There is still another, and by no means an unimportant benefit, which might arise to the naval service from this improvement: I mean its effect on the higher classes of officers. If there be nothing more shocking than a disreputable clergyman in a mess-room, so, on the other hand, I conceive there can be nothing more useful, in many very material respects, than the constant companionship of a right-minded and well-educated person of this description. I say nothing of the obvious and salutary influence which his presence never fails to exercise over the manners of men, already too much disposed to laxity in their habits; but it may be well to consider, likewise, the great additional benefits which may arise to the officers from their possessing the means of instructing themselves in the different branches of knowledge, with which a chaplain, regularly qualified to teach, would be able to impart. Except on board ship, and at sea, few of the senior officers of the Navy, in war time, have the opportunity, and still fewer the means, of improving their acquaintance with those pursuits, of which, in the earlier periods of their service, they may have gained a smattering. I allude to the classics, to modern languages, and the belles lettres generally, to the higher branches of mathematics, and to many of those sciences formerly deemed abstruse, but which have lately become popular; such as chemistry, geology, and natural history in all its departments. The time is not remote when it was held by high naval authorities, that all or any of these refinements, instead of being useful to an officer, actually stood in his way; and, as far as they went, interfered with the due execution of his duty. Nor can it, or ought it, to be denied, that the principle of extra instruction is very apt to be carried too far, and the refining system overdone. Nor must it ever be forgotten in these discussions, that the service—that is to say, the hard, regular, seamanlike round of official duties, in all seasons, and under all circumstances, ought always to be the primary objects of an officer’s thoughts, before which every thing else is not only to bend, but, if need be, must break. And it is chiefly on the principle of rendering an officer only the more fit for such technical routine, that any of the pursuits alluded to can ever be considered as having legitimate claims on his attention. If such studies become so engrossing as to detach his thoughts from his sterner duty; to make him a scholar instead of a seaman, a dandy instead of a disciplinarian; or if he allow himself to attend to these extraneous matters with any other view than to his improvement as a strictly professional man, he will, of course, find them, one and all, prejudicial, and not be encouraged. Under proper regulation, however, there seems little or no danger of any thing of this description proving injurious to an officer’s character, as a useful, hard-working servant of the public.