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the world in the middle of the British Channel, while his mother was taking a little trip from Portsmouth to Plymouth on board her husband's flag-ship (for he, too, had been an admiral), when, rather before he was expected, our admiral was born. This début fixed his destiny. At twelve years old he went to sea, and had remained there ever since, till now, when an unlucky promotion sent him ashore, and seemed likely to keep him there. I never saw a man so unaffectedly displeased with his own title. He forbade any of his family from calling him by it, and took it as a sort of affront from strangers.

Being, however, on land, his first object was to make his residence as much like a man-ofwar as possible, or rather as much like that beau-ideal of a habitation his last frigate, the Mermaiden, in which he had by different prizes made above sixty thousand pounds. By that standard his calculations were regulated; all the furniture of the White House at Hannonby was adapted to the proportions of his majesty's ship the Mermaiden. The great drawing-room was fitted up exactly on the model of her cabin, and the whole of that spacious and commodious mansion made to resemble, as much as possible, that wonderfully inconvenient abode, the inside of a ship; every thing crammed into the smallest possible compass; space most unnecessarily economized, and contrivances devised for all those matters which need no contriving at all. He victualled the house as for an East-India voyage, served out the provisions in rations, and swung the whole family in hammocks.

and plagued and thwarted him every hour of the day. He, on his part, returned their aver sion with interest; talked of female stupidity. female awkwardness, and female dirt; and threatened to compound an household of the crew of the Mermaiden, that should shame all the twirlers of mops and brandishers of brooms in the county. Especially, he used to vaunt the abilities of a certain Bill Jones, as the best laundress, sempstress, cook, and housemaid in the navy; him he was determined to procure, to keep his refractory household in some order: accordingly, he wrote to desire his presence; and Bill, unable to resist the summons of his old commander, arrived accordingly.

This Avatar, which had been anticipated by the revolted damsels with no small dismay. tended considerably to ameliorate matters. The dreaded major-domo turned out to be a smart young sailor, of four or five-and-twenty, with an arch smile, a bright merry eye, and a most knowing nod, by no means insensible to female objurgation or indifferent to female charms. The women of the house, particu larly the pretty ones, soon perceived their power; and as this Admirable Crichton, of his majesty's ship the Mermaiden, had, amongst his other accomplishments, the address completely to govern his master, all was soon in the smoothest track possible. Neither, universal genius though he were, was Bill Jones at all disdainful of female assistance, or averse to the theory of a division of labour. Under his wise direction and discreet patronage, a peace was patched up between the admiral and his rebellious handmaids. A general amnesty was

crone of a she-cook, who had, on some occasion of culinary interference, turned her master ont of his own kitchen, and garnished Bill Jones' jacket with an unseemly rag, yelept a dishclout.

She was dismissed by mutual consent: and Sally the kitchenmaid, a pretty black-eyed girl, promoted to the vacant post, which she filled with eminent ability.

It will easily be believed that these innova-proclaimed, with the solitary exception of an old tions, in a small village in a midland county, where nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants had never seen a piece of water larger than Hannonby great pond, occasioned no small commotion. The poor admiral had his own troubles. At first every living thing about the place rebelled-there was a general mutiny; the very cocks and hens whom he crammed up in coops in the poultry-yard screamed aloud for liberty; and the pigs, ducks, and geese, equally prisoners, squeaked and gabbled for water; the cows lowed in their stall-the sheep bleated in their pens, the whole live-stock of Hannonby was in durance.

The most unmanageable of these complainers were of course the servants; with the men, after a little while, he got on tolerably, sternness and grog (the wind and sun of the fable) conquered them: his stanchest opponents were of the other sex, the whole tribe of housemaids and kitchenmaids abhorred him to a woman,

Soothed, guided, and humoured by his trusty adherent, and influenced perhaps a little by the force of example and the effect of the land breeze, which he had never breathed so long before, our worthy veteran soon began to show symptoms of a man of this world. The earth became, so to say, his native element. He took to gardening, to farming, for which Bill Jones had also a taste; set free his prisoners in the basse-cour, to the unutterable glorification and crowing of cock and hen, and cackling and gabbling of goose and turkey, and enlarged his own walk from pacing backwards and forward

in the dining-room, followed by his old shipmates, a Newfoundland dog and a tame goat, into a stroll round his own grounds, to the great delight of those faithful attendants. He even talked of going pheasant-shooting, bought a hunter, and was only saved from following the fox-hounds by accidentally taking up Peregrine Pickle, which, by a kind of Sortes Virgilianæ, opened on the mischances of Lieutenant Hatchway and Commodore Trunnion in a similar expedition.

