main-topsail and take thirty cod-fish, when a northwesterly gale springing up, with sharp squalls and rain, we scudded before it, and on the 14th day were in sight of the high lands round Bantry Bay and Cape Clear, Ireland, 3000 miles from our starting post.

The weather now became serene and beautiful, and, had not the dead calm which succeeded the gale threatened to frustrate all our expectations of making the shortest passage upon record, we could with pleasure have remained a week or two in the same situation. I never experienced a more delightful and sudden transition. The days were more mild and genial than in the month of May; the sun set with all the softness and mellowed tints of an Italian clime; and, on the night of the 15th of November, the northern lights illumined the heavens with an unusual brilliancy. The heavy gale had swept away the dim blue haze which generally hangs over the land, and the bold and picturesque coast of the south of Ireland stood forth with all its transcendent beauties. All around us, save a dark line to windward, presented one placid and glittering sheet of long unbroken billows. Our ship was rolling listlessly upon the smooth surface of the waves, just beyond the verge of the last puff of the sea-breeze, and the number of vessels around us hourly increased, their wellfilled canvass rising above the dark ripple on the distant horizon, and gradually creeping towards us with diminished speed, until every sail flapped and beat itself against the straining masts in our own hapless condition. In my eyes our sister isle never wore half so lovely an appearance, and I felt something like pride at her being seen to such advantage by the many strangers on board; but, as if coy and bashful, she soon drew a thick veil over her charms, or, in other words, true English weather set in.

The long-dreaded south-easterly wind, with its usual concomitant-a dense fog, succeeded after the expiration of two most delightful days.

After beating a few hours to windward in order to weather the Cape, we were enabled to bear up the channel with studding-sails set, and were off Holyhead the following evening, when time again hung heavily on our hands. It was Sunday night, and the pilots preferred continuing their carousals to noticing the numerous rockets, blue lights, and signal guns we fired, and kept us beating on and off shore in squally, unpleasant weather, until daylight, when one of them took charge of the ship, and gave us the first news of a Dutch war. As usual in such cases, the accounts were greatly exaggerated; but he had more compassion than a Cork pilot, who, three days previously, boarded a vessel in which an acquaintance of mine was passenger, and destroyed the whole Russian fleet, with only the loss of a few English line-of-battle ships; yet the information was such as to raise the military barometer of the officers on board to the highest degree. The wind veered a-head during the two following days, which time barely sufficed to beat to the mouth of the Mersey, a distance of fifty miles; nor did we land amongst the hazy and dark buildings of Liverpool until the 19th day from our leaving New York bay: a fourth of this our short passage had been most provokingly swallowed up by the few miles of the Irish channel.

"You might easily pass muster as one of us; for I should never have imagined you to be the countryman of these sturdy fellows," said an American fellow-passenger to me, as we were pushing our way through the dense crowd on the quay the following morning, and escorting our baggage to the Custom House, where it was passed

in due time; and after the payment of half a crown for "specimens of minerals" (videlicet, a lump of Schuylkill coal, cedar from the tomb of Washington, splinter from the vessel which was carried over the Falls of Niagara, and part of Termination Rock from under them, with divers other such valuable relics), I was soon again trundling rapidly in a good coach along the smooth roads, and amid the well-cultivated lands of the broad-shouldered sons of Old England.

APPENDIX I.

THE Colonies had appealed to arms for the decision of the controversy between them and the mother country for some time before they actually declared their independence of Great Britain. The subject of a separation had occupied the ablest pens in America throughout the winter of 1775 and 1776, and many of the Provinces had authorized their Representatives in the General Congress to make a proposition to that effect. The breach was now too wide to be repaired, and it was evident to every one that a final separation must take place. The Provincialists had now felt their strength, and had good prospects of maintaining their independence. The battles of Lexington and Bunker's Hill had been fought upwards of a year; the royal army had been blockaded in Boston by an undisciplined and partly unarmed militia; Quebec had been laid siege to, and General Montgomery had fallen; Montreal had surrendered; Fort Chamblée had been captured, and the whole of the New England States were occupied by provincial troops. Colonel George Washington, who had distinguished himself as aid-decamp to General Braddock in his unfortunate expedition in 1755,

and who was at this time forty-three years of age, had been ap-pointed by Congress in June 1775 as commander-in-chief of the army "assembled for the defence of American liberty, and for repelling every hostile invasion thereof." At an early period in the same year, letters of marque and reprisal had been granted by the Congress of Massachusetts, though this heretofore had been a prerogative of the Sovereign; and a resolution had been proposed that the Colonies should form governments independent of the Crown. At last, on the 7th of June, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, moved a resolution in general Congress, to the effect" that the United Colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent States." He was seconded by John Adams, and the motion was carried on the 10th, by a bare majority of the Colonies; and a committee, consisting of Jefferson, John Adams, Dr. Franklin, Sherman, and R. Livingston, was appointed to prepare a Declaration. The first two were selected as a sub-committee. Mr. Jefferson, who was at this time only thirty-three years of age, and by profession a lawyer, had the merit of drawing up this important document, a few changes only being suggested by Adams and Franklin. After a discussion of three days' duration, in which some unimportant alterations were made by Congress, it received their approbation on the 4th of July, 1776, and was proclaimed from the steps of the State House in Philadelphia, where they assembled. It did not, however, receive the signatures of the members until the 2d of August, being previously authenticated only by those of the President and Secretary. Between the 4th of July and this day many new members, amongst whom were Carroll, Taylor, Thornton, Clymer, Rush, Smith, and Ross, took their seats in the house, and affixed their names to the Declaration, though they were not present at the discussion. Hancock, an opulent merchant of Boston, was President of the Congress, though many men of more transcendent abilities were in that body; but he had gained popularity in the Provinces, from the cir