This Elizabeth stands, nevertheless, with a rare glory in history, alone in more than one way. Happiness and misery, love and hate, victories and the scaffold; the utmost splendor of noon-day, the deepest darkness of night; and amid all these a will, an intellect, which knew how to govern, to govern itself as well as others-an extraordinary human life! Beside this stands Queen Victoria, as a sunbright idyl. We went into the apartments of the castle; I shall not say much of their mag pomp and festivity? No! but more and more is it the home of human virtues, both public and private. People do not talk of the pleasures of the royal pair, but they speak of their excellent schools for poor children, and their excellent institutions for old servants. People do not build inquisitive towers in the enchanting neighborhood of Virginia Water, that they may spy out the secret pleasures of royalty, but they drive thither to see the beautiful farms | which Prince Albert has designed, where happy human beings live and children play. We drove through avenues three En-nificence or of their paintings. I was glish miles long on each side the park, composed of beautiful trees, elms and beeches. The view of the castle the whole way, with its round tower and fluttering banner, is really magnificent. We drove through the little town of Windsor, and then up to the castle. We first visited the chapel, a beautiful antique building, which powerfully moves the excited mind to devotion, and then, while waiting for admission into the castle, walked to and fro upon the terrace-Queen Elizabeth's work and place of exercise; in truth, a promenade fit for a proud queenly spirit. The view from this point is so extensive and free that one seems to behold half the globe at one's feet. Through the vast expanse of meadow, the royal Thames meanders, gleaming forth like silver, while the spires of Eton College raise themselves commandingly above a multitude of lesser towers, country churches, villages, and towns, till at length, in the blue distance the horizon incloses the rich and immense landscape in a half-circle. How Queen Elizabeth must have felt as she gazed on this picture! Elizabeth Tudor! I love her not, for she was not a noble woman, however grand she might be as a sovereign; but I love her picture in history, love it for the contrasts which it presents. The proud queen on the terrace at Windsor, with half the world at her feet; and then later, during the last days of her life, heartbroken by the treachery of Essex and his death on the scaffold, sitting silent, with eyes riveted on one spot, the finger pressed upon the closed lips, refusing medicine, wishing for death, deaf to all words, excepting those of prayer. How unlike are the pictures! I think that I love her best in the last, because she died with a yet warm heart. more struck with what I saw in Warwick Castle; besides, as the queen was now residing at Windsor, the most beautiful rooms and the best pictures were not shown. Of the latter, none made a deeper impression on my memory than the excellent portraits of Pope Pius VII., and of Cardinal Gonsalvi, perhaps in some degree from the remarkable contrast, in form and character, which these presented with those of the English statesmen, on the opposite side of the gallery. The most refined and the highest degree of intellectual character is expressed in these beautiful Italian forms, speaks in their penetrating eyes, seems to exist in the very touch of the tips of their fingers; one might say that the noblest Italian wine flowed in their veins. Will Queen Victoria drive out to-day? we inquired from some of the castle attendants. No one could say positively; the queen had gone out on horseback several times last week, perhaps also to-day she might ride out in the afternoon. We had already been two hours at Windsor, it was now past three in the afternoon, and as we wished to reach home before dusk, and as we saw no signs of a royal cavalcade, we determined to wait no longer, but to set out on our homeward way. We went down to the carriage which had drawn up below, outside the iron gates, the nearest approach to the castle. Here we found about a hundred persons assembled, mostly of the lower class, although well dressed, who appeared to be waiting for something that was to come from the castle, toward which they looked up. We had just taken our seats in the carriage when we heard it said, "The queen is coming.” So it was! Queen Victoria with Prince Albert, and their attendants, came riding down from the castle, and on toward the iron gates, which opened for them. We drew up our carriage in order to see the queen as perfectly as possible; and that was not difficult, for she came on slowly, and looked quietly around her. She was dressed in a black, closely-fitting riding habit, a black riding hat, without vail or ornament, and rode upon a brown horse. To the left of the queen rode Prince Albert, on her right an elderly gentleman, who looked like a German. After the queen, upon a pony, rode her eldest son, the young Prince of Wales, no one on either side; after him came a stately lady and two gentlemen, with three servants following. All were dressed in black, all rode upon brown horses; the whole cavalcade looked as simple and unpretending as possible. I had my eyes riveted upon the queen. She seemed to me, between the two tall gentlemen, almost like a little girl. I remembered the imposing figure and glance of our Northern Queen. I could not judge of the much-praised and beautiful form of the head on account of the riding hat, which also concealed the upper part of the forehead. However, the small figure appeared to me remarkably well proportioned and elegant, and she sate her horse, which seemed to carry her as if in sport, gracefully and well. She looked at