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Yes, the teacher whom George, while in health thought strict and severe, in the time of his sickness seemed to be one of his nearest and dearest friends. About a week before his death several of the teachers visited him, and found him rejoicing in the love of Christ Jesus. Although his sufferings were very great he requested his teacher to tell all his friends at school, that he was ready for death, and that he was going to Jesus. This was on the Monday evening before he died. During the few days previous to his death, he was visited by three of our school conductors and the Secretary, who found him in great suffering and pain, scarcely able to speak to them. Yet his language was still the same. He said, “I am going to Jesus." A short time before his death, he wished all the members of the family to be called to his bed side; and he addressed a few remarks to each. To his brother he gave this special charge, that he was to tell them at the Sundayschool that he had "found peace for his soul, and was depending upon Jesus Christ as his Redeemer, and that he should soon be with Him in heaven." He tried to sing this verse out of our school hymn book.

"Hide me O my Saviour hide
Till the Storm of Life be past;
Safe into the haven guide,
O receive my soul at last."

His voice faltered he was struggling hard with death and with what effect this was sung, can be more easily imagined than expressed. About 9 o'clock in the evening, his spirit took its flight to a better world, where sickness and sorrow-pain and death-are felt and feared no

more.

He died April the 7th, and was interred at Houghton Green Wesleyan Chapel, April 14th, 1854.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.

A CORNISH CHURCHYARD BY THE SEVERN SEA. PERHAPS there is no county in all Great Britain less known to the bulk even of the more intelligent portion of the community than Cornwall. Its geographical position has hitherto isolated it, and it will probably be long ere railways introduce any material alteration either in the character of the people, or in the aspect of the land. The knowledge of Cornwall popularly (but erroneously) diffused in England usually amounts to this-that it is a desolate peninsula, barren and treeless; that it contains inexhaustible mines, that its miners and peasantry speak a dialect quite unintelligible to the people of any other part of England; that it boasts a St. Michael's Mount, and a Land's End; and that its natives have, from time immemorial, enjoyed the unenviable notoriety of being merciless wreckers, devoid of the milk of human kindness. How unmerited this last stigma is, as applied to modern Cornishmen, the anecdotes we have to relate will sufficiently indicate.

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The church of the remote village of Morwenstow, in Cornwall, is close on the Severn Sea, and the vicar's glebe is bounded by stern rifted cliffs, 450 feet high. Orkney or Shetland itself perhaps does not contain a more wild and romantic place than Morwenstow. Nothing here but doth suffer a sea-change." Fragments of wreck everywhere attest the nature of the coast. If an unfortunate vessel is driven by a north-west or a south-west gale within the Horns of Hartland and Padstow Points, God help her hapless crew! for she is doomed to certain destruction. Along the whole coast there is no harbour of refuge-nothing but iron rocks. Here the roar of the ocean is incessant, and in stormy weather appalling. Mighty waves then fling themselves against the giant cliffs, and bursting with thundering crash, send their spray in salt-showers over the land. The life led by the dwellers near these solitary cliffs can be but dimly imagined by the inhabitants of inland cities. During the long dark nights of winter, they listen between the fierce bursts of the tempest, expecting every moment to hear the cry of human agony, from the crew of some

foundering bark, rise above the wild laugh of the waves; and when morning breaks, they descend to the rugged beach, not knowing whether they may not find it strewn with wrecks and corpses. So tremendous is the power of the sea on this particular part of the coast, that insulated masses of rock, from ten to twenty tons in weight, are frequently uplifted and hurled about the beach. Whatever stigma once attached to the people of the coasts, as wreckers who allured vessels to destruction, or plundered and murdered the helpless crews cast ashore, a character the very reverse may most justly be claimed by the existing generation. Their conduct in all cases of shipwreck is admirable, and nably do they second the exertions of their amiable and gifted vicar, the Rev. R. S. Hawker, whose performance of his arduous duty is appreciated far beyond the boundaries of old Cornwall.

Many a startling legend of shipwreck can the worthy vicar tell you; and he will show you, at his vicarage, five figure-heads of ships, and numerous other melancholy relics of his "flotsam and jetsam" searches along the coast of his parish. In his escritoire are no less than fifty or sixty letters of thanks, addressed to him by the relatives of mariners whose mortal remains he has secured from the sea, and laid side by side, to rest in the hallowed earth of his churchyard. Let us visit this churchyard with him, and we shall see objects not seen every day "amongst the tombs ;" and hear stories which, melancholy as they are, give us reason proudly to own the men of Cornwall as our fellow-countrymen.

