Some seventy years ago, there lived a poor country player, named Samuel Jerrold. His principal claim to a prominent position among the strolling company to which he was attached, consisted in the possession of a pair of shoes once belonging to the great Garrick himself. Samuel Jerrold always appeared on the stage in these invaluable "properties"--a man, surely, who deserves the regard of posterity, as the only actor of modern times who has shown himself capable of standing in Garrick's shoes. Samuel Jerrold was twice married--the second time to a wife so much his junior that he was older than his own mother-in-law. Partly, perhaps, in virtue of this last great advantage on the part of the husband, the marriage was a very happy one. The second Mrs. Samuel was a clever, good-tempered, notable woman; and helped her husband materially in his theatrical affairs, when he rose in time (and in Garrick's shoes) to be a manager of country theatres. Young Mrs. Samuel brought her husband a family--two girls to begin with; and, on the third of January, eighteen hundred and three, while she was staying in London, a boy, who was christened Douglas William, and who was destined, in after life, to make the name of the obscure country manager a household word on the lips of English readers. In the year eighteen hundred and seven, Samuel Jerrold became the lessee of the Sheerness Theatre; and little Douglas was there turned to professional account, as a stage-child. He appeared in _The Stranger_ as one of the little cherubs of the frail and interesting Mrs. Haller; and he was "carried on" by Edmund Kean, as the child in _Rolla_. These early theatrical experiences (whatever influence they might have had, at a later time, in forming his instincts as a dramatist) do not appear to have at all inclined him towards his father's profession when he grew older. The world of ships and sailors amid which he lived at Sheerness, seems to have formed his first tastes and influenced his first longings. As soon as he could speak for himself on the matter of his future prospects, he chose the life of a sailor; and, at ten years old, he entered on board the guardship, Namur, as a first-class volunteer. Up to this time the father had given the son as good an education as it lay within his means to command. Douglas had been noted as a studious boy at school; and he brought with him a taste for reading and for quiet pursuits when he entered on board the Namur. Beginning his apprenticeship to the sea as a Midshipman, in December, eighteen hundred and thirteen, he was not transferred from the guardship to active service until April, eighteen hundred and fifteen, when he was drafted off, with forty-six men, to his Majesty's gun-brig, Ernest.