us, and saluted us with a short nod of the head. There was more of kindness, however, in Prince Albert's glance and bow. Then came the little Prince with his hat lifted from his head, and the light locks raised by the wind, a delicate-looking boy, but with eyes and an expression from which an angel seemed to glance, so grave and gentle did he look, that lovely nine years' old boy! The sight of him affected me greatly, and I could not help saying in Swedish, "God bless thee, thou beautiful child!" Some over-loyal little boys waved their hats so zealously that the queen said to them "Put on your hats! you frighten the horses!" And, turning at the same moment toward where we were, I saw an expression on her pouting under-lip of which I would willingly have seen more, because there was in it suppressed merry laughter. But they rode on, the cavalcade turned to the left into a by-road of the woods, and vanished among the green trees. I said farewell to the hope of ever seeing more of Queen Victoria; yet, nevertheless, I did see more of her, thanks be to fate and to my old Swedish umbrella, which for the last time in foreign parts did me now good service. Mrs. -'s coachman, one of Queen Victoria's loyal subjects, who had, during our drive to Windsor, been especially desirous of avoiding a certain heavy and sandy road, now found reason for not avoiding it, probably because he had seen the queen take the same road; and hence it was that, to our surprise, we found ourselves, after half an hour's ploughing of the sand, close upon Queen Victoria's train. After we had driven slowly for a few minutes, the queen turned round and motioned with her hand for our coachman to drive past them. He obeyed, and just as we came past the Queen, he dashed forward in order to clear the way for Her Majesty. We had not gone fifty yards, when, in consequence of the rapid movement of the carriage, one of the doors flew open, and all the umbrellas and parasols flew up to cast themselves on the ground at the feet of Queen Victoria. I caught at them, but too late to save my Swedish umbrella, which resolutely seemed to fling itself out of the carriage upon the road. My Swedish umbrella! my faithful companion during a three years' travel—my traveling companion in America and the West Indies-no! I could not leave it here to be trampled upon by the feet of Queen Victoria's horse. I must pick it up even if from beneath that very horse's feet. "We must stop! I must get out!" said I to my irresolute friend; "I must have my umbrella again!" Mrs. called to her coachman to stop, and I alighted from the carriage. At the same moment up galloped the queen and Prince Albert, laughing and nodding kindly to me, who could not help laughing myself. Then they rode past us, one of the gentlemen indicating to us that the umbrella had been picked up and restored to the hands of the coachman. I was glad to have recovered my faithful traveling companion, and almost equally glad that, by means of its self-sacrificing interposition, I had received an impression of Queen Victoria which could scarcely have been improved. There are countenances which we may see for whole days, and yet not understand SENSATIONS IN DROWNING. them until one has seen a tear in the eye. And if I carry with me, to my beloved Other countenances there are which are home in Sweden, no other knowledge unexplained enigmas, until a smile, or a than that of the many good and beautiful good hearty fit of laughter lights them up. | homes on earth, it is no small gain for my And thus was it, when Queen Victoria, long wanderings. laughing and nodding to me, flew past me light and airy as a fairy queen. I at once understood the magic power of her person; for, like sunlight breaking through HE following letter, addressed by the cloud, like a flower bursting from its Admiral Beaufort to Dr. W. H. Wolbud, was the laughter in the queen's countenance. There was in it a high degree of the former when apparently on the very laston, giving an account of the feelings of natural life, freshness, vivacity, good point of death from drowning, was originhumor, and a good deal of peculiar charac-ally published in the Life of the late Sir ter. After this, I can easily comprehend what a noble lady, who often sees the Queen, said on one occasion, in reply to my remark, "What a little queen you have!" "Yes, she is a little queen, but on a large scale! She seems to me always like a human being such as God made her, while the greater number of human beings seem to be such as God did not make them!" On our return from Windsor we passed Runnymede, so remarkable in English history, which lies on a little island in the Thames, where Magna Charta was signed by King John. The sweet idyllian landscape, now illumined by the rays of the setting sun, scarcely recalled the gloomy times, and the bitter contests between the people and the kingly power, which led to the concluding of the contract between the two, and which thus made the place remarkable. When at home, once more in that kind, beautiful home, at — , I wrote that which it and its possessors made me feel :"From a good home it is not far to heaven!" John Barrow. It will repay the reader's perusal. "The following circumstances which attended my being drowned have been drawn up at your desire: they had not struck me as being so curious as you consider them, because from two or three persons, who, like myself, have been recovered from a similar state, I have heard a detail of their feelings, which resemble mine as nearly as was consistent with our different constitutions and dispositions. 