Not to speak of the numerous scattered single graves of drowned sailors, three entire crews of ships here rest together. Nearly all their corpses were found by the vicar in person, who, with his people, searched for them among the rocks and tangled sea-weed, when the storms had spent their fury; and here they received, at his benevolent hands, solemn and befitting Christian sepulture. As a local paper well remarked at the time: " Strangers as they were, receiving their last resting-place from the charity of the inhabitants upon whose coast they were thrown, they have

not been piled upon one another, in a common pit, but are buried side by side, each in his own grave. This may seem a trifle; but reverence for the remains of the departed is a Christian virtue, and is associated with the most sublime and consolatory doctrine of our holy religion. They who thus honour the dead, will seldom fail in their duty to the living." We cordially echo this sentiment.

At the foot of one group of graves stands the figure-head of the Caledonia, with dirk and shield. The gallant crew sleep well beneath its shade! The Caledonia was a Scotch brig, belonging to Arbroath, and was wrecked about ten years ago. Fast by, repose the entire crew of the Alonzo, and near the mounds which mark their resting-place is a boat, keel uppermost, and a pair of oars crosswise. Full of melancholy suggestiveness are these objects, and the history the vicar tells us fully realizes what we should anticipate from seeing them in a churchyard. The Alonzo was a large schooner belonging to Stockton-on-Tees, and came down this coast on her voyage from Wales to Hamburg, with a cargo of iron. Off Morwenstow she encountered a fearful storm, and despite every effort of seamanship, drove within the fatal "Points."

"Pilot! they say when tempests rave,

Dark Cornwall's sons will haunt the main,
Watch the wild wreck, but not to save!'

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She yields her to the conquering wave;

And Cornwall's sons-they line the strand-
Rush they to plunder?-No, to save!"

But, alas! no effort of "dark Cornwall's sons" could now avail. The captain of the Alonzo, a stern, powerful man, is supposed to have been overmastered by his crew in the awful excitement when impending destruction became a dread certainty. At any rate, he and they took to their boat, and forsook the wreck. What a moment was this for the spectators! For a few fleeting minutes, all was breathless suspense-the boat now riding on the crests of the mad billows, now sinking far down in their mountainous hollows. One moment, it is seen bravely bearing its living

freight-the next, drifting shoreward swamped. Hark! a terrible cry of despair echoes over the raging billows: it is the blended death-cry of the perishing mariners. Captain and crew, nine in number, all were lost; and all are now sleeping side by side in their last long home, with their boat rotting over their heads. One of the owners of the vessel posted to Morwenstow to identifiy the bodies of the crew. This was done chiefly by comparing the initials on their clothes and on their skins with the ship's articles which were cast ashore. One of the crew was a young Dane, a remarkably noble-looking fellow, six feet two in height. On his broad chest was tattooed the Holy Rood—a cross with our Saviour on it, and his mother and St. John standing by. On his stalwart arm was an anchor, and the initials of his name, "P. B."—which on the ship's list was entered Peter Benson. Three years after his burial, the vicar received, through a Danish consul, a letter of inquiry from the parents of this ill-fated mariner, in Denmark. They had traced him to the Alonzo, had heard of her wreck, and were anxious to know what had become of his remains. His name was Bengstein, and he was engaged to be married to his Danish Pige, or sweetheart, on his return home. Poor Pige of Denmark! Never more will thy lover return to claim thee as his bride. Thy gallant sailor rests from all his wanderings in a solitary churchyard in a foreign land. In heaven thou mayest meet him again-on earth, never!

Another anecdote related by the vicar deeply affected us. The brig Hero, from Liverpool to London, drove in sight of Morwenstow Cliffs in a terrible storm, and drifted towards Bude, a small dry haven to the southward. Her crew unhappily took to their boat, were immediately capsized of course, and every soul perished. The ship itself drove ashore at Bude, with the fire still burning in her cabin. They found in one of her berths a Bible-a Sundayschool reward. A leaf was folded down, and a passage marked with ink not long dry. It was the 33rd chapter of Isaiah, and the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd verses. There was a piece of writing paper between the leaves, whereon the owner of the Bible had begun to copy the passage!

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