a grandeur in the motion of the splendid ship, as, overshadowed by her mass of sails, she rode at a furious pace upon the waves, which filled one with an indescribable sense of pride and exultation. As she plunged into a foaming valley, how I loved to see the green waves, bordered deep with white, come rushing on astern, to buoy her upward at their pleasure, and curl about her as she stooped again, but always own her for their haughty mistress still! On, on, we flew, with changing lights upon the water, being now in the blessed region of fleecy skies; a bright sun lighting us by day, and a bright moon by night; the vane pointing directly homeward, alike the truthful index to the favouring wind and to our cheerful hearts; until at sunrise, one fair Monday morning, the twenty-seventh of June, I shall not easily forget the day, there lay before us old Cape Clear, God bless it, showing, in the mist of early morning, like a cloud: the brightest and most welcome cloud, to us, that ever hid the face of heaven's fallen sister-Home.

Dim speck as it was in the wide prospect, it made the sunrise a more cheerful sight, and gave to it that sort of human interest which it seems to want at sea. There, as elsewhere, the return of day is inseparable from some sense of renewed hope and gladness; but the light shining on the dreary waste of water, and showing it in all its vast extent of loneliness, presents a solemn spectacle, which even night, veiling it in darkness and uncertainty, does not surpass. The rising of the moon is more in keeping with the solitary ocean, and has an air of melancholy grandeur, which in its soft and gentle influence, seems to comfort while it saddens. I recollect when I was a very young child, having a fancy that the reflection of the moon in water was a path to heaven, trodden by the spirits of good people on their way to God; and this old feeling often came over me again, when I watched it on a tranquil night at sea.

The wind was very light on this same Monday morning, but it was still in the right quarter, and so, by slow degrees, we left Cape Clear behind, and sailed along within sight of the coast of Ireland. And how merry we all were, and how loyal to the George Washington, and how full of mutual congratulations, and how venturesome in predicting the

HOMEWARD BOUND.

25

exact hour at which we should arrive at Liverpool, may be easily imagined and readily understood. Also, how heartily we drank the captain's health that day at dinner; and how restless we became about packing up; and how two or three of the most sanguine spirits rejected the idea of going to bed at all that night as something it was not worth while to do, so near the shore, but went nevertheless, and slept soundly; and how to be so near our journey's end, was like a pleasant dream from which one feared to wake.

The friendly breeze freshened again next day, and on we went once more before it gallantly-descrying now and then an English ship going homeward under shortened sail, while we with every inch of canvas crowded on, dashed gaily past, and left her far behind. Towards evening the weather turned hazy, with a drizzling rain; and soon became so thick, that we sailed, as it were, in a cloud. Still we swept onward like a phantom ship, and many an eager eye glanced up to where the look-out on the mast kept watch for Holyhead.

At length his long-expected cry was heard, and at the same moment there shone out from the haze and mist a-head, a gleaming light, which presently was gone, and soon returned, and soon was gone again. Whenever it came back, the eyes of all on board brightened and sparkled like itself; and there we all stood, watching this revolving light upon the rock at Holyhead, and praising it for its brightness and its friendly warning, and lauding it, in short, above all other signal lights that ever were displayed, until it once more glimmered faintly in the distance, far behind us.

Then it was time to fire a gun for a pilot; and almost before its smoke had cleared away, a little boat, with a light at her mast-head, came bearing down upon us, through the darkness, swiftly. And presently, our sails being backed, she ran alongside; and the hoarse pilot, wrapped and muffled in pea-coats and shawls to the very bridge of his weather-ploughed-up nose, stood bodily among us on the deck. And I think if that pilot had wanted to borrow fifty pounds for an indefinite period on no security, we should have engaged to lend it him, among us, before his boat had dropped astern, or (which is the same thing) before

every scrap of news in the paper he brought with him had become the common property of all on board.

We turned in pretty late that night, and turned out pretty early next morning. By six o'clock we clustered on the deck, prepared to go ashore; and looked upon the spires, and roofs, and smoke of Liverpool. By eight we all sat down in one of its hotels, to eat and drink together for the last time. And by nine we had shaken hands all around, and broken up our social company for ever.

