By the REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D.

THE gale of the 3rd of December last was a destructive hurricane. It would appear, from observations made at Liverpool, that its utmost severity fell on that town and its neighbourhood ; for, according to the anemometers in the Observatory there, its pressure, between 8 and 10 o'clock of the forenoon of the 3rd of December, was equal to 43 pounds on the square foot; and this is the highest ever registered at that Observatory, and considerably higher than the registers of this gale at London, or any other place.

Interesting as that fact is, it will convey to many a very imperfect idea of the power of the wind to raise storms, before which the stoutest ships of oak or iron may be crushed like an egg-shell. One or two circumstances which have come under my own eye may convey to most readers a more distinct and vivid idea of the power of the sea in such a * This graphic description of the heavy gale of the 3rd of December last appeared in Good Wards of April, and we are indebted to the publishers of that valuable .work for permission to republish it.

gale; and here I may give the copy of a letter which I sent from New Brighton to Edinburgh, on the afternoon of Thursday s the 3rd of December:—" On Tuesday, the 1st, Admiral FiTzEoY (who would have made a fortune two hundred years ago by selling winds to seamen, if he was fortunate enough to escape being drowned or burned as a warlock) had sent notice to all the seaports that on Wednesday and Thursday the wind would blow from the west, strong to a gale. Well, yesterday morning his prediction seemed as worthless as those of ' Moore's Almanac,' where we used to have the wind and weather given from the January of the one year to the January of the next. The sky was hazy, the air a dead calm, and the sea smooth as a mill-pond. But, as we took our forenoon saunter on the sands, the curtain which hid Waterloo—a suburb of Liverpool which stands facing us on the opposite shore—suddenly lifted; and though two or three miles of water lie between us and its houses, they -stood out as distinctly as if they were not a third of the distance away : a pretty sure sign of a change; this was the pause before the battle—the gleam before the storm.

" A short while, and the sky began to darken and the wind to rise; and in less than an hour the heavens and earth were in wild commotion. The tempest roared; the sea foamed with rage; and the sand on its shore was blown as I -never saw sand blown before—scudding along like a low mist, to form, wherever it encountered house or wall, great heaps, like wreaths of snow, only they were grey in place of white, and drifting landward in clouds, as if its purpose was to bury .the town. So it continued all day long. We made some attempts to go out, but were glad to beat a retreat; for the wind was absolutely choking—the sand filled our nostrils, ears, and mouth—and, so far as the eyes were concerned, it was what the Scotch called a blind drift. As the night fell down, so did the storm—it seemed to have worn itself out and gone to sleep with the rest of the world : but, as if its exhausted energies had been restored by a night's repose, the gale returned with double fury on Thursday morning.

" No boat could leave our landing-stage for Liverpool, so that was ' stormi stay'd,' and had to spend the day with us, instead of in his office. Some gentlemen, anxious to get to their places of business, set off in a van 'for Birkenhead, intending to cross from thence to Liverpool, as almost no weather stops the ferry-boats so far up the river. It was a bold, but unsuccessful attempt. The hurricane capsized the van, and emptied its freight on the road—a disaster which also befell the milk-cart, to the detriment of our breakfast. You remember the storms we sometimes had at Lochlee; and how, roaring down into the glen from the peak of Cragmaskeldie, they blew the water in great sheets out of the river, and, falling in whirlwinds on the loch, whisked up clouds of spray as high as the neighbouring hills. Yet the storm to-day beat any we ever saw there. Blowing through every chink of doors and windows, it has coated chairs, tables, carpets— the whole interior of the house—with sand.

And how it sounds!—whistling, howling, shrieking, yelling; and, in our bed-room, where it has found out some curiously-constructed crevice, humming with a noise like the thousand spindles of a mill, or such as you could fancy coming from the drone of a Highland bagpipe as big as the pipes of a church organ.

" The town, from which our servant who ventured out has just returned, looks like a deserted city—no shop open, and nobody in the streets. Such was the strength of the gale, that it took me, the two lads, and a servant, to shut our front door. The servant had incautiously opened it, and was at once laid on her back in the lobby.

" The sea is in ah awful turmoil, thundering on the shore; and ever and anon some great wave hurls itself against the fort, making grand explosions, if I may say so; throwing the most beautiful clouds of spray high in the air above the cannon which crown the massive walls. The gale has blown such a mass of water inshore, that had this been a time of spring instead of neap tides, the ground story of our house would probably have been afloat; and with sand in the upper story, without the sea in the lower, we have discomforts enough.

But these have been little thought of. We have been thinking of the poor fellows who are fighting for life out on the stormy deep; and have also been rejoicing with them that do rejoice—with some whom we have seen come safe out of the battle. Sand, wind, rain, everything was forgotten, as another and another barque hove in sight, and we turned our glasses to see her as she came rolling, pitching, ploughing through the mist and foam to take the Mersey, and feel herself safe on passing the fort and lighthouse.

