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present century in punishing criminals, had been employed for preventing crime by means of education, what a different country would England have been to that which our criminal records show it to have been!

Thank Heaven! this truth at length is making its way to the convictions of our rulers. The principle is recognised that the people must be instructed. There is no longer any party found to question this principle, or to oppose its practical application. Differences there are and will be as to the best mode of carrying it out, but those differences of opinion are not allowed to stay the progress of education, which will, which must, go forward, and perhaps the more rapidly by reason of the discussions that arise out of those very differences. *

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The Government plans are still [1850,] perhaps, too recent, and, it must be added, too imperfect, to exhibit any very striking result; but with a knowledge of the enlightened zeal which is allowed to carry out the intentions of the legislature, it is not too much to hope that enough of good will soon be made apparent to show the desirableness of extending those plans, so that we shall soon cease to be the lowest among the Protestant kingdoms of Europe, as respects the performance of our duty in promoting the education of the people.-PORTER'S ' Progress of the Nation.'

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WHETHER it arises from a consciousness of the danger to which sailors know their lives are constantly exposed, or the frequent opportunities they have for calm and serious reflection in the lonely mid-watch, surrounded by the most elevating and spiritstirring scenes in nature, they have, in general, a due sense of the importance of religion and the existence of a future state. It is no less true, that this sentiment is too often found to be strongly tinctured with its not unfrequent concomitant, superstition. They implicitly believe in omens', mermaids, the Flying Dutchman, evil spirits, the appearance of the ghosts of the departed, and the pranks of malicious spirits and goblins. They familiarly talk of frightful sounds and preternatural noises coming up from the deep, all having an import of fearful warning, and occasionally portending accidents or the death of a messmate.

The simple and uneducated mind of the sailor seizes on the supposition of some preternatural occurrence in all such cases, as the easiest way of accounting for these appearances, which a better-informed mind would endeavour to unravel by the application of philosophical principles, or a close examination of the facts-comparing them with the usual operations of nature in such situations. But these are efforts to which a tar is unequal; his creed, therefore, is easily made up, and hence certain shores, islands, and even latitudes, known to the naturalist as abounding in marine animals, which produce strange sounds when approached or surprised on the surface of the water, or basking ashore, are accounted by sailors ominous and fearful of approach.

A seaman, too, as devoutly as any Methodist, believes in the efficacy of a call; with this difference, that the latter imagines it will prove the means of preserving him from perishing finally in fire; the sailor, that, if the legend of his mother and granddam be true, it will avert a similar fate by water. Of witches, such is his dread, that a horse-shoe, always toe-up, is nailed to the forepart of the fore-mast as a specific against those unhallowed hags. Is the superstition of a Laplander more silly ?

Valuable as a fair wind is to a sailor, he would sooner lose it, and run the chance of its chopping about, and detaining him for weeks in harbour, than voluntarily sail on a Friday. Should he be compelled, from circumstances, to sail on that ill-starred day to schoolboys and sailors, he will not fail to attribute to that circumstance every the minutest failure or most serious accident which subsequently occurs throughout the voyage.

For some animals they entertain a singular predilection; whilst for whole classes of their fellow-creatures, even those whom they permit to plunder them with impunity as a matter of business, they entertain in this respect a comparative horror. No sailor would hesitate to throw a Jew rather than a cat overboard, perhaps without being aware of the high authority which sanctions such a line of distinction. He may think, with his holiness of Rome and general councils, that in promoting the cause of the extirpation of heretics, he "is doing God service ;" whilst he dreads that the offence against the brute creation will be visited by the consequent and inevitable penalties of sickness, scurvy, hard weather, masts struck by lightning, or vessels miraculously escaping during chase.

Their suspicions are not confined to beasts, as allies of the great enemy of man: even the birds which soar aloft come in for their share, possibly from his considering them as liege subjects of the "prince of the power of the air" (as a great authority calls Satan), and therefore bound to do his dark behests on the viewless winds." Their appearance at sea is almost always thought a sinister occurrence. Some are considered the harbingers of a tempest and storm; others, like "Mother Carey's chickens," the active agents of the foul fiend, already bent on their destruction.

