alphabet of their more perfect knowledge, which may force into the service of mankind powers of nature now unthought of, and subject those we know to a perfect control.

Such reflections are melancholy. We like not to contemplate the time when we will be no better known than the ages which are past. We are so full of the ardent life of the present, so wrapped up in our own schemes, so proud of our own discoveries, that the thought the time will come when our history will interest our successors no more than a page of Livy, comes on us like the breath of the grave. And it is the breath of the grave which gives such thoughts their significance. "That contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world," alike obscures our public as our private lives, tinging with the sombre hue of the vanity of vanities the pride of the nation and of the individual.

Sunday, July 18.

Noon. We have made very little progress by tacking ships, but owing to a slight fog we could not see any distance.

Saw a few

Six P.M.-The wind has been all day against us. I have tired a good deal. If I could, I would run away. I can no longer flatter myself that my internal resources are sufficient to save me from ennui. I must find amusement of some kind-reading, conversation, variety of scene-anything rather than prolonged self-communion, so that I can now answer the question I put at the beginning, by admitting that I would be very miserable as a disembodied spirit.

Eight P.M.-It is no wonder maritime men differ from others. How different is their daily life and habits! Shut up in a ship with few associates, for days and weeks out of sight of land, given up, as it were, to the other elements, air and water; instead of the firm earth the everheaving ocean, which is traversed by aid of the heavenly bodies, the connexion of which with navigation must ever be to the common seaman somewhat mysterious. No wonder he is superstitious. Everything about him is plastic, capable in the fog or twilight of being shaped into any form by the imagination, nor-except the ship itself is there anything to give substance to the phantom world in which he exists, and even the ship, moving by unseen and capricious influences, is half a spirit.

Contrast all this with the landsman's life: his solid house of stone; his scenery of immovable land in vale or mountain; his journey by macadamised roads graduated by milestones, or by railways, suggesting, in their iron lines and motive machinery, more and more the idea of substance. Consider him sheltered from elemental vicissitude in his stone and slated house, sleeping on a bed which never rocks; follow him through his daily business, ever meeting men separately pursuing their own way to material aggrandisement; think of his banks, his countinghouses, churches, markets, and in general of everything which constitutes the medium in which he lives; they all tend to dissipate the shadowy and spiritual and to develop the material.

Under such contrary discipline the wonder is that the difference

betwixt a seaman and a landsman is not more marked.

Monday, July 19, 7 P.M. Becalmed all day-very hot; felt extreme lassitude, and a difficulty in doing anything. What must a hot day be at the line?

I wonder how long this will continue; northward, southward, eastward, and westward, far as the eye can reach, it is smooth as a mill-pond; the only object in sight two vessels becalmed like ourselves, and which we have seen all day, precisely at the same distance from us and from each other. The sea is getting thick and feculent, as if the dust of all the carpets in the world had been shaken into it. There is not the slightest breath of wind, nor any symptom in the sky from which a hope of wind could be derived. It seems a calm settled for a fortnight. There are no birds, not even a gull to flash its white wing, and give some motion and life to the world of water and sky-all is still, as if frozen. On board our ship each one is more listless than another. The sailors, with their five days' unwashed faces, stare idly at one another, as if averse to give themselves the trouble of speaking. The captain, with his coat off, leans half-sleeping over the gangway, while the mate, whose watch is off deck, is in bed, trying with all his might to sleep, in order to pass the time. I have exhausted my capacity for sleep already, and now I am building hazy castles in the air of undefined splendour, and weaving adventures of which I am the hero-adventures never brought to an end, for, after getting on with one epic I drop it in the middle and try another, equally undefined, incoherent, and unfinished. I fancy myself out of the ship, and scheme imaginary tours, eat imaginary breakfasts, and sleep in imaginary beds, and then "waken with a start," and the waters, not roar, but purr almost inaudibly, as the brig progresses at the rate of one yard in the hour. Of course I have breakfasted, dined, and supped. I remember these well-the only epochs of the day; but only as epochs, for one can't eat with the heat, or drink hot tea without cream, and one turns with loathing from corn-beef somewhat tainted, and dough suggestive of much fat; nor does the bilge smell of the cabin improve in the heat, though it is more tolerable than on the deck, where the sun strikes right through all wide-awakes. I wish I could sleep twenty-four or thirty hours.

