arrogance and all the self-importance of a porter at the Admiralty, who considers himself sufficiently condescending when he allows a poor, half-starved, expecting lieutenant to write his name down for an interview with the magnanimous first lord, and who would see the poor devil buried in Paddington churchyard before he would show him the way to the waiting-room. These vermin are as haughty as their superiors, and positively laugh at the idea of a complaint. This should be reformed; for it is hard to be at the mercy of an inferior, and be insulted in the bargain. The boys crowded round me; my dirk was drawn and sheathed as often as that used by the learned monkey at Antwerp; my cocked-hat was fitted on the head of every boy in the school, and I paraded about in all the conscious pride of a drill-sergeant before his awkward squad. The French tyrant ridiculed the folly of sending such children to sea: his slaves were rung into the school-room, and I swore as I turned my head toward the large iron gate, that if I ever caught the master, or any of his relations, in my power, I would be revenged for that word "children," and the many hard blows and little knowledge I had received for my father's money.

It was on the 4th of July that I stepped into my father's carriage. I tittered with joy, whilst the family were in tears at my departure. I thought only on glory and a star, they on affection and the probable last farewell. Of all the scenes in life, the parting with an affectionate son, when the parents are at an advanced age, is perhaps the most trying. Some who send their sons to India to fight their own way in the world, and who know that the eye gazes for the last time on the boy, the last parting kiss is imprint. ing, and that the last fond adieu is expressing, bear up against the loss, inspired by hope, although that hope is desperate. Mammon assists to veil the truth; the hope that he may be rich banishes the dull idea that, to the parent, the boy may be lost forever. He may for some few years read of his success; but the prospect of the return to the parent, once again to be clasped in his arms -once more to hear the kind and welcome voice, and feel his cordial and endearing kiss, is hopeless and una. vailing. The child is dead though living-and to him the parent exists, yet has passed away. No sooner had I

driven from the door, although my father was with me, than I felt the coldness of desolation; the dress ceased to please, my mind constantly recurred to home, and I felt at "each remove the lengthening chain." Then did I feel the force of Southey's beautiful sentence :-"The pain which is felt when we are first transplanted from our native soil, when the living branch is cut from the parent tree, is one of the most poignant which we have to endure through life. There are after griefs which wound more deeply, which leave behind them scars never to be effaced, which bruise the spirit, and sometimes break the heart; but never do we feel so keenly the want of love, the necessity of being loved, and the sense of utter desertion, as when we first leave the haven of home, and are, as it were, pushed off upon the stream of life.'

Alas! too soon I felt it-too soon I had necessity to call to remembrance the kind affection of a mother, the eager solicitude of my sisters, and the ever ready, willing hand of my old and kind protecting nurse.

The ship was at Sheerness, or rather the "Little Nore." We drove to the Three Tuns, about as miserable a hole, in as swampy a place, as the Washington Arms at Savannah. Here we slept. The next morning, at ten o'clock, we found a boat waiting to convey us on board the Salsette, a six-and-thirty-gun frigate, my future destination. Having refreshed ourselves with breakfast, and despatched my chest by the yawl, I, the owner, with my father, followed in the captain's gig. They were just hoisting in my traps as I came alongside. "Hulloa!" said the first-lieutenant, (seeing my chest marked No. 6-a large, lumbering thing, in which my father had stowed his linen for an Indian voyage some years back.) "Hulloa-No. 6! why, does this youngster fancy the ship was made for him? Here, Mr. M'Queen," calling one of the master's mates, "strike this chest into the steerage for the present; but it must go in the hold afterwards." Instead of the careful hand of the elegant butler or trim footman, a parcel of half-clad savages, with long tails like monkeys, only shipped a little higher up, seized hold of No. 6, and in a moment I lost sight of all my worldly treasures, as it descended into the hole, as the first-lieutenant called it. Captain Bathurst was on deck to receive his old friend, my father. I

was noticed kindly; undergoing at the same time a pretty severe inspection by my future companions. They laughed covertly, for laughing is not allowed on the quarter-deck, at my frightened appearance; and being a slim, and, I have since been told, an elegantly-made young. ster, it was wittily remarked that I should make a good "nipper" or "selvagee" upon emergencies; but, on descending the hatchway, I heard myself christened "Fat Jack," for which cognomen I was indebted to about as ugly a midshipman as mother ever produced or father saw. I turned, on descending the hatchway, to view the maindeck. Ye gods, what a difference! I had anticipated a kind of elegant house with guns in the windows; an orderly set of men; in short, I expected to find a species of Grosvenor Place, floating about like Noah's ark. Here were the tars of England rolling about casks, without jackets, shoes, or stockings. On one side provisions were received on board; at one port-hole coals, at another wood; dirty women, the objects of sailors' affections, with beer cans in hand, were every where conspicuous; the shrill whistle squeaked, and the voice of the boatswain and his mates rattled like thunder in my ears; the deck was dirty, slippery, and wet; the smells abominable; the whole sight disgusting; and when I remarked the slovenly dress of the midshipman, dressed in shabby round jackets, glazed hats, no gloves, and some without shoes, I forgot all the glory of Nelson, all the pride of the navy, the terror of France, or the bulwark of Albion; and, for nearly the first time in my life, and I wish I could say it was the last, took the handkerchief from my pocket, covered my face, and cried like the child I was. These were no tears of schoolboys' eyes, but tears of mortification and disappointment, fresh from a youngsters heart.

