These extracts, though of course sufficiently boyish, help to shew what may be made out of the most common-place details, when all things are totally new both to the writer and the reader. It is on this account I give a place to these juvenile lucubrations; for it is not about the particular incidents that we care, in such cases, so much as the state of feeling and genuine opinions of a young person, exposed, for the first time, to the actual contact of the world. It would be unreasonable to expect such ideas to be expressed in so many words; but they may be picked up, in some degree, by the very terms used in describing the most ordinary transactions. The following letter shews how little difficulty people find in expressing themselves when well charged with their topic. On reading it over at the distance of nearly thirty years, I cannot help remarking how different, and yet how much alike, the same person may be at various periods of his life—how much changed in thought—in sentiment—in action! It is curious also to discover, how independent the man at one stage of life is of the same man at another stage—though, after all, they may possibly be more nearly allied in character, at bottom, than any two other persons who could be placed in comparison. At the same time, under the circumstances described in this letter, I really do not see that I should act differently at this hour. _“Portsmouth, June 19._ “We were very near all being destroyed, and blown up, last night, by an alarming fire on board. As I was standing making my hammock, last night about ten o’clock, near two others making theirs, we were alarmed by seeing a large burst of sparks come from one corner of the cock-pit. Without going to see what was the matter, I ran into our birth, or place where we mess, and got hold of all the pots of beer which the midshipmen were going to drink. I returned with these, and threw them on the fire, while others ran for water. “When I came back, I saw the purser’s steward covered with fire, and rubbing it off him as fast as he could, with a pile of burning sheets and blankets lying at his feet. One of us ran up to the quarter-deck, and seizing the fire-buckets that were nearest, filled them, and brought them down. We also got some of the men out of their hammocks, but took good care not to awaken any of the rest, for fear of bustle and confusion. “The sentry, as soon as he discovered the smell, went down to the captain and lieutenants, who immediately came to the cock-pit, and whispered out ‘Silence!’ They then got more buckets of water, and quenched the flames, which, as they thought, were only in the purser’s steward’s cabin. But one of the men opened the door of the steward’s store-room, and saw a great deal of fire lying on the floor. Water, of course, was applied, and it also was quenched; the store-room was then well flooded.