Nine P.M. -A light breeze has sprung up. We have made up to one of the vessels which we have seen all day becalmed. She turns out to be the emigrant ship Euryalus, with five or six hundred Irishmen on board. We passed near enough to hail her and to see the passengers-a freight rags and dirt.

of

Tuesday, July 20.

Our brig has two names: that written on the stern is Wilhelmina, in honour of its first owner, a romantic lady, as became her name, and who managed, in the course of her life, to get rid of three husbands. To each of them she successively conveyed the brig; and indeed Wilhelmina had married a fourth husband, when he, probably thinking there was something ominous in the chattel, sold it (that is, the ship) for the sum of 9007.; and the wisdom of this act was confirmed by his survivance of his wife, who died shortly after, owing to an excessive partiality to strong waters. Among seafaring people the brig, which owing to its matrimonial history was somewhat famous in Southampton water, went by the name of Wally.

Originally she had been a superior craft, and in the time of the second husband had done a considerable contraband business with the coast of France, a connexion from which arose her mistress's predilection to brandy. But unfortunately both ship and mistress were well stricken in years. The fourth husband had recorded in marble that the beloved wife and mother died at the age of fifty-six, and as she must have been married for a period of twenty years, allowing an average of five years for each husband, and as the brig was the dower of the first marriage, the Wally could not be much under twenty-two years of age. She had, indeed, a venerable look befitting her years. The mainmast was a little bent forwards, the foremast had lost its top-gallant yards and royals, and it was difficult to say what had been the original colour with which she had been painted. As to Wilhelmina's image, which served as a figurehead, you were left to guess wherein consisted the attractions of the original, since the features of her wooden image were deficient in a nose and one of the cheeks. I cannot say how much she leaks, but the working at her pumps awakes me every day at five o'clock, and the operation continues for half an hour. During the rest of the day she is allowed to imbibe at her own sweet will; but however sweet her will might be, it is very sensibly evident the water does not agree with Wally's internal arrangements, for a strong smell of bilge exhales from her hold.

The rats have left the Wally-ominous desertion! But since that event she has gone a voyage or two, and perhaps the bugs-of which there are many-take the place of the rats in warding off the evil eye.

I am the only "cabin passenger"—that is, I have the honour of sleeping on a mattress stretched across a locker, which extends the whole length of the cabin, and constitutes a bed of intolerable hardness. The cabin is six feet long, five feet broad, and five feet eight inches in height. There are two press-beds in it, which constitute the dormitories of the captain and the mate, so that on the whole the accommodation is rather limited.

The captain and mate change watches every four hours. Everything necessary for the ship is kept in the cabin; and oil in particular is continually wanted at all hours in the night. The cook comes down to wash the floor at half-past five in the morning, and we must be dressed and up by seven to make room for breakfast. From all which, it follows that my sleep is somewhat intermittent.

One word as to the crew. We have a captain, and mate, and nine sailors. The captain knows navigation well, and the mate, in addition, is well versed in theology. They are both natives of Portsmouth, and in their way very excellent fellows. Our cook is a negro, who goes by the name of Doctor-sea cooks being originally doctors, like barbers on land. His black face is a great advantage, for he never looks dirtier at one time than another, which otherwise might occur, as the sailors wash only once a week. Then we have a Lascar, dressed in a pair of trousers with the legs cut off. This gentleman has a run-a-muck style of countenance, which I do not at all like. Next in order-I mean in point of dress-is an Irishman. In addition to the trousers, one leg of which is entire and half the other, Phelim wore a great coat when he came on board, reaching down to his heels, and constructed so as to afford the maximum of venti

lation; and he had something on his head, which might have been a hat, but it had evidently suffered from generations of shillelaghs. Phelim was a landsman, and I was for some time at a loss what could have induced the captain to take him on board, but, on inquiry, he told me that Phelim had begged a passage in order to go out and join the Turks against the Russians, and as the captain was patriotic, and Phelim promised to do anything and to eat anything, he had granted his request. The rest of the crew are in no way remarkable. Three of them are ordinary English sailors, and the other three average specimens of Scotchmen of the same profession.

