he imagined, have a hand in such unaccountable things. His reason, however, getting the better of his apprehensions, he makes experiments successively on a pipe, a bottle, and various other things, to try whether they would take the same course, when none of them answer; but the key of the cupboard, out of which he had taken them, happening to drop from his finger, whilst thus employed, it was no sooner disengaged, than away it went. Upon this, and finding that the needle of his compass stood fixed to the rock, he concluded that the latter contained great quantities of load-stone, or was itself one great magnet, and that their lading of iron was the cause of the ship's violent course above mentioned.

During the three months he continued to live on board, he found the days grew shorter and shorter, till having lost the sun for a little while, they were nearly quite dark. This gloomy season he employed as well as he could, in shifting his water, to purify it-in rummaging the vessel, to ascertain more exactly what it contained, and in amusing himself with hopes, that ships were making towards him; for by the faint, glimmering light, he often fancied he saw large bodies moving at a little distance from him; but though he halloed as loud as he could, and often fired his gun, he never received an answer. He afterwards found reason to suspect, that what he had taken for ships were only large floating masses of ice that came int his vicinity. When light returned, and the days began to grow longer, he found his own spirits rise in proportion, and he determined to launch the ship's boat, and coast the rock quite round, in hope of finding a landing place, or perhaps a snug habitation on shore. This voyage he thought he might safely undertake, as he had never seen a troubled sea since he came to the islands; for though he heard the wind often roaring over his head, yet coming always from the land side, it never disturbed the water near the shore. Having replenished his bark with stores sufficient for a considerable voyage, and arms and ammunition, together with an axe or two, which might be of service, in case of his landing, he sets out on his expedition, "with God's speed," and commits himself " once more to Providence and the main ocean."

During the three weeks he continued to coast the island, he saw no entrance any where, nor place to land in, nor any thing but the same unscaleable rock; till one evening, just as it was growing dark,

"I heard a great noise, as of a fall of water, whereupon I proposed to lie by and wait for day, to see what it was; but the stream insensibly drawing me on, I soon found myself in an eddy; and the boat drawing forward, beyond all my power to resist it, I was quickly

sucked under a low arch, where, if I had not fallen flat in my boat, having barely light enough to see my danger, I had undoubtedly been crushed to pieces, or driven overboard. I could perceive the boat to fall with incredible violence, as I thought, down a precipice, and suddenly whirled round and round with me, the water roaring on all sides, and dashing against the rock with a most amazing noise.

"I expected every moment my poor little vessel would be staved against the rock, and I overwhelmed with waters; and for that reason never once attempted to rise up, or look upon my peril, till after the commotion had in some measure ceased. At length, finding the perturbation of the water abate, and as if by degrees I came into a smoother stream, I took courage just to lift up my affrighted head; but guess, if you can, the horror which seized me, on finding myself in the blackest of darkness, unable to perceive the smallest glimmer of light."

Still, as the boat seemed to glide easily along, he roused himself so far as to strike a light, with materials he happened to have with him; but the horrors which this revealed, were worse than the darkness it dispelled; giving him the " tremendous view of an immense arch over his head, to which he could see no bounds." The stream itself, which might be about thirty yards broad, flowed black and murky, sometimes impeded by craggs, jutting out from the side of the cavern-at others running with such violence, where it was confined in a narrower channel, that unless his light had enabled him to keep the middle of the stream, he must have suffered a worse shipwreck than any that had yet befallen him. He was fortunate, too, in having some oil on board, to supply his lamp; yet, though he husbanded it with the utmost frugality, it was nearly spent, whilst the same gloomy arch yet hung suspended over his head, and no prospect of deliverance appeared.

"I had now cut a piece of my shirt, for a wick to my last drop of oil, which I twisted and lighted. I burnt the oil in my brass tobacco-box, which I had fitted pretty well to answer the purpose. Sitting down, I had many black thoughts of what must follow the loss of my light, which I considered as near expiring, and that, I feared, for ever. I am here, thought I, like a poor condemned criminal, who knows his execution is fixed for such a day, nay, such an hour, and dies over and over in imagination, and by the torture of his mind, till that hour comes: that hour which he so much dreads! and yet that very hour which releases him from all farther dread! Thus do I-my last wick is kindled-my last drop of fuel is consuming !—and I am every moment apprehending the shocks of the rock, the suffocation of the water; and, in short, thinking over my dying thoughts, till the snuff of my lamp throws up its last curling, expiring flame, and then my quietus will be presently signed."

His spirits growing low and feeble at this melancholy

prospect, he has recourse to his brandy bottle to raise them; when, reflecting that this would only increase his thirst, and that it were better to take a little of the white Madeira he had brought along with him, he applied what he took to be a bottle of the latter to his mouth, when the first gulp cheered his heart more than all the cordials in the world could have done-" It is oil, cried I aloud, it is oil." In this incident, he once again acknowledges the superintendence of heaven over his affairs; and reposing his trust on the goodness of his Maker, who had thus rescued him from being swallowed up in darkness, he feels ground to hope, that he should yet live to praise him in the full brightness of day.