After this warning, which he considered as nothing less than providential, he relinquished any attempt at mounting that formidable animal a horse, but having found his land-legs, he was afoot all day long in his farm or his garden, setting people to rights in all quarters, and keeping up the place with the same scrupulous nicety that he was wont to bestow on the planks and rigging of his dear Mermaiden. Amongst the country people he soon became popular. They liked the testy little gentleman, who dispensed his beer and grog so bountifully and talked to them so freely. He would have his own way, to be sure, but then he paid for it; besides, he entered into their tastes and amusements, promoted May-games, revels, and other country sports, patronized dancing-dogs and monkeys, and bespoke plays in barns. Above all, he had an exceeding partiality to vagrants, strollers, gipsies, and such like persons; listened to their tales with a delightful simplicity of belief; pitied them, relieved them, fought their battles at the bench and the vestry, and got into two or three scrapes with constables and magistrates by the activity of his protection. Only one counterfeit sailor with a sham wooden-leg, he found out at a question, and, by aid of Bill Jones, ducked in the horse-pond, for an impostor, till the unlucky wretch, who was, as the worthy seaman suspected, totally unused to the water, a thorough land-lubber, was nearly drowned; an adventure which turned out the luckiest of his life, he having carried his case to an attorney, who forced the admiral to pay fifty pounds for the exploit.

Our good veteran was equally popular amongst the gentry of the neighbourhood. His own hospitality was irresistible, and his frankness and simplicity, mixed with a sort of petulant vivacity, combined to make him a most welcome relief to the dulness of a country dinner-party. He enjoyed society extremely, and even had a spare bed erected for company; moved thereunto by an accident which befel the fat rector of Kinton, who having unfortunately consented to sleep at Hannonby one wet

night, had alarmed the whole house, and nearly broken his own neck, by a fall from his hammock. The admiral would have put up twenty spare beds if he could have been sure of filling them, for besides his natural sociability, he was, it must be confessed, in spite of his farming, and gardening, and keeping a log-book, a good deal at a loss how to fill up his time. His reading was none of the most extensive: Robinson Crusoe, the naval Chronicle, Southey's admirable Life of Nelson, and Smollett's novels, formed the greater part of his library; and for other books he cared little, though he | liked well enough to pore over maps and charts, and to look at modern voyages, especially if written by landsmen or ladies; and his remarks on those occasions often displayed a talent for criticism, which, under different circumstances, might have ripened into a very considerable reviewer.

For the rest, he was a most kind and excellent person, although a little testy and not a little absolute; and a capital disciplinarian, although addicted to the reverse sins of making other people tipsy whilst he kept himself sober, and of sending forth oaths in volleys whilst he suffered none other to swear. He had besides a few prejudices incident to his condition— loved his country to the point of hating all the rest of the world, especially the French; and regarded his own profession with a pride which made him intolerant of every other. army he had an intense and growing hatred, much augmented since victory upon victory had deprived him of the comfortable feeling of scorn. The battle of Waterloo fairly posed him. "To be sure to have drubbed the French was a fine thing-a very fine thing-no denying that! but why not have fought out the quarrel by sea?"

