quiet way; my odds looking well,
but to-morrow, the 19th, by far the favourite, Captain Maxwell himself
indeed, considering it a hollow thing. Got a notion in my head, however,
in favour of my day, and accordingly took the odds; resolute to abide by
the 20th, and either "mak' a spune or spoil a horn."

All hands well and in motion; the crew busily employed getting the
sea-service off the rigging, and setting it all up in holiday order. The
mate is peering about jealously on all sides, eyeing his ship as a
mother would a beauty dressing for her first drawing-room, and to the
full as anxious about her appearance.

_Monday, 19th._--In the middle watch had a heavy squall, and carried
away our foretop-gallant mast. At nine o'clock, A.M. made the American
shore off Jersey, to the southward of Barney Gat. Wind light, no
betting, but anxious speculations on the probability of our getting
within Sandy Hook this day. Tuesday a hollow thing, feel "cock
sure:"--about noon, wind died away; and, right enough, it was not until

_Tuesday, August 20th_, that at three o'clock, A.M. I was called on deck
to look upon the Hook lights, and count my wagers won. I received the
omen as a good one, and so it proved.

LAND, HO!

I had often, and with much pleasure, heard intelligent Americans
describe the restless anxiety with which they approached the shores of
Britain; the almost painful degree of excitement created by the various
associations crowding on the imagination, and jostling each other for
supremacy, as they looked for the first time on their father-land.

The veneration with which they pictured her ivy-clad towers, and the
throb with which they caught the names of places long familiar to memory
and hallowed by historical events, to all of which they felt their claim
inherited from their ancestors, whether from Thames, or Tweed, or
Shannon.

To all of this I have, I say, listened with great pleasure, and with a
full sympathy in feelings at once natural and generous, yet can I hardly
admit them to possess more force, or their nature to be more exciting,
or richer in the material whence Fancy frames her chequered web, than
the recollections awakened in a well-stored imagination by a near
approach to the shores of America. Although differing widely, these are
to every philosophic mind, especially to a subject of Britain, at least
equally stirring.

When it is first remembered, that on all the long line of coast
extendi