THE PAC HA OF MANI' TALES.

A "YARN," theugh in common parlance applied to any story told by a sailor, is in strictness, we believe, en impossible tale told to a landsman in order to dumfound him by the doings and sceings of nautical life. As pity or terror is the object of tragedy, surprise is the end of a " yarn,,' and lies are the means. The rude rules which may have beet► laid down by the practitioners themselves, we are unacquainted with ; but the critical haw•s of yarns would seem to be few and simple,dependent ripen experience and a ready fancy, rather than genius or profound observation. Unity of story must of course be given tip : the events, as in a fairy tale, are not to be measured by physical possibilities, but they should be con- sistent with themselves. As regards the manners, we incline to believe that the practice of authors in general is a critical canon here—those which are familiarly known to the narrator and his audience should be painted as truly as be can ; he may draw upon his fancy for the unknown. The sentiments and style of a true yarn are those of a jack tar when bent upon humming; but if the nautical spirit be kept up, we ophie that its coarseness may be softened. It was a matter of dispute among the French critics, whether the hero of the epic should be an honest man ; it is per- haps a moot point whether the hero of a yarn should be a sailor. It seems unnecessary to limit his adventures to the sea, but the warner would do well not to lay the scene in his own country. These would appear to be something like the dead letter of the rules of yarning. "To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art," is to invent a succession of lies which shall overwhelm from their mere magnitude. Ex. gr.

I sailed in a brig for the Brazils, and a gale came on that I never seed the like of. We were obliged to have three men stationed to hold the Captain's hair on his head ; and a little boy was blown over the moon, and slid down by two or three of her beams, till he caught the mainstay, and never hurt himself. * * Well, the gale lasted for a week ; and at last one night, when I was at the helm, we dashed on the rocks of a desolate island. I was pitched right over the mountains, and fell into the sea on the other side of the island. I swain on shore and got into a cave, where I fell fast asleep. The next morning, I found that there was nothing to eat except rats, and they were plentiful ; but they were so quick that I could not catch them. I walked about, and at last dis- covered a great many rats together ; they were at a spring of water, the only one, as I afterwards found, on the island. Hats can't do without water, and I thought I should have them there. 1 filled up the spring all but a hole which I sat on the top of? when the rats came again, I filled my mouth with water and held it wide open ; they ran up to drink, and I caught their heads in my teeth, and thus I took as many as I wished.

Thus much of precept and example, to introduce three volumes Which are essentially a collection of varns. The Paella who gives half the title to the work was a barber, who has risen to high office ; his Vizier (?) is a renegade Greek, who exercised the Paella's original profession on his person, and is promoted to the post of minister on the elevation of his master. The Pacha is very fond of stories, "for they always send him to sleep ;" and Mustapha, the Vizier, procures him the "Arabian Nights. With these, however, he is delighted ; and after their second perusal he becomes hypochondriacal for want of his mental stimulus. Mustapha, in order to divert him, suggests that they should sally forth in disguise like the Caliph Haroun and his Vizier, and see what stories or story-tellers they may pick up. The advice is fol- lowed; and the various persons encountered and brought Were the Pacha furnish the many Tales. The framework, it will be seen, is ingenious; and the workman- ship is very good. The Turkish manners are not so free, so finished, or so exact as in Mmuntar's prototype, MORIER ; but the natural characters of the Pacha and Mustapha are most ably drawn; and the quiet, satirical embodiment of the abusive prac- tices of the Turkish executive, very pointedly and humorously done. There is, too, considerable variety in the tales ; which are Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Spanish, and nautical. Nor are they confined to mere amusement, but satirize, and keenly enough, the different lies and foibles of the day. In one sea tale, the followers of the new school of supernatural horrors are pointed at; in an- other, the sea serpent. We cannot affirm that the story constantly suspended by the chaunt " Titum tilly-filly, titum tilly-lillv,titum, ti,' is intended for a cut at authors who intermingle their prose narratives with poetry; but in another, the eloquent yet sickly sen- timent and reflection which writers of great name and brilliant abilities are wont to push to an extreme, seems not very darkly shadowed. A maniac volunteers a story, and pours forth a string of euphonic sentences, now signifying little or nothing, now like the following : the occasional interruptions of the Pacha serving far a commentary. " There is nought under heaven so interesting, so graceful, so pleasing to con- template, as a young mother with her first-bmn at her breast. The soft lisps and caresses of childhood, the expanding graces of the budding maiden, the

