with travellers, who had added little to the general fund, and had been seen for the first and the last time. Consistently with the principle of the house, as we were retiring, she cast a cautious glance around the room, as if to assure herself that none of the three chairs (miserably crippled articles) or other furniture of our dormitory had passed into the trunk about to be removed. Coming into the air, we found the morning dark and dismal; it rained heavily, and the wind blew piercingly keen in sweeping gusts. A few minutes brought us to the river, and what a discord awaited us!-boatmen pressing forward, clamorous for a freight, jostling and threatening each other,a storm of oaths most blasphemously varied, the dashing of boats against boats, the lashing of the surge, and the sreeching of cordage,-a Babel of confusion impossible to be imagined; and the darkness and state of the weather took nothing from the effect. As a passing torch gleamed on the group around us, excited as they were, they realised whatever might be conceived of devils in motion. We were detained some time, and I felt uncomfortable to a degree beyond any thing I had ever experienced, cold, wet, half struggling with sleep, and spiritless; sensations more than participated by my father. At length, after being pounced on, and literally dragged off by some fellows forming part of a crew, and being exposed to not a little hazard in stepping from one boat to another, we were established and in motion down the river. It was an ebbing tide, and the wind blowing with the current, we went down rapidly. The prospect was sufficiently dismal before embarking, but our situation was now one of real peril. Once and again, in our progress, we fell foul of craft, bootlessly tasked, I should imagine, in attempting to move against wind, tide, and current. Happily we arrived in safety; less happily it fell out to others. As we passed along, the frequent crashes, that might be heard in the interval of the gusts, gave reason to think that all was not well, and of the fate of one boat and her crew we had dismal assurance from the yell that rose close by us: she had been struck by a barge running with the tide, and had instantly swamped and sunk. Poor wretches! their fate was inevitable; in the darkness and confusion there was no hand to save; perhaps their lengthened absence from expecting homes was the first presage of the loss they had sustained. But how different the scene, and how agreeable the change of situation the "Albion" presented! There she lay in comparative repose-a haven, so to speak, of comfort and security. Already all was activity; the greater part of the passengers were on board, or rather, I believe, I was the last; and every thing showed marks of approaching departure. Among the passengers I was glad to see ladies. They, too, had come on board on this troubled morning, and seemed less ruffled than, it must be allowed, I ness. The others having no immediate care, and possessing all the vivacity of the English female character, were already surveying the accommodations of the vessel, dropping a jest on the possibility of their erecting a nunnery on board, and apparently finding an ample measure of delight in the novelty of their situation. The regular establishment of blacksmiths at work-Vulcan and the Cyclops, where they expected only Neptune and the sea-gods,seemed to surprise them not a little; and the feeling was not in any degree diminished, when, going a little farther, they were greeted by a mixed concert of fowls chucking, sheep bleating, cows lowing, and hogs snorting;-a farm-yard in the bosom of an Indiaman was more than they were prepared for. It was now day, and I was to bid adieu to my father. It was short, as adieus should be; and with a "God bless you!" on his part, and a close pressure of the hand, we parted. Now alone, I felt more buoyant than I could have anticipated. On board a large ship, on the eve of sailing, there is about as much opportunity for sentiment as in a market-place; and he must be of the melting mood indeed, who, at such a time, and in such a situation, does not feel some excitation of spirits; or, should it be that he is impervious to the mere scenes, perhaps a call of interest may awaken him from his reverie. Such an occurrence gave a turn to my ideas not then entirely attuned to melancholy; and I started at the name of a custom-house officer, as if he had come armed with an impress-warrant, and I were the victim of its execution, instead of the ordinary prying warrant of office. I was not without cause of alarm, being the bearer, to a trading friend in India, of a large assortment of valuables, which his correspondents had thought fit to hazard on board, without an entry at the custom-house; and the forfeiture of these, for weighty reasons, was the last thing I could patiently think of. On this occasion, I found the benefit of an introduction which I had obtained to one of the ship's officers :"Smooth him with a double crown," said he. I would have done any thing, if it had appeased what was expected or required; but "smoothing with a crown" conveyed no idea to me."With ten shillings," he added, in an explanatory way, seeing me bewildered. That was easily understood, and the hint immediately acted on, and with effect; for this keeper of the King's keys, having had pointed out to him what belonged to me, passed on as if the vessel had not contained me or mine. But for the universal solvent, and this timely application of it, though in a dose apparently insignificant, I should have cut the most awkward figure possible under his ministration. I confess, at the time, it did not occur to me that I was guilty of a palpable infringement of the revenue laws. I believe my opinion of those restrictions then was, that there was as much honour in the breach as in the observance; an opinion not very defensible; but so it is, that measures of unnecessary severity defeat their own ends; they are impressed with scarcely any moral sanction; and the feeling of indifference thus excited is well