abated. I advanced with deep interest by the peaked group of rocks, and
passed the wreck of a brig lying high and dry on the sand just before me.
The whole of the shore between the Heads, was strewed with her contents. I
never witnessed so total a wreck in so short a space of time. The violence
of the surf had completely beaten her sides out, leaving stem and stern
hanging together as by a thread, while her ribs and broken cordage and
sails, completed the picture, had any thing been wanting to perfect it. I
could moralize any day on a single bit of plank on a shore--each fragment
seems to tell its tale, and awakens a train of thoughts and feelings in
the mind; but "grim desolation" was here visibly before me.

Though I was early astir, I found that the prospect of booty had been
sufficiently powerful already to draw out not only the inhabitants of
Torwich, but great numbers of the neighbouring peasantry. But where was
the ship, about whose fate we had been so greatly interested the preceding
evening? This was manifestly not her; but I distinctly saw a large, black
hull lying under the western cliffs, half a mile distant, towards which
the people were rapidly moving. She had come ashore a little after high
water, during the night. I picked my way through the wreck strewn
around--to a small group of persons standing near me; five of them were
strangers, the crew of the brig. I learnt that my surmises were right
concerning the ship in the distance, and that the brig which was laden
with crockery came ashore about the same period.

I left these poor fellows endeavouring to rescue their little articles of
property, and took a route apart from the course of the crowd towards the
other ship. I had not gone far, when I almost stumbled over the dead body
of a young female, lying with her face uppermost, half buried in the sand--

Her very tresses clung