sea,

had a tight little ship, and therefore awaited the result with something like calmness. I was standing near the mizen-mast, scanning the aspect of the when my brother suddenly came up to me. The vessel at this time was lurching very heavily, and seas were breaking over her with a violence which rendered the safety of those on deck a matter of extreme hazard.

"Paul," said my brother, “it will be a dreadful job, but the skipper says we must lighten the ship."

I immediately comprehended his meaning. "Never," said I; never will I have any hand in the murder of these poor wretches. A curse will come down on all our heads, or my name's not Paul Penryn."

He made an angry reply, though I believe he was greatly averse to Wildman's designs. However, one angry word followed another, till we both became mad with passion. At last my brother struck me. I felt my blood boil. I returned the blow with a violence which made him stagger. At this instant the ship gave a heavy lurch, reeling over till her yard-arms dipped into the water. A tremendous sea struck her-I clung to a rope just in time to save myself, and then a wild and startling death-shriek was heard amidst the storm-the ship again got way on her I was alone upon the deck. Oh God! from that hour I have never known peace!

As the Firefly bounded on her course, a loud crash was heard forward; the bowsprit had risen considerably from its place, the gammoning having given way, and the masts reeled and swayed in the blast. The ship again descended into the hollows of the waves; their wild and curling tops swept clear over us, and every hand on deck grasped firmly by the tackling as if that moment was to be his last. The foremast and bowsprit were swept away by the board, bearing with them into the foaming ocean four unhappy seamen, whose shrieks were fearfully distinct -another heave, and she bounded forward like a racehorse. I have often wondered how we got through that night. Cold, drenched, weary, and in continual fear, each minute seemed an hour. Few questions were put respecting my brother's death, for it was believed that he perished when the foremast fell. When daylight broke, the storm had abated greatly. We gathered on the quarter-deck, a mournful little group, thinned in numbers, and broken in spirit. I felt the plague-spot upon me; my brother's last shriek resounded in my ears, and more than once I resolved to tell the captain all.

We had found it necessary to cut away the mainmast early; the ship indeed was a wreck -a leak was also sprung-and the captain now declared to the crew that she must be abandoned. "The lubberly blacks," he said, "must have a swim for it." They were to be thrown overboard! I opposed the cruel course; "liberate them, and give them a chance in the wreck," was the advice I gave, but in vain. The captain was very wroth.

"Have a care young man," he said, "it doesn't signify arguing the flash of flint with me."

When he went below, a fearful scene presented itself. Nearly the whole of the miserable creatures, who had been almost totally neglected for the preceding thirty-six hours, were lying dead on the deck. Worn out and exhausted by a raging fever, without water, and inhaling an atmosphere close and putrid beyond belief, their galled and lacerated bodies in continual torment as the ship rolled and heaved during the hours of darkness-human nature could stand it no longer. The few that yet existed were in a dying state. It was a mercy to release them from their sufferings.

I had gone below after the altercation with the captain, and turned into my berth in very weariness of soul. I fell into a deep sleep. Horrible visions passed before me, and I awoke in agony.

It was pitchy dark. The ship groaned heavily as the sea swept beside her with a sullen and mournful swell. But on board all was wild and lonely-not the smallest sound smote upon the ear, though I lay and listened with a degree of intensity, and a feeling of utter helplessness, such as I had never before experienced.

I lay broad awake for some time before I could comprehend all that had past; but I gradually recovered to a full consciousness of my situation and its horrors. I started from my berth, and groped my way upon deck. The night was profoundly calm. The moon was struggling amidst large fleecy masses of cloud that sailed lazily across the sky, and the Firefly heaved gently on the bosom of the lately agitated main. It was too true; I stood a solitary being on the waste of waters" past hope, past help,”— without friend, or sail, or compass — the tenant of a floating charnel-house. I dared not look below; but the rank and pestilent air told its tale of horrors. The ship, too, was half full of water; she could not survive long if it came to blow hard. I felt my

brain madden, as an indistinct groan and motion amongst the chains betwixt decks spoke of the lingering agony of some wretched sufferer. I sickened, and again groped my way to my berth. Now I courted sleep. Hours passed away, but yet I lay tossing and tumbling upon my feverish bed, till I worked myself into an agony. thought I would once more take a turn on deck, for anything was better than a continuance of such thoughts.

The light aloft was feeble and indistinct. I walked for some time backward and forward along the poop-deck; at last I became weary, and leaned on the taffrail, buried in thought. When I turned, I felt a strange consciousness, a conviction, fearful yet indefinite, that another being tenanted the quarter-deck. Under the shadow of the broken mast—and the light was exceedingly obscure I shaped out of the darkness a figure, which became gradually distinct and

apparent a figure, I say, which I felt was familiar-my heart leaped from its placeit was my brother. There he stood, wan and spectral, with sunken eyes like those of the dead; yet the lids seemed gradually to unclose, when the dim orbs glared upon me with a look, leaden and soul-searching, which absolutely rivetted me to the spot. My tongue clove to my jaws-my brain reeled-the ship appeared to be going down -I made a rush towards the shape-but it was gone!

