uil sea on the other--types of life
and eternity. It was a good situation for that church.
Homeward-bound sailors caught sight of the tower of St Nicholas, the
first land object of all. They who went forth upon the great deep
might carry solemn thoughts with them of the words they had heard
there; not conscious thoughts, perhaps--rather a distinct if dim
conviction that buying and selling, eating and marrying, even life
and death, were not all the realities in existence. Nor were the
words that came up to their remembrance words of sermons preached
there, however impressive. The sailors mostly slept through the
sermons; unless, indeed, there were incidents such as were involved
in what were called 'funeral discourses' to be narrated. They did
not recognize their daily faults or temptations under the grand
aliases befitting their appearance from a preacher's mouth. But they
knew the old, oft-repeated words praying for deliverance from the
familiar dangers of lightning and tempest; from battle, murder, and
sudden death; and nearly every man was aware that he left behind him
some one who would watch for the prayer for the preservation of
those who travel by land or by water, and think of him, as
God-protected the more for the earnestness of the response then
given.

There, too, lay the dead of many generations; for St. Nicholas had
been the parish church ever since Monkshaven was a town, and the
large churchyard was rich in the dead. Masters, mariners,
ship-owners, seamen: it seemed strange how few other trades were
represented in that great plain so full of upright gravestones. Here
and there was a memorial stone, placed by some survivor of a large
family, most of whom perished at sea:--'Supposed to have perished
in the Greenland seas,' 'Shipwrecked in the Baltic,' 'Drowned off
the coast of Iceland.' There was a strange sensation, as if the cold
sea-winds must bring with them the dim phantoms of those lost
sailors, who had died far from their homes, and from the hallowed
ground where their fathers lay.

Each flight of steps up to this churchyard ended in a small flat
space, on which a wooden seat was placed. On this particular Sunday,
all these seats were filled by aged people, breathless with the
unusual exertion of climbing. You could see the church stair, as it
was called, from nearly every part of the town, and the figures of
the numerous climbers, diminished by distance, looked like a busy
ant-hill, long before t