Our vessel is freighted with an immense variety of goods. We have two hundred dozen of wine, principally port and sherry, two hundred dozen of brandy, twenty dozen of gin, some unknown quantity of porter and ale, hampers of champagne and Hampshire hams, pants, boots and shoes, starch, pickled salmon, sardines, and coals-articles, all and sundry, anticipated to be in demand with her Majesty's fleet in the Bosphorus.

Seven P. M.-It has been a calm, or nearly so, for the last two hours. I have attached the Lascar to myself as a sort of body-guard, an arrangement to which the captain gives a tacit consent. I made the selection because, except the cook, he is likest to a slave, at least the melodramatic slave, and I confess to having long wished to have a slave-a wish, I believe, pretty general, if we would confess it, since we are all naturally tyrants, and the kicking scene in the "Rivals" is a correct picture of life. I wish I could give some better reason, for the gentleman is evidently a rascal, and if a convenient opportunity occurred, I dare say would not object to cut my throat, or that of any other. However, when I cannot find any good reason for selecting him as my body-guard, I can see no reason why, simply because he is a rascal, I should therefore not avail myself of his services. A great deal of use may be made of rascals, and many an opportunity is lost by our insisting on employing only honest men. A handy rascal is better than an awkward respectable. It does not necessarily follow that his general rascality will exhibit itself in a special rascality to your detriment, for the very fact of your trusting him may put him on his good behaviour. At all events, in practical matters it is, I think, judicious to risk a little, and employ the readiest agency, rather than go out of our way to select an agent who, although honest, would not be eligible. The poor rascals, too, should have some chance given them to reform. It is owing to honesty barring the door, that so many irreclaimable rascals, male and female, walk the earth. Leave the door occasionally ajar, and the outcast may return.

THE PAINTER'S DAUGHTER.

Ar that glorious epoch when the brothers Van Eyke, Hans Hemmling, Jan Mabuse, and several others had cast the first golden beams upon the Netherlands, which soon became the glowing sunshine of art, there lived in the city of Antwerp a poor illuminator, by name Gerhards. From the narrow dormer-window of his low house the white summit of the cathedral tower was just visible, and in his room could be heard more distinctly than elsewhere the artistic chimes of the great clock, which continually warned the busy sons of men below in their harsh and inexorable tones, hora fuit! The shadow of the immense church lay like a grey cloud over Gerhards's roof at an early hour of the afternoon, and hence he was obliged to drag his wooden bench and chair close to the window, that he might distinguish the sharp outlines of the little pictures which he illuminated for the holy brotherhood of St. Sebaldus. Even then his eyes too often failed him, and the colours danced up and down before him like flies in the sunshine. There was no extraordinary variety in the pictures he coloured, but an illuminator is forced to follow his orders, and has no choice. One week Gerhards was obliged to dress a number of St. Katharines in blue gowns and red cloaks, while in another St. Theresas demanded from him blue cloaks and red gowns. It was only rarely that he had to attire the blessed Virgin in her golden garb, and place a glittering tiara on her head. On the other hand, St. Sebastians came in by dozens, asking for a brown gown, or a St. Hubert in want of a green coat. Without sighing or complaint the illuminator gave each his own from morn till twilight, and so it went on incessantly from one year's end to the other. Any one who saw him thus sitting bent over his work, with his cheeks tinged by his work, would have felt amazed at such indefatigable industry. After dusk his only relaxation was to take his fair-haired little daughter by the hand and enjoy a ramble about the city; but that only when the weather was fine. Illuminating, we are bound to state, had been Gerhards's voluntary choice of employment, and he had only attained it after much trouble and labour in his riper years: perhaps this accounted for his patience.

From his earliest youth Veit Gerhards had wished to be a painter. He was an orphan, and lived at Nüremberg with his grandfather, who was considered a very clever armourer, and was not a little proud of his glistening trade. At that day Nüremberg shone like a rare jewel among all the towns of Germany. There was a wondrous activity in all branches of art, and any one possessed of open hand and open heart found enough to see and admire there. The brazier Peter Vischer was employing his busy hands on the most glorious masterpieces; the architect Adam Kraft was drawing the boldest plans for palatial edifices; woodcutters and builders were distinguishing themselves; and in the workshop of the master Wohlgemuth a great number of industrious scholars were learning their profession. To this painting-room the old armourer Gerhards had an occasion to send his grandson on a message. The lad had never before seen an easel, or had an opportunity to examine a painting closely. When he called at the master's the latter was not at home, and the workroom