페이지 이미지
PDF
ePub

her masts. The sea rose above the main deck, sweeping over it at every surge. They made every exertion that courage could prompt, or hardihood endure; but so fearful were the wind and cold, that the stoutest man was not able to strike more than two blows, in cutting away the mast, without being relieved by another.

The wretched people thronged together upon the quarter-deck, which was crowded almost to suffocation. They were exhausted with toil and suffering, and could obtain neither provisions nor fresh water; they were all covered by the deep sea, when the vessel became a wreck. But, unfortunately, the crew got access to ardent spirits, and many of them drank to intoxication. Insubordination, mutiny, and madness ensued. The officers remained clear minded, but lost all authority over the crew, who raved about them.

A more frightful scene can scarcely be imagined-the dark sky, the raging storm, the waves breaking wildly over the rocks, and threatening every moment to swallow up the broken vessel, and the half frozen beings who maintained their icy hold on life, lost to reason and to duty, or fighting fiercely with each other. Some lay in disgusting stupidity; others, with fiery faces, blasphemed God. Some in temporary delirium, fancied themselves in palaces surrounded by luxury, and brutally abused the servants, who, they supposed, refused to do their biddings. Others there were who, amid the beating of that pitiless tempest, believed themselves in the home that they never more must see; and with hollow, reproachful voices, besought bread, and wondered why water was withheld from them by the hands that were most dear. A few whose worst passions were quickened by alcohol to a fiend-like fury, assaulted or wounded those who came in their way, making shrieks of defiance and their curses heard above the roar of the storm. Intemperance never displayed itself in more distressing attitudes.

At length death began his work. The miserable creatures fell dead every hour upon the deck, being frozen stiff and hard. Each corpse as it became breathless, was laid upon the heap of dead, that more space might be left for the survivors. Those who drank most freely, were the first to perish.

On the third day of these horrors, the inhabitants of Plymouth, after making many ineffectual attempts, reached the wreck, not without danger. What a melancholy spectacle! Lifeless bodies, stiffened in every form that suffering could devise. Many lay in a vast pile; others sat with their heads reclining on their knees; others grasping the ice-covered ropes; some in a posture of defence, like the dying gladiator; others with hands held up to heaven, as if deprecating their fate.

Orders were given to search earnestly for every mark or sign of life. One boy was distinguished, amid the mass of dead, only by the trembling of one of his eyelids.

The poor survivors were kindly received into the houses of the people of Plymouth, and every effort used for their restoration. The captain and lieutenant, and a few others who had abstained from the use of ardent spirits, survived. The remainder were buried, some in separate

graves, and others in a large pit, whose hollow is still to be seen on the south-west side of the burial-ground at Plymouth.

The funeral obsequies were most solemn. When the clergyman, who was to perform the last service, first entered, and saw more than seventy dead bodies, some fixing upon him their stony eyes, and others with faces stiffened into the horrible expression of their last mortal agony, he was so affected as to faint.

Some were brought on shore alive, and received every attention, but survived only a short time. Others were restored, after long sickness. but with their limbs so injured by the frost, as to become cripples for life.

In a village, at some distance from Plymouth, a widowed mother, with her daughter, were constantly attending a couch, on which lay a sufferer. It was the boy whose trembling eyelid attracted the notice of pity, as he lay among the dead.

"Mother," he said, in a feeble tone, "God bless you for having taught me to avoid ardent spirits; it was this that saved me. After those around me grew intoxicated, I had enough to do to protect myself from them. Some attacked, and dared me to fight; others pressed the poisonous draught to my lips, and bade me drink. My lips and throat were parched with thirst; but I knew, if I drank with them, I must lose my reason as they did, and perhaps blaspheme my Maker.

"One by one they died-these poor infuriated wretches;-their shrieks and groans still seem to ring in my ears. It was in vain that the captain and other officers, and a few good men, warned them of what would ensue, if they thus continued to drink, and tried every method in their power to restore them to order. They still fed upon the intoxicating liquor; they grew delirious; they died in heaps.

