at that moment. On hearing this, the goodnatured captain thrust his hand into a side pocket of his coat, and, drawing forth a biscuit, gave me in this though a hard, nevertheless, a welcome supper, which I was really beginning to want; for nothing I have ever experienced gives so keen an appetite, excepting the air of a lofty mountain, as that of a brisk wind and a rough sea. Whilst I was engaged with my biscuit, to my extreme surprise, in the midst of sickness, cold and storm, my poor invalid fell into a doze by my side; his head sank on my shoulder. I thought of Shakspeare - - and his ship boy who sleeps in "cradle of the rude imperious surge." Once more I disposed the cloak around him so as to cover him, as well as I could, from the salt shower which still continued to salute us, and having done this, again did I compose myself to watch the mighty

element before me.

It was now neither day nor night, but that sort of sombre twilight when there is just suffieient light to show the objects around under an aspect of peculiar gloom. The sun had looked

very angry as he went down; very red in the midst of heavy, sullen clouds, like the glow of a conflagration amid volumes of black smoke. Ideas that are noble always connect themselves with the ocean; and I could not now look upon it without thoughts that were calculated to stir the fancy, and to fill the heart with those feelings towards God and man which are not of earth-earthly. earthly. There is no repose in the ocean, nor is there in the mind of man. Life, thought, and feeling are always in action, and never more animated than when on the great deep; for who can glide along or struggle over the bosom of the ocean without experiencing some powerful emotions,-some religious thoughts which whisper to him- Here do I depend alone on the will of the Almighty! Let his breath but stir the waters beyond their ordinary bounds; let the hand of his Providence but throw aside the restraining power which, like a bridle over the neck of the wild horse, he casts upon the tossing waves, and I am nothing! Truly may we say of seamen, in the language of the psalmist, "These men see the works

of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep "For he maketh the storm to cease; so that the waves thereof are still." Hence is it that, generally speaking, sailors are religious: every hour do they feel their absolute dependence upon God.

The sea around had now become, indeed, a grand sight. The captain assured me that, though so rough, there was no danger. I was glad to receive this assurance, because, though I had often been at sea, and in very bad weather, I did not recollect ever having seen waves running so high as on this evening. I was sorry that the illness of my husband prevented his enjoying so noble a spectacle; and if I could but have kept my feet to be able to stand, or to crawl down into the cabin, I should assuredly have made my way thither, in order to call up my nephew, that he might not lose the sight of so fine an object as that now presented by the agitated ocean. I thought of those majestic lines of Lord Byron; and no poet has ever described the sea more beautifully:

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean roll !
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain:
Man marks the earth with ruin; his control

Stops with the shore: upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown!

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play;
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow,-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convuls'd in breeze, or gale, or storm,

Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime
The image of eternity — the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone."

The twilight gradually gave place to the night-yet it was not dark, for I could still see the billows with their white and "curled"

heads, rolling and dashing against the sides of the vessel with a force that seemed to make her their sport. But when I looked upward I could see no sparkling lamp in the heavens to light us on our way: the clouds hung above us like a pall; they were all darkness and gloom. Yet, in the far distance, I at length saw for a moment a faint glimmering light." That is the light at Ostend," said the captain; "that's the port." But I had scarcely time to feel the joy connected with the hope of a port, ere the light became lost, and the weather, if possible, every moment worse and worse. The captain soon told me that the gale was accompanied with squalls, and that to the latter cause we owed the loss of the Ostend light.

"How, then, will you get into the harbour?" said I. "By the lead," he replied; "we must feel our way in." This the seamen prepared to do; but to my extreme joy, after about half an hour's total obscurity, we once more saw the faint glimmer of a light. Soon it became clearer; and at length three separate lights, like three brilliant stars, encircled by a radii, be