through it almost till the break of day, we gave up the hope of making Nesshead, and, altering our course, took in another reef, and ran for the Calf.

But the gale continued to increase; we pitched and plunged to no purpose; the boat was going bows in at every dip, and the straining of her timbers as she stooped out to every stretch, told plainly that we must either have started planks or an altered course again. The sailors, after some consultation, agreed on putting about; and, for reasons best known to themselves, pitched upon Strangford Lough as their harbour of refuge. Accordingly we altered our course once more, and went off before the wind. Day broke as we were still toiling ten miles from the coast of Down. The grey dawn shewed á black pile of clouds overhead, gathering bulk from rugged masses which were driving close and rapid from the east. By degrees the coast became distinct from the lowering sky; and at last the sun rose lurid and large above the weltering waters. It was ebb tide, and I represented that Strangford bar at such a time was peculiarly dangerous in an eastern gale; nevertheless the old sailor who was now at the helm insisted on standing for it. When we were yet a mile distant, I could distinguish the white horses running high through the black trembling strait, and hear the tumult bitti of

our

breakers over the own bows. Escape was impossible; we could never beat to sea in the teeth of such a gale; over bar we must go, or founder. We in the last reef, hauled down our jib, faces, saw our

and, tentes more among

selves

the cross seas and breakers.

The waters of a wide estuary running six miles an hour, and meeting the long roll of the Channel, might well have been expected to produce a dangerous swell; but a spring-tide combining with a gale of wind, had raised them at flood to an extraordinary height, and the violence of their discharge exceeded our anticipations accordingly. We had hard ly encountered the first two or three breakers, when Ingram was staggered from the forecastle by the buffet of a counter sea, which struck us orward just as the regular swell

caught us astern; the boat heeled almost on her beam ends, and he fell over the cabin door into the hold; the man at the helm was preparing for the tack as he saw his messmate's danger, and started forward to save him: he was too late; the poor fellow pitched upon his head and shoulders among the ballast; at the same instant the mainsail caught the wind, the boom swung across, and striking the helmsman on the back of the neck, swept him half overboard, where he lay doubled across the gunnel, with his arms and head dragging through the water, till I hauled him in. He was stunned and nearly scalped by the blow. Ingram lay moaning and motionless; the boat was at the mercy of the elements, while I stretched the poor fellows side by side at our feet. I had now to take the helm, for the little Frenchman was totally ignorant of the coast; he continued to hand the main-sheet; and O'More, who all night long had been sitting in silence against the cabin bulkhead, leaped manfully upon the forecastle and stood by the tackle there. We had now to put the boat upon the other tack, for the tide made it impossible to run before the wind. O'More belayed his sheet, and, as the cutter lay down again, folded his arms and leaned back on the weather bulwark, balancing himself with his feet against the skylight.

The jabble around us was like the seething of a caldron; for the waves boiled up all at once, and ran in all directions. I was distracted by their universal assault, and did not observe the heaviest and most formidable of all, till it was almost down upon our broadside.. I put the helm hard down, and shouted with all my might to O'More Stand by for a sea, sir, lay hold, lay hold." It was too late. I could just prevent our being swamped, by withdrawing our quar ter from the shock, when it struck us on the weather-bows, where he stood: it did not break. Our hull was too small an obstacle: it swept over the forecastle as the stream leaps a pebble, stove in the bulwark, lifted him right up, and launched him on his back, with his feet against the foresail the foresail stood the shock a moment, and he grappled to it, were swept on in the rush, like a sparrow in the clutches of a hawk; but the weight

