fellow moved on, he was reported to the officer on duty as mutinous, tied to the grating, and received a dozen or two. Our provisions too were very scanty, and not of the best quality; while a complaint would have been mutiny. Before we reached the Island of Jamaica, custom overcame disgust. I saw, besides, that it was the rule of the service--officers were not, in their station, better off than the men; midshipmen were cobbed or ordered aloft with as little compunction or inquiry as the men were flogged. The only individual on board who stood not in fear of some other alongside was the captain; yet he feared the admiral, and the admiral crouched to the Lords of the Admiralty, who succumbed to the ministry, who crouched to the king; and, as a landsman on board a man-of-war, all being in a circle, I was next to him again to complete it. The whole I saw to be an intricate system of coercion and discipline; and I submitted with all the cheerfulness I could; but there was a messmate of mine, who claimed the sympathy I disregarded. Poor James! I am to this hour sad when I think of him. Who or what he was I never knew; for his years, he was the best learned and most intelligent person I have ever met with in the world. Every genteel accomplishment was his. About two years my senior, he was an age in advance of me; and I looked up to him with a reverence I have never felt since for any human being, as we have sat on a gun-carriage, I listening to the knowledge that flowed from his lips, and which he took a pleasure in imparting to me. Thus, when it was not our watch, he stored my mind with truths and information, both ancient and modern, the benefit of which I feel even now. An exquisite draughtsman, he taught me the rudiments of the art, and practice has done the rest. Yet he was secret as the grave as to the cause of his sorrows; and though he knew that I wished to be acquainted with his history, not through idle curiosity, but to console him, if in my power, he shunned the subject. That he was born to a rank far above that in which I knew him, both the officers and the men allowed. He was prompt in his duties from an innate sense of honour; and there was a lofty bearing in all he did--not the effect of an effort, but of natural impulse--that extorted the respect of his shipmates; though, of all men, sailors are the quickest at perceiving peculiarity of character among themselves, and an appropriate sobriquet is generally the consequence. To his officers he was as politely humble as the strictest rules could require; but this manner was so different from the uncouth and crouching humility of the other men, that a stranger would have conceived he was the superior returning the civility. His soul was, indeed, truly Roman, and superior to his fate. Whether that fall was the effect of circumstances over which he had no control, or voluntarily chosen, from some secret reason, he would never avow. Once I heard him