With reference to these calumniated little creatures, they often gravely tell at nightfall a story, which fails not to make the circle round the galley-fire smaller by degrees as it proceeds-but whether through intense attention or apprehension, it luckily is unnecessary to determine :-as "how the Tiger East Indiaman, outerbound, had one continued gale without intermission, till they got to the Cape,' by which time they

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were almost a wreck; that off the Cape of Good Hope,' in particular, they were nearly foundered; that in the height of this gale were seen a number of ominous birds screaming about in the lightning's blaze, and some of them of monstrous shape and size; that among the passengers was a woman called 'Mother Carey,' who always seemed to smile when she looked up to these foul-weather birds, upon which they concluded she was a witch; that she had conjured them up from the 'Red Sea,' and that they never would have a prosperous voyage while she remained on board; and, finally, that as they were just debating about it, she sprang overboard, and went down in a flame; when the birds (ever after called Mother Carey's chickens') vanished in a moment, and left the Tiger to pursue her voyage in peace!"— HALL'S Naval Sketch Book.'

1. In ancient times, it was supposed that coming events were indicated by signs showing their nature. These signs were called omens.

2. There is here a pun on the word call. Methodists, according to this author, believe in a Divine call, and so the sailor believes in a caul, and carries it about with him for his personal safety. 3. The Laplanders were not converted to Christianity till the 17th century, and they still retain many heathen superstitions.

4. I never heard that Friday was in bad odour with schoolboys. Indeed I should rather say it was a favourite day. "Black Monday" used to be the term of schoolboys, but even they would be ashamed of such silly nonsense now-adays.

5. This word points to the belief in omens, already spoken of. A flight of birds, on the right hand, was considered lucky; but on the left hand (Lat. sinister), unlucky.

THE INCHCAPE BELL.

No stir on the air, no swell on the sea,
The ship was still as she might be :
The sails from heaven received no motion;
The keel was steady in the ocean.

With neither sign nor sound of shock,

The waves flowed o'er the Inchcape Rock;
So little they rose, so little they fell,
They did not move the Inchcape Bell.
The pious abbot of Aberbrothock

Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock;
On the waves of the storm it floated and swung,
And louder and louder its warning rung.

When the rock was hid by the tempest swell,
The mariners heard the warning bell,
And then they knew the perilous rock,
And blessed the abbot of Aberbrothock.

The float of the Inchcape Bell was seen
A darker spot on the ocean green :
Sir Ralph the rover walked the deck,
And he fixed his eye on the darker speck.

His eye was on the bell and float,-
Quoth he, "My men, put down the boat,
And row me to the Inchcape Rock,—
I'll plague the priest of Aberbrothock."

The boat was lowered, the boatmen row,
And to the Inchcape Rock they go;
Sir Ralph leant over from the boat,
And cut the bell from off the float.

Down sunk the bell with a gurgling sound;
The bubbles rose, and burst around,—
Quoth he, "Who next comes to the rock
Won't bless the priest of Aberbrothock!"

Sir Ralph the rover sailed away;
He scoured the sea for many a day;
And now grown rich with plundered store,
He steers his way for Scotland's shore.

So thick a haze o'erspread the sky,
They could not see the sun on high ;
The wind had blown a gale all day;
At evening it hath died away.

"Canst hear," said one, "the breakers roar?
For yonder, methinks, should be the shore;
Now where we are I cannot tell,

I wish we heard the Inchcape Bell."

They hear no sound-the swell is strong,
Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along;
Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,-
"Oh, heavens! it is the Inchcape Rock!"

Sir Ralph the rover tore his hair,
And cursed himself in his despair;
And waves rush in on every side,
The ship sinks fast beneath the tide.

SOUTHEY.

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