Within a few hours of their death the nuisance has been detected and removed, although for five days, according to Redburn, they had been allowed to die by inches, within a few yards of frequented streets, and with the full knowledge and acquiescence of sundry policemen. We need hardly waste a comment on the more than improbable, on the utterly absurd character, of this incident. It will be apparent to all readers. Mr Melville is, of course, at liberty to introduce fictitious adventure into what professes to be a narrative of real events; the thing is done every day, and doubtless he largely avails of the privilege. He has also a clear right to deal in the lugubrious, and even in the loathsome, if he thinks an occasional dash of tragedy will advantageously relieve the humorous features of his book. But here he is perverting truth, and leading into error the simple persons who put their faith in him. And, from the consideration of such misguidance, we naturally glide into the story of Master Harry Bolton. Redburn had been at Liverpool four weeks, and began to suspect that was all he was likely to see of the country, and that he must return to New York without obtaining the most distant glimpse of "the old abbeys, and the York minsters, and the lord mayors, and coronations, and the maypoles and fox-hunters, and Derby races, and dukes, and duchesses, and Count d'Orsays," which his boyish reading had given him the habit of associating with England,--when he one day made acquaintance, at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, with "a handsome, accomplished, but unfortunate youth, one of those small but perfectly-formed beings who seem to have been born in cocoons. His complexion was a _mantling brunette_, feminine as a girl's; his feet were small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black, and womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp." It is natural to wonder what this dainty gentleman does in the sailors' quarter of Liverpool, and how he comes to rub his dandified costume against the tarry jackets of the Clippers' habitual frequenters. On these points we are presently enlightened. Harry Bolton was born at Bury St Edmunds. At a very early age he came into possession of five thousand pounds, went up to London, was at once admitted into the most aristocratic circles, gambled and dissipated his money in a single winter, made two voyages to the East Indies as midshipman in a Company's ship, squandered his pay, and was now about to seek his fortune in the New World. On reaching Liverpool, he took it into his head, for the romance of the thing, to ship as a sailor, and work his passage. Hence his presence at the docks, and his acquaintance with Redburn, who, delighted with his new acquaintance, prevails on him to offer his services to Captain Riga of the Highlander, who graciously accepts them.