No familiarity with earthquakes is sufficient to do away with their terrors. The Limanian who has known them from childhood, no sooner feels the first shock, than he rushes from his apartment, with the cry of "_misericordia_" upon his trembling lips, no less than the foreigner who has never before witnessed these convulsive throes of nature. The moment a shock is felt the Cathedral bell begins to toll, all the belfries in Lima take up the sound, and summon the affrighted population to their devotions. A change has been wrought even in the form of church service, by the ever-present apprehension of these convulsions: the word "famine" being omitted and "earthquake" inserted among the evils from which deliverance is implored. The very architecture of Lima--its houses of a singly story--its plastered upper walls, its cane roofs, its towers and steeples of stuccoed wicker work--is a perpetual prayer against an evil which no human foresight can avoid, and no mortal power avert, and in respect to which the utmost that man can do, is in some degree to mitigate its consequences. ALLY SOMERS.--A TALE OF THE COAST-GUARD. When I joined the _Scorpion_ sloop of war, then (1810) on the West India station, there were a father and son among the crew whose names, as borne on the ship's books, were John Somers and John _Alice_ Somers. The oddity in this country of giving a boy a female baptismal name had been no doubt jestingly remarked upon by those who were aware of it, but with the sailors the lad passed as _Ally_ Somers. The father was approaching fifty, the son could not have been more than seventeen years of age. The elder Somers, who had attained to the rating of a boatswain, was a stern, hard, silent man, with a look as cold and clear as polished steel, and a cast-iron mouth, indicative of inflexible, indomitable firmness of will and resolution. The son, on the contrary, though somewhat resembling his father in outline of feature, had a mild, attractive, almost feminine aspect, and a slight graceful frame. I was not long in discovering that, obdurate and self-engrossed as the man appeared, the boy was really the idol-image in which his affections and his hopes were centred. His eye constantly followed the motions of the lad, and it appeared to be his unceasing aim and study to lighten the duties he had to perform, and to shield him from the rough usage to which youngsters in his position were generally subjected by the motley crews of those days. One day a strong instance in proof of this master-feeling occurred. Ally Somers some time previously, when on shore with a party dispatched to obtain a supply of water, had, during the temporary absence of the officer in command, been rather severely rope's-ended by one of the seamen for some trifling misconduct, and a few slight marks were left on the lad's back. The rage of the father, when informed of the circumstance, was extreme, and it was with