a sergeant and his family, who have refreshments for visiters, and raise signals when vessels approach. A cannon is also fired there at sundown, when the gates of the town are closed, the drawbridges raised, and there is no entering or leaving Gibraltar until the sunrise gun is heard the next morning. Further south is a solitary guard-house, where a number of soldiers were killed by lightning, and which was therefore abandoned. At the extreme southern point of the rock is a round tower of stone, called O'Hara's Folly. It was built by an Irish officer of that name, with the hope that thus he might be able to see Cadiz. Both the tower and the stone buildings there, which were formerly used as a signal house, are much shattered by lightning. As I approached them, two large black birds, resembling ravens or vultures, which were perched upon the ruins, sent forth a hoarse, unearthly croaking, and then floated off upon the breeze. The old classic feeling, that they were birds of ill omen, rose within me, and they seemed to be indeed fit guardians of the scene of desolation over which they were brooding. I thought, too, of the prophecy which, when speaking of a proud monument of human greatness, says, "The owl also and the raven shall dwell in it; and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with his mate."

As I stood there, alone, upon the summit of that vast rock, which had been washed by the waves of the deluge, and looked out upon the mountains of Spain and of Africa, and saw around me those seas which had been ploughed by Phonician, Egyptian, Roman, and Carthaginian galleys, a dream of other days came over me, and a thousand associations of the past rushed in upon my mind. I fancied that the mountain was one of those fabled giants of antiquity, who, for some crime against the gods, had been deprived of speech and motion, and fixed there, to be lashed by the waves and scathed by the lightning, and, in stern and solitary grandeur, look out upon the changes, which, like the airy pageants of a dream, transpired in the little world around. And what a tale, thought I, might he tell of the nations that had flourished there, and the generations which, in rapid succession, had chased each other across the stage of being. What a lesson, too, might he read, on the vanity and instability of human greatness, to those who were yet to exist there, down to the end of time.

But, laying all figures aside, I could not but think what a vast and striking monument of human depravity the rock of Gibraltar, with its immense excavations, and works of defence, will be to those who shall see the time, when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and spears into pruninghooks; when nation shall no more take up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. Perchance, too, the time may come, when the very name and remembrance of war may be so lost and shrouded in the deep oblivion of remote antiquity, that the object of these excavations shall be veiled in a mystery as deep and impenetrable as now rests upon the pyramids of Egypt, or the mounds of Northern Asia and America.

I have spoken of the peculiar excitement one feels on first landing, after a long voyage. At sunset, on the day of our arrival at Gibraltar, I was standing in the Alameida, in front of the beautiful pavilion there, and near the monument to Lord Wellington. Behind me was the lofty rock, and around were a thousand various plants and shrubs which line the mazy walks, while in front was the quiet bay, and beyond rose mount Abyla, one of the pillars of Hercules, on whose summit was a golden cloud, from behind which the setting sun sent forth a flood of rich and mellow light, which spread over half the horizon. By my side was standing a Scottish soldier, to whom the waving plumes, and the tartan kilt of his native land, gave a wild and singular appearance. As he spoke of the scenes among which he had spent his youth, Scotland, with her rugged mountains and classic glens, and her stern and rigid morality, so much like our own New England, came up before the mind, and, blending their interest with that of the scene around, excited emotions of almost unearthly ecstasy.

In the evening the moon shone with uncommon splendor, and the streets were full of life and motion. While passing by a barber's shop, I heard some one say camphor, — c a mphor, said another, spelling it promptly. The same was done with other words. It was truly delightful, amid the jargon of foreign languages, to hear one's mother tongue, and that, too, used in a way which revived so freshly the recollections of my school-boy days. There, thought I, is some one who is doing good, and I could not resist the impulse which I felt to see him. He was about thirty years of age, genteely dressed, and was, as he told me, the head clerk in a large commercial house. Before him was standing a bright, black-eyed Spa

nish boy, about twelve years old, who was a poor orphan, and to whose instruction this gentleman devoted an hour every evening. This fact was a sufficient passport to my confidence, and I found him a very useful and intelligent friend.