blushing, smiling, yet trembling bride, all lose in the comparison with woman in her beauty fulfilling her destiny on earth—her countenance radiating with those intense feeliugs of delight which more than repay her for her previous hours of sorrow and of anguish. But I'm afraid I tire your Highness.' " Wallah el Nebi ! by Cod and his Prophet ! you do indeed. Is it all to be like that ?"

" No, Paella: I wish to heaven that it had been. Merciful God ! why didst thou permit the blow ? Was not I grateful ? Were not my eyes suffused with tears, springing from gratitude and love, at the very moment when they rushed in, when their murdering weapons were pointed to my breast, when the mother bIllicked as they tore away the infant as a useless encumbrance, and dashed it to the wound, when I caught it up, and the pistol of the savage Tut k put an coil to its existence? I see it now, as 1 kissed the little ruby fountain which bubbled from its heart. I see her too, as they lieu e her away senseless in their aims. Paella, in one short minute I was bereft ofall—wiW, child, home, liberty, and reason ; and here 1 am, a madman and a slave !"

The maniac paused ; then starting upon his feet, lie commenced in a loud voice—" But I lisciw who they were, I know them 1111, and I know where she is too ; and vow, Paella, you shall do the justice. This is he who stole may wife; this is lie who murdered my child ; this is he who keeps her fiem my arms ; 411111 thus I beard him in vow• presence !" and as he finished his exch.- mations he sprang upon the terriiied )1ustapha, seizing him by the beard with

out' while with, the other he heat his tin ball iihout his head.

The guards rushed in, and rescued the Vizier f 111 the awkward position in which be was placed by his own imprudence, in permitting the man to appoar at the divan.

The rage of the Pacha was excessive ; and the head of the tnaniae would have been sepatated from Ilk body Lid it not been for the pi udence of illustaplia, who was aware that the common people consider idiots and madmen to be under the special protection of lwaven, and that such an act would be sufficient to create aim insurrection. At his intercession, the man was taken away by the guards, and not released until lie was a considerable distance from the palace.

" Allah Karim ! God is merciful !" exclaimed the Paella, as ',Oink as the maniac had been carried away. " I'm glad that he did not think it was me who had his wife."

• ' Allah fin bid that your Highness should have been so treated. He has almost ruined the beard of your slave," replied the Vizier, adjusting the folds of his turban.

" Alustaplia, make a memorandum never again to accept an offer. I'm con- vinced that a volunteer story is worth nothing."

The sea tales in general may have a reference to the stories of voyages, but some are levelled at the Northern discoverers. In the third voyage of Huckaback, we are introduced to an island is the Northern Seas whose inhabitants dwell in houses made of entire whale•skins, sail in boats made of entire whale-skins, live upon the milk, cheese, and flesh of whales, with which they are supplied by their tame flocks ; and finally, the hero departs in one- of their boats, which being mistaken for a living animal, is harpooned and cut into, and by which means he escapes. The last voyage of Huckaback opens with his being frozen up in an iceberg; an event which happens through his eagerness to harpoon a sca- horse, and venturing between two icebergs that suddenly dose in consequence of a squall.

The men in the other boats immediately pulled away, and, as I afterwards learnt, when I arrived at Marseilles, they escaped, and returned home in the ship ; but those in mine, who wet° intent upon watching me, as I stood in the bow of the boat with the harpoon to strike the animal, did not perceive the danger until the stern of the boat was touched by the other iceberg. The two now coming within the attraction of cohesion of floating bodies, were dashed like lightning one against the other, jamming the men, as well as the boat, into atoms.

