church, exhorted them to pause as they were rushing out en masse in the midst of the service; and having gained the door, took to his heels saying, “Now, my lads, it is but fair we should all start alike!” and reached the wreck first.  The people view the plunder of a wreck as a right, and it is in vain to attempt to persuade them otherwise.  However it is but justice to say that they have frequently risked, and even sacrificed, their own lives in endeavouring to preserve those of others; though some recent instances, especially in Wales, prove that the old disposition still lurks amongst the people, and sometimes breaks out with unabated violence.

The arrival of a party of the Preventive Service that evening, in some measure proved a check to the plunder of the peasantry; but the guards themselves were not proof against the prevailing infection, and similar scenes to that related, prevailed as long as there was any thing left to drink or pick up; however, a considerable part of the cargo was safely stowed, though there were few of the rum casks that did not afterwards turn out impregnated with bilge water.

On a fine grey morning, about a week after these events occurred, I wandered out towards the shore:  there had been rough weather in the channel, and many wrecks, and the turbulence of the ocean had not yet subsided.  It was about half-flood when I reached the Bonne Esperance.  She had disappeared by piece-meal under the repeated assaults of the sea, but the principal part of the hull was still hanging together.  Each wave as it struck her tattered timbers, seemed to sap away her strength and threatened to shake her to fragments.  I sat with the supercargo for about an hour, watching the flow of the tide.  Her timbers cracked louder and louder at each shock of the breakers; when a heavy sea struck her, her joints loosened, and she broke up at last, scattered into fragments, and whelmed in a gulf of boiling waters which foamed like an immense cauldron over the place she had occupied a minute before.  We had watched the progress to this final disaster with the deepest interest—­I may almost say sympathy—­for we could hardly help looking upon the ship as a friend in need, hovering as it were over destruction without an arm being stretched forth to save her, and it was not without a real feeling of pain and sorrow that we witnessed her destruction.

About half-ebb we descended to the shore—­it was covered as far as the eye could reach with her ruin and materials; and one could almost imagine it had been the destruction of a fleet.  Thus ended the fate of La Bonne Esperance of Brest, and the occasional appearance of a solitary fragment on the beach, was soon all that recalled her history to the remembrance of the passers-by.

VYVYAN.

[1] The scenes and events in tins sketch are drawn from nature, and real
    occurrences on the southern coast.

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