has pointed out that they were foretold by both
thermometer and barometer, and that their
advance could have been telegraphed from the
southern to the eastern and northern coasts in
sufficient time to ensure full preparation. " It
is proved," writes the admiral, " that storms
are preceded by distinct warnings, and that they
advance in particular directions towards places
where their influence is felt some time after it
has become marked elsewhere. Therefore,
information may be conveyed by telegraph, in time
to caution those at a distance who are likely to
be visited by bad weather." Of the message
swifter than the wind, no use has yet been made
for the protection of our-sailors.

Warning was again neglected, of the yet
more terrible gales of this year. In the lost
Yarmouth fishing-boats alone, one hundred and
thirty men perished, two hundred in the boats
from Yarmouth and the adjacent dozen miles of
coast, and they have left two hundred children
fatherless.

The courage and humanity of all the boatmen
of our coast appear in the return of lives
saved. We must not think of the rocket-and-
mortar apparatus and the life-boat stations as
the sole dependence of the shipwrecked mariner
whose eye strains towards British ground
expecting help. But the life-boat can brave storms
in which a coast-guard boat or fisher boat could
not venture to put out; it has a trained crew
and every provision for the rescue of men from
a wreck; it is ready to slip out to its work at a
minute's warning, and the men saved by a life-
boat very commonly are men whom nothing but
a life-boat could have saved.

Almost the first blot on the records of the
life-boat service was the selfish struggle, during
one of the late gales, among men of the
Yarmouth life-boat, who retained the boat ashore,
disputing among themselves for the right to
the place of coxswain, while men were being
drowned before their eyes from a wrecked brig
upon the Scroby Sands. The boat that could
have saved all hands went out too late, and came
back as it went out, in disgrace. Very different
was the temper of the Margate life-boatmen,
who, coming to the shore a minute or two late,
and finding their boat manned by other seamen,
threw them their waterproofs, with a kind
cheer to speed them on their swift errand of
mercy.

There is a fund annually granted by this
nation for the acknowledgment of gallant services
in saving life at sea. It is spent, not in reward,
but in thankful recognition of a generosity
bounded by no national distinctions. Now, it is
an American captain who saves thirty English
lives, maintains them in his ship for forty days,
and joins his owners in refusing compensation.
Now, it is a French custom-house officer, himself
unable to swim, who has plunged into the sea to
save a drowning Englishman, or who totters
from a sick-bed to help in the rescue of an
English wreck upon his coast. Now, it is a
Genoese captain who saves a crew of fourteen
men, maintains them for three weeks, and will
not be paid. Now, it is a Greek and now a
Dutchman, now a Dane and now a Portuguese,
who has braved death and storm for the help of
imperilled Englishmen. The Maltese seaman of
the Royal Charter none forget.

The public recognition of the duty for which
all hearts are so ready, as regards the saving of
wretched men upon our shores, has for its best
evidence the life-boat. There were last year
one hundred and fifty-eight life-boat stations on
the coasts of the three kingdoms. Many of
these are maintained by the harbour commissioners,
dock trustees, or other local representatives
of shipping interests, of the ports at which
they are found. One or two are maintained by
the generosity of individuals; but the great
majority—ninety-two last year, and after a few
months this year, one hundred and one—are
under the management of the National Life-
boat Institution. This Institution relies on the
public for its means, but has a subsidy of about
two thousand a year from the Board of Trade,
which spends also another two thousand on the
maintenance and use of the mortar-and-rocket
apparatus. On the Institution just named,
government depends for the maintenance and
advancement of an efficient life-boat system. What
is its history, and what is it about?

It was founded six-and-thirty years ago, and
is actively represented by a committee mainly
composed of mercantile men and officers in the
navy, with the Chairman of Lloyd's, the
Comptroller-General of the Coast-Guard, the
Hydrographer to the Admiralty, and others. The
committee sits in London, and, on the part of the
Institution, its business is to build, station, and
maintain in repair life-boats of the most perfect
description; to furnish them with all necessary
appurtenances, including boat-houses and
carriages for the conveyance of boats to the sea; also
to provide, through a local committee, for the
proper management of each boat and the
exercising of its crew. The Institution also grants
money, medals, votes of thanks to those who have
risked life in the effort to save shipwrecked
men. It collects and turns to account the
newest and best information on the construction
of life-boats, the management of boats in surf
and storm, the best method of restoring animation
to drowned men in whom a spark of life
may linger, and whatever else may be found
serviceable to the cause it represents.

There have been reported to the committee
of this Institution, by coast-guard officers and
Lloyd's agents, sixty points upon our coast at
which a life-boat station is still urgently required.
Two years ago, the Institution possessed
seventy boats. A year ago, it possessed
eighty-one boats. At the annual meeting held
this year, it was reported that the Institution
had placed on the coast twelve more boats (one
of which is the free gift of Miss Burdett Coutts),
and had others in course of building, which
would raise the force of their fleet to one
hundred and one, the largest life-saving fleet that
the world has ever seen. Each boat, apart from
any help it might give to a wreck, has been