To the

I made no mention of Mrs. Floyd in enumerating the admiral's domestic arrangements, because, sooth to say, no one could have less concern in them than that good lady. She had not been Mrs. Floyd for five-and-twenty years without thoroughly understanding her husband's despotic humour, and her own light and happy temper enabled her to conform to it without the slightest appearance of reluct ance or discontent. She liked to be managed

it saved her trouble. She turned out to be Irish, as I had suspected. The admiral, who had reached the age of forty without betraying the slightest symptom of matrimony, had, during a sojourn in Cork harbour, fallen in love with her, then a buxom widow, and married her in something less than three weeks after their acquaintance began, chiefly moved

to that unexpected proceeding by the firmness | more; and at such times there was something with which she bore a salute to the lord-lieu- of good-humoured malice in her bright hazel tenant which threw half the ladies on board eye, that spoke more than she ever allowed into hysterics. her tongue to utter. Her father's odd ways, for instance, and her mother's odd speeches, and her sister's lack-a-daisicalness, amused her rather more than they ought to have done; but she had never lived with them, having been brought up by an aunt who had recently died leaving her a splendid fortune; and even now that she had come to reside at home, was treated by her parents, although very kindly, rather as an honoured guest than a cherished daughter.

Mrs. Floyd was indeed as gallant a woman as ever stood fire. Her first husband had been an officer in the army, and she had followed the camp during two campaigns; had been in one battle and several skirmishes, and had been taken and retaken with the carriages and baggage without betraying the slightest symptom of fear. Her naval career did not shame her military reputation. She lived chiefly on board, adopted sea-phrases and sea-customs, and but for the petticoat might have passed for a sailor herself.

And of all the sailors that ever lived she was the merriest, the most generous, the most unselfish; the very kindest of that kindest race! There was no getting away from her hearty hospitality, no escaping her prodigality of presents. It was dangerous to praise or even to approve of anything belonging to herself in her hearing; if it had been the carpet under her feet or the shawl on her shoulders, either would instantly have been stripped off to offer. Then her exquisite good humour! Coarse and boisterous she certainly was, and terribly Irish; but the severest stickler for female decorum, the nicest critic of female manners, would have been disarmed by the contagion of Mrs. Floyd's good humour.

My chief friend and favourite of the family was however one who hardly seemed to belong to it-Anne, the eldest daughter. I liked her even better than I did her father and mother, although for very different qualities. She was "inland bred," and combined in herself sufficient self-possession and knowledge of the world, of literature, and of society, to have set up the whole house, provided it had been possible to supply their deficiency from her superabundance; she was three or four-andtwenty, too, past the age of mere young ladyism, and entirely unaccomplished, if she could be called so, who joined to the most elegant manners a highly cultivated understanding and a remarkable talent for conversation. Nothing could exceed the fascination of her delicate and poignant raillery, her voice and smile were So sweet, and her wit so light and glancing. She had the still rarer merit of being either entirely free from vanity, or of keeping it in such good order, that it never appeared in look or word. Conversation, much as she excelled in it, was not necessary to her,

as it is to most eminent talkers. I think she enjoyed quiet observation full as much, if not

Anne Floyd was a sweet creature in spite of a little over-acuteness. I used to think she wanted nothing but falling in love to soften her proud spirit and tame her bright eye; but falling in love was quite out of her way-she had the unfortunate distrust of an heiress, satiated with professions of attachment, and suspecting every man of wooing her fortune rather than herself. By dint of hearing exaggerated praise of her beauty, she had even come to think herself plain; perhaps another circumstance a little contributed to this persuasionshe was said to be, and undoubtedly was, remarkably like her father. There is no ac counting for the strange freaks that nature plays in the matter of family likeness. The admiral was certainly as ugly a little man as one should see in a summer day, and Anne was as certainly a very pretty young woman: yet it was quite impossible to see them together, and not be struck with the extreme and even absurd resemblance between his old battered face and her bright and sparkling countenance. To have been so like my good friend the admiral might have cured a lighter spirit of vanity.

