32 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



publicity, it was not altogether easy to persevere. His 

 young shipmate, Luke Thomas, looked upon the practice 

 with stern disapproval, and took an opportunity of advising 

 him "to get rid of that sort of thing, as that wouldn't do 

 for Newfoundland." At no period of his life, however, was 

 my father affected in the slightest degree by considera- 

 tions of this sort. His conscience was a law to him, and 

 a law that he was prepared to obey in face of an army 

 of ridicule drawn up in line of battle. At this time, he 

 was far from having accepted the vigorous forms of reli- 

 gious belief which he adopted later on. He was not, as he 

 would afterwards have put it, "converted;" he was as other 

 light-hearted boys are, but with the addition of an inflexible 

 determination to do what was right, and in particular what 

 he had promised to carry out, however unpleasant the 

 performance might prove to be.» This was a personal 

 characteristic with him, and one which will be found to 

 have coloured his whole career. In an age which has 

 mainly valued and cultivated breadth of religious feeling, 

 he was almost physiologically predisposed to depth, even 

 at the risk of narrowness. 



At length, on the morning of Wednesday, June 6, 1827, 

 a long line of dim blue, ending in a point, was visible on 

 the western horizon, — Newfoundland apparent at last, in 

 the form of Cape St. Francis, the eastern boundary of 

 Conception Bay, to which the brig was bound. All that 

 day the promontory continued to occupy the same position, 

 for there was very little wind. A noble iceberg of vast 

 dimensions was also in view; and this, while they were 

 gazing at it, majestically shifted its balance, and turned 

 about one-third over, causing an immense turmoil of water 

 and a swell that was felt for a long time afterwards. To 

 the impatient and imaginative lad, fretting for the con- 

 quest of a new continent, this iceberg seemed no inappro- 