A series of such meditations, after a considerable lapse of time, brought him once more under the fair canopy of heaven; when he found himself at one extremity of a prodigious lake, whose noble expanse was bordered with a grassy down, about half a mile wide, of the finest verdure he had ever seen this, again, was flanked with a grove rising around, like an amphitheatre, of the same breadth; whilst behind this, and above all, towered the naked rock to an immense height-so high, as to contract even the circle of the heavens, and to present an eternal barrier to all but birds of the strongest pinion and highest flight. Having thus.emerged to new light and life, he forgot not the Providence that had protected him in the darkness of the cavern; but, kneeling on the green-sward, returned thanks for his deliverance-praying that he might continue to be shielded by his care, and that whatever should hereafter befall him, he might once more behold the green fields of the island of his birth, and die, at last, on his native soil. After a most delightful meal on his coarse fare by the grassy margin of the lake, taking his gun in hand, he walked towards the wood, in order to contemplate the retreat his destiny had assigned him; when, looking behind him and all around the plains, " is it possible," said he, " that so much art (for I did not then believe it was natural) could have been bestowed upon this place, and no inhabitant in it? Here are neither buildings, huts, castle, nor any living creature to be seen! It cannot be, says I, that this place was made for nothing." The extreme beauty of the wood next draws his attention, inviting him to explore its recesses, till the approach of darkness, when every thing about him, however agreeable in the day time, "would have more or less of horror in it," warned him to seek out a safe retreat for the night. Finding a small natural grotto in the rock, he determined to take up his quarters there, till the return of day; and disposing himself to rest, he slept as soundly as he had ever done on ship-board. Indeed, from the time he shot the gulf down to the present moment, he had not had the enjoy

ment of one hour's rest together. "Nature, indeed, could not have supported itself thus long under much labour; but as I had nothing to do but only keep the middle stream, I began to be as used to guide myself in it with my eyes almost closed, and my senses retired, as a higgler is to drive his cart to market in his sleep." The next morning he awoke sweetly refreshed, and after breakfasting on such provisions as his boat contained, he laid him down to drink at the lake, which looked as clear as chrystal, intending, no doubt, a delicious draught; but he had forgot it brought him from the sea, and the first gulp almost poisoned him. However, he is far from despair: so rivetted on his mind was a sense of Divine care and mercy, that though the vast lake of salt water was surrounded by an impenetrable barrier of rock, he rested satisfied that he should rather find even that yield him a fresh and living stream, than that he should be suffered to perish for want of water. After walking about seven miles along the banks, nearly round five-sixths of the lake's circumference, his confiding trust was rewarded by the sight of a small hollow, or cut in the grass, from the wood to the lake, at a little distance before him: "thither I hasted with all speed, and blessed God for the supply of a fine fresh rill, which, distilling from several small clefts in the rock, had collected itself into one stream, and cut its way through the green sod to the lake."

One of the principal charms of the work will, in the estimation of the reader of good taste, be found to consist in the serene and tranquil air, which is diffused around it by pure thoughts and innocent conversation, joined to this beautiful and sublime dependence on the merciful care of the Great Father of the universe, which, in all the chances and disasters of his eventful life, the simple-minded and good-hearted hero never fails to evince. Stuck, like a sea-gull in its nest, in the cleft of a sea-beat rock-or absorbed in the thick darkness of a subterranean cavern-or left to himself amidst solitudes, where never foot of man had trod since the creation; and cut off for ever even from the possibility of mingling again with beings formed like himself, of ever hearing more the accents of a human voice,-the poor wanderer, though one of those more especially formed to enjoy society, is far from being overcome by the tremendous stillness of his abode, but strangely hugging himself with an air of comfort, carries a serene mind about with him for the present, and looks forward with hope to the future. A solitary individual, abstracted from the great mass of human society, with no kind eye to reflect his joys in the hour of gladness, and nothing but the moaning winds to answer his sighs, when sorrowful, still he is not alone; but, like the patriarch of old, walking with God, among his

eternal solitudes, he finds in that hallowed intercourse ample compensation for the pleasures of society, the comforts of home, and the affectionate endearments of kindred. The awful barrier of the rock for ever interposes between him and the prospect of the world; but it excludes not from his sight the blue heavens, which smile upon him, as it were, with the eye of a father and an everlasting friend. If the wood bear him fruit, he is grateful to him who has thus prepared a table in the wilderness; if he find the clear waters of a brook to quench his thirst withal, he drinks of it with even more delight, because it is the boon of Him, who in the dry and sandy desert did fetch water from the living rock, to refresh a murmuring and thankless generation. This is wisdom!-this is true philosophy!thus, indeed, may the devout contemplator of Nature's works "find tongues in brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing." What a noble view of man! God-like in reason himself-conversing with God! amply, indeed, does he vindicate the divinity of his origin. The anchorites, who forsook the busy scenes of life to muse amidst the solitudes of the desert, or in the gloom of primæval forests, and by the banks of lone sequestered streams, held high communion with heaven; on whom the stars, as they glittered in the vast expanse of air, shot down rays of the divine intelligence; and who, in the mysterious sighings of the gale, as it waved the lofty branches under which they sat, heard the voice of the ever-living God,-were a superstitious race no doubt, who forgot in their mystical devotion the first duties of life; but they had noble aspirations, and a sublime sense of religious worship. But when by the irresistible tide of human events, over which man has no controul, he is cast, like a stranded vessel on a lone and desolate sea-beach, far out of the sphere of domestic or social life, environed by the ocean, imprisoned in rocks, an exile forgotten of all men-a wanderer by sea and land for conscience sake; yet still reposing with such implicit faith and singleness of heart, on the kind protecting care of a benevolent and almighty Being, as to be superior to every hardship; cheerful in desolation; familiarly acquainted with and indifferent to every danger, and regarding death no more than as a friend welcome at any hour; neither the hero triumphant amidst the tide of battle, nor the poet in imagining new worlds, nor the philosopher developing the mysteries of the universe, affords so grand a display of the energies of the human soul, or the glorious capabilities of our nature.

But to return. Having thus found a stream of water, and, in the wood, a never-failing repast, to supply the wants of nature, he began to think of commencing housekeeper; and being about to build, as he imagined for life, he determined upon