tion the great cause of all their serious and lasting pains. Let them concur in adopting a more considerate and merciful treatment of them, and Mr. Martin's Act may be permitted to retire. Look at the style of travelling in this country, not among carts and waggons, but among post-chaises and gentlemen's carriages! Let those who have a silly pleasure, or sillier pride, in scampering desperately along the roads, for the passing glory of raising a little wonder and dust, reflect upon the consequences of these dazzling deeds to the poor animals who bear a painful and unwilling part in them. So far is cruelty from being the exclusive vice of the poor, that, of any given party of dashing travellers, you shall find the driver, the unsanctified post-boy, the only one who has the slightest tenderness for the horses; and it is well if he can maintain this feeling against the persuasion, threats, and bribery of his betters. "Push on, my lad, push on, we'll remember you," is dinned in his ears till, it is too probable, his frailty yields, and, "to please the gentlemen," he turns savage at last. Let the impatient spirits who are in the habit of poking their heads out of the front windows of chaises, and crying out, "Push on," substitute for such harsh phrases the more kindly in junction of "Gently, my lad, gently," and they will do incalculably more, they may assure themselves, for the relief of horses, than they who go about to denounce the unlicensed cruelty of the vulgar.

I am not at all confident, that these recommendations, were they likely to be heard, would be listened to with much respect. People are not cruel for cruelty's sake; but they will not readily give up the least of their enjoyments, if they can be reproached with nothing but cruelty. They have no delight in giving pain; but they will cling with obstinacy even to trifles that are pleasurable to themselves, and painful only to others. How can one expect that the world will give up any of its habitual indulgences in favour of brutes that perish, when he remembers the history of the slave trade-how long it was before we could be driven from a few paltry gains and base advantages, that devoted millions of human beings to the extremity of human misery and degradation? With such a precedent in memory, with what face could he propose, in these hard times too, that the profits of any man should suffer the reduction of a farthing, that horses might not die of the glanders,-now that farmers are obliged to give the labour of two horses to one?

But I have said enough. The time may come, when these miserable entanglements and difficulties, that stand in the way of universal beneficence, shall be removed. Enough has been done to keep hope alive: it is not quite absurd, while it is certainly very pleasing, to imagine some Utopian futurity, when man, and the meanest creature that lives, shall have their full rights and enjoyments.

R. A.

Tom Hood

T.

was fulfilled in me. A month had hardly passed over me in my little lonely isle ere my wound was cured and my late perils forgotten. I joined in the dance and the song by night, and by day in the chace of the wild-fowl, the seal, and the porpoise. Though cheered by the mild bright eyes, and beauty, and tenderness, of the young island maidenthough her mother, in the language of the old and simple romance, washed me with her lily-white hand, and dried me with her lily-white apron,' my restless spirit was beyond the charm of such consolation. I had my race to run, and I began to sigh for the trim bark and the fathomless

sea.

"Early on a summer morn a sail was seen on the distant waters-at first it appeared like a small white cloud hung between the sea and sky; -it expanded as it approached-the tapering masts covered with milkwhite canvas, and a painted deck filled with busy mariners, became more and more visible. The glittering of lances, and muskets, and harpoons, betokened a vessel destined for the northern sea; and as the mariners dropped their anchor in our little bay, my heart leaped in my bosom, and I scarce forbore shouting with joy. Several of the islanders, seated with me on a rock which overlooked the bay, indulged themselves in conjectures concerning our new visitants. This is the ship Macmurrach saw in his vision last night,' said one islander; it came to the island with forty living men, with weeping and with wailing, and dropt a dead man in our bay-and it sailed away with mirth and with music on the morrow; and he saw forty and one living men on deck-we shall lose one of our people by persuasion or by violence.' 'If they come in peace,' said another islander, in peace shall they depart -but death has come into their ship, and no ship ever came to our fathers' isle with a dead man in her bosom which prospered in her voyage. Late last night, I saw death-lights shining amid the unstable water; they wavered awhile at sea, and then they ascended the shore-sickness, and sorrow, and sore tempest, shall be heirs-shipwreck perhaps, and death. Lo! now they prepare to cast one

of their brethren into the deep. Sorrowful must the mother be whose son is buried in the waters.'

