ago, is not exactly a model of composition, but it is very characteristic, and shows the strength of that enthrallment which led him, despite his natural kindness of heart, to risk the lives of his men in order to communicate with the object of his passion.]