seconded by the sinister character of those to whose hands is entrusted the execution of those lowest of fiscal duties. The same day we dropped down the river, and got into the Channel, where we were driven about for nearly three weeks, during which I was as sick as if, for my sins, an apothecary's shop had been made the portion of my stomach. The other passengers were in no better condition, so there was no disposition among us to cultivate acquaintance. The weather then began to settle, and the pas sengers to feel returning life; and there was immediately established that sort of conventional frankness with which travellers, having the same destination, never fail to regard each other, and which invariably leads to conversation and acquaintance. It is in a cabin as in a stage-coach, though in a higher degree in the former, because of the fewer objects to solicit attention; pent up together, the reserve experienced between strangers falls aside, the sympathy of situation is felt, and a freedom of communication follows, which months or years, in other situations, would not produce. To feel the full force of the social principle, one must be in a cabin; every idea of superiority abandoned, rank is seen to yield to its influence, the pride of learning is forgotten, the independence of middle station assumes its happiest note, a sort of republic, for the time, is acknowledged, and the least favoured of Fortune may freely have themselves enrolled in its lists. The members congregate as naturally as rooks. They have the common enemies, time, and the monotony of the voyage, to contend with, and their chief protection lies in a combination of resources; and who so poor as not to be able to present some offering? It is true, there is a new stamp of currency. Trifles rise into importance. Any thing becomes an incident and matter for conversation; and what truism, however hoary, will then be quarrelled with? During the voyage, we had it solemnly asserted, and I suppose we might have had it proved too, if any of us had been sceptical enough to start a doubt, that the East Indies are hot, very hot, that the King neverdies, and that the Pope was not so terrible as he had been ;-truths rather different in kind, but all equally remarkable for novelty, and affording mat for enlightened discussion, if that had been expedient. But it is not necessary, in a cabin, to be, or seem to be, wiser than one's neighbours; it is true wisdom to be neighbour like and social. And a man must be social there, almost in spite of himself, or he is a fool if he is not. Not that he may be either indifferently. If he does prove recusant and crabtree, he had as well look to the consequence. There is no neutrality, far less resistance, permitted by the confederated circle; he must either be one of it, or be content to take the alternative of being the victim of its persecutions; and he will find that there are no tricksters so merciless as those who club against time and cynicism. It will be gathered, from what I have said, that I had no reason to complain of the persons with whom I had the fortune to be associated. They possessed nothing remarkable in talent or character, but they were all (I include the ship's officers) frank and companionable, and eminently friendly; qualities of all others, which, while they afford least matter for chronicle, attract the most permanent regard. But Mr Joseph Cricket, the assistant-surgeon, deserves a separate notice. He was a little man, between thirty-five and forty, usually concealed in a suit of clothes capable, for dimensions, of containing three of him, and at least ten years behind the reigning mode. He had tried to establish himself in Yorkshire, had waited year after year looking for a business, and in this visionary project lost sight of the little money he had inherited from his father. He was too humane, he remarked, for the people there. While others of the profession resorted to the most summary remedies which the art afforded for the release of patients from a world of care, and secured the eternal gratitude of the survivors, he had employed the less-approved system of assist ing Nature by gentle and safe means, had endeavoured to "sweeten the blood rather than attack the humour, applied an emollient rather than used the cautery." This passed for imbecility, want of energy, and want of skill; and he saw the little practice he had dying away, because he was chargeable with fewer deaths than any -a at bay, and announced his thorough contempt for books, and all that could be got from them; he had not looked into a book for ten years, not since he had passed Surgeons' Hall, and then he had sold every one he had. The magnanimity of this declaration seemed to relieve him greatly, and he drew himself up, as if he had thrown down the gauntlet to be taken up by any one who had the courage or temerity to do so. But, " quo adjutore usus est? quo socio?" Why, Mr Cricket's chief ally and friend on board seemed to be old Frost,bluff veteran, careless of heat or cold, storm or calm, whom no measure of alcohol, by his own account, could lay low; a sort of nautical actor-ofall-work, but chiefly officiating as a kind of deputy boatswain. He and the doctor were observed to draw together at an early part of the voyage, and to be soon on the most intimate terms. He had a world of adventures to tell of, and all he said was so far removed from any thing that books furnished, that he was entirely the man after Cricket's own heart. It was impossible, indeed, not to be struck by the oddity of his character. Every one had something to say to Frost, and he had a word for every one. I soon discovered he was of the north country, and, from an adventure told with characteristic humour, that he was from a part of the coast not distant from my native town. This adventure was the shipwreck of Skipper Oldman in the Drivequick Schooner, in which he said he was a sharer, and which every one in that quarter has heard of. Oldman was the most spare trencherman, the most profound drinker, the hardiest