"Dear mother, our sufferings from hunger and cold you cannot imagine. After my feet were frozen, but before I lost the use of my hands, I discovered a box among fragments of the wreck, far under water. I toiled with a rope to drag it up; but my strength was not sufficient. A comrade, who was still able to move a little, assisted me. At length it came within our reach. We hoped that it might contain_bread, and took courage; uniting our strength, we burst it open. It contained only a few bottles of olive oil; yet we gave God thanks, for we found that, by occasionally moistening our lips, and swallowing a little, it allayed the knawing, burning pain in the stomach. Then my comrade died, and I laid beside him as one dead, surrounded by corpses.

"Presently, the violence of the tempest, which had so long raged, subsided, and I heard quick footsteps and strange voices amid the wreck where we lay. They were the blessed people of Plymouth, who had dared every danger to save us. They lifted in their arms, and wrapped in blankets all who could speak; then they earnestly sought all who could move, but every drunkard was among the dead; and I was so exhausted with toil, and suffering, and cold, that I could not stretch a hand to my deliverers. They passed me again and again.

66

2

They carried the living to the boat. I feared that I was left behind. Then I prayed earnestly in my heart, O Lord, for the sake of my widowed mother, for the sake of my dearest sister, save me!'

"Methought the last man had gone, and I besought the Redeemer to receive my spirit. But I felt a warm breath on my face; I strained every nerve my whole soul strove and shuddered within me. Still my body was immoveable as marble. Then a loud voice said, 'Come back, and help me out with this poor lad; one of his eyelids trembles— he lives.' O the music of that sweet voice to me! The trembling eyelid, the prayer to God, and your lessons of temperance, my mother, saved me.

Then the loving sister embraced him with tears, and the mother said, "Praise be to Him, who hath spared my son to be the comfort of my age!"

YOUNG WASHINGTON.

At the time of the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the woods of Virginia sheltered the youthful George Washington, the son of a widow. Born by the side of the Potomac, beneath the roof of a Westmoreland farmer, almost from infancy his lot had been the lot of an orphan. No academy had welcomed him to its shades, no college crowned him with its honours: to read, to write, to cipher-these had been his degrees in knowledge. And now, at sixteen years of age, in quest of an honest maintenance, encountering intolerable toil, cheered onward by being able to write to a school-boy friend,—“ Dear Richard, a doubloon is my constant gain every day, and sometimes six pistoles;"-himself his own cook, having no spit but a forked stick, no plate but a large chip; roaming over spurs of the Alleghanies, and along the banks of the Shenandoah ;-alive to nature, and sometimes spending the best of the day in admiring the trees and the richness of the land ;-among skin-clad savages, with their scalps and rattles, or uncouth emigrants, that would never speak English ;--rarely sleeping in a bed ;-holding a bear skin a splendid couch;-glad of a resting place for the night upon a little hay, straw, or fodder; and often camping in the forest, where the place nearest the fire was a happy luxury. This stripling surveyor in the woods, with no companion but his unlettered associates, and no implements of science but his compass and chain, contrasted strongly with the imperial magnificence of the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. And yet God had selected, not Kaunitz nor Newcastle, not a monarch of the house of Hapsburg nor of Hanover, but the Virginia stripling, to give an impulse to human affairs; and, as far as events can depend on an individual, had placed the rights and the destinies of countless millions, in the keeping of the widow's son,

THE EYE OF GOD.—A candle wakes some men, as well as a noise. The eye of the Lord works upon a good soul, as much as his hand; and the godly man is as much affected with the consideration-the Lord sees me, as with this, the Lord

strike me.-Donne.

HISTORICAL SKETCHES.

NO. III.-COPENHAGEN.

[By the Rev. E. E. ADAMS, A. M., Seamen's Chaplain, Cronstadt.]

Thorwaltzen is of Icelandic extraction, and a native of Copenhagen. His name is conspicuous amongst the artists of the present age. He has resided twenty years in Italy, where he had the models of antiquity before his eye, as well as the chaste samples of the great Canova. His genius luxuriated in those halls, where mind had left its fairest creations. His copy of Venus de Medicis, is pronounced by those who have compared it with the original, a specimen of no common execution. Indeed it is admired as second to no other copy.

