IV. “A Swedish newspaper contains a lengthy account of the gallant rescue of a Swedish steamer by the people of the village of Cresswell, Northumberland. Thirteen out of the fifteen male inhabitants manned the boat, to launch which the women waded to their waists. A fisher-girl named Bella Brown ran ten miles to the next lifeboat station for assistance, and had to wade through several bays on an icy January night. The brave girl was seized with cramp on returning, and nearly lost her life.” V. Part of a letter from one of my best friends, Fellow and Tutor of Corpus, communicating some recent notes on English scenery:— “I next went to the Isle of Wight, which is very pretty, but all over-builded. It threatens soon to become a mere suburb of London. Portsmouth detained me a day,—all too brief a time for its beauties and horrors, its relics of past naval glories and picturesque bits on land and sea, its nightmare sea-going caldrons, misnamed men-of-war, at the present. I went on board the Thunderer, twin ship of the Devastation. I had expected something ugly and horrible, both inside and out; but my expectations were surpassed tenfold, especially with regard to the inside of the ship. The crew are confined altogether in utterly dark dungeons at each end of the ship, wholly under water, and hardly high enough for a man to walk in upright. An iron-shielded and very high deck in the middle of the ship is the only place where a man can see the light of day, and live when this witch’s kettle is at sea, as the ends of the vessel cut under the waves. The bull of Phalaris would have been an eligible prison to me in comparison of this; victims, at any rate, were not sent to sea in it.” VI. “Laxey, Isle of Man, March 4th, 1876. “Dear Sir,—In this month’s ‘Fors,’ page 107—‘Affairs of the Master,’—if you add up the amounts paid out, I think you will find, instead of £360 2s. 0d., the amount should be £370 2s. 3d., and leaves a proper balance of £225 5s. 6d. “I hope you will not be offended at me for troubling you with these trifling errors, of no moment; but I have got a singular habit—that I can never pass over a column of added figures, no matter what length, without testing their correctness. “Yours truly, “E. Rydings.” (If only my good correspondent—now a Companion—will indulge himself constantly in this good habit as respects the Fors accounts, I shall be much more at ease about them. But his postscript is more important.)