"As he spoke, the mariners arranged themselves on the deck, uncovered their heads, and four of the oldest brought a coffin from below and stood with it in their hands, making a momentary pause of reverence and affection before they consigned it to the eternal deep. No prayer was offered-for no physician of the mind was present; but each mariner uttered, as he viewed the coffin of his comrade, a brief exclamation of sor-row. There he lies,' said one, wiping a weather-beaten cheek with a hand of iron- a bolder heart never broke biscuit or breasted a midnight billow. We must all come to the carpenter's wooden shirt at last,' said another seaman; many a rough sea and lee shore have we braved together, and a surer eye never steered by the compass or sailed by the stars

but seven fathom of sea brine is a burial place for a prince-so fare thee well.' Ah,' said a young mariner, and his eyes as he spoke dropt tears on the coffin-lid, little thought I to see thee so soon stretched in thy last linen, when breast by breast we boarded the Fanfaron in the bay of Boulogne, and were the foremost to mount the deck of the Spanish schooner

three to one-in the bay of Algesiras. I may meet with many a true and tried heart, but shall I ever meet the like of thee again?' Amid these and other expressions of affection and sorrow, the coffin was moved toward the ship's side, and two men stood ready to obey the signal to cast it into the deep. At this moment a loud shriek was heard; and I saw a young woman, with dishevelled hair and disordered dress, with a babe at her bosom, ascend from the cabin to the deck. She flew, with a loud murmur of sorrow and reproach, and placed herself between the coffin of her husband and the ship's side, and stretched her hand over it with that look of earnest supplication which precedes an impassioned speech. The mariners gathered around her, and I heard her pour out, in a kind of measured tone, a remonstrance to the living, and an eulogium on the dead.

found safety in his counsel, and shelter under his sword, and yet ye will give him to the fish for food. Are ye men, and feel not a yearning within you for a grave under the greensward-the prayers of holy men poured o'er ye, and the tongues of good men to bless your narrow dwelling as they pass to the house of God? Would you prefer a grave beneath the cold and boundless billow to a dwelling in hallowed earth by the holy kirk-wall? Seven years have I been a wedded wife, and much sorrow has the salt sea brought me. When the rain fell, and the wind blew, and the lightning flashed, I thought of my gallant sailor, and clasped his bairns closer to my bosom. Often have I flown to the shore amid tempest and storm, when the ships were sinking, and the seaman's cries were heard to seek to save life-or take from the merciless water the body of some poor sea-boy and happy, thought I, as I laid out some youthful and comely corse in white linen happy would thy mother be if she knew that the form she has so fondly nursed was redeemed from the hun gry sea, and laid to rest in a Christian kirk-yard.' And she turned her eyes on the mariners streaming with

tears.

"Say nae mair, my bonnie woman, say nae mair,' said a young mariner; if they lay thy brave husband in the sea, they shall lay me beside him: let us bear him doucely to a decent kirk-yard; may they sup on melted brimstone who would cast a comrade's body to the sharks, when the green land's in view!' Ah, my handy fellow,' said a stout Hibernian, 'many's the man and mother's son goes without coffin, or shroud, or priest's benediction, to that ready and evergaping grave, among seven fathoms of sea-water. So just stand aside my boys; and by the powers I'll pitch him neatly into the burial ground plowed by the sea-gull's bosom and the shallop's prow." Whisht whisht, O'Grady,' said an old seaman, -I'm no sure but the widow's right. Of all the sounds I ever heard, that of a comrade's coffin plunging amid the waves is the sorest and the saddest. It's one thing to be borne quietly to a decent grave by reverend hands-the earth shovelled softly above ye—and then to moulder away

into silent dust with a bonnie sward of gowans and violets wagging their sweet tops o'er ye; and it's another thing to be canted o'er the ship's side among sea-vermin-to have your breast bone bored, and your shoulder blade drilled, by long-nebbed things, and things that dwell among sea-foam, and come up in the time of the tide. Ye may laugh if ye like, it's all one to Willie Mackeen. And there's Jamie Gordon cares not if the foul fiend made a flute out of his fifth rib when he's dead and gone, and a fiddle of his spoolbane-such high hopes has Jamie of rising again. And to cut short this long yarn-be it for our shame or our praise, there's a sore hankering in all human flesh for kind usage after death. So I give my sanction to the green sward- there's an island before us-and lower the boat, say I,—diel hae the hindmost!'

