foundation was laid long ere that stormy day when the Mayflower anchored off Plymouth rock, years before Oloffe the Dreamer had his prophetic vision on the greensward of Mannahatta, nor had the adventurous Iberville erected his little fort in the swamps of Louisiana. It is the oldest house of the oldest settlement in the United States. Wilder than any tale of Charter Oak, would be its history. The haughty Spaniard, the fiery Frenchman, the ruthless Bucanier, the determined Englishman, the noble Indian and our own countrymen, have all fought and bled and died, within its shadow. The fosse of that old castle has flowed with the blood of many nations, and the incidents of its history are, perhaps, the most varied, most notable, and least known of any one spot in our land.

But stirring events and rapid change are now no more. A tranquil apathy, a stagnant senility, has settled down upon the town. The Indian pony feeds peaceably in the dry fosse, running vines clamber over ramparts, and old walls loom up at night, cracked and weird as those of the House of Usher. He who spends a short time there lives as in a pleasant dream, and going away, doubts the reality of all he has seen and heard and done. Would that we could spend all our years under the same hallucination, for

Death is the end of life; ah, why

Should life all labor be?

D. G. B.

"They knew not then what War was."

I.

In that lovely land where the beautiful Rhine,
With its banks enlaced by the trailing vine,
Glides along to the sea 'neath the castled steeps
That are mirrored far down in the watery deeps,
They tell an old tale of a glorious time,

When war was unknown in that sweet, sunny clime.
And, they say, all mankind were as brethren then,
Ere this spirit of ill had appeared among men:

Before the curst demon of strife had his birth,

And went forth to lay waste our fair home on the earth.

And, they say, that men dreamed 'mid the birds and the flowers,

By the soft-sighing streamlets, in dark leafy bowers,

And, in the clear blue of the pure vaulted sky,
Oft saw the bright pinions of seraphs on high;
And they dreamed and they soared in vision divine,
In that land of the soul on the banks of the Rhine.

II.

Since those days in that land by the fair-flowing Rhine,
War's bloody battalions have trampled the vine,

For men live no longer in peace and in love;

And the falcon of strife has o'ermastered the dove,

And the dark clouds of battle have veiled the blue sky,
And the pinions seraphic have vanished on high.
When the battle came on in its might and its power,
Oh! then was a dark and an ominous hour!

For the innocent birds flew in horror afar,

When they heard the first sound of the maddening war.
-And dying groans loaded the breeze on the plain,
And the flowerets were dabbled in blood of the slain,
And the children of nature lay cold on the sod,
For the souls of the dreamers had gone to their God,
And the red stream of life was the terrible wine

That was pressed out that day on the banks of the Rhine.

Navalia.

SOMETIME about the Spring of the year 1850, some of the more adventurous of the youth who were under the care of our Alma Mater, put their heads and pockets together, and established a boat-club. The boat was built in New York, and having been duly paid for, was forwarded to the City of Elms.

History does not inform us where it was kept, whether at Riker's, remarkable for its convenient situation and perfect adaptation to the wants of the Navy, or at Brooks', which, at low tide, commands such an expansive view of mud. Whether they overlooked the natural advantages which both of these locations present to the amateur mariner, and sought out some spot at present unknown to us, is, and ever will be, a mystery.

Nor are we informed whether a clause in their constitution, ordering that "no one should enter the boat with his boots on," was the means of furnishing the small boys in that neighborhood, who were more troubled with bare-footedness than conscience, with an abundant supply of patent

leather pumps, till experience taught their benefactors wisdom, and marks of boot-heels appeared on the bottom boards of the boat after the fourth generation of slippers had disappeared.

Still less, on account of the negligence of cotemporary writers, are we able to discover whether they paid the paltry sum of twelve dollars, for the privilege of traversing the docks for a mile in that vicinity every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, in search of a small punt, recognizable from its containing a piece of a broken oar, an oyster-keg and an old shovel, and being from half to two-thirds full of water, according as circumstances were favorable or unfavorable.

With regard to all these important items, we are unhappily left in darkness. Were we to judge from the experience of the present day, we should be inclined to imagine that such things might possibly have happened. Man is fated to have his trials, and we cannot be justified in supposing that so complex a thing as a boat-club-an amphibious corporation blown about by the winds, tossed up and down by the waves-involving so many interests both by land and by sea-depending upon so many principles, mechanical, hydrostatical, hygienic, social and commercial-that so complicated and diversified a system as this, should occasionally be obliged to contend with difficulties, is not to be wondered at.

Difficulties then they must have had, but whether these difficulties were similar to those of the present day, we have no means of ascertaining. Certain it is, however, that in those times of one boat club, it must have been a blessed satisfaction to any despairing individual searching the upper loft of Riker's spacious edifice for a sponge with which to bail out the boat, or a boat-hook or a stretcher, to know that if he found any of these, they inevitably, according to syllogistic principles, belonged to the boat-club. Now-a-days, everything belongs to everybody else, and if any person wishes to bail out his boat, he must sit upon one side of it, "squat like a toad," for the greater part of the afternoon, waiting for his turn for the sponge to come.

But for the present, laying aside these minor considerations, let us contemplate the main fact that in the Spring of 1850, a stout boat, manned by six sturdy Yalensians, and steered by Winthrop, shoved off from the pier; six oars rose and fell, and away went the Atalanta with her flags flying in the wind. The Atalanta was the first boat on record, that is, on the Yale record,-giving this correction through fear that some might be led by similarity of dimensions, to confound the Atalanta with the Ark, the first boat on record outside of the Yalensian world.

In the year following, we find four more boats recorded.

The Excelsior, a six-oared boat, built by Brooks, and owned by the class of 1852.

The Shawmut, eight-oared, built in Boston, and owned by the class of 1853.

The Phantom, five-oared, built by Brooks, and owned by the same class. That larboard bowsman must have been a Hercules.

The Halcyon, eight-oared, built at Boston, and bought from the Harvard students by the class of 1854.

During the next year, the Undine, a six-oared boat, built by Brooks, and owned by the class of 1853, was added to the list. This boat at present astonishes the natives on the banks of the Connecticut river by its lightness and speed.

The Atalanta and Halcyon yet survive in the navy, and are the exponents of the two styles of modern naval architecture, boats built for speed, and those built for pleasure. The devotees of Mercury must have a boat consisting of forty feet of quarter inch plank, brought together at each end, carrying nothing but the crew and two boat-hooks-gliding swiftly and gracefully past with its ambitious load. The claims of Venus are not to be despised, however, so a broad, strong craft goes struggling on after, laden down to the water's edge with its fair burden.

In respect to the build and speed of boats, the Navy has made great advances since its first establishment. Not so with uniforms, however. Once or twice a week, Chapel street is variegated with men who look as if they had been melted and poured into their tight-fitting white pants. They wear shirts of all the different colors of the rainbow, and carry red and white handbills on their breasts, informing the curious spectator the precise spot in the college world from which the bearer hails. In those old times, a modest, dark-blue flannel shirt, with an "A, '54," on the breast, constituted the sole uniform of a boat-club man. A change of our present style of uniforms in this direction, would be advantageous.

During the Summer of the year 1852, a race between the club-boats of Yale and Harvard Colleges, took place at Winnipisiogee Lake, in New Hampshire. "Sat verb. sap."

We come now to the establishment of the Yale Navy in 1853. The first Commodore was Richard Waite. One of the fleet-captains, N. W. Bumsted, afterwards became a Commodore. The boats included in the Navy, were the Atalanta, Halcyon, Thulia, a six-oared boat, built by James, of Brooklyn, in 1853, and owned by the class of 1854, Nepenthe, four-oared, built in New York in 1853, and owned by the class of 1855,

Ariel, four-oared, built in New York, and owned by the Engineering Department.

A. H. Stevens was the Commodore for the year following. Three new boats were entered by the Freshman Class: the Alida, six-oared, built by Ingersoll, of New York; the Nautilus, six-oared, built by James, of Brooklyn; the Rowena, four-oared, built in New York. In addition to these, the Transit, a six-oared boat, built in New York, was entered by the Engineering Department.

On a dark night, in the year 1855, the Nepenthe slipped from her moorings and wandered down the harbor. The only tidings ever heard from her, were that a few weeks after, a piece of thin board, painted red, floated ashore on Long Island, and was immediately confiscated by an avaricious clam digger. During this year, also, the Halcyon retired into private life. The Nereid, a six-oared boat, built by James, of Brooklyn, was the only new boat purchased; the Atalanta and Rowena, however, passed into the hands of the Freshmen. The Commodore for 1855, was N. W. Bumsted, who had the management of the second race with Harvard, on the Connecticut river, at Springfield, resulting in a second defeat. He was succeeded in the ensuing year by A. W. Harriott. No new boats were purchased. The annual race at Commencement time came off with great eclat. The only boats which entered, were the Transit and the Ariel, the latter having a crew selected from the bystanders about a quarter of an hour before the race. It succeeded in reaching the end of Long Wharf in time to meet the other boat coming back, and cheered them with that magnanimity which has ever characterized defeated race crews.

At present, the Navy consists of but nine boats. Their names are as follows: Ariel, Atalanta, Nereid and Wa Wa of the Junior Class; Nautilus and Thulia of the Sophomore Class; Transit and Wenona of the Freshman Class; and the Alida owned by a club principally composed of the engineering students. The present Commodore is S. Scoville. The Halcyon having been rejuvenated by the addition of a coat of black paint, and the euphonious title of Wa Wa, again graces the Navy with its presence. The Wenona, the new boat lately bought by the club in the Freshman Class, merits particular attention. She was built by James of Brooklyn, who has the credit of building four of the best boats of the Yale Navy, viz: the Thulia, Nautilus, Nereid and Wenona. She rows six oars and is forty-one feet in length. Her model is one of surprising grace and beauty, and as a whole she is a credit to the skill and taste of the builder and the enterprise of the club who own her.