I found him one morning seated on the ground, taking the sun’s altitude with a pocket sextant, from an artificial horizon, which had been made by pouring some treacle into a bowl. Upon my expressing great curiosity to know what magical operation he could be about, he at once explained, or rather endeavoured to explain, the object of such pursuits. Instead of cutting me short with some idle reply about the thing being above my comprehension, he intermitted his work, and sought earnestly to make me perceive how closely such observations were connected with the duties of a naval life. Next day he gave me a copy of Bonnycastle’s Astronomy, which I possess to this hour; and I think I may date from the conversation above alluded to, the growth of a taste for this branch of professional pursuits—I mean nautical astronomy—which has not only proved at all times a source of the highest enjoyment, but, as will be seen in the sequel, has been accompanied by no small utility in helping me on in the world. I shall be sorry if what I have here said dispose any idle youth who may not find himself happy at school, to try so rugged a profession as that of the sea, unless he have many other, and more substantial reasons for preferring it to all others. The whole system of school discipline, however, has been so much changed since the present century commenced, that boys have probably much less excuse than I had for not sticking to their lessons. And yet truth forces me to confess, that the fault lay fully more with the scholar than with the school. But my head had got so filled with notions of voyaging and travelling, that, even if I had been at Eton, I dare say I should have sighed to be allowed to fly away.