o toll, and every one stands
in silence and uncovered as the prayers are read. Sailors, with all
their looseness of habits, are well disposed to be sincerely religious;
and when they have fair play given them, they will always, I believe,
be found to stand on as good vantage ground, in this respect, as their
fellow-countrymen on shore. Be this as it may, there can be no more
attentive, or apparently reverent auditory, than assembles on the deck
of a ship of war, on the occasion of a shipmate's burial.

"The land service for the burial of the dead contains the following
words: 'Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy,
to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we
therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to
ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope,' &c. Every one I am
sure, who has attended the funeral of a friend--and whom will this not
include?--must recollect the solemnity of that stage of the ceremony,
where, as the above words are pronounced, there are cast into the grave
three successive portions of earth, which, falling on the coffin, send
up a hollow, mournful sound, resembling no other that I know. In the
burial service at sea, the part quoted above is varied in the following
very striking and solemn manner:--'Forasmuch,' &c.--'we therefore commit
his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the
resurrection of the body, when the sea shall give up her dead, and the
life of the world to come,' &c. At the commencement of this part of the
service, one of the seamen stoops down, and disengages the flag from the
remains of his late shipmate, while the others, at the words 'we commit
his body to the deep,' project the grating right into the sea. The body
being loaded with shot at one end, glances off the grating, plunges at
once into the ocean, and--

"'In a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into its depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.'

"This part of the ceremony is rather less impressive than the
correspondent part on land; but still there is something solemn, as
well as startling, in the sudden splash, followed by the sound of the
grating, as it is towed along under the main-chains.

"In a fine day at sea, in smooth water, and when all the ship's company
and officers are assembled, the ceremony just described, although a
melancholy one, as it must always be, is often so