hen they pass in procession. It is good for Mr.
Briefless (50, Pump Court, fourth floor) that there should be a Lord
Chancellor, with a gold robe and fifteen thousand a year. It is good
for a poor curate that there should be splendid bishops at Fulham and
Lambeth: their lordships were poor curates once, and have won, so
to speak, their ribbon. Is a man who puts into a lottery to be sulky
because he does not win the twenty thousand pounds prize? Am I to fall
into a rage, and bully my family when I come home, after going to see
Chatsworth or Windsor, because we have only two little drawing-rooms?
Welcome to your garter, my lord, and shame upon him qui mal y pense!

So I arrive in my roundabout way near the point towards which I have
been trotting ever since we set out.

In a voyage to America, some nine years since, on the seventh or eighth
day out from Liverpool, Captain L---- came to dinner at eight bells as
usual, talked a little to the persons right and left of him, and helped
the soup with his accustomed politeness. Then he went on deck, and was
back in a minute, and operated on the fish, looking rather grave the
while.

Then he went on deck again; and this time was absent, it may be, three
or five minutes, during which the fish disappeared, and the entrees
arrived, and the roast beef. Say ten minutes passed--I can't tell after
nine years.

Then L---- came down with a pleased and happy countenance this time, and
began carving the sirloin: "We have seen the light," he said. "Madam,
may I help you to a little gravy, or a little horse-radish?" or what
not?

I forget the name of the light; nor does it matter. It was a point
off Newfoundland for which he was on the look-out, and so well did the
"Canada" know where she was, that, between soup and beef, the captain
had sighted the headland by which his course was lying.

And so through storm and darkness, through fog and midnight, the ship
had pursued her steady way over the pathless ocean and roaring seas, so
surely that the officers who sailed her knew her place within a minute
or two, and guided us with a wonderful providence safe on our way. Since
the noble Cunard Company has run its ships, but one accident, and that
through the error of a pilot, has happened on the line.

By this little incident (hourly of course repeated, and trivial to all
sea-going people) I own I was immensely moved, and never can think of
it but with a heart full of thanks and awe. We trus