of water bore all before it-the sheets were torn from the deck, the sail flapped up above the water, and I saw him tossed from its edge over the lee bow. The mainsail hid him for a moment; he reappeared, sweeping astern at the rate of fifteen knots an hour. He was striking out, and crying for a rope; there was no rope at hand, and all the loose spars had been stowed away: He could not be saved. I have said that the sun had just risen: between us and the east his rays she through the tops of the higher waves with a pale and livid light; as O'More drifted into these, his whole agonized figure rose for a moment dusk in the transparent water, then disappeared in the hollow beyond; but at our next plunge I saw him heaved up again, struggling dim amid the green gloom of an overwhelming sea. An ago nizing cry behind me made me turn my head. “O save him, save him! turn the boat, and save him! O William, as you love me, save my father!" It was Madeline, frantic for grief, stumbling over, and unconsciously treading on the wounded men, as she rushed from the cabin, and cast herself upon her knees before me. I raised my eyes to heaven, praying for support; and though the clouds rolled, and the gale swept between, strength was surely sent me from above; for what save heavenly help could have subdued that fierce despair, which, at the first sight of the complicated agonies around, had prompted me to abandon hope, blaspheme, and die? I raised her gently but firmly in my arms; drew her, still struggling and screaming wild entreaties, to my breast, and not daring to trust myself with a single look at her imploring eyes, fixed my own upon the course we had to run, and never swerved from my severe determination, till the convulsive sobs had ceased to shake her breast upon mine, and I had felt the warm gush of her relieving tears instead; then my stern purpose melted, and, bending over the desolate girl, I murmured, " Weep no more, my Madeline, for, by the blessing of God, I will be a father and a brother to you yet!" Blessed be he who heard my holy vow!-when I looked up again we were in the smooth water.

Drenched, numbed, and dripping all with the cold spray, one borne senseless and bloody in his messmate's arms, we climbed the quay of Strangford: the threatened tempest was bursting in rain and thunder; but our miserable plight had attracted a sympathizing crowd. No question was asked of who? or whence? by a generous people, to wounded and wearied men and helpless women; till there pressed through the ring of bystanders a tall fellow, with a strong expression of debasement and desperate impudence upon his face, that seemed to say, "Infamy, you have done your worst,' He demanded our names and passports, and arrested us all in the king's name, almost in the same breath. I struck him in the face with my fist, and kicked him into the kennel. No one attempted to lift him; but he scrambled to his feet, with denunciations of horrible revenge. He was hustled about by the crowd till he lost temper, and struck one of them. He had now rather too much work upon his hands to admit of a too close attention to us: three or four persons stepped forward and offered us protection.

"

Ingram and the other wounded sailor were taken off, along with the Frenchman, by some of their own associates; while a respectable and benevolent looking man addressed me, "I am a Protestant, sir, and an Orangeman; but put these ladies under my protection, and you will not repent your confidence; for, next to the Pope, I love to defeat an informer;" and he pointed with a smile to our arrester, who was just measuring his length upon the pavement.

Is his name Macdonnell ?” asked I.

"The same, sir," he replied; "but come away with me before he gets out of my Thomas's, hands, and I will put your friends out of the reach of his."

I shall never be able to repay the obligation I owe to this good man, who received Miss O'More, with her attendant, into the bosom of his family, till I had arranged her journey to the house of a female relative, whence, after a decent period of mourning, our marriage permitted me to bear her to my own,

If it be seldom safe for one man to dislike, despise, or disparage another, it must always be dangerous for one nation so to regard or judge another nation, since the causes are then more numerous, and also more subtle in their workings, by which both feeling and reason may be perniciously biassed, in the formation of sentiments permanently cherished by people towards people, state towards state.

It is hard to know one's own heart, scarcely possible to know another's; and yet how rash are we, one and all, in attributing characters to individuals on imperfect knowledge even of their outward lives, in utter ignorance of their inner spirits! From certain circumstances in which we suppose we see them placed, but without understanding what produced that condition, and from a certain course of conduct which we suppose that we perceive them to pursue, but without any acquaintance with their multifarious motives, we too often confidently pass sentence on their duties and deserts, classing them in different orders of moral and intellectual worth, as we vainly believe, too, according to the commands of our conscience. But conscience, though stern and unrelenting in selfjudgment, is not so when seeking to see into the impulses of the souls of our brethren; and is then indeed the sister of charity. She tells us to be less wary in bestowing our praise than our blame, our love than our hate, and that in the light of goodwill we shall ever most clearly see the truth.

A very moderate experience, if accompanied with very moderate reflection, might suffice, one would think, to shew us that we cannot otherwise be just. A holy caution is indeed one of the most conspicuous characteristics of that feeling and faculty within us that judges right and wrong; and we must not grant to" well-meaning people," as the weak and narrow-minded are too often called, the privilege of trying, and testing and deciding all human con

duct by reference solely to what may happen to be the habitual prejudices and bigotries of their own understandings, uninstructed and unenlightened by that large, that universal sympathy, without which there can be neither virtue nor wisdom.