'Many years ago, when I was a youngster on board one of his majesty's ships in Portsmouth Harbor, after sculling about in a very alongside the ship to one of the scuttlerings; small boat, I was endeavoring to fasten her in foolish eagerness I stepped upon the gunwale, the boat of course upset, and fell into the water, and, not knowing how to swim, all my efforts to lay hold either of the boat or the floating sculls were fruitless. The transaction had not been observed by the sentinel on the gangway, and therefore it was not till the tide had drifted me some distance astern of the ship that a man in the foretop saw me splashing in the water, and gave the alarm. The first lieutenant instantly and gallantly jumped overboard, the carpenter followed his example, and the gunner hastened into a boat and pulled after them. With the violent but vain attempts to make myself heard I had swallowed much water; I was soon exhausted by my struggle, and before any relief reached me, I had sunk below the surface;-all hopes had fled—all exertion ceased-and I felt that I was drowning. "So far, these facts were either partially remembered after my recovery or supplied by those who had latterly witnessed the scene; for during an interval of such agitation a drowning person is too much occupied in catching by alternate hope and despair, to mark the suoat every passing straw, or too much absorbed cession of events very accurately. Not so, however, with the facts which immediately ensued: my mind had then undergone the sudden revolution which appeared to you so remarkable, and all the circumstances of which are now as vividly fresh in my memory as if they had occurred but yesterday. From the moment that all exertion had ceased-which I imagine was the immediate consequence of complete suffocation-a calm feeling of the most perfect tranquillity superseded the previous tumultuous resignation-for drowning no longer appeared to be an evil-I no longer thought of being rescued, nor was I in any bodily pain. On the contrary, my sensations were now of rather a pleasurable cast, partaking of that dull but contented sort of feeling which precedes the sleep produced by fatigue. Though the senses were thus deadened, not so the mind: its activity seemed to be invigorated in a ratio which defies all description, for thought rose after thought with a rapidity of succession that is not only indescribable, but probably inconceivable by any one who has not himself been in a similar situation. The course of those thoughts I can even now in a great measure retrace; the event which had just taken place -the awkwardness that had produced it-the bustle it must have occasioned (for I had observed two persons jump from the chains)the effect it would have on a most affectionate father—the manner in which he would disclose it to the rest of the family-and a thousand other circumstances minutely associated with home, were the first series of reflections that occurred. Then they took a wider range our last cruise-a former voyage, and shipwreckmy school-the progress I made there, and the time I had misspent-and even all my boyish pursuits and adventures. Thus traveling backwards, every past incident of my life seemed to glance across my recollection in retrograde succession; not, however, in mere outline, as here stated, but the picture filled up with every minute and collateral feature; in short, the whole period of my existence seemed to be placed before me in a kind of panoramic review, and each act of it seemed to be accompanied by a consciousness of right or wrong, or by some reflection on its cause or its consequences; indeed, many trifling events which had been long forgotten then crowded into my imagination, and with the character of recent familiarity. May not all this be some indication of the almost infinite power of memory with which we may awaken in another world, and thus be compelled to contemplate our past lives? But, however that may be, one circumstance was highly remarkable; the innumerable ideas which flashed into my mind were all retrospective; yet I had been religiously brought up; my hopes and fears of the next world had lost nothing of their early strength, and at any other period intense interest and awful anxiety would have been excited by the mere probability that I was floating on the threshold of eternity; yet at that inexplicable moment, when I had a full conviction that I had crossed that threshold, not a single thought wandered into the future-I was wrapt entirely in the past. The length of time that was occupied by this deluge of ideas, or rather the shortness of time into which they were condensed, I cannot now state with precision, yet certainly two minutes could not have elasped from the moment of suffocation to that of my being hauled up. "The strength of the flood-tide made it expedient to pull the boat at once to another ship, where I underwent the usual vulgar process of emptying the water by letting my head hang downwards, then bleeding, chafing, and even administering gin; but my submersion had been really so brief, that, according to the ac count of the lookers-on, I was very quickly restored to animation. "My feelings while life was returning were the reverse in every point of those which have been described above. One single but confused idea-a miserable belief that I was drowningdwelt upon my mind; instead of the multitude of clear and definite ideas which had recently rushed through it, a helpless anxiety—a kind of continuous nightmare-seemed to press heavily on every sense, and to prevent the formation of any one distinct thought, and it was with difficulty that I became convinced that I was really alive. Again, instead of being absolutely free from all bodily pain, as in my drowning state, I was now tortured by pain all over me; and though I have been since wounded in several places, and have often submitted to severe surgical discipline, yet my sufferings were at that time far greater; at least, in general distress. On one occasion I was shot in the lungs, and, after