an institution for the sailor as the landsman; it should bring him as sweet repose. He may sail his ships, or prepare for the approaching tempest, but whale on the Sabbath-never. Compel him to anything beyond the sailing or the safety of the ship, and you break his Sabbath. Unnecessarily leave port on the Sabbath, and he is compelled to unnecessary work, and is robbed of his day of rest. him on the "look-out," except in case of distress, and you break in upon holy time. The time is his own-or rather it is God's. He is at liberty to use it neither for himself nor for others, only as calls for necessity or mercy demand his attention or aid.

Put

But the soul of the sailor most requires a Sabbath. Should he not improve it, it would only increase the necessity of its observance. Nor would such a fact afford the least ground for depriving him of the day. The fact, that he has not been allowed to observe it, or has not chosen to observe it, if allowed, is a prominent reason among many, why sailors, as a class, are so wanting in principle, and so abandoned in practice. From many causes scamen are notoriously reckless and licentious. Their songs, their conversation, their very walk, declare the same truth. The passions he indulged on shore, burn within him far out on the ocean, and kindle into fierce flame in anticipation, at the next port, of renewed liberty and indulgence. But let the Sabbath be proclaimed on board; let masters and officers be foremost in its observance; let there be quiet and rest, reading and retirement; or let it be merely a day of cessation from work, and let him realise that work is not allowed, and why, and who can doubt the restraining effect of such a fact upon his mind. Though he "fears not God," and "restrains prayer," the Sabbath will operate as a powerful check upon his prevailing propensities. The tide of lust will be retarded; the growth of evil will temporarily receive a check, which in its frequent return may stint, and perhaps in the end kill, the monster passion within him. Better thoughts, and of the future, would necessarily come up in his mind, perhaps to be suppressed; but up they would come again, and while they found a place there would be light in the dark chambers of his soul. This might go out with the setting sun; but the sun of successive Sabbaths would at least break up the midnight of his soul; perhaps bring there twilight and increasing day. But if not made a better man, the outward observance of the Sabbath might keep him from becoming worse. At all events, it would tend to retard his downward course to ruin.

But seamen are not all thoughtless or vicious. To some, the return of the holy day brings up tender associations of earlier days. Perhaps they used to break it, till at length they fled from it. Still, a reverence for it clings to them, and they cannot, without a struggle, shake off its obligations. And how does the recurrence of the day remind them of the Sabbath bell, the faithful sermon, the praying mother, the heedless, prayerless son. If there be no Sabbath whither they have fled from the sanctuary and the closet of a praying mother, these feelings will subside; scenes at first vivid and painful, grow indistinct and powerless, till at length the habitual Sabbath-breaker cares for neither sanctuary nor the day of rest.

How such seamen need the Sabbath! Its observance at sea would, as it were, shut them in to its hallowed influence. They could not escape its reach. It would throw its light so directly across their path, that blindness itself could hardly fail of discovering the pit-falls at their feet, and enemies in ambush along their track. In how many such minds would a train of reflection be awakened, that, leading them on through conviction, alarm, despair, repentance, supplication, and faith, would terminate in conversion and eternal life. Such would be the tendency on such minds of a Sabbath at sea. How dangerous to deny the sailor his day of rest.

There are those, too, at sea, who love the Sabbath. If the rules of the ship require them to break it, what a conflict between fear of man and fear of God! If conscience yields, what a loss of peace, what a shock to their religious firmness! How devotion languishes, as breach of religious principle succeeds breach, and defeat treads upon the heels of weakness! How shame lurks in the heart, and mantles the check of the self-reproaching, Sabbath-breaking disciple! Joy has long since left his troubled spirit. Hope is flickering on the neglected altar, conscience is fleeing before fear, while faith and love, awaiting the issue of the conflict, seem on the wing for flight. Perhaps he will conquer: if so, he will bear the reproach, the scourging, the hunger, the imprisonment that adherence to principle may cost him, but break the Lord's Sabbath he will not. His fall has humbled him, his conflict has strengthened him. But how cruel the necessity that caused him to stumble; how criminal the law that perilled his Christian hope! How such a sailor (and there are such) needs the retirement and devotion of the Sabbath! Give it to him, and he would find a secret place of prayer, though the sneer, or the merriment, or the profanities of his fellows should keep him within the peaceful enclosure of his own bosom. Make the Sabbath the law of the ship, and he will soon have companions in its observance. Before the Voyage is closed, the Bethel flag will, undoubtedly, float over a quiet deck and a praying band, both in cabin and forecastle.

Seamen, too, should have all their Sabbaths. What a mockery to meet for prayer, and for the reading of a sermon, with a man aloft watching for whales, to break up the devout assembly! What trifling with the Sabbath, and with sacred things! One Sabbath praying God to deliver them from temptation and from sin; the next, or in the afternoon of the same day, shouting, rowing, lancing, cutting in and boiling whale! Serving God when they cannot serve Mammon-serving Mammon whenever they can! Alas! for religion, when subjected to such contempt! Alas! for the poor sailor, whose only Sabbath is such a mockery! Multiply opportunities, and such men would banish the Sabbath from the world. They would do more than the infidel-more than the professed violator of the sacred day--to rob land and sea of rest and heaven.-Friend.