" Not more in all than three or four have ventured in; and these, perhaps, because the gale caught them so near shore that they could not beat out to sea. The sight of "these vessels returning shattered, but safe, from a deadly conflict with the elements, carried me back nearly half a century, to the day when the whole of Edinburgh crushed into the High Street and Canongate to welcome the survivors of the 42nd Highlanders on their return from Waterloo. The spectators filled every window of the seven and eight storied houses —crowded every roof, and clustered, like swarms of bees, on the chimney tops; and it was a stirring sight to see that small band of gallant men marching up to the Castle, some with their arms in slings, patches still on the naked limbs that strode, and on the brave bronzed faces that looked upon, that bloody field, and waving over their heads, amid cheers that rent the air and seemed to shake out their folds, the torn colours which they had borne into the fight, and brought out of it with Highland honour. I had seen that grand sight when I was a boy; and it was recalled to my recollection as vessel after vessel came in, each bearing plain evidence of the struggle she had had for life. Save one low sail to steer by and keep them off shore, they did not show a bit of canvas, nor could they. All had been blown from the bolts or torn to rags; and their remnants were flying from the yards like ribbons—shreds of flesh on a skeleton—or, as in the case of some of their jibs, draggling from the bowsprit through the sea. As each went past, now showing her keel as she lurched over on the top of a wave, and then, as she went down into the trough of the sea, burying her hull and showing only naked masts—the waves now flying in clouds of spray among her yards, and now leaping bodily on her deck to sweep it fore and aft—we watched the scene with the deepest interest: we mentally congratulated the poor fellows; we thanked God that they were safe; and we would have sent forth a cheer had there been any chance of its reaching them; but human voices were lost amid the crash of the waves and the everlasting roar of the hurricane " So ran the letter.

On the morning of the day after the gale, which had entirely gone down during the night, we turned our glasses on the shores and sand-banks. Three vessels lay stranded on the opposite beach; a fourth was fast on a bank on our side of the channel, the; waves breaking furiously over her hull; and further out, the masts of a fifth, which had gone down in deep water, were sticking up like bare poles.

A welcome relief from the melancholy fancies of death and drowning struggles these sights produced—we had the satisfaction of looking at a ship's crew who had escaped the jaws of destruction but some hourj before. Their schooner had gone on the banks some half mile off' land, in the dead of night. We confess to sympathizing with their small, wiry, grey terrier, which, with canine sagacity, had also taken to the boat, and was now wheeling round us— ploughing the sand with his nose, barking and frisking about, as if he felt life all the sweeter for having been so nearly lost. The sad matter was that they were not all there; one was in the bottom of the sea—a fine young fellow, whom they left alone on the ship's deck with not an hour to live. When she struck and began to break up, they all took to their boat, hoping to make the shore; but the boat was still attached to the ship by the painter, as the rope is called.

This should have been cut. In the confusion the lad who was lost leapt once more aboard to loosen it; and before he could return, an immense wave seizing the boat, swept it away, and left him standing alone on the deck. The shore and life were on this side, and that poor perishing man on the other; yet they would have run the risk of returning for him, but could not.

The wave which swept them away, besides filling their boat almost to the gunwale and almost swamping her, carried oif one of their two oars. They could do nothing.

So, while they were drifted to the beach, he was left to die alone; and we were left to hope that God was with him in that terrible hour, and that the wave which swept him into eternity found him on his knees, and with his last breath washed a prayer for mercy from his lips.

Near by the scene of this catastrophe, and but a little way off shore, there floated, like a great black coffin, the hull of another schooner, bottom up. None knew where or how her crew had perished. But they were all drowned, six in number; and, with them, three Liverpool pilots, who, after conducting other ships safely out to sea, went on board of her with the intention of returning to their port. With all these hands to work, and with the best of skill to guide her, down she went; for it is on the sea as on the ]and—" the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." A sore battle indeed it had been, as many vessels showed, which, by help of a bit of a sail, or drawn by tugs, passed us that day and the next on their way to Liverpool.

Some with bulwarks stove in or torn off flush with the deck; some with yards blown away, or the sails hanging from them like ribbons; some with the stump of a mast standing like a tree snapped by the middle, or every mast cut clean away by the board—they came, entering the river as the best of men, when Me's storms are over, shall enter Heaven, "scarcely saved." The ravages of this gale were felt all along our coasts. It was said that from eighteen to twenty-seven vessels had foundered in the harbour at Holyhead, and that as many as sixty-eight bodies had been washed ashore there. This was an exaggeration ; but there is no doubt that hundreds of vessels were wrecked in this gale, and that the loss of life was terrible. For example, more than one hundred men and boys perished belonging to one seaport —Yarmouth; and hundreds more would have perished but for the brave and almost superhuman exertions of our life-boat crews.

What these gallant men dare and do is beyond conception. Talk of courage ! where is it to JDC found nobler, or in a nobler cause? We would hope that the services bravely rendered to humanity by life-boat crews in the late gale will secure a larger measure of support to the NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION than it has hitherto received.

This gale brings out the perils and hardships to which our seam en are exposed; and who can think of these without feeling ashamed that so little is done by the nation on behalf of men whose life is one danger, on whose bravery our country has often depended for her safety, and on whose labours she depends for so much of her enormous and ever-growing wealth ? Early removed from home and all its blessed influences ; exposed to temptations greater even than the dangers of the deep ; far from the kind and guardian care of parents, sisters, and brothers; enjoying no quiet Sabbaths, and strangers to the sound of the church-going bell ; no sooner on shore, with exuberant spirits and purses full of money, than they are assailed by crimps, land-sharks, harpies, who make them their prey, nor leave them till they are plundered of all their hard-earned wages—they should be the objects of our kind and Christian care.

It is a scandal and a deep stigma on the wealth, humanity, and Christianity of our seaport towns that so little is done for our seamen—to bless them for this world and save them for the next.

As a class, those who have had to do with seamen say that they are kind, impressible, generous, tender-hearted, and very open to good influences. We have certainly met with some of the finest, noblest specimens of religion among them ; and the most careless have often been found with such a respect for it, and sense of /t, as gives us something to work on. We are shocked to hear them spoken of as a class, doomed by the terrible necessity of their circumstances to wasteful habits and a wicked life. Nor will this Paper have been written in vain if it move the sympathy of my readers for seamen, and awaken or increase an interest in schemes now afloat to further their temporal and spiritual welfare.