On Saturday, the 10th of June, 1815, my brother, my sister, and myself, sailed from the pier of Ramsgate at three in the afternoon, in company with Sir Neil Campbell, the celebrated Knight of Elba, Major Wylie, of the Royal Fusiliers, extra aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington, a Mr. N., an English merchant; together with an incongruous assemblage of horses, dogs, and barouches; Irish servants, French valets, and steerage passengers, too multifarious to mention, all crowded together into a wretched little packet. On Sunday evening, the 11th of June, we found ourselves, after a passage of thirty-six hours, many miles distant from Ostend, lying at anchor in a dead calm, and without a hope of reaching it till the following morning. To escape remaining another night amidst the discomforts of this packet, without food, for we had eaten up all our provisions; and without sleep, for we had experimentally proved that none was to be got, our three selves, and our three companions in misfortune, the Knight, the Major, and the Merchant, embarked in a crazy little boat, about nine o'clock in a beautiful summer's evening, as the sun was sinking in golden splendour, and trusted ourselves to the mercy of the waves. The tide was running strong against the rowers, and night closed in long before we approached the shore; but though the light of the heavens had faded, the ocean was illuminated with that beautiful phosphoric fire so well known in warmer latitudes. The most brilliant magic light played upon the surface of the waters, and marked the path of our little vessel through the deep, with the softest, purest radiance; the oars seemed to be moving through liquid fire, and every drop, as it dashed from them, sparkled like the blaze of a diamond: the little rippling waves, as they curled their heads, were covered with the same transparent ethereal fire, which would mock the powers of the poet's fancy, "glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," to embody or describe. It is more like the pale beam the glow-worm sheds from his evening lamp than anything on earth, but ten thousand times more bright and more beautiful. By such a light Oberon and his Queen, attended by their band of tiny sprites, might have held their midnight revels, amidst the bowers and halls of fairyland; and by such a light, enchanted spirits in happier worlds might be supposed to slumber. This soft, transparent, _unearthly_ light gleaming around us, and kindling at every touch in living brightness over the waters; the calm and glassy stillness of the wide extended ocean; the softened glow that lingered in the western sky; and the mild breath of evening, made our passage to the shore, slow as it was, most delightful. It was a night calculated to soothe every unquiet passion into rest, and in which the imagination loved to indulge in dreams of delight and beauty. The heart must have been cold that did not feel the harmony of nature, and