thought of her father on earth. Alas! they were not far separated! The father was lying but a short distance from his child; he too had sunk down in the drifting snow, after having, in less than an hour, exhausted all the strength of fear, pity, hope, despair, and resignation, that could rise in a father's heart blindly seeking to rescue his only child from death, thinking that one desperate exertion might enable them to perish in each other's arms. There they lay, within a stone's throw of each other, while a huge snow-drift was every moment piling itself up into a more insurmountable barrier between the dying parent and his dying child.

CHRISTOPHER NORTH (JOHN WILSON).

THE COMET OF 1811.

STRANGER of heaven! I bid thee hail!
Shred from the pall of glory riven,
That flashest in celestial gale,

Broad pennon of the King of Heaven!

Art thou the flag of woe and death,

From angel's ensign staff unfurled?
Art thou the standard of his wrath,
Waved o'er a sordid, sinful world?

No; from that pure, pellucid beam,
That erst o'er plains of Bethlehem shone,
No latent evil we can deem,

Bright herald of the eternal throne!

Whate'er portends thy front of fire,
Thy streaming locks so lovely pale-
Or peace to man, or judgments dire,
Stranger of heaven, I bid thee hail!

Where hast thou roamed these thousand years?
Why sought these polar paths again,
From wilderness of glowing spheres,
To fling thy vesture o'er the wain?

And when thou scal'st the Milky Way,
And vanishest from human view,
A thousand worlds shall hail thy ray
Through wilds of yon empyreal blue!

Oh, on thy rapid prow to glide!

To sail the boundless skies with thee,
And plough the twinkling stars aside,
Like foam-bells on a tranquil sea!

As H.M.S.Wasp,' Captain Usherwood, was cruising in the Bight of Benin, near Lagos, on the 27th February, 1845, a strange sail was seen, and Lieutenant Stupart was immediately ordered in pursuit. At about eight o'clock in the evening he came up with her, and found her to be the 'Felicidade,' a Brazilian schooner, fitted for the slave trade, with a slave-deck of loose planks over the cargo, and a crew of twenty-eight men. With the exception of her captain and another man, they were transferred to the Wasp;' and Lieutenant Stupart, with Mr. Palmer, midshipman, and a crew of fifteen English seamen, remained in charge of the prize. On the 1st of March, the boats of the Felicidade,' under Mr. Palmer, captured a second prize, the Echo,' with 430 slaves on board, and a crew of twenty-eight men, leaving Mr. Palmer, with seven English seamen and two Kroomen, on board the 'Felicidade.' Several

of the 'Echo's' crew were also sent on board as prisoners, with their captain. The officer and prize crew were overpowered and murdered, and an unsuccessful attempt made to gain possession of the 'Echo.' The Felicidade' was seen and chased on the 6th March by H.M.S.Star,' Commander Dunlop. When she was boarded, no one was on her deck, the crew being concealed below; and on being found and questioned, they stated the vessel to be the Virginie,' and accounted for their wounds by the falling of a spar; but there were traces of a conflict, and many tokens which proved that English seamen had been on board. She was then sent to Sierra Leone, in charge of Lieutenant Wilson and nine men. Whilst on the passage, during

a heavy squall, the schooner went over, filled and sank, so as only to leave part of her bow-rail above water. When the squall passed, the whole of the crew were found clinging to the bow rail. Some expert divers endeavored to extract provisions from the vessel, but without success; and nothing but death stared them in the face, as the schooner was gradually sinking. Lieutenant Wilson ascertained that there were three common knives among the party, and it was resolved to make a raft of the main-boom and gaff, and such other floating materials as remained above water. These they secured by such ropes as could be cut and unrove from the rigging, and a small quantity of cordage was retained to make good any defects they might sustain by the working of the spars; a small topgallant studding-sail was obtained for a sail; and upon this miserable float the ten persons made sail for the coast of Africa, distant 200 miles, without rudder, oar, compass, provisions, or water. Being almost naked, and washed by every wave, their sufferings were very great. Famished for food and drink, scorched by a burning sun during the day, and chilled with cold during the night, they thus remained twenty days. Delirium and death relieved the raft of part of its load of misery, two blacks being the first to sink under their sufferings. The question naturally suggests itself, How did the survivors support life? Some persons would be almost afraid to put the question, or hear the answer. There is nothing, however, to wound our feelings, but much to admire, in the admirable conduct of Lieutenant Wilson and his men during these melancholy and miserable twenty days. Showers of rain occasionally fell; they caught some water in their little sail, which they drank, and put some into a small keg, that had floated out of the vessel. The sea was almost always breaking over the spars of the raft, which was surrounded by voracious sharks. The famishing sailors actually caught with a bowling-knot a shark, eight feet in length, with their bare hands, and hauled it upon the raft; they killed it, drank the blood, and ate part of the flesh, husbanding the remainder. In this way three other sharks were taken, and upon these sharks the poor fellows managed to prolong their lives till picked up (in sight of land) in what may be termed the very zero of living misery. Lieutenant Wilson and four seamen survived, and recovered their strength. Order and discipline were maintained upon the raft; fortitude, fore