"Fair fall ye, for that kindly word,' said the widow-'ye only do to him that's gone what he would have done for you had his unhappy dool been yours. Ye may all remember when Lieutenant Johnstone was killed-he had a sore hankering to be buried on shore-and alas! they had no shore but the unkindly earth of France to lay him in. There's Andrew Fairbairn was at the midnight burial himself, and he can tell you how my brave husband, with a drawn cutlas and a bent pistol, kept back the French, till his comrade's body was laid in consecrated ground, and sore wounds he took on himself to fulfiladying man's wish.' 'Enough said, my bonnie woman, enough said; so lower down the boat there,' said the Captain; and hear ye, my lads, let me have none of these half-suppressed laughs-but put on a look of decorum and gravity-else I will teach ye to be reverend at a time like this with the flat side of my cutlas.' The boat was lowered-the coffin was let down, and carried a shore--a grave was dug in the island burial-ground; and as the earth sounded on the coffin-lid, each mariner looked in his comrade's face, and tears were plentifully dropt over the low abode of their favourite companion.

"From the first appearance of the ship, and during the whole of the moving speeches of the mariners, and the rude but affectionate ceremony of interring their comrade, I had

°°°

looked and listened with an attention and interest in which all else was swallowed up. All this was not unobserved of the captain of the vessel -a fine young man with a bold free air-and a native of the mountainous coast of Northumberland. We have lost a bold and a faithful seaman, my lads,' said Captain Lawson-but the land that has taken him from us, can give us another to make our loss the less.' Young man,' he said, laying his hand gently on my shoulder, the hand of Him who ordains all has written mariner on thy high white front. I see thy destiny sparkling in thy deep dark eyes, and the colour gong and returning on thy cheeks as thou lookest on my vessel floating with all her sails set in the bay. I am no rover, stealing the child from the mother's bosom, and selling him into bondage in a foreign land-nor do I go forth with cannon and boarding-spear to wage war on other mariners-but I go to seek sustenance and riches from the bosom of the great deep-so come with me, if thou wilt. My sail is spread for frozen Greenland, the land for the daring and the prompt spirit, where we overcome the monsters by land, and harpoon the leviathan of the great deep, and contend with the terrors of

and the ship sunk lower; and he beheld her scattered as the down of the sea-fowl by the strong whirlwind-so bide at home with me,' and a sigh and a blush added to the earnestness of her intercession. But I was ever capricious and wayward-the impulse of my destiny was too strong for the voice of youth and beauty-and after some silent looks, a few tears, and parting words of muttered affection and blessing, I leaped aboard; the sail was spread to the wind, and away we went northward through the wide and watery waste.

"It was the warm and pleasant time of the year; the sky was unclouded, the breeze propitious, and we sailed among the haunts of the sea-fowl with a steady and a rapid motion. We bade farewell to the bold, rocky, and barren coast of north Scotland-we passed among those clusters of rough and heathy isles, the last refuge of the marauding Danes, and rendered famous in story by the many maritime conflicts of that race of sea kings, but remarkable now only for the hardihood with which their inhabitants contend for existence with a region unproductive and sterile-and for the perpetual clang of the sea-mew and the weltering of seals. The day passed-an and clear-and

see thy enthusiastic spirit mounts as I speak, so seaward, ho! my hearties; thou shalt be ever at my side, and I will teach thee to tame the polar bear, and harpoon the whale, and steer a ship among moving islands of ice-a secret many would gladly know-so seaward, ho! my hearties.'

"And wilt thou leave me, my child?' And wilt thou forsake me, my brother?' said the mother and her fair-haired daughter-thou shalt live with us, and eat of our bread, and drink of our cup-go not down, we beseech thee, to the remorseless deep, for many perils await thee;' and the mother took me by the hand, and sought gently to stay me. 'Go not down to the devouring deeps, Allan Lorburne,' said the island maid, her voice deepening into pathos as she spoke, and her eyes glistening with tears. Our seer beheld in a vision that ship and her gallant mariners sore tossed on a wild and tempestuous he heard the cries of drowning creatures, and the sea swelled higher,

sea;

the moon and a

threw their brightness upon us, making a night little less brilliant than open day. The northern lights, too, in swift, and wavering, and capricious streams, showered their fitful splendour on ship, and isle, and ocean -now spouting forth in long trembling lines of radiance, then gushing over half the heaven in a broad flood of effulgence :-the rushing sound along the sky was audible to every mariner's ear. The breeze lessened -then died away-or, awaking with a start, hastened us on our path with an unsteady motion: at last the wind utterly departed, and the sea, as far as we could discern, was smooth and clear, and the moon and stars were reflected back scarcely less bright than they appeared in the heaven above.

We mariners are the most superstitious people existing-we are ever at the mercy of the wind and wave, and exposed to greater dangers than other men, and therefore are ever