As in the general course of commerce in Europe, British vessels visit every part of the narrow seas, and especially the Kattegat and the Baltic (seeing that of the 15,000 vessels that annually pass the Sound up and down, fully one quarter belong to the United Kingdom), it becomes of some importance that the British mariner should know where he is likely to find a life-boat in the possible event of his vessel being driven on the coast of a neighbouring country.

We propose, then, to give a brief notice of the several life-boat and rocket stations, as far as we are aware of them, on the shores of France, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark; we wish we could add—and of Prussia, but we have not yet succeeded in obtaining the requisite information from that State, yet which we hope at a future period to be enabled to lay before the readers of the Life-Boat Journal.

In preparing such a notice, we are again obliged to have recourse to the Report of the Northumberland Life-Boat Committee, and to a lecture on the subject of Life-Boats, in connexion with the Industrial Exhibition of 1851, recently delivered before the Society of Arts ; but for the present we propose to do little more than enumerate the several stations. When our limits will permit, we trust, through the courtesy of the several Foreign Life-Boat Associations, to be enabled to furnish a tolerably complete account of their several establishments; for the cause of humanity is universal, not national, and as on our own shores whatever aid could be afforded would be as promptly rendered to a foreigner as to a countryman, so we feel assured that were an English vessel wrecked on any of the coasts above named, the residents in the district would vie with each other who should be the foremost to succour and help the unfortunate strangers.

Commencing in the Channel, there is one life-boat, if not more, stationed at Havre. A similar full-sized boat, built by M. ED. LAHURE, of Havre, was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and placed outside the eastern end of the building; the boat was of iron, with a very rising floor, and the usual air-cases: the Jury awarded a medal to its inventor.

Proceeding from Havre to the eastward, there is a gap of 100 miles until we reach Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk, at each of which places there is a life-boat. This inter- val comprises the entrance of the Somme, the scene of so many disastrous wrecks, including that of the Reliance on the 12th November, 1842, when 113 were drowned, and the Con- queror on the 13th January, 1843, when 69 more lives were lost, besides many other vessels; a spot (as Captain F. W. BEECHEY, R.N., has shown, in his admirable paper on the Tidal Streams of the North Sea and English Channel in thePM. Trans, for 1851, and as M. MONNIER has pointed out in his Memoire sur les Courants de la Manche, as well as in Le Pilote Franyais) at which the streams of both flood and ebb tide at certain periods tend to carry vessels into the bight between Le Treport and Etaples, and which, therefore, ought to be especially protected by life-boats, rockets, mortars, and all other apparatus that may assist in saving life.

In Belgium there is a life-boat at Ostende; in Holland at Zieriksee, Brouwershaven, Rockanje, Grave'sande, Ter Heide, and Sche- veningen, or three on each side of the entrance of the river leading to Rotterdam, within a distance of 20 miles on either side. All these boats are built and supported by the South Holland Shipwreck Institution, under the presidency of Mr. WM. VAN HOUTEN, of Rotterdam; they have been serviceable on many occasions in saving life, and the whole organization and establishment is highly creditable to the merchants of that great commercial city.

In Denmark there are 21 life-boat and rocket stations on the west coast of Jutland, between the Horn, or Blaavaiid's Hook, and the Skaw, or Skagen, a distance of about 180 nautic miles : of these, 12 are complete with life-boat and rocket apparatus, 8 with rockets only, and 1 with a life-boat only.

Beginning from the southward, the stations are Blaavand's Hook, Hennestvand, Nymin- degab, Synder Lyngviig, Vaddersei Klit, Tuskicer, Flyvhoim, Tybo Kon, Agger Canal, (the entrance into the Lyra Fiord that leads out by Aalborg into the Kattegat,) Vester Agger, Nordre Voruysore, Klitmoller, Han- stedholm, Lill Strand, Slette Strand, Blok- husene, Lokken, Lonstrup, Hirtshals, Kan- destederne, and Skagen, at the extreme north point of Jutland, and the entrance of the Kattegat.

All these boats are now supported by the Danish Government, and have been so since October, 1849; but M. CLAUDI, Superin- tendent of this part of the coast, was the first to call attention to the subject of the want of life-boats as far back as the year 1838, and it is owing entirely to his dis- interested and indefatigable exertions that the affairs have been brought to their present state. In 1846, a private society, " The Association for the Advancement of Navi- gation," resolved to have a life-boat built, which was stationed in the Agger Canal; in 1847 the Masonic Lodge of Copenhagen placed a smaller life-boat at Harboore, on the west coast of Jutland: in the same year the late King, CHRISTIAN VIII., devoted a sum of money for the support of these boats; and in October, 1849, as before- mentioned, the whole establishment was re-organized by order of Government, and placed on its present footing. The boats have all been built by M. BONNESEN, of Copenhagen, and to judge by the drawing of one which we hav£ seen, they are not unworthy of the countrymen of the great CHAPMAN, whose work on Naval Architeture is well known.

We learn further from Captain IPSEN, of the Danish Royal Navy, a member of the Committee of the National Shipwreck Institution of Denmark, to whose great courtesy we are indebted for the above details, that the island of Bornholm, in the Baltic, is shortly to be provided with one life-boat and five rocket stations, also at the cost of the Danish Government, which may thus proudly boast of having set the example to Europe of caring for the lives of its ship- wrecked mariners.

In Prussia we believe there are some life- boat stations, but we have not been able to ascertain their names; we well know, how- ever, that the inhabitants of the island of Riigen are famed for their hospitality and kindness to shipwrecked sailors, and we believe that there are some ancient humane laws still in force respecting wrecks, which are immediately taken charge of by persons appointed for the purpose, and thus those disgraceful scenes, formerly of common occurrence near home, are entirely prevented.