intimating their intention of coming home by the 'Charter.' To them the intelligence of the wreck had terrible interest. Hour after hour they hung about the City, and when, just before closing, a 'List of the Saved' was received at Lloyd's, it was with difficulty the clerk was enabled to keep them from tearing the document from his hands and post it upon the walls. One gentleman, white-headed and bent with age, who, I subsequently found, had a son on board, swooned the moment he saw the list. _His boy was saved._ I endeavour to be brief in these introductory remarks; but somehow the atmosphere of dejection which has rested upon us all since the evil tidings first met us, reproduces itself as I write, and I find myself calling up with mournful minuteness the earlier passages in the History I have been requested to prepare. To that task let me now compel myself. While the news of the wreck was still being bandied from mouth to mouth, I, who knew the ill-fated craft, and thought, without taking upon myself to suggest a reason for the disaster, I could yet set down many things which might enable others to do so, wrote the following article for one of the newspapers:-- 'The finest ship that ever left the port of Liverpool has gone down with five hundred lives on board. I knew the ship--unhappily I knew some of those who have perished. I purpose to tell my impressions of the vessel, of the captain--everything I know that is likely to be read with interest by the dread light of the calamity.