The time slipped away imperceptibly, for now I dreaded the departure of my father. In consolation or love, Heavens, how the joyful moments fly!-I dare say the poor criminal who is to pay the forfeit of his life, when St. Sepulchre's bells begin to anounce the eighth hour, finds the time between his awakening and his execution flying rather to rapidly, and would fain arrest the wing of the enemy for one short moment. My father appeared not to have been on board a minute, and now he wished to be

gone. He saw me placed under the protection of an older midshipman, and he faltered when he gave me his last blessing, and shook hands with all the friendship and affection of a parent. I saw him leave the ship. Well do I remember leaning over the gun in the captain's cabin, my head nearly out of the port, crying with all the bitterness of a forsaken child,-surrounded by strangers, who regarded me only as "a necessary evil"-my ears assailed by uncouth words and irreligious cursing-no one to pity me, no one to alleviate my misery-alone in the world, and yet surrounded by it. My boyish bewailing was interrupted by the entrance of the captain, who consigned me to the care of the older midshipman ; and I was walked off under the command of my new protector, to the finest school for aristocratic pride and delicate stomachs— a midshipman's berth. I was ushered into the larboard berth thus:"Here, my lads, is another messmate; rather green at present, but as thin as our pig, and as sharp as a razor. "What? another!" roared a ruddy-faced midshipman of about eighteen; "he must stow himself away, for we are chock-a-block here." It was noon, at which time the men and midshipmen dine, and consequently I found my companions at their scanty meal. A dirty tablecloth, which had the marks of the boys' fingers and the gentlemen's hands, covered the table. It had performed both offices of towel and tablecloth since Sunday. A piece of half-roasted beef-the gravy chilled into a solid, some potatoes in their jackets, and biscuit in a japanned basket, with some very questionable beer, formed the comestibles. The berth was about ten feet long by eight broad; a fastened seat, under which were lockers, was built round the bulk-head; and the table, a fixture from sea lashings, was of that comfortable size that a man might reach across it without any particular elongation of the arm. A dirty-looking lad, without shoes or stockings, dressed in a loose pair of inexpressible, fitting tight round the hips, a checked shirt, with the sleeves turned up to the elbows his face as black as a sweep's and his hands as dirty as a coalheaver's, was leaning against the locker, and acted in the dignified capacity of midshipmen's boy. Here it is only justice to remark that the occupation of these poor devils' time is so fully engrossed, that it has

been held by good judges one of the most difficult points to determine which is the most worthy of compassion, the maid of a lady of easy virtue, a hackney coach-horse, a pedlar's donkey, or a midshipman's boy: for my own part, I always give it as my opinion, which I shall not now retract, that a midshipman's boy in a frigate, having about fourteen masters, and no assistant, is about as cursed a situation as the vengeance of man could suggest-a galley slave he is in every sense of the world. He was as slim

and as flexible as an eel, and not very likely to become as fat as the Norfolk lady's servant, who had left his mistress a kind of undefined shadow, and who three months afterwards was found in London as fat as a duchess's coachman, or a boxer become landlord in a public-house.

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Ah, John," quoth the lady, "I am glad to see you: why, you are looking quite fat and rosy."

"Yes, ma'am," said the sawny-looking lout, "I have got a main good place now; I chews all the meat they puts in the patties in that pastry-cook's shop there; that's what I does, ma'am; and so I swallows it now and then, and gets right plump and hearty." Had poor Smith, our boy, masticated all the leavings of our hungry crew, it would not have increased his rotundity.

"Well, I say, youngster," said a dirty-looking messmate, "it's no use your piping your eye now; so what will you have? Come, speak out like a man; why, you have got a long-tailed coat on; the sail-maker will soon altar the cut of your jib."

I answered in a trembling voice, that I would take a glass of water; upon which I was saluted with a loud laugh, and the boy forthwith began to pour out some dingy-looking liquid in a tea-cup.

"Here, you rascal !" cried one; "I asked you for it before that youngster: hand it here, for I must be off, and relieve the deck."

A cup of water was then handed to me; it was the bit. terest drop pride ever sipped. Oh! could I then have recalled my choice of a profession, the world would have been too poor to have liquidated the debt.

In those days in the navy, before we had been polished by the society of females, or enjoyed the benefits of peace, the dinner-service in a midshipman's berth was not quite