*

I have but little recollection how the next three days passed away. The pestilence from below became appalling, and I believe that I fell into a raging fever. It was nearly a week before I recovered my senses. I had been taken off the wreck, wasted almost to a skeleton, several days before, by the Lively, of Liverpool. VIDA.

If it were not too troublesome an inquiry, and productive of much futile inconvenience to myself, I think it would be ascertained beyond dispute that I am the laziest individual in existence, or perhaps that ever did exist. There have been many arguments, which I have, at this moment, neither time nor inclination to combat, urged in favour of industry, to the prejudice and scandal of idleness; but without giving any reasons for so doing, I deny their weight or importance. There has been much unworthy homage, also, paid by bankrupt and faint-hearted sluggards to the cause of diligence and activity, which I cannot but think base and unmanly. "Ah!" sighs the supine renegade, "had I but bestirred myself in early life-had I taken advantage of my many opportunities—had I taken time by the forelock, instead of swinging like a pendulum from his pigtail-had I struck when the iron was hot instead of

standing with my hammer thus, The whilst the iron did on the anvil cool "—

I might probably, ere this, have become alderman of the ward, or, perhaps, lord mayor of London."

These complaints are not only useless but irrational, absurd, and ungrateful. We

GRAY.

cannot eat our cake and have it too; and when we have once slain our goose and obtained its golden eggs, I know not where is the Promethean heat that can warm that anserous biped into renewed existence. Time is the great goose that I have been endeavouring unceasingly to destroy, but he is of the hydra genus, and carries the great body of his folly and imbecility under a vast number of heads. He is like the phoenix described by our great poet, and lives

"A secular bird, ages of lives,"

and eternity alone will be permitted to enjoy the giblets.

I should like to ask the unconscionable penitents above alluded to, was there no pleasure in their former life? was it no enjoyment to sit, or rather to lie still, doing nothingthinking of nothing-feeling nothing-desiring nought? Is it not "dolce far niente?" Is it no blissful privilege to sit with all the world and our hands before us, and nothing upon them, not even the weight of a ring or the burden of a pair of gloves? Is it no glorious immunity to indulge and to pamper, yea, even to satiety, the immortal yearnings that do not stir, but seem spontaneously to suggest, eternal quiet and repose? Believe not that heresy.

Have not all our poets in their better moods left us glimpses of an inward but unconquerable desire of perfect and undisturbed rest? I am not going to ransack the whole body of English poetry for the purpose of proving my position-I mount no library steps-I draw no volumes from their shelves, assure yourself of that. Were there really "books in the running brooks," I am no intellectual Izaak Walton to angle for them. The Statutes at Large might swim in shoaly security for me, and the minutest duodecimos duck and dive at their leisure. I have other fish to fry. But this is from my purpose. What passage in Shakspeare, I should be glad to learn, is more admired, or is, indeed, more admirable, than his celebrated invocation to sleep, in Henry IV., commencing

"To die, to sleep-no more-"

and the thought pleases him. But not content with that anticipated happiness, he pushes his inquiries further, like a blockhead, and the result is

"To sleep-perchance to dream, aye, there's the rub;" yes, the rub, indeed; dreaming is but a weary occupation, for, as a modern poet says, and as I perfectly know

"That sleep's the sweetest when we dream the least." In Milton's minor poems many evidences of a bias towards supineness and inactivity are discernible. For instance, when he would fain retire from the busy hum of men; when he talks of the bellman's " charm." That line in Otway always delighted me mightily, when he makes Jaffier say

and drowsy

"Oh! for a long round sleep, and so forget it!" Round sleep-I like it myself-coiled like a hedgehog upon the carpet before the fire. That man had a soul! Kit Marlowe, in his play of Faustus, cannot refrain from intro

ducing Sloth, who gives this short and sweet
account of himself:-" Heigho! I was born
upon a sunny bank. Heigho!
I'll not say
another word for a king's ransom." Finally,
Dr. Young, the moral poet, begins his Night
Thoughts after this fashion:-

"From short, as usual, and disturbed repose
I wake-how happy they who wake no more!"

Observe the querulous impatience of that "as usual," and the climactic conclusion of the second line.

I am not inclined to put much faith in the sincerity of Thomson's laziness. He has the credit of having been the laziest of men, but I do not think that he deserves it. There were, I doubt not, Thomson's seasons of activity. His Castle of Indolence is not a sincere or a well-imagined poem. I could have suggested-but no matter, I will not boast of my perfections. The persons introduced into that poem always appeared to me rather bustling people than otherwise. Eating peaches from a tree with one's hands supporting the skirts of one's coat, as Thomson did, was an awkward and laborious process. Have them plucked for you, say I. Nor is the popular anecdote related of the bard a

whit more in his favour. It is recorded that a gentleman calling upon Thomson found him in bed, and foolishly inquired why he did not rise? The reply of the poet is altogether paltry and contemptible. "I had no motive, young man." Could any earthly motive induce me to get up, unless indeed it involved a solemn guarantee of a softer couch in the immediate vicinity? Besides, Thomson altogether forgot (let me hope that he was too lazy) to dwell upon his motives for lying still.

