A late writer tells us, that being on board the packet ship Silas Richards, on his way from New York to Liverpool, the captain one day opened the letter bags in the round house, to sort the contents; and to amuse the passengers standing about him, read aloud some of the most singular superscriptions, when he came to a letter which had a seal with an epigraph on it which ran thus: “Mispah—Gen. xxxi. 49.” “Here,” said he to a clergyman by, (the writer himself, I suppose,) “this is for you to expound.” But the clergyman not being able to do so, ran for his Bible, and soon returning with it open at the place referred to, read out, “Mispah: the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” “Beautiful!” said one. “Beautiful!” said another. “A gem! a gem!” exclaimed a third. “A gem indeed!” cried all together. “And surely,” adds the writer, “the brightest, most precious gem of all, was to find, in such a place and circle, these prompt and full-souled expressions of sympathy on this announcement of religion and christian piety. There were, indeed, powerful tendencies to such sympathy in the circumstances of us all. For who present, whether going _to_ or _from_ his home, did not feel himself separated from those he loved, and loved most dear? And who, with a wide and fitful ocean before him, tossing on its heaving bosom, would not feel his dependence, and looking back or forward to home and friends, lift up his aspirations to that high Providence who sits enthroned in Heaven, and rules the land and sea, and breathe to him the sweet and holy prayer—‘The Lord watch between me and mine, while we are absent one from another?’”