FOUNDERING OF THE STEAMER 'LONDON.' 239 finds the hearts of all men out. Two hundred and twenty of our countrymen and countrywomen, taken, as it were, at random from amongst us, expecting nothing so little as such a trial, and exposed beforehand to fatigues and dreadful weather such as might break the strongest down, have sent us the lesson over the seas, that 'it is not so terrible to die.' The secret of the effect which this story is producing is, that every feature of it is so intensely simple. It wants no sailor's craft to make out the scenes from beginning to end; little or nothing is left to the imagination. A week ago passengers and crew were with us, and now-they are buried with the stately ship in the Bay of Biscay, or they float upon the wide Atlantic. But we know the interval as if we had witnessed it; and taking all things together, we are aware of no narrative of the sea that has more human interest than that which records the foundering of this stately ship. No writer of fiction will ever invent a picture of more concentrated anguish than that which was real, veritable, and visible eight days ago in the hapless vessel. Who cannot see her with her decks swept, her stern gaping, and the mad sea breaking over and into her at every third billow, as she lay that Thursday morning? Who cannot call up a sigh of pity for the passengers grouped in the saloon, worn out by the storm, and feeling by the lifeless wallow of the ship and the manner of the sailors that the end is coming? And then the captain enters, as helpless now as the little ones who wonder why their mothers are so pale and their fathers so silent; and be sure he bared his brave head before the ladies, and spoke to all in a tender and quiet tone, as he told them that there was no more hope, except from God, and that very soon they would all be before Him. What followed then? We could guess it if we did not know; but it is better to know. There was a great silence, broken only by the waves finishing their work; and then crew and passengers mingled together to die; no ranksno servant or master any more; and some knelt with the clergyman and prayed, some opened the Bible which tells how 'the winds and the waves obey Him;' and others, just as fitly, just as patiently, held hands with their loved ones, and waited meekly for the pang and the change. No screams or fainting, they tell us, among the women-no disgraceful rush after brandy to drug death withal among the men. Very nobly our brothers and sisters took the message of their doom from the good captain; how should they not, being, as many were, stout-hearted squatters, or wives and sons of squatters, accustomed to master their blood, and all of them English? Still it is pleasant to know that this prosperous age has not killed the calm manhood of Englishmen, nor taken from Englishwomen their sweet patience in peril and death. Quietly they gave their souls to God, and when His savage sea had done its mission, we think it did but send them, by a brief anguish, to a better port than that which the good ship 'London' foundered in striving to reach. Daily Telegraph, Jan 19, 1866. 242 Defence of the Bridge against the Tuscan army Description of Auburn Dora Elegy written in a Country Churchyard First of May, The. Fossil Pine-tree, The Foundering of the Steamer 'London in the Bay of Biscay Fox-hunt, The French Peasant's Supper, A Grace Darling |