ship, mother and child speedily disappeared.
Captain Allen called them sea-serpents
because he had no other name to give them.
Perhaps it may be not undesirable to bear
this circumstance in mind, and to remember
that in cases of testimony such as those of
Captain M'Quhae and Captain Harrington,
it is a thing—not a name—that is insisted
on.

What are we to think of these and similar
narratives? It will not do to set down all
the narrators as knaves or fools; nor will
it do to believe that the men really saw all
that they supposed they saw. Some middle
course is needed. A conjecture has been
hazarded that, in one particular instance, a
serpent may have escaped from a ship in
which it was being conveyed to some
menagerie, and have launched itself into
an element unsuited for it; but in which
it may have survived a few days. Then
it has been supposed that, in many cases,
a marine animal of well-known kind, but
of specially large size, may have been
mistaken for a kind of serpent. The
porpoise, the sword-fish, and other sorts
may be named, which give a little colour
to this supposition. With regard to the
porpoise, there is one narrative exceedingly
curious, which seems to throw a gleam of
light on the nature of some of the very
long sea-serpents. A few years ago, a
gentleman was sailing in his yacht, off the
north coast of Scotland. He saw in the
sea what looked like a sea-serpent, a
succession of undulations of a black substance
swimming in the sea, and extending several
hundred feet in length. The motion was
exactly like the up-and-down contortions of
a snake, or eel: certain portions alternately
appearing above and sinking beneath the
water. But on closer examination, the
object resolved itself into a vast number of
porpoises following (as is often their custom)
closely in the wake of each other, and
swimming in a straight line. Their alternate
pitching, head and tail, gave so exactly
the appearance of the wriggling motion of
a large serpent, as easily to suggest a very
erroneous estimate of the matter: though
here again it is to be borne in mind on the
other hand that a shoal of porpoises is a
very common fact to all seamen. Another
test was obtained by the officers of the
Pekin, while on a voyage from Moulmein
in 1848. One day they saw a singular-
looking object about half a mile from the
ship. It appeared to have a head and
neck, and a long shaggy mane, which it
kept lifting at intervals out of the water.

Captain F. Smith, determined to know
more about the matter, launched a boat,
in which he sent off his first officer and
four men. They got close to the head,
the monster taking no notice of them, but
ducking its head repeatedly, and showing
its great length. They secured a line to
it, and slowly dragged it towards the ship,
where it was hoisted on board. The
monster looked very supple, and was
completely covered with large barnacles.
Presently it was found to be simply a gigantic
seaweed, twenty feet long by four inches
diameter, the root-end of which appeared
when in the water like the head of an
animal; while the motion produced by the
sea caused it to seem alive and active. Here
again, naturalists sitting in their studies at
ease, and calmly thinking of the blunders
on the seas, must not make too much of
the seaweed. And why? Because nobody
took it for a sea-serpent, or even reported
it as such.

A PRAYER IN THE CITY.

LONDON, 1869.

AH, me! the City groaneth at my feet,
And all the crowd, oh God, is faint with woe;
Help have I none nor any message meet.
Teach me that I may know!

Behold the little children everywhere,
But not the little ones of old I knew;
Fledglings they seem, when all the woods are bare,
Flowers, where there falls no dew.

Whose are they? for the parents heed them not,
And men are all too busy as they pass;
Their place is with the shameless and the sot,
Lost in the huddling mass.

The fair green fields, wherein the cowslips come,
The streams whereby the tasselled grasses wave:
These are as lands unknown; the garret home
Must hold them to the grave.

The song of birds, that in sweet seasons mate,
And fill the pleasant May-time with delight;
Shall never reach these little slaves of fate
Wrapped in their smoky night.

Yet have they guests that will not be denied
As warders ever waiting at the door,
Grim Fever, with lank Famine at her side,
These, and a thousand more.

See how the sunshine trembles on its way,
So dark are all these alleys in the shade;
Oh God, to think our palace builders stay,
So near, yet undismayed!

We pile the marble for the rich man's tomb,
We hang the satin at my lady's head;
Why, then, are human lives within the gloom
Less cared for than the dead?

The babbling stream of fashion comes and goes,
And every bubble finds some fool to follow;
But the great tide that heaves to speechless woes,
Rolls on, and voices hollow,

Come from the hearts that should be first to bleed,
"How very sad," they say, " that such things are;
But 'tis the law of God that one man's need
Should light another's star."