lying on the deck at night for some hours bleeding from other wounds, I at length fainted. Now, as I felt sure that the wound in the lungs was mortal, it will appear obvious that the overwhelming sensation which accompanies fainting must have produced a perfect conviction that I was then in the act of dying. Yet nothing in the least resembling the operations of my mind when drowning then took place; and when I began to recover, I returned to a clear conception of my real state. "If these involuntary experiments on the operation of death afford any satisfaction or interest to you, they will not have been suffered quite in vain by "Yours very truly, "F. BEAUFORT." "This letter of Admiral Beaufort, (observes Sir John Barrow,) must give rise to various suggestions. It proves that the spirit of man may retain its full activity when freed from the trammels of the flesh; at least, when all the functions of the body are deprived of animal power, and the spirit has become something like the type and shadow of that which we are taught to believe concerning the immortality of the soul." It is seldom that we meet with the experience of an individual so near the confines of the eternal world as was the one in the case now before us. If all the acts of transgression, all the deeds done in the body, can thus in a moment be brought back by memory to view, does it not seem to give a foreshadowing of that period when man is to stand at the solemn tribunal of his Creator? How unspeakably important, on such a contemplation, must it be to have an interest by faith in the blood of Christ, which cleanses from all sinnot a mere head-faith, but one which shows its genuineness by loving God and, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, keeping his commandments. A TEXT WITH A COMMENT. "THE will bring forth; it is sunshine and gloominess; light on hill and dale, its bland airs, and the singing of birds, will yet come. Lift up thy head and journey onward. of life. But, dropping its poetic tone, let This is not rhapsody, it is the true logic us look more soberly at the subject. To endure then, to suffer, is to live; but there is more in life. To do is pre"Action, action, aceminently to live. tion," was the reply of Demosthenes to the question, "What is eloquence ?" It is a befitting answer to the question, What is life? the most if not the whole of life. Activity is not only the law of life, but especially the law of the happiness of life. Here it is that men, even good and thoughtful men, blunder, some of them practically, most of them theoretically. They long for "retirement." The success which will enable them to retreat from the active pursuits of life is the goal of their endeavors. A shrewder thinker than Mountford, Dr. Chalmers, when entering his sixtieth year, had a beautiful fancy of this kind : "It is a favorite speculation of mine," he says, "that if spared to sixty, we then enter on the seventh decade of human life; and that this, if possible, should be turned into the Sabbath of our earthly pilgrimage, and spent Sabbatically, as if on the shore of an eternal world, or in the outer courts, as it were, of the temple that is above-the tabernacle in heaven. What enamors me all the more of this idea is the retrospect of my mother's widowhood. I long, if God should spare me, for such an old age as she enjoyed," &c. A fine but thorough fallacy this. Chalmers' instincts were truer than his imagination respecting it. He was in a maelstrom of agitation and labor when he uttered it, and went on, brave man as he was, striking right and left at every evil within his reach, until, going to bed one So writes Mountford, in his delightful book " Euthanasy." A pleasant picture of ordinary tranquil life is this, and not untruthful as far as it goes. But this is not all of life. There is something still better and as common in our common pilgrimage: it is to suffer, and to grow strong and pure by suffering-to conquer by sore conflict our formidable selves, fighting down old prejudices and passions, breaking away from old and fetter-like habits, binding ourselves, in spite of our natural selfishness, to the altar of self-sacrifice; it is forbearing with weakness, forgiving wrongs, enduring evil, standing indomitable amidst calamities, and "having done all, still to stand" at our post with brave heart and calm brow, though everything dear lies in wreck around us. This is life often, and the nobler life-the life that grows in strength and prepares for eternal life. It may not be "happiness," but it is "bless-night, after a wearisome day, he woke up edness;" and more ordinary in our aver- within the gates of heaven. There he age life are these conditions-conditions found his Sabbatic life in its appropriate of self-development and purification-than the pleasant ones in Mountford's pleasant picture. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." Lift up thy head then, O sufferer, though no other sorrow seems like thine. Think not that life is vain because to thee it is only suffering. The more real, the more holy, and therefore the more noble will it be for that suffering, if rightly sustained. Press on then in thy night-journey, the morning is at hand; streaks of the aurora occasionally cheer thee, and the full day, with its blessed VOL. II, No. 4.—Z place. What sort of a close to such a life as his would that Sabbatic decade he longed for have been? One of downright wretchedness. Can the old war-steed browse calmly in the shade of a tree while the trumpets and the "shoutings of the captains" startle the air from the neighboring battle-field? Not only does an original instinct of our constitution require that we should be active, but habit-especially the habit of a long life-renders this instinct inexorable. The only right rule for the old workman |