This artist is now nearly eighty years of age; and yet his works are rapidly multiplying. The hand that has for half a century, given life to the unconscious marble, moves yet at the bidding of an unclouded genius. The Studium still bears witness to his industry, and young artists sigh for the mantle he must soon resign.

The Museum of Northern antiquities is an object of much interest, as it contains specimens of sarcophagi, with the ashes of the ancient dead; implements of husbandry and war; ornaments, and various coins, excavated from the tumuli, which abound in Zealand, as also many Icelandic antiquities, illustrative of the national and social character of the ancient inhabitants of that island.

The Picture Gallery is one of the most extensive on the continent, containing many rich specimens from artists of a former age; and also of landscape painting, by modern Danish artists. Many of the Norwegean and Swedish winter scenes, reminded me of my own New England, where the Author of nature has for ages

Poured the waters from his hollow hand,

And notched the centuries in the eternal rocks!

Jonah preaching to the Ninevites, and Jesus blessing little children, by Rosa, are amongst the best of the collection. Indeed the former is considered, by competent judges, as the master-piece of its great author. The earnestness of the prophet, heightened by penitence for his recent infidelity-gratitude for his miraculous preservation-and resolution to live, in future, for the pleasure of Him, whose divine commission he bears, is strikingly pourtrayed in his features and posture, the king is bowing to the earth,- he forgets his throne, and his royal pageantry, and bends with the humility of a child before the awful messenger of God. The members of the royal family kneel around their king, and with streaming eyes, and trembling hands lifted heavenward, pray that the bolt of wrath may not fall; that their city may not at once, and for ever, be blotted from the world.

[ocr errors]

There are several statues in and about the city. One in the market place, an equestrian statue of Christian v. in bronze. His steed is trampling upon a most pitiable and hideous mortal, personating Heresy." This is the work of an indifferent French artist; of whom Belzoni, the Italian traveller, said, "He must have been a clever fellow, for all the animation I can discover about his statue, is in the tail of the horse."

Near the harbour, in the centre of an octagon, formed by four palaces, and as many intervening dwellings and streets, is an equestrian statue of Frederick v. This portion of the city, and the statue of the king who designed it, are indicative of no small degree of

taste.

A beautiful monument in the suburbs of the city towards the country, commemorates the honour of Christian VII. for proclaiming liberty to the Danish peasantry in 1793.

Copenhagen is not destitute of benevolent institutions. It has one hospital in which 1200 patients are accommodated. This is supported in part by the crown, and partly by the voluntary contributions of the people. There are also two asylums, one for deaf mutes, containing fifty scholars, and one for blind children, containing 26 scholars. These children are taught to spin and knit; to reckon by wooden or pasteboard figures, and to sing. The readiness with which some of them answered questions proposed by the Rev. Mr. Baird, my fellow-traveller, was surprising. A little boy played most sweetly on the violin, whilst the girls sang to his numbers. It was a sacred tune, one which I had often heard by my own native hearth. We left the asylum, with a deep sympathy for the young unfortunate inmates, but yet consoled with the reflection, that the eye of benevolence had not passed them by, and that although deprived of sight, they could enjoy and occasion happiness. How many in the world who have not to lament the deprivation of either of the senses, yet abuse their nature by the vilest practices, gazing upon scenes which cannot with safety be witnessed; listening to discourse which stains the soul; tasting pleasant things in which lurks the poison of death. To be prepared for a better world, our physical as well as moral nature must be educated. If the soul would converse with the glorious objects of the heavenly state through a perfect medium, it must begin to purify that medium on earth. It will not do to leave the body entirely to the process of the resurrection. The body will sympathise with the character of the soul. If the latter be pure, its tendency will be to perfect the former.

How, then, ought we to seek for the perfection of that world, where soul and body will be pure and glorious, where all blindness will be gone, and all weakness cease, where every power of the whole being will be in vigorous and delightful exercise for ever!

The Prison, in Copenhagen, is an object of painful curiosity. The number of its inmates is 600, of which 150 are females! They are well fed, and clothed, but kept under rigid discipline. Some are in dungeons where not a ray steals upon the darkness, and not a voice relieves the tedium of life. Others occupy cells in couples, where day

« 이전계속 »