The country, by the railroad, seemed, as we rattled through it, like a luxuriant garden. The beauty of the fields (so small they looked!), the hedge-rows, and the trees; the pretty cottages, the beds of flowers, the old church-yards, the antique houses, and every well-known object; the exquisite delights of that one journey, crowding, in the short compass of a summer's day, the joy of many years, and winding up with home and all that makes it dear; no tongue can tell, or pen of mine describe.

FALL OF JERUSALEM.

SECTION II-FICTION.

17

27

[Under this head are classed all those pieces which are taken from works of fiction, even though they have a historical basis, or are largely descriptive.]

L-FALL OF JERUSALEM.

(REV. GEORGE CROLY, LL.D.)

The Rev. George

The siege of Jerusalem here described took place in 70 A.D. Croly, LL.D., rector of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, London, was born in Dublin about 1785. His works, both prose and verse, are very voluminous.

THE fall of our illustrious and happy city was supernatural. The destruction of the conquered was against the first principles of the Roman policy; and, to the last hour of our national existence, Rome held out offers of peace, and lamented our frantic disposition to be undone. But the decree was gone forth from a mightier throne. During the latter days of the siege, a hostility, to which that of man was as a grain of sand to the tempest that drives it on, overpowered our strength and senses;-fearful shapes and voices in the air— visions starting us from our short and troublesome sleeplunacy in its hideous forms—sudden death in the midst of vigour the fury of the elements let loose upon our heads. We had every terror and evil that could beset human nature but pestilence—the most probable of all, in a city crowded with the famishing, the diseased, the wounded, and the dead. Yet, though the streets were covered with unburied, though every well and trench was teeming, though six hundred thousand corpses were flung over the ramparts, and lay naked to the sun, pestilence came not; for if it had come, the enemy would have been scared away. But "the abomination of desolation," the pagan standard, was fixed where it was to remain until the plough had passed over the ruins of Jerusalem.

On this fatal night no man laid his head upon the pillow. Heaven and earth were in conflict. Meteors burned over us

--the ground shook under our feet-the volcanoes blazedthe wind burst forth in irresistible blasts, and swept the living and the dead in whirlwinds far into the desert. We heard the bellowing of the distant Mediterranean, as if its waters were at our sides, swelled by the deluge. The lakes and rivers roared and inundated the land-the fiery sword shot out tenfold fire-showers of blood fell-thunder pealed from every quarter of the heavens-lightning, in immense sheets, of an intensity and duration that turned the darkness into more than day, withering eye and soul, burned from the zenith to the ground, and marked its track by forests of flame, and shattered the summits of the hills. Defence was unthought of, for the mortal enemy had passed from the mind. Our hearts quaked for fear, but it was to see the powers of heaven shaken. All cast away the shield and spear, and crouched before the descending judgment.

We were conscience-smitten. Our cries of remorse, anguish, and horror, were heard through the uproar of the storm. We howled to caverns to hide us. We plunged into the sepulchres to escape the wrath that consumed the living. We would have buried ourselves under the mountains. I knew the cause, the unspeakable cause, and knew that the last hour of crime was at hand. A few fugitives, astonished to see one man amongst them not sunk into the lowest feebleness of fear, came around me, and besought me to lead them to some place of safety, if such were now to be found on earth. I told them openly that they were to die, and counselled them to die in the hallowed ground of the temple. They followed; and I led through streets encumbered with every shape of human sufferings, to the foot of Mount Moriah; but beyond that, we found advance impossible. Piles of clouds, whose darkness was palpable even in the midnight in which we stood, covered the holy hill. Impatient, and not to be daunted by anything that man could overcome, I cheered my disheartened band, and attempted to lead the way up the ascents; but I had scarcely entered the cloud, when I was swept down by a gust that tore the rocks in a flinty shower around me.

Now came the last and most wonderful sign that marked the fate of rejected Israel. While I lay helpless, I heard the