Sir,—You having no prospect of obtaining a commission for me can no way alter or cool my desire at this important juncture to venture my life in some manner or other for my King and my country. I cannot bear living under the reproach of lying obscure and idle in a country retirement when every man, who has the least sense of honour, should be preparing for the field. You may remember, Sir, with what reluctance I submitted to your commands upon Monmouth’s rebellion, when no importunity could prevail with you to permit me to leave the Academy. I was “too young to be hazarded”; but give me leave to say it is glorious at any age to die for one’s country, and the sooner, the nobler the sacrifice. I am now older by three years. My uncle Bath was not so old when he was left among the slain at the battle of Newbury, nor you yourself, Sir, when you made your escape from your tutor’s to join your brother at the defence of Scilly. The same cause is now come round about again. The King has been misled; let those who have misled him be answerable for it. Nobody can deny but he is sacred in his own person, and it is every honest man’s duty to defend it. You are pleased to say it is yet doubtful if the Hollanders are rash enough to make such an attempt. But be that as it will, I beg leave to insist upon it that I may be presented to his Majesty, as one whose utmost ambition it is to devote his life to his service and my country’s, after the example of my ancestors. No unworthy extract, this, surely, wherewith to close the annals of six centuries of stainless loyalty in a family whose motto has always been: “Deo, Patriæ, Amicis.” ROGER GRANVILLE. THE AUTHOR OF _BRITANNIA’S| PASTORALS_ AND TAVISTOCK.[5] | |BY THE REV. D. P. ALFORD, M.A. If beautiful country could beget good poets, Tavistock ought to abound in them. For, on one side, there is Dartmoor, with its rugged grandeur, stretching out protecting arms to Brent Tor and Whitchurch Down; on the other side, there is the majestic Tamar, winding through its deeply-wooded valley, from Latchley Weir, past New Bridge and the Morwell Rocks, to Gawton Quay; whilst through the midst, the sportive Tavy runs down from its lonely cleave, and gathering up the Walla on its way, with bright and tawny waters, now creeps, now rushes past, to break through the beetling cliffs beyond Crowndale, and glide beneath the Ramsham woods, to its happy meeting with the Walkham, and thence to the copse-covered banks at Denham Bridge. ----- Footnote 5: