322 Notice of Sketches of Naval Life. 



us. To Americans, there is a voice in every thing from other 

 nations, and such books are the medium through which it 

 speaks. As the bee extracts the sweets of every flower and 

 brings them to the common hive, so the traveller accumu- 

 lates and deposits, for common use, the stores of knowledge 

 which he has obtained. A traveller should be vigilant, in- 

 quisitive, industrious, candid and honest. He should have 

 enlarged and comprehensive views of men and things ; he 

 should be both a scholar and a man of the world ; he should 

 unite keen perception and a cool judgment ; and he should 

 be actuated by pure and elevated moral feeling, quickened 

 by a healthful sensibility, and a chastened taste, which will 

 make him equally accessible, to the beauties of nature and 

 the productions of art. He should attend not only to what is 

 " awfully vast" but that which is " elegantly little ;" he 

 should be bold and firm, yet modest and unpresuming, for 

 only such men will succeed well in a strange land. Above 

 all, as an American, (for such we suppose him to be,) he 

 should give all his observations a practical character ; he 

 should bring every thing to bear on his own country, and 

 blend the wnrm patriot, with the man of information and 

 feeling. With all this he should have a ready pen ; he 

 should be able to describe well ; to seize on our feelings and 

 make us sharers in the pleasures of the journey, while he ex- 

 cuses us from its fatigues ; seizing the striking points of 

 view, whether of men or of nature, he should place before 

 us, a graphic representation of events and things; and in a 

 word should make us see as he saw, and feel as he felt. 



It is giving our opinion of the volumes of Mr. Jones, when 

 we say, in a word, that if this beau ideal of a traveller is 

 rarely seen, he has come nearer to it, than most of those 

 Vk4io publish their observations in the form of travels. In 

 our last number, page 168, we gave an extract from the MS 

 of Mr. Jones' work, and many have since, not only through 

 our own pages, but though those of our newspapers, enjoyed 

 the pleasure, which we experienced from seeing the ship, her 

 spars tipped vvith fire balls, and her canvass emblazoned by 

 lightning, reeling in the night squall, while we contemplated 

 the uproar, from the snug harbor of our own safe tenement, 

 on land. 



We have already mentioned, that the author's prominent 

 object is to display the police and character of our navy, es- 

 pecially as they struck a landsman ; — a civilian^ as he chooses 



