extraordinary account of his sovereign disposal of those for whom so many fervent prayers were made continually.'" The results of modern science enable us to explain the mysterious appearance. It is probable that some Dutch vessel, proceeding slowly, quietly, and unconsciously on her voyage from Amsterdam to the New Netherlands, happened at the time to be passing through the Sound. At the moment the apparition was seen in the sky, she was so near, that her image was painted or delineated to the eyes of the observers, on the clouds, by the laws of optics, now generally well known, before her actual outlines could be discerned by them on the horizon. As the sun sunk behind the western hills, and his rays were gradually withdrawn, the visionary ship slowly disappeared, and the approach of the night, while it dispelled the vapors from the atmosphere, effectually concealed the vessel as she continued her course along the Sound. The optical illusions that present themselves, on the sea shore, by which distant objects are raised to view, the opposite islands and capes made to loom up, lifted above the line of the apparent circumference of the earth, and thrown into every variety of shape which the imagination can conceive, are among the most beautiful phenomena of nature, and they impress the mind with the idea of enchantment and mystery, more perhaps than any others. But they have received a complete solution from modern discovery. It should be observed that the optical principles that explain these phenomena have recently afforded a foundation for the science, or rather the _art_, of _nauscopy_. There are persons, it is said, in some places in the Isle of France, whose calling and profession it is to ascertain and predict the approach of vessels by their reflection in the atmosphere and on the clouds, long before they are visible to the eye or through the glass.