I have great faith in Mr. Coleridge. From all that I have heard of that great man, I am inclined to feel a friendly interest in his welfare. I would extend my hand to him, were he lying in an adjacent bed. He has himself told us that he composed his fine fragment of" Kubla Khan" in his sleep, thereby causing the claims of occupation to give place to the demands of repose. I can picture to myself the venerable poet and philosopher in his study. My mind will only permit me to conceive him perusing the shortest and, therefore, the most exquisite pieces of our approved authors. A paper, perhaps, of the Idler, or the Lounger;-the least long of Horace's Odes or Anacreon's;-elegies, epigrams, an occasional Idyllit should be called an idle-of Theocritus, or the Ode to Tranquillity, by his friend Mr. Wordsworth.

For my own part, I glory in what fools consider my shame. I have almost discovered the perpetual immobility. The revolution of the earth is motion enough for me, and for any reasonable man. Can any one conceive a more lamentable figure than a bustling impertinent, busy in other people's affairs or his own, and laughed at for his pains, or baffled in his projects? Who cuts the more philosophical figure of the two, the locomotive blockhead who burst into a bed-room to apprise the sleeper that his house was on fire; or the disturbed sage who, calmly addressing himself again to sleep, remarked, that when it reached the first floor it was time enough to rise? What young man ever left the university with more gratifying credentials than those conveyed in the following concise summary of his merits by one of the fellows of the college. Sir, he had nothing to do, and he did it." Let us turn for a moment to the phenomena of animated nature. Can anything be more helplessly ridiculous than the insane saltations of a flea, the fruitless fandangos of a fly at a window-pane, the gyrations of a kitten in pursuit of its own tail, or the most absurd jumpings of a grasshopper? Nor is the analogy unfair. Is not all flesh grass? and may not, therefore, all short-lived and fretfully motional beings, be aptly termed grasshoppers? In word, there is no denying the fact; all motion is madness. The spring of the tiger, the fall of Niagara, the eruption of Vesuvius, the ultra-activity of men-all madness and vanity. To what does the last tend? What is the most successful race of emulation? At best the attempt of a snail to keep pace with a slug. What is vaulting ambition? Merely jumping in a sack. What are the aspirings of genius? Only climbing up a pole, alas! too often, not for a leg of mutton. What is the use of "taking arms against a sea of troubles?" The expertest sabre-stroke but cleaves a billow; the most dead shot only "picks off" a ripple. There is no water-mark after such transient wounds. By what bleaching process can we whiten the darkness of our fate? It is but scouring the Ethiop, after all. The waste of a wilderness of bristle and innumerable bars of soap. The bankruptcy of a soap-boiler and the unnecessary bereavement of a herd of swine. The primum mobile itself was the daughter of rest.

I have invariably argued the point in this manner with my friend, when he has come to see me; for I never pay visits. I love my friend Moss, and, perhaps, for the very rea

son that we are altogether opposed to each other in our respective notions of the duties of life and the obligations of society. I rather incline to think, however, that my regard for the man was stimulated by the pleasing peculiarity of his cognomen. Mossit was a soft name, and suggested ideas of repose. One might lean one's elbows on his shoulders and disclose our griefs to him. I might lay my commands upon Moss, I might rest secure of his friendship. There is a great deal in these associations, if the reflecting reader would consider them. But Moss himself is the most bustling and busy of beings. He rises with the lark-I get up with the owl-an ornithological difference of taste. He cannot sleep after six in the morning; I can till six at night. He is Boreas and bellows loudly. I am Zephyr with a lisp. He is Eclipse, and runs a mile in a minute; I am the White Horse in Piccadilly, which never runs at all. A thousand like myself might live together in a millennium of silence.

"Grant but as many kinds of men as Moss,"

as the poet says, and you create a perpetual dynasty of discord.

But with all this fitful exertion on the part of Moss, he can barely contrive to keep his soul and body in a tolerably sufficing state of partnership and co-operation; whereas I, in spite of my ever-denounced and everlasting indolence, am in a situation of perfect ease and competence. The truth is, men like Moss measure their corn by another man's bushel; and oh! exhaustless granary! Because I am idle, he is to prosper. He counts his chickens before they are hatched, and no poultry-yard can be found to contain them. He reckons without his host, and adds up his ones and twos over his pint of port with much glee, and many compliments upon his own numerical dexterity, and all at once down comes unconscionable Boniface upon him with his nines and his tens and his sophistications. Were he to arrange an elopement with an heiress, ten to one but he would be, like his namesake, stuck upon the wall of the dwelling, hours before the appointed time, exposed to the dragon-watch of the guardian or the detection of the duenna. Now, were I a principal in such an affair-which, by-the-by, never could be-I need hardly say that levers and cables would be necessary to drag me to the scene of action. The sole uncle of Moss dies and cuts him off with a shilling, and a blighting explosion of spleen in his last moments, to the effect that his persevering assiduity and