It was just at night when we left Gibraltar for Mahon, and it proved a very dark and stormy one. The Rock rose behind us like a sable cloud, while the evening lights in the houses which extend far up its side, looked like so many stars shining through the thick darkness which shrouded the heavens. The next day, however, was pleasant, and the waters sank to rest. It was the Sabbath, and we moved quietly on in our floating chapel, with nothing to lessen the peculiar interest which one can hardly help feeling in religious worship at sea. All are present at such times but the officer of the deck, together with four or five at the wheel by which the ship is steered, and a few in the tops, and most of these can hear the voice of the preacher. The remark is frequently made by seamen, that the Sabbath is more often pleasant than any other day in the week, and so we, during our cruise, certainly found it to be. A ship's company on board a man-of-war are commonly a very attentive congregation, where the services are adapted to their circumstances and feelings. The monotony of a life at sea leads them to seek the variety, the social excitement, and the reviving of earlier and purer feelings, which the Sabbath, with its cleanliness and its sacred associations, brings along with it. "The good folks at home are praying for us now," they would say, when the Sabbath came; and when, too, in our united devotions, we asked the blessing of Heaven on those beloved friends from whom we were so widely severed, strange feelings came over us: and when we thought that perchance we might meet them no more on earth, emotions of peculiar sadness oppressed us, such as might yield only to those hopes of an endless and blissful union with those whom we loved, which are extended to the righteous in the volume of eternal truth. Choirs of singers are sometimes organized on board our men-of-war, but we relied wholly upon a fine band of music to give impressiveness and power to those tunes which, from our earliest years, had been associated in our minds with the words of sacred song. Our interest in public worship was heightened by the fact, that we were sailing over the same sea where Paul and the fishermen of Galilee wandered, when, in obedience to the command of Christ, they went forth into all the world, to preach the gospel to every creature;

and where, too, they doubtless often declared the message of heaven to those with whom they sailed. Our Saviour, also, from a vessel's deck preached the gospel to the multitudes who thronged the shore; thus, as it were, raising the Bethel Flag on the sea of Galilee, and furnishing a cheering example to such as are called to labor for the good of those exposed to peril on the mighty deep.

The ocean presents a thousand forms of grandeur and of beauty, all of which are peculiarly fitted to suggest and to heighten religious emotions, and with strange distinctness to stamp, in enduring characters, lessons of heavenly wisdom on the mind. Now, with feelings of high excitement, one looks around him, when tempests roar and awful thunders roll, until, as his soul rises within him, he seems himself to become the animating spirit of the scene around him; and the fierce rushing of the hurricane, and the bursting of the thunderbolt are to him but as the actings of his own mind. At such times he loves the madness of the sea, when lashed by the wrath of the tempest, and, holding high communion with God through the noblest of his works, he feels and knows that he must be immortal. He seems conscious too of the power ascribed to pure and lofty spirits, of existing and acting wherever in the wide universe their thoughts may chance to wander, and of instantly effecting any thing which the mind may will.

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But not only is there grandeur and sublimity, but there is too beauty, ay, surpassing beauty, in the deep. He who hath been borne far upon its bosom, and hath closely watched it, when in its milder and more playful moods, cannot but have felt, if he had a heart to feel, -that it is truly beautiful. To have had this feeling, deep and strong, one need not have descended below the surface of the ocean, to witness the gambols of "that leviathan which God hath made to play therein, and who maketh a path to shine after him, so that one would think the deep to be hoary." He need not have looked upon the world of animated beings, which, with their thousand widely varied species, all full of life, and joy, and motion, sport and revel in the depths below. Nor need he have wandered in imagination through those fairy regions which poetic fancy, with magic wand, has called into being,

those spacious and brilliant halls, far down in the caves of the sea, which are paved and lighted by the pearls and gems of the ocean. Those regions,

"Where, with its waving blade of green,

The sea flag streams through the silent water,
And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen

To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter:

Where, with a light and easy motion,

The fan-coral sweeps through the deep clear sea;
And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean

Are bending like corn on the upland lea."

"There's beauty in the deep," when the tempest has died away, and the long-swelling glassy billows are rolling around you, and the sun, shining forth upon the mist which rests upon the surface of the ocean, gives to it the hue of burnished gold. Or when the high waves, crested with foam and silvery spray, and extending as far as the eye can reach, seem like so many monsters of the deep, engaged in gay and sportive gambols, while the ship in which you sail is dashing boldly on, plunging amid the foam, tossing it on high, and the sunlit waves send up their joyous gleams to heaven.

One more sketch and we leave this topic. Our ship, as already noticed, had passed the straits of Gibraltar, and the dark Rock was far behind us. The air was soft and balmy as the breath of spring, while a gentle breeze, which scarcely ruffled the surface of the deep, bore us onward. Our gallant bark spread wide and high her snowy canvass, and though she marched proudly on, yet was there no more motion within her than if she had been lying in a quiet harbour. For the first time in my life I was looking out upon the Mediterranean ;

"That tideless sea,

Which changeless rolls eternally."

That sea, whose very name recalled to the mind so many rich and poetical associations of early and of riper days, whose waves had for thousands of years washed the shores of lands where had flourished and decayed the oldest and most renowned empires on which the sun ever shone,— Egypt and Carthage, sacred Palestine, and classic Italy, and Greece.

On our left rose the lofty mountains of Granada, the scene of many a trial of Moorish and of Christian valor. The highest peaks were covered with snow, which brightly glistened as the setting sun poured forth, over land and sea, one unclouded blaze of living light. Nearer to us was Malaga, with its dense mass of houses, its old Moorish wall, and its vast Cathedral, all distinctly visible. As the sun, in sinking, gave a parting smile, as if to cheer and gladden creation