thunderer of oaths, (probably holding, with other valorous spirits, "that an oath sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation of valour, than proof itself would earn,") and withal the most wrong-headed skipper thatever sailed coast-ways, and never lost sight of that surest of sea-guides, land. One squally night he took it into his head that his schooner was sinking, and ordered every one of them, as they valued their lives, and regarded his authority, to get into the boat and be off; an order which he accompanied with so many oaths, that it was impossible not to be impressed by it. After some hours' hard pulling, they could discover, through the darkness, a vessel near them. They hailed her, and called for assistance; but it was to no purpose, they got no answer. Whereupon Oldman, to be revenged, commenced, against vessel and crew, a cannonade of oaths and grape-shower of epithets in such abundance, as almost to exhaust his magazine,buccaneers, savages, inhuman brutes, falling among the most gentle of the latter. Some hours after, they were more fortunate, by getting on board a vessel, and there the skipper resumed the war, volleying anathemas, and exclaiming against the inhumanity of the treatment he had received from a vessel, he supposed, calling herself Christian. The jest comes. When day broke, the inhuman vessel proved to be his own schooner-abandoned just as she was sinking, which he called Heaven to witness he had seen sink, and which, Tony Lumpkin like, he had been sailing round the whole night-now swimming as buoyantly as she had done any time for seven years before. This, and such like narrations, pleased Mr Cricket much, which, Daniel Frost observing, he did not fail to minister to his taste copiously, taking care, on no occasion, to allow the case in hand to fall short of expectation. Dan had a spice of roguery in him. He would frequently make merry at the expence of the doctor when his back was turned, and would give off to him moving "accidents, by flood and field," which he would not have hazarded to any other. Yet at no time was the unsuspecting doctor known to break faith with Dan, or speak of him otherwise than as a man of excellent parts, a hearty cock, an honest fellow. But I turn from the doctor and his friend, whom I have described rather as I afterwards came to know them, than as I first saw them, to the proper affairs of my journal, and to an occurrence that interrupted the peaceable government of the vessel, about a month after we had put to sea. Two of the crew fought, and, when separated, in the heat of passion, excited by the fray and by liquor, spoke insultingly to the first mate. For this, although it appeared they were not equally blameable in the first breach of discipline, (one of them an active fellow, and rather a favourite with the crew, but pas sionate when irritated, having been wantonly provoked by the other, an idle and worthless dog,) they were ordered two dozen lashes each, and suffered them soon after. I do not know how far the authority of the commander of such a vessel goes, but, in this affair, the order was promptly given and as promptly executed. I resolved to be present. It was the first time I had seen such an infliction, and having seen it, it shall be the last. I loathed it in spirit: Nature asserted an equal loathing, and, as the blood flowed, I sickened to the heart. How is this? Is it woman-heartedness? Perhaps it is, but is it a token of cowardice? I would say No. I want neither courage in sudden emergency, nor fortitude where perseverance is necessary; but the spectacle of this degrading punishment, whether from physical weakness, or from whatever other cause, I could not abide. I have often since reflected how punishment, so revolting in its kind, so demoralizing in its effects, so uncongenial to the institutions of freemen, so totally at variance with policy, should have become part of our army and navy discipline. Talk of the degradation of slavery! Degradation is relative, and the last indignity of slavery is the lash-that "ex a tremum concordiæ vinculum," in the hands of authority. A slave has the lash habitually in his thoughts, and before him; and when he becomes the victim of its laceration, he is surrounded by those who have felt it, or may feel it, he suffers pain, but he suffers no degradation in their sight, and they are the only beings whose opinion he looks to, whose lot and sympathies he partakes. It is otherwise with soldiers and sailors. Although their power of free action has been abridged, with some voluntarily, with others by means not easily justifiable, and a contract of service has passed, they have been taught to believe that they had the birth of freedom, and that they are members each of a profession which, while it imposes restraints, is itself honourable, and the path to distinction and reward. Every feeling of their nature, therefore, rises against the system of the scourge. Once subjected to its infamy, a inan, it may be a brave man, and more inconsiderate than guilty, stands degraded with his associates; a stain is cast upon his past life, a death-shade thrown over his hopes and prospects, the felon's mark is upon him, and he is at war with himself and the world. The punishment, it is true, is now less frequently resorted to, and there are restrictions as to the occasion and extent of it, but who does not pray that it may be totally abolished, and that the very spirit which could sanction it, nay, find words to defend it, may be utterly forgotten, and for ever! Lines on Edinburgh. EDINA, dear! so fair, so wild, Smile in the sun's red setting dye; With blush like Beauty's deep'ning glow, Far seen amidst its smoky shroud, Thy walks the haunts of Fairy feet, And Calton's Monumental Hill! Oh! 'midst the crowds that o'er them stray, We've seen those forms of Beauty glide From the tranced gaze away-away, That leave all in eclipse beside; Upon whose flight we, gazing, turn, And sigh, as o'er misfortune's birth, And look and feel as one at morn, Who dreams of Heaven and wakes on carth! |