REID'S LAW OF STORMS.

(Continued from page 104.)

When we come to investigate more closely the second of the two motions of a storm, namely, its progressive motion or track across the deep, the interest of the subject increases still further. In some quarters of the globe great numbers of gales and storms have now been tracked for more than 2,000 miles, and every particular relating to their progress and direction has been accurately noted. Generally, as we have stated, in tropical latitudes, storms are found to move from east to west up to a certain point, and then to recurve. Their tracks or orbits, too, are found to be tolerably constant, although the investigations on this head have not been hitherto pushed with equal zeal in all parts of the world. The best known sea, fortunately, for our Liverpool traffic, is the North Atlantic, and the frontispiece to the volume before us is a hurricane-chart, showing the tracks of some eighteen or twenty well-known storms over these waters. These whirlwinds appear to take their origin somewhere in the lowest degrees of north latitude, and about west longitude forty, from which point they move westward, inclining to the north, over the Caribbean Sea, pouring their full force upon our luckless West Indian plantations. Still moving west, they sweep the southeastern coast of the United States, occasionally, though not often, penetrating inland, and making their return curves to the east, somewhere about Cape Hatteras, as was the case with the West Jersey tornado, described in our paper a few weeks since, and which, at Cape May, was found blowing furiously eastward. From Cape Hatteras they blow directly in the teeth of our Halifax-bound vessels, or sometimes take a northerly sweep over Newfoundland or Labrador. The Bay of Bengal storms, too, have been most laboriously tracked and illustrated, as have also, to some extent, the typhoons of the China Seas. In prosecuting this latter branch of inquiry, Mr. Piddington, a most able and successful labourer in this field of science, betook himself to the records of the East India Company, in order to investigate the logs of Indiamen in days past, and thus test a modern theory by the undesigned testimonies of a preceding generation. One of his extracts ought to carry unusual interest in the reader's eye. It comprises the logs, during a storm in the Chinese Seas in 1803, of the Hon. Company's ships, "Warley," "Royal George," "Bombay Castle," "Alfred," "Coutts," "Ganges," and "Earl Camden"-being the identical vessels which, four months later, under the broad pennant of Commodore Dance, in the "Earl Camden," engaged and repulsed Admiral Linois with the " Marengo,' ," "Belle Poule," "Sémillante,' "Berceau," and "Aventurier." The stormtracks of the East Atlantic have been but very imperfectly ascertained, though there is reason to suppose that the Madeira gales do not differ, except in degree of force, from those of Bermuda. The characteristics of the Arabian Sea, too, in this respect have yet to be established, but, as special attention to this subject is now enforced on board the mail steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, our information may be speedily expected to improve. The neighbourhood of the Adaman Islands seems to be a favourite spot for the generation of these whirlstorms, whence they traverse the Bay of Bengal and burst upon the south-east coast of India, but, being checked by the high line of the eastern Ghauts, they find an issue by Salem across the Coimbatoire plains, and escape through the Palagatchery Pass into the Arabian Sea in the exact direction of the Laccadives.

The practical application of all these discoveries to the science of navigation, though one of the principal objects of the publication now under notice, is obviously a branch of the subject on which we can touch but lightly. The value, however, of the knowledge thus communicated can scarcely be set at too high a price. By acquainting himself with the law which regulates the

revolution of a whirlstorm, the commander of a vessel may sail away from its centre. By observing how the wind begins to veer, he can ascertain exactly into what point of a circular storm he is falling, and can take his measures accordingly. Rules are even supplied for the proper nautical evolutions, under certain circumstances, and Mr. Piddington, to whose successful researches we have before alluded, has published a volume, entitled-" The Sailors' Hornbook of the Law of Storms in all parts of the World." A general knowledge of the progressive motion of storms will secure even still further immunities, as the tempest can occasionally be escaped by judicious movements, like a shower of rain in a morning's walk. For this purpose, it is necessary, of course, to obtain prognostics, which are supplied in the first place by the barometer, and, in the next place, by careful observations of the swell. More than one unhappy voyager, after leaving Dover without a breath of air apparently stirring, has found himself tossed off his legs before reaching Calais, and has had to glean his comfort from the explanation of the captain, that "the sea often makes before the wind." It does so, however, in sober reality, the undulations being propelled in certain directions from the circumference of the coming whirlstorm according to presumed rules, which we could hardly express without employing some very hard words. But the quarter from which the tempest is approaching can be at least reasonably conjectured from this swell, which is an almost invariable harbinger of the storm itself.

"I was in Bermuda," says Colonel Reid, "when the hurricane of 1839 occurred, and distinctly heard the sea breaking loudly against the south shores on the morning of the 9th of September, full three days before the storm reached the islands. At that time the hurricane was still within the tropic, and distant ten degrees of latitude. As the storm approached the swell increased, breaking against the southern shores with louder roar and greater grandeur, until the evening of the 12th, when the whirlwind storm reached the Bermudas and set in there. When it had passed over, the southern shore became calm, and the northern reefs in their turn presented a white line of surge." Sometimes a ship can venture on crossing the front of a storm, at other times it can avoid overtaking it by slackening sail or changing its course, and at all times it can ascertain its position relatively to the storm's centre. The earliest and surest warnings are given by the barometer. An admirable story is told of the use to which these prognostics and their deductions were once turned in the China Seas by Captain Hall, in the ship "Black Nymph." He was three or four days' sail from Macao, when he noticed, that though the weather was remarkably fine, his barometer was continually falling. Incredulous at first, he at length, when the downward tendency of the mercurial column was put beyond question, made his ship all snug for a storm, to the great surprise of his crew, who were smartening up things for harbour. His next step was to watch very carefully for the first breath of the typhoon, which in due course made itself felt, and he then betook himself to calculate his position according to such scientific deductions as we have been describing. The result was a conclusion that the ship must be on the western and southern verge of the storm, and her course was shaped accordingly, with the following consequences:

"The wind rapidly increased in violence, but I was pleased to see it veering to the N.W., as it convinced me I had put the ship on the right tack— viz., the starboard, standing, of course, to S. W. For five hours it blew with great violence, but the ship being well prepared rode comparatively easy. The barometer was now very low, the wind about W.N.W., the centre of the storm passing doubtless to our right. Thinking it a pity, as the gale sensibly decreased, to lie so far out of our course, I wore to N.W., and made sail, but in less than two hours heavy gusts came on and the barometer began to fall. I now thought we were approaching the storm again, and doubtless the theory is not mere speculation. I wore again to the S.E., and

to show more clearly how great a difference a very short distance nearer to or farther from these storms makes, the weather rapidly improved.

When we arrived at Hongkong, two or three days afterwards, we found they had had a gale, and its centre lay between the ship and Hongkong, through which centre I might have had the pleasure of passing, if, regardless of the indications of the barometer, and the results of the scientific comparison of the data of other storms, I had been eager merely to keep on the tack nearest my course."

Other striking instances of successful calculation are given by Colonel Reid. In 1839, Mr. Redfield wrote to him from New York, stating his conclusion that the September gale of that year, to which we have alluded above, must have passed over Bermuda, and so correct was the estimate, that the centre of the storm touched the westernmost part of the island. On the occasion of the same storm a vessel full of passengers had left Bermuda for New York two days before the gale set in. Of course the most painful apprehensions were entertained by the relatives of those on board, but Colonel Reid betook himself to his charts, laid down the course and distance of the vessel, calculated the track of the storm, and pronounced that, though within its circuit, she would be beyond danger-results which proved literally true. Six years later, that is, in October, 1845, Mr. Redfield wrote again from New York, expressing his fears that the Halifax packet would encounter one of two specified gales which had taken a more easterly course than usual. She did so, and just after her arrival came the other gale, on the east side of the Bermudas. Some people may perhaps think such calculations as remarkable as those of an astronomer.

We have been treating almost wholly of tropical latitudes, for it is in these that such storms most usually arise. But the winds which occur in extratropical latitudes, termed the "Variables," are considered by Colonel Reid to admit of reduction to certain laws, by pushing to their legitimate conclusions the discoveries established in equatorial regions. On this point, however, we have not space to enter; but we have already, we trust, made it evident how far the dominion of science may be extended over these hitherto intractable operations of nature. One thing which will not fail to strike most forcibly the attentive reader is the extraordinary combination of seamanship, intrepidity, sang froid, and resolution, which is disclosed by the various logs of the merchantmen collated and published in these researches. They were intended to convey nothing but the details of the storm, but they unintentionally discover traits of national character and individual ability which are enough to induce very serious doubts whether the merchant service may not recently have been somewhat too lightly spoken of. We must conclude with observing, that it is indispensable to the progress of this wonderful and important science that merchant seamen should unhesitatingly publish to the world the results of their experience, on which point we allow one of themselves, Captain Freeman, of the "Sea," to address the others, for we are sure we could find no better language :—

"In point of ascertaining the extent of hurricanes in the Atlantic,—that must rest with scamen, and it might soon be decided if they would only give the subject the attention it deserves, and communicate their observations. Many, perhaps, feel a backwardness in writing anything that will appear before the public, for various reasons, and one no doubt often is, that they feel conscious they have no great ability. To be plain, they do not, in many instances, feel competent to pen their thoughts in a way satisfactory even to themselves. Neither can I. But if any man chooses to ridicule my want of learning or ability let him do so. My only answer is, had he been situated as I have (at sea since I was twelve years of age), perhaps he would not have been a greater proficient in learning than myself. Therefore I shall not refrain because I am not talented; and I hope I shall be careful not to be presumptuous or dogmatical when showing my opinion."