thought, a reliance upon Divine Providence, and good conduct, enabled these Englishmen to surmount such hor le sufferings, while the Kroomen and Portuguese sank under them. -KINGSTON.

THE OWL.

In the hollow tree in the gray old tower,
The spectral owl doth dwell;

Dull, hated, despised in the sunshine-h
But at dusk-he's abroad and well:

Not a bird of the forest e'er mates with him;
All mock him outright by day;

But at night, when the woods grow still and dim,
The boldest will shrink away;

Oh, when the night falls, and roosts the fowl,
Then, then is the reign of the horned owl!

And the owl hath a bride who is fond and bold,
And loveth the wood's deep gloom;

And with eyes like the shine of the moonshine cold
She awaiteth her ghastly groom!

Not a feather she moves, not a carol she sings,
As she waits in her tree so still;

But when her heart heareth his flapping wings,
She hoots out her welcome shrill!

Oh, when the moon shines, and the dogs do howl,
Then, then is the cry of the horned owl!

Mourn not for the owl nor his gloomy plight!
The owl hath his share of good:

If a prisoner be he in the broad daylight,
He is lord in the dark green wood!

Nor lonely the bird, nor his ghastly mate;
They are each unto each a pride-

Thrice fonder, perhaps, since a strange dark fate
Hath rent them from all beside!

So when the night falls, and dogs do howl,
Sing Ho! for the reign of the horned owl!

We know not alway who are kings by day,
But the king of the night is the bold brown owl.
BARRY CORNWALL (B. F. PROCter).

GOLD LEAF.

Of all the substances on which man exercises his manufacturing ingenuity, gold is perhaps that which admits of being brought to the most extraordinary degree of fineness. Many of the productions in this department of industry ate really "curiosities." Is not a solid, unbroken, uniform sheet of

gold, less than one five-hundredth part the thickness of a sheet of ordinary printing paper, a curiosity; is it not a curiosity to know that one ounce of gold may be made to cover the floor of an ordinary sitting-room; that one grain of gold will gild thirty coat buttons; and that the covering of gold upon gold lace is very far thinner than even leaf gold? Let us glance a little at these remarkable productions.

And first for gold-leaf and the gold-beating processes whereby it is produced. Gold-leaf, in strictness, it certainly is not: for it is found that a minute percentage of silver and of copper is necessary to give the gold a proper malleable quality-a percentage of perhaps one in seventy or eighty. The refiner manages this alloy, and brings the costly product to a certain stage of completion; he melts the gold and the cheaper alloys in a black-lead crucible; he pours the molten metal into an ingot mould, six or eight inches long; he removes the solidified and cooled ingot from its mould, and passes it repeatedly between two steel rollers until it assumes the thickness of a ribbon; and this ribbon, about one eight-hundredth of an inch in thickness, and presenting a surface of about five hundred square inches to an ounce, passes next into the hands of the gold-beater.

The working tools, the processes, and the products of a goldbeater, are all remarkable. That puzzling material, "goldbeaters' skin," is an indispensable aid to him: it is a membrane of extreme thinness and delicacy, but yet tough and strong, procured from the intestines of the ox; eight hundred pieces of this skin, four inches square, constitute a packet with which the gold-beater labors; and thus he proceeds-A hundred and fifty bits of ribbon-gold, an inch square, are interleaved with as many vellum leaves four inches square; they are beaten for a long time with a ponderous hammer on a smooth marble slab, until the gold has thinned and expanded to the size of the vellum. How the workman manages so as to beat all the pieces equally, and yet beat none into holes, he alone can answer it is one of the mysteries of his craft. The gold is liberated from its vellum prison, and each piece cut into four: the hundred and fifty have thus become six hundred, and these are interleaved with six hundred pieces of gold-beaters' skin, which are then packed into a compact mass. Another beating then takes place--more careful, more delicate, more precise