Such errors, however, pass unheeded by, often with little visible injury done, in the narrow circles of private life, haunted, as they are, by too many foolish fancies and absurd surmises, whispered in the idle and empty talk of that confidential gossiping, which, not contented with the imaginary evil it condemns, is restless till it has created a seeming reality out of mere report, and infused perhaps a drop of pestilential poison into the otherwise harmless air of rumour, that circles round the dwelling of unsuspecting innocence.

How much wilful misunderstanding and misrepresentation of character and conduct do we see and hear every day, in the case of different professions! The soldier thinks the clergyman a hypocrite, because he wears a black coat; and the clergyman thinks the soldier a profligate, because he wears a red one; the cloth is thought to colour the cha racter even to the very eye; and there is a mutual repulsion between those who by nature may be kindred and congenial spirits.

A more commonplace observation than the above, never trickled from grey-goose quill; and on that account we let it trickle from ours; for extend the spirit of it from trades and professions, each of which hangs together like a small commonwealth, and is composed of a peculiar people, to kingdoms separated by seas, and each swarming with its own life, and then you will find mighty nations regarding each other with just the same sort of feelings; millions, when leagued together under different laws and institutions, as blindly and senselessly ignorant of other millions, as Mrs Grundy of the real character of Mrs Tomkins.

It is right that every people should

have its own national character, and the more strongly marked the better, for in such separation there is strength. But it is also right that each people should have large sympathies with the national character of all the rest. We speak of the good or the great;—and all are either the one or the other, who, with some vices, possess any strong and distinguishing virtues. But to have such large sympathies, there must be knowledge; and to have know ledge, we must scatter to the winds that visit us from afar, all such of our home-born and home-bred prejudices and bigotries as blind us to the perception of the same qualities in which we find our own pride and delight, when they exist in novel forms and combinations and habits in the character of the natives of other isles or continents, whether of alien, or of our own blood. If alien, to do so may be more difficult; if our own, not to do so is more mean-or base

-or wicked, and now we are brought to the point-shall Englishmen and Scotchmen suffer themselves to be divided in soul, more than by seas, from their brethren the Americans-by the sullen swell or angry billows of animosity and hatred, more perilous far than all the storms that sweep the bosom of the wide Atlantic?

We are the children of one mother. Not merely of old mother Earth, though in all cases that consideration should be sufficient to inspire mutual love into the hearts of her offspring; but of the Island of the Enlightened Free: and never shall we believe that great nations can help loving one another, who exult in the glory of the same origin. Many passions may burn in their hearts, as they follow the career assigned them by fate, that shall seem to set them at war. Jealously may they regard one another in the pride of their ambition. Should their mightier interests clash, fierce will be the conflict. But if these maybe pursued and preserved in peace, there will be a grandeur in the guarded calm with which they regard each other's power; and mutual pride, we may be well assured, in mutual prosperity. They —our colonists-thought themselves oppressed, enslaved, and they resolved to be free. We resolved to put

them down as rebels. We fought and

they conquered. We were met by our own might-and need Old England be ashamed that New England triumphed? They grudged not afterwards-though they must have envied-our victories over our and Europe's foes, at Trafalgar, Talavera, and Waterloo. Ask them, the Ame ricans, what nation of the Old World they love best, and that stands highest in their proud esteem? The nation from whose loins they sprung. Alfred, Bruce, and Washington, were our three great deliverers.

There is great grandeur in the origin of the civil polity of the Americans-in its sudden and strong establishment; and it is destined, we doubt not, to long duration, and a vast accumulation of power boundless empire.

a

The growth of the human race, in the course of nature, shews us first a family, then a tribe consisting of many kindred families, then a nation consisting of many kindred tribes. We find in the world several nations spread to a considerable extent by this natural diffusion; but in that case, the degree of union among the different tribes seems very loose, and not sufficient to prevent internal wars. Thus in Europe, in its primitive state, the Celtic, the German, and the Sclavonic nations, have extended to great numbers, occupying wide countries; and the old remembrances of consanguinity, marked in speech, and in external appearance, with some community of usages, has maintained a loose union among them. In Asia, some of the great Tartar nations, and the Arabs also, offer similar examples, having remained till this day free from admixture of blood. These shew how the traces of the primitive origination of political society may remain indelibly impressed upon it, through the longest succession of time.

But to form larger, and yet strongly cemented states, other principles have been necessary, and have been employed by nature-chiefly these two, voluntary Confederacy under a common head, and Conquest.

Of the permanent states, that have been formed at any time by voluntary Confederacy, the examples are not numerous, though some of them