Julia, the younger and favourite daughter, was a fine tall handsome girl of nineteen, just what her mother must have been at the same age; she had been entirely brought up by Mrs. Floyd, except when deposited from time to time in various country boarding - schools, whilst that good lady enjoyed the pleasure of a cruise. Miss Julia exhibited the not uncommon phenomenon of having imbibed the opposite faults to those of her instructress, and was soft, mincing, languid, affected, and full of airs and graces of the very worst sort; but I don't know that she was much more ig norant and silly than a girl of nineteen, with a neglected education, must needs be; and she had the farther excuse of being a spoiled child. Her father doated upon her, and thought her the most accomplished young

woman of the age; for certain, she could play a little, and sing a little, and paint a little, and talk a little very bad French, and dance and dress a great deal. She had also cultivated her mind by reading all the love-stories and small poetry that came in her way; corresponded largely with half-a-dozen bosom friends picked up at her different seminaries; and even aspired to the character of authoress, having actually perpetrated a sonnet to the moon, which sonnet, contrary to the wellknown recipe of Boileau and the ordinary practice of all nations, contained eighteen lines, four quatrains, and a couplet; a prodigality of words which the fair poetess endeavoured to counterbalance by a corresponding sparingness of idea. There was no harm in Julia, poor thing, with all her affectation. She was really warm-hearted and well-tempered, and might have improved under her sister's kind and judicious management, but for a small accident which interrupted the family harmony, and eventually occasioned their removal from Hannonby.

The admiral, always addicted to favouritism, had had under his protection, from boyhood to manhood, one youth of remarkable promise. He had been his first lieutenant on board the Mermaiden, and was now, at threeand-twenty, a master and commander; which promotion, although it ejected him from that paragon of frigates, the young captain did not seem to think so great an evil as the admiral had found his advancement. He was invited to the White House forthwith; and the gallant veteran, who seldom took the trouble to conceal any of his purposes, soon announced that Captain Claremont was his intended son-in-law, and that Miss Julia was the destined bride.

The gentleman arrived, and did as much honour to the admiral's taste as his other favourite Bill Jones. Captain Claremont was really a very fine young man, with the best part of beauty, figure and countenance, and a delightful mixture of frankness and feeling, of spirit and gaiety, in his open and gentlemanly manners; he was, at a word, just the image that one conjures up when thinking of a naval officer. His presence added greatly to the enjoyment of the family; the admiral "fought his battles over again," and so did his lady, who talked and laughed all day long: Anne watched the proceedings with evident amusement, and looked even archer than usual; whilst Julia, the heroine of the scene, behaved as is customary in such cases, walked about, exquisitely dressed, with a book in her hand, or reclined in a picturesque attitude, expecting

to be made love to; and Captain Claremont, who had never seen either sister before, pleased with Julia's beauty and a little alarmed at Anne's wit, appeared in a fair way of losing his heart in the proper quarter. In short, the flirtation seemed going on very prosperously; and the admiral, in high glee, vented divers sea-jokes on the supposed lovers, and chuckled over the matter to Bill Jones, who winked and grinned and nodded responsively.

After a few weeks that sagacious adherent began to demur.

"Things seemed," as he observed, "rather at a stand-still-the courtship was a deal slacker, and his honour, the captain, had talked of heaving anchor and sailing off for Lincolnshire."

To this the admiral answered nothing but "Tush!" and "pshaw!" and as the captain actually relinquished, with very little pressing, his design of leaving Hannonby, Bill Jones' suspicions did seem a little super-subtle. Bill, however, at the end of ten days, retained his opinion.

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For certain," he said, "Miss Julia had all the signs of liking upon her, and moped and hung her head and talked to herself like the negro who drowned himself for love on board the Mermaiden; and the captain, he could not say but he might be in love-he was very much fallen away since he had been in that latitude

had lost his spunk, and was become extraordinarily forgetsome he might be in love, likely enough, but not with Miss Julia-he was sure to sheer away from her; never spoke to her at breakfast or dinner, and would tack a hundred ways not to meet her, whilst he was always following in the wake of Miss Anne; and she (Miss Julia) had taken to writing long letters again, and to walking the terrace between the watches, and did not seem to care for the captain. He could not make the matter out. Miss Anne, indeed!"

Here the admiral, to whom the possibility of a failure in his favourite scheme had never occurred, interrupted his confidant by a thousand exclamations of " Ass! blockhead! lubber!" to which tender appellations that faithful satellite made no other reply than a shake of the head as comprehensive as Lord Burleigh's.

