trast to this, look to the history of the same events as pictured by the fanciful pen of Mons. Thiers. The French themselves admit the inexactitude and fanfaronnade of this unscrupulous politician; but why hesitate to apply the more fitting epithet -BAREFACED FALSEHOODS?

Towards the end of these strictures, speaking of Lord St. Vincent, a curious oversight occurred in the printing, namely, for "himself a bachelor," it should have been "himself a Benedict."

A Biographical Sketch of Captain Dampier.-An early appreciation of the great nautical abilities of this extraordinary man, together with the acquisition of some important manuscripts relating to him, induced me to write this memoir : and it presents incidents brimful of instruction. In the hope of obtaining affluence, he embraced an evil cause; and in almost everything he undertook-despite his courage and capacity-the conclusion was disastrous to the last degree, as though it were a judgment for having adopted such a