This digression towards a country, which busy remembrance points to with unceasing anxiety, could not be suppressed. To proceed with my observations here:----The republican spirit is inculcated not in songs only, for in every part of the ship I find emblems purposely displayed to awaken it. All the orders relating to the discipline of the crew are hung up, and prefaced by the words _Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, ou la Mort_, written in capital letters. The _bonnet rouge_, or cap of liberty, is erected in several places, and crowns the figure on the prow of the ship, which represents the demagogue whose name she bears, and on which is written an extract from the declaration of the rights of man. In the cabin (to which the officers are entitled to resort at all times) _Liberté & Egalité_ are pourtrayed in female characters, the former brandishing a sword, and the latter nursing a numerous offspring, with impartial attention to the wants of all. But a picture of another sort also caught my eye: it was pasted on the _outside_ of a door, which led to the apartment of an officer, and represented the prime minister of Great Britain conducting to a _guillotine_ his blindfolded sovereign. The person to whom it belonged, on seeing me regard it with mingled indignation and contempt, would have begun a conversation on the subject, had I not prevented him by turning my back and walking away. Indeed, next to the poor emigrants, Mr. Pitt, or “_Ministre Peet_,” as they always call him, seems to be the primary object of their abhorrence. Hated name! never breathed but in curses, never coupled but with execrations! To hear them, one would suppose that he is the only man in England hostile to their growing republic. Even Captain Le Franq, who has certainly hitherto behaved towards us with more delicacy than the other officers, did not scruple to call him “a Robespierre.” To argue with these people I find impossible; “but to be grave exceeds all power of face.” My only resource, on such occasions, is to ask some question foreign to the subject they wish to talk upon: even here I can make no progress; I am either repulsed by want of common knowledge, or bewildered in contradiction. Having established it as a maxim, that some degree of information may always be gained by talking to men of their own professions, I am as inquisitive as I modestly can be, about their naval institutions. But, if my question be heard by more than one, such shocking abrupt oppositions of opinion follow, and so pertinaciously does each party defend his assertion on the most ordinary points, that my only alternative, to prevent a perfect equilibrium of mind, is to place the little confidence left at my disposal in the champion who has been least violent and vociferous; agreeably to the old observation, which says, the still stream is the deepest. Their ignorance, indeed, upon almost every subject which has been stated, is deplorable. One of