The next morning vindicated Bill's sagacity. Anne, who, for obvious reasons, had taken the task upon herself, communicated to her father that Captain Claremont had proposed to her and that she had accepted his offer. The admiral was furious, but Anne, though very mild, was very firm; she would not give up her lover, nor would her lover relinquish

her; and Julia, when appealed to, asserted her female privilege of white-lying, and declared that if there was not another man in the world she would never have married Captain Claremont.

The admiral, thwarted by everybody, and compelled to submit for the first time in his life (except in the affair of his promotion and that of the ducked sailor), stormed, and swore, and scolded all round, and refused to be pacified; Mrs. Floyd, to whom his fiat had seemed like fate, was frightened at the general temerity, and vented her unusual discomfort in scolding too; Anne took refuge in the house of a friend; and poor Julia, rejected by one party and lectured by the other, comforted herself by running away, one fine night, with a young officer of dragoons, with whom she had had an off-and-on correspondence for a twelvemonth. This elopement was the copestone of the admiral's misfortunes; he took a hatred to Hannonby, and left it forthwith; and it seemed as if he had left his anger behind him, for the next tidings we heard of the Floyds, Julia and her spouse were forgiven in spite of his soldiership, and the match had turned out far better than might have been expected; and Anne and her captain were in high favour, and the admiral gaily anticipating a flag-ship and a war, and the delight of bringing up his grandsons to be the future ornaments of the British navy.

THE WORLD.1

Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast--
World you are beautifully drest.

The wonderful air is over me,

And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree,
It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
And talks to itself on the top of the hills.

You friendly earth! how far do you go,
With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers
that flow,

With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles,
And people upon you for thousands of miles?

Ah, you are so great, and I am so small,
I tremble to think of you, world, at all;
And yet, when I said my prayers to-day,
A whisper inside me seemed to say,

"You are more than the earth, though you are such a dot:

You can love and think, and the earth can not!"

From Lilliput Lectures, by the author of Lilliput Levee (Mathew Browne). London: Strahan & Co.

THE DORTY BAIRN.

[David Wingate, born at Cowglen, Renfrewshire, 1828. At the age of nine years he began work in a coal-mine; he subsequently studied at the Glasgow School of Mines, and qualified himself for the respons

ible position of manager of extensive collieries in Lanarkshire. In 1862 appeared his first volume, Poems and

songs, and in 1866 another volume, Anne Weir and other Poems, both published by Blackwood and Sons Mr. Wingate at once obtained general recognition as one of the foremost of modern Scottish poets. Healthy pathos, honest humour, and a spirit of sturdy inde pendence, are the most prominent characteristics of his

verse.]

Preserve me! Lizzie Allan,

Hae ye no your breakfast taen? Sic a face ye hae wi' greetin'! What's the matter wi' ye, wean?

Aye! "A flee ran owre your parritch?” "Fanny snowkit at your bread?" My certie! Leddy Lizzie!

Ye're a dainty dame indeed!

But the parritch can be keepit,

And the bread can be laid bye, And if hunger proves nae kitchen, Then the tawse we'll hae to try. Aye! a bairn may weel be saucy Whare there's plenty and to spare; But there's mony a better lassie Would be blythe to see sic fare.

Oh! waes me! but it's vexin',

Yet it's needless to misca'See, there's the glass. What think ye? D'ye ken yoursel ava?

There's the een I praised this mornin',
For the happy licht within,
Noo as red's the fire wi' rubbin',

Baith as blear't's the cludit moon.

There's the pina" that an hour sin'
Was as white's the driven snaw,
Noo as draiglet as the dish-cloot,-
D'ye ken yoursel ava'?

And your hauns that were like lilies,
Saw ye e'er sic hauns as thae?
And your cheeks! Their verra roses
Ye'll hae rubbit aff some day.

Oh Lizzie, Lizzie Allan!

Ye maun mend, or ye shall learn That it's mair o' cuffs than cuddlin' That awaits a dorty bairn.

1 Pina'," i.e. pinafore.

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