OR, VULCAN S PEAK. 141 him of some future day, when he, might be compelled to give up life itself, without a friendly hand to smooth his pillow, or to close his eyes, led him to think far more se riously than he had done before, on the subject of the true character of our probationary condition here on earth, and on the unknown and awful future to which it leads us. Mark had been carefully educated on the subject of reli gion, and was well enough disposed to enter into the in quiry in a suitable spirit of humility; but, the grave cir cumstances in which he was now placed, contributed largely to the clearness of his views of the necessity of preparing for the final change. Cut off, as he was, from all communion with his kind ; cast on what was, when he fim knew it, literally a barren rock in the midst of the vast Pacific Ocean, Mark found himself, by a very natural operation of causes, in much closer communion with his Creator, than he might have been in the haunts of the world. On the Reef, there was little to divert his thoughts from their true course; and the very ills that pressed upon him, became so many guides to his gratitude by showing, through the contrasts, the many blessings which had been left him by the mercy of the hand thai had struck him. The nights .in that climate and season were much the pleasantest portions of the four-and-twenty hours. There were no exhalations from decayed vegetable substances or stagnant pools, to create miasma, but the air was as pure and little to be feared under a placid moon as under a noon-day sun. The first hours of night, therefore, were those in which our solitary man chose to take most of his exercise, previously to his complete restoration to strength ; and then it was that he naturally fell into an obvious and healthful communion with the stars. So far as the human mind has as yet been able to pene trate the mysteries of our condition here on earth, with the double connection between the past and the future, all its just inferences tend to the belief in an existence of a vast and beneficent design. We have somewhere heard, or read, that the gipsies believe that men are the fallen angels, toiling their way backward on the fatal path along which they formerly rushed to perdition. This may not be, pro bably is not true, in its special detail ; but that men are
