man, in a battered cocked hat, on the poop of an English war-ship in Plymouth Sound—just before his transportation to the rock appointed to him to eat his heart upon. I envied the nurse who told upon her fingers the names of the famous victories of the British army under WELLINGTON in Spain; Vimieira, Talavera, Vittoria, Salamanca, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, Fuentes d’Onore,—_mille e tre_; in fine—at last, WATERLOO. Why had I not lived in that grand time, when the very history itself was acting? Strong men there were who lived before Agamemnon; but for the accident of a few years, I might have seen, at least, Agamemnon in the flesh. ’Tis true, I knew then only about the rejoicings and fireworks, the bell-ringings, and thanksgiving sermons, the Extraordinary Gazettes, and peerages and ribbons bestowed in reward for those deeds of valour. I do not remember that I was told anything about Walcheren, or about New Orleans; about the trade driven by the cutters of gravestones, or the furnishers of funeral urns, broken columns, and extinguished torches; about the sore taxes, and the swollen national debt. So I envied; and much disdained the piping times of peace descended to me; and wondered if the same soldiers I saw or heard about, with scarcely anything more to do than lounge on Brighton Cliff, hunt up surreptitious whisky-stills, expectorate over bridges, and now and then be lapidated at a contested election, could be the descendants of the heroes who had swarmed into the bloody breach at Badajos, and died, shoulder to shoulder, on the plateau of Mont St. Jean. [Illustration: MR. GAMBLE’S APPRENTICE.] Came 1848, with its revolutions, barricades, states of siege, movements of vast armies, great battles and victories, with their multiplied hecatombs of slain even; but they did not belong to us; victors and vanquished were aliens; and I went on envying the people who had heard the Tower guns fire, and joybells ring, who had seen the fireworks, and read the Extraordinary Gazettes during the first fifteen years of the century! Was I never to live in the history of England? Then, as you all remember, came the great millennium or peace year ’51. Did not sages deliberate as to whether it would not be better to exclude warlike weapons from the congress of industry in Hyde Park? By the side of Joseph Paxton with his crystal verge there seemed to stand a more angelic figure, waving wide her myrtle wand, and striking universal peace through sea and land. It was to be, we fondly imagined, as the immortal blind man of Cripplegate sang:— “No war or battle’s sound Was heard the world around: The idle spear and shield were high uphung, The hookèd chariot stood Unstain’d with hostile blood, The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng; And kings sate still with awful eye, As if they sorely knew their Sovereign Lord was by.”