So gently shuts the eye of day;
So dies a wave upon the shore.

"Life's duty done, as sinks the clay,
Light from its load the spirit flies;
While heaven and earth combine to say,
'How blest the righteous when he dies!'"--_Mrs. Barbauld._

"An eve
Beautiful as the good man's quiet _end_,
When all of earthly now is passed away,
And heaven is in his face."--_Love's Trial._

"He sets
As sets the Morning Star, which goes not down
Behind the darken'd West, nor hides obscured
Among the tempests of the sky, but melts away
Into the light of heaven."

"As sweetly as a child,
Whom neither thought disturbs nor care encumbers,
Tired with long play, at close of summer's day
Lies down and slumbers."

A holy life is the only preparation to a happy death, says Bishop Taylor.
And we have seen how much importance even heathen minds attached to _peace
at the last_. Truly, as Kettlewell said while expiring, "There is no _life_
like a happy _death_."

"Consider," says that excellent writer, Norris of Bemerton, "that _this_
life is wholly in order to _another_, and that _time_ is that sole
opportunity that God has given us for transacting the great business of
_eternity_: that our work is great, and our day of working short; much of
which also is lost and rendered useless through the cloudiness and darkness
of the morning, and the thick vapours and unwholesome fogs of the evening;
the ignorance and inadvertency of youth, and the disease and infirmities of
old age: that our portion of time is not only _short_ as to its duration,
but also _uncertain_ in the possession: that the loss of it is irreparable
to the loser, and profitable to nobody else: that it shall be severely
accounted for at the great judgment, and lamented in a sad eternity."--"Of
the Care and Improvement of Time," _Miscel._, 6th edit., p. 118.

EIRIONNACH.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Sir Thos. Browne's _Christian Morals_, sect. ix.]

* * * * *

BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR AND DEATH OF NELSON.

The following unpublished letter, as a historical document, is worth
preserving in the pages of "N. & Q." It relates to the important national
events of the battle of Trafalgar and death of Nelson. The writer was, at
the time, a signal midshipman in the service, and only about thirteen years
of age. He was a native of Glasgow, and died many years