I may refer also to the magnanimous contest between Captain Baker, of the Drake, and his officers and men, each insisting on being the last to make his way from the ship to a rock (p. 231), and which ended in Captain Baker refusing to stir until he had seen every man clear of the wreck.  A second struggle for precedency in glorious self-devotion took place, when the same commander declared, that all his crew should pass from the rock to the mainland, by help of a line, before he himself would consult his own safety, (p. 234.) The rope broke, and the last means of communication between the rock and the shore was severed, while the captain of the Drake and three of his companions were waiting their turn to escape.  They met their fate with intrepid composure, (p. 235.) Lieutenant Smith, of the Magpie, offered another memorable example, when his schooner was upset in a squall, and he took to his boat with seven men.  The boat capsized, and while the struggling crew were endeavouring to right her, they were attacked by sharks.  The lieutenant himself had both his legs bitten off; but when his body was convulsed with agony, his mind retained and exercised all its energies, and his last words were expressive of dying consideration for others.  ‘Tell the admiral, if you survive,’ said he, to a lad named Wilson, ’that my men have done their duty, and that no blame is attached to them.  I have but one favour to ask, and that is, that he will promote Meldrum to be a gunner,’ (p. 270.) And richly did Meldrum deserve the distinction.  When all in the boat had perished but himself and another, a brig hove in sight, but did not seem to notice the speck on the ocean.  Meldrum sprang overboard, and swam towards the ship, and was thus the means of saving his companion’s life as well as his own.

In a volume like this, ‘the dangers of the seas’ come before the reader in such rapid succession, that he has scarcely time to think of the many other awful perils and sufferings, besides those of wind and storm, which put the mariner’s fortitude to the test.  The narratives in pages 2, 3, 9, 36, 69, 70, 113, 115, present to view the horrors of a ship on fire.

In pages 12, 169, 171, 196, 226, 242, we learn something of the terrible consequences of being exposed to fogs and mist, ice and snow.  In page 27, we have a vivid picture of a combination of these terrors; and in pages 217, 268, the most appalling of all the dangers a sailor has to encounter is brought in view.

We will hope that the rigours and perils of the blockade system, which occasioned so fearful a loss of life at different periods of the late war, but especially in the disastrous year 1811, are at end for ever.  From page 154 to 159, and from 168 to 186, the accounts of the loss of life in the Baltic and North Seas alone occur in fearful succession; and the magnanimity with which hundreds, nay, thousands of our bravest officers and men met death on that most perilous of all services,