Being in the bow of the boat, and healing the crash, I had just time, in a mo- ment of desperation, to throw myself into the cave upon the back of the sea-horse, when the two enormous bodies of ice carne in contact ; the noise I have no doubt was tremendous, but I did not hear it, as I was immediately enclosed in the ice. Although at first theme were interstices, vet, as the southerly gales blew the ice- bergs before it into the northern region, all was quickly cemented together by the frost, and I found myself pent up in an apartment nut eight feet square in company with a sea-horse. I shall not detain your !Ugliness hydescribing my sensations : my ideas were, that I was to exist a co twin time, and then die for want of fresh air ; but they were incorrect. At first, indeed, the cave was intolerably hot from the accu- mulation of breath, and I thought I should soon be suffocated. I recollected all my past sins, I implored for mercy, and lay down to die ; but I found that the ice melted away with the heat, and that, in so doing, a considerable portion of the air was liberated, so that in a few minutes my respiration became more free. The animal in the mean time, apparently frightened at his unusual situation, was perfectly quiet ; and, as the slightest straw will be caught at by the drown- ing man, so did the idea of my preservation conic into my head. I considered• bow much air so enormous an animal must consume, and determined upon de- spatching him, that I might have more for my own immediate wants. I took out my knife, and inserting it between the vertebral bones that joined his head to his neck, divided the spinal marrow, and he immediately expired.

The death of the seal gives Huckaback both air and meat. He tells the Paella that he measures time by noting the growth of his finger-nails; and after two months' confinement,—during which his appetite gradually decreases, owing, the story-teller " presumes, to the want of fresh air and exercise,"—he conjectures, from the convulsions of his cave, that it was broken off the iceberg in some concussion ; and shortly becomes frozen up in a floe. Three months more pass in this state ; when -

One morning I heard a grating noise close to me: soon afterwards I perceived the teeth of a saw entering my domicile, and I correctly judged that some ship was cutting her way through the ice. Although I could not make myself lwaid, I waited in anxious expectation of deliverance. The saw ap- proached very near to where I was sitting ; and I was afraid that I should be wounded, if not cut in halves: but just as it was within two inches of my nose. it was withdrawn. The fact was, that I was under the main floe, which had been frozen together ; and the firm ice above having been removed and pushed away, I rose to the surface. A current of fresh air immediately poured into the small incision made by the saw, which not only took away my breath from its sharpness, but brought on a spitting of blood. Hearing the sound of voices, I considered my deliverance as certain. Although I understood very little Eng- lish, I heard the name of Captain Parry frequently mentioned,—a name, I pre- sume, that your Highness is well acquainted with.

" Pooh ! never heard of it," replied the Pacha.

" I am surprised, your Highness ; I thought everybody must have beard of that adventurous navigator. I may here observe, that I have since read his voyages, and he mentions, as a curious fact, the steam which was emitted from

the ice ; which was nothing more than the hot air escaping from my cave when it was cut through,--a singular point, as it not only proves the correctness of Ms remarks, but the circumstance of my having been there, as I am now scribing it to your Highness."

The majority of the stories are of this kind in their plan and conduct ; with, for the most part, an under-current of calm and satirical allusion. The execution displays the exact and distinct finish which characterizes MARRVAT,—the result of laborious care, or of long and early practice. But the Paehu of Many Tales is scarcely worthy of his powers, and will add nothing to his per- manent fame. The finer satire will hardly be appreciated by the herd of readers ; the sameness of character in the tales creates a feeling at times approaching to listlessness ; the interest of a con- nected story is missing ; and, with one exception, when the mind is not stimulated by surprise, there is no other feeling that can be excited, for not only are the stories known to be fictions, but their mendacity is avowed and obtruded.