xample of intelligent
reading; for the boy took in the sense of the printed lines, and then
made it his own by giving homely utterance to what he understood.

Defoe tells in this letter several tales of the shorefolk about the Great
Storm of November, 1703, recollection of which Addison used effectively
in the following year in his poem on the Battle of Blenheim. There was
the sweeping away of the first Eddystone Lighthouse, with the builder,
confident in its strength, who had desired to be in it some night when
the wind blew with unusual fury. There was the story also of the man and
two boys, in a ship laden with tin, blown out of Helford Haven, and of
their hairbreadth escape by counsel of one of the boys who ran the ship
through rocks into a narrow creek that he knew in the Isle of Wight. The
form of the coast has been changed so much since 1703 by the beat of many
storms, that it may be now impossible to know that little cove as the boy
knew it. It must have been at the back of the island. Were the storm
waves tossing then in Steephill Cove or Luccombe Chine? Does there
survive anywhere a tradition of that perilous landing? Probably not.
Wreck follows upon wreck, and memory of many tales of death and peril on
the rock-bound coast lie between us and the boy who took the helm when he
spied the well-known creek as the great storm was sweeping the ship on to
destruction. From the next year after that famous storm, Defoe gives a
memory of disaster seen by himself at Plymouth in the wreck of a little
fleet from Barbadoes. In another part of this letter he tells what he
had seen of a fight at sea between three French men-of-war and two
English with a convoy of two or three trading vessels.

There will be found also in this letter a good story of a Cornish dog
taken from Carew's "Survey of Cornwall," which may pair with that of the
London dog who lately took a wounded fellow dog to hospital.

The writer of this letter speaks of the civil war times as a friend of
monarchy, but when he tells of the landing of William III. at Torbay, he
suggests that the people had good reason for rejoicing, and throughout
the journey he takes note of a great inequality he finds in distribution
of the right of returning members to Parliament. It is evident that he
could propound a project for a Reform Bill, though he is careful so to
describe England as to avoid giving offence to Englishmen of any party.
The possibility of some chan