"Before concluding my brief remarks, I call upon you once more to offer your support to so excellent an Institution. I congratulate you that it has arrived at so excellent a state, and I feel sure that you would be the last to wish it to decay for the want of support to its funds." Thus spake His Royal Highness, in 1867, and since then the Institution has developed more and mere, completing its organization, perfecting its system, and yearly in its noble results increasing its hold upon the affections of the country. And now, as I write the concluding lines of my book, the reality of the work related is deeply impressed upon my mind, for this morning my two little boys came running downstairs making the house ring with their cries of "The life-boat! the life-boat!" they had seen it from their nursery window. Yes, there she was, being towed by the steamer, the rough seas lashing over her; her flag was flying in triumph. I could see through my glass that there were about a dozen saved men on board the steamer; and as I have since learned, seldom have men more narrowly escaped than did those poor fellows, and seldom have men been saved by a greater exhibition of courage and perseverance than was displayed by our life-boat men while effecting their rescue. The _Scot_, a barque of 345 tons, bound from Sunderland to Algiers with a cargo of coals, after experiencing much stormy and thick weather, ran on the Kentish Knock Sand at five o'clock in the morning; the seas immediately began to break over her; the carpenter sounded the well and found two feet and a half of water in her hold, but as the waves lifted her, and plunged her down upon the Sands, she filled at once with water. The captain sent the steward into the cabin for the ship's papers; he found the water up to the cabin floor; he seized the box in which the papers were, and ran up on deck; a wave rushed over the vessel and swept him along the deck; he caught hold of a rope with one hand, but one of the sailors, overwhelmed by the same wave, threw his legs around his neck and nearly tore him from his hold; the wave passed and the two men were enabled to spring into the rigging: all hands had to take refuge there, for within five minutes of the vessel's striking she began to break up; the boats were washed away, the deck-house was torn to fragments and carried away piecemeal; the deck began to twist, and buckle, and open, and then was speedily ripped up by the force of the seas, and torn away plank after plank. The vessel broke her back and heeled over on the starboard side, and settled down upon the Sands; the men could not make any signal of distress, and if they could have done so, they were miles away from any life-boat, and at any moment the masts might give and they be plunged into the boiling sea. If the weather moderated some passing vessel might see them and be able to send a boat in to their rescue, but not while the gale lasted. The day grew on; many