DORA.  “Dear me! how very sudden; what an awful scene it must have been, so many poor creatures hurried, with scarcely a moment’s warning or time to cry for mercy, into the presence of their Creator!  Were the bodies all washed ashore?  Oh! what a mourning and lamentation there must have been at Spithead, when the fatal truth was borne to their sorrowing friends.”

MR. WILTON.  “They were not all washed ashore, Dora, for the good old Admiral Kempenfeldt was never found.  Vast portions of the wreck have been recovered, and many of her stores; but they are comparatively worthless when we think of the widows and orphans left to pine in poverty and wretchedness.”

EMMA.  “Cowper has written some touching-lines on this awful calamity, with which we shall wind up the subject:—­

  “’Toll for the brave! 
    The brave that are no more! 
  All sunk beneath the wave,
    Fast by their native shore!

  “’Eight hundred of the brave,
    Whose courage well was tried,
  Had made the vessel heel,
    And laid her on her side.

  “’A land breeze shook the shrouds,
    And she was overset;
  Down went the Royal George,
    With all her crew complete.

  “’Toll for the brave! 
    Brave Kempenfeldt is gone;
  His last sea-fight is fought: 
    His work of glory done.

  “’It was not in the battle;
    No tempest gave the shock;
  She sprang no fatal leak;
    She ran upon no rock.

  “’His sword was in its sheath
    His fingers held the pen,
  When Kempenfeldt went down,
    With twice four hundred men!

  “’Weigh the vessel up,
      Once dreaded by our foes! 
    And mingle with our cup
      The tear that England owes.

  “’Her timbers yet are sound,
      And she may float again,
    Full charged with England’s thunder,
      And plough the distant main.

  “’But Kempenfeldt is gone,
      His victories are o’er;
    And he and his eight hundred
      Shall plough the main no more!”

MRS. WILTON.  “I fear we are prolonging this evening’s discussion beyond the customary bounds; but I should not be satisfied to quit the Channel without a peep at rocky Eddystone.”

GEORGE.  “Mamma is very anxious to see the Lighthouse, and so am I. It appears to me a most wonderful building, standing as it does, surrounded by foaming waves, and in constant danger from winds and storms.  Who knows anything about it?”

EMMA.  “I do! the Eddystone Lighthouse is built on a rock in the Channel, about fifteen miles south-south-west from the citadel of Plymouth.  It is, as George remarked, exposed to winds and waves, for the heavy swells from the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean send the waves breaking over the rock with prodigious fury.  The first Lighthouse erected on these rocks was the work of a gentleman named Winstanley;