In the Leander, on the Halifax station, we had an excellent schoolmaster for about a year, when the situation of professor of one of the colonial colleges happening to fall vacant, we lost his services immediately; and although ours was the flag-ship, on board of which the inducements were considerably beyond the common run, we could never afterwards procure a proper person to fill the office. The youngsters, therefore, who, as usual, flocked on board the Admiral’s ship, were ever after left completely adrift. What would become of the arrangements of a man-of-war, I should like to ask, if any one of the other officers—the first lieutenant, for instance, the purser, or the boatswain—were at liberty, without warning, to quit the ship the instant he saw an opportunity of bettering himself? And yet, if there existed no prospective benefit in these officers remaining, on what principle could we expect to maintain any permanent hold over them? How then can we wonder that chaplains and schoolmasters, whom as yet we have taken no pains to form into a distinct, respectable, and well-paid class of officers, should scruple so little about abandoning a service in which no proper means have yet been adopted to give them, as in the case of every other officer, a determinate life interest? The obvious remedy, as has been urged a hundred times, seems to lie in this plan of uniting the situations of chaplain and schoolmaster, and joining the pay of the two. In all probability, the truest economy will be found in still further augmenting this pay, so as to make it really worth the while of properly-educated men to look to it, not merely for a season, but as a fixed provision. The discomforts, however, of a midshipman’s birth—to all but the mids themselves, who are hastening to get out of it—are so intolerable, that hardly any amount of pay will ever be thought a full recompense for the sacrifices which a person grown up to man’s estate, and properly qualified in other respects, would be called upon to make, were he required to mess in the cock-pit. In the event, therefore, of such union of offices, the gentleman in whom they are joined ought to bear a regular commission, mess with the commissioned officers, and walk the weather side of the deck; perhaps also he might advantageously wear a suitable uniform. At all events, he ought to possess a distinct rank, and be considered as essentially a part of the ship’s complement as the surgeon, purser, or any other officer in the civil department of the fleet.