C- was by far the most obliging person on board, and the most self-denying in a situation which generally tends to exhibit the selfish character conspicuously. Comforts are so scarce, and discomforts so very annoying on a long voyage, that ordinary benevolence can ill abide such a test: but I often remarked that Captain C appeared to consider himself as only the temporary holder of any accommodation, by resigning which he might promote the advantage or lessen the inconveniences of another passenger. To me he was peculiarly kind: he had witnessed the desperate exploit of mounting the ship's side; and the interest naturally excited in that moment of peril found expression, I doubt not, in prayer on my behalf, to be answered in due time. Should this paper ever meet the eye of the individual in question, let him accept the tardy acknowledgment of kindness better appreciated now than at the time it was conferred.

The calm endured but for a few hours after the remark just recorded. A breeze sprung up which strongly ruffled the ocean, and bore us rapidly towards the mighty rampart of rock, which seemed to rise a perpendicular wall from the surface of the sea. It was unbroken, far as the eye could reach, and at the summit jagged and indented into a strange variety of fantastic outlines. Attached to its base I discerned several large bodies of pure white, around which the breakers were dashing, and these I was told were icebergs. One had already broken from its station, and came drifting towards us in all the lustre of its frozen magnificence. It was then nearly evening; dark clouds had overspread the western horizon, and the sun was about to sink behind the

blackening mass. guine hue which often results from the intervention of a storm-fraught atmosphere, and the rays that streamed upon the iceberg invested it with a beauty wholly inconceivable by those who have never beheld one of these majestic objects. That before us was considered very small: it resembled a rock, with fantastic peaks surmounting its bold cliff; and two buildings, which no one could hesitate to call a castle and a church, corresponding as they did in size and outline with those edifices, placed, the one on the summit of the rock, the other sheltered at its base. Semi-transparent in most parts, in some clear as crystal, and in others hung with wreaths of snow, some idea may be formed of the aspect of this frozen mass, as it was borne majestically past us on a swelling sea, with its thousand prisms turned to the deep red light that streamed across its course. Bending over the vessel's side, I gave utterance to expressions of the most passionate admiration and delight, adding a fervent wish that it would closely approach our ship for my greater gratification. Captain Cwho was pacing the deck with more than his usual thoughtfulness of look, heard me; and once more cautioned me as to the wishes I was so ready to frame. He told me that the sternest of the rocks before us was not so dangerous as the unseen base of that fragile iceberg, one touch from which would send us instantly to the bottom: adding that he had himself been most wonderfully preserved with his little crew, by promptly stepping into their boat on the instant his ship struck, from which they saw her go down in less than two minutes from the moment of the collision. He concluded by observing that my

The orb had assumed that san

morning wish was about to be fulfilled; a tempest was rising, and ere midnight we should regretfully recal our dissatisfaction at the innocent calm which preceded it.

The storm was indeed even then commencing, and as night prematurely closed around, the last gleams exhibited those frowning rocks in fearful proximity, while the breakers flung their foam upon the troubled blast, assisting to mark more distinctly the dark rampart against which it was hurled. The swell of the waves became terrible; all save the seamen were ordered to quit the deck: the dead-lights were fixed, and overcome by sickness or by panic, the passengers lay down on their berths: all, I believe but one -and that was the rebel who shrank not from the blasting of the breath of the Lord's displeasure, because she was under the power of an illusion, too common, alas! with such as have been brought up in an external regard to the forms of religion, without partaking in any spiritual influence, or even comprehending that such influence was required. Truly can I say, that "I lived a Pharisee," and verily did I believe in myself that I was righteous, and despised others. Like them, I expected death; but probably there was not one among them so perfectly indifferent as to whether it came or no. I went to my little cabin, and finding it impossible to preserve any other seat, I chose the floor for mine, lashed a lantern to one of the posts that supported my berth, firmly twisted my left arm round another, and placing a large Bible on my lap, selected some portions that seemed most appropriate-not to our own awful situation, on the very verge of eternity, but to the grandeur of the scenery that I had enjoyed during

the last few hours, and the sublimity inseparable, in the minds of those who are neither sick nor fearful, from the deep roll of the stormy waves, the measured reel of the vessel as they bore her aloft, and then slid from beneath her to overhang her masts, the straining of every timber, and the thundering effect of the roaring blast among her shattered sails. The Bible had never been made a task-book to me: if those who reared me could not teach me to understand it, they yet taught me to love it as the most interesting of historical, the most sublime of poetical volumes. I chose it then for my companion, partly no doubt from ostentation, but chiefly because everything else fell so lamentably short of the conceptions of my mind, ever alive to impressions of magnificence. The forty-sixth Psalm I read again and again, for the sake of its stormy imagery-that precious Psalm, so dear to Martin Luther, and likely to become equally so to those who hold Luther's. faith, when the tempest of persecution now gathering in our atmosphere shall break. Next I took the fourteenth of Isaiah, and the sixty-third, as surpassing in grandeur of imagery and diction all that man could invent. While thus employed, I saw Captain C come to the door, look at me, and retire. I felt pleased that a man so evidently religious should have discovered me thus employed. No doubt his thought framed the query of Philip : "Understandest thou what thou readest!"

That night was one of extreme peril, and of most wonderful deliverance. The vessel was driving, helpless as a cork on the waters, directly towards the rocks and when all human effort became totally unavailing to arrest or to vary her course, a sudden

change in the wind drove her out to sea so rapidly, that when morning came nothing was visible of the threatening coast but a long dark line in the distant horizon, towards which we gradually re-approached, beneath a cloudless sky, with a propitious breeze, that imparted to the ocean what I consider its most beautiful aspect; for, lovely as at all times the great world of waters appeared, it never charmed me so much as when the exquisite depth of blue prevailing in the Atlantic was dappled with the silver foam that crests the myriads of little billows into which the surface is gathered on a breezy, sunshiny day. I felt delight, and a measure of thankfulness too; but the warm expressions of the latter with which Captain C pointed out to me at once the dangers we had escaped, and the favourable prospect before us, fell comparatively cold upon my mind, and awoke but a faint response. So true it is that the Lord must open our lips before our mouth can shew for his praise.

Much more strongly did I feel the deliverance vouchsafed to others in the course of that day. We had nearly made the exquisitely picturesque mouth of St. John's harbour, and were steering through the multitude of little fishing-boats that people those seas, when one of them came bounding so completely across our track, that no skill either on the part of our steersman or of the two poor fishermen could avert a collision. It was a moment of agony never to be forgotten-literally a moment, for I did not perceive the boat until she was so directly beneath our prow, that the next movement of the rolling ship must decide her fate. Every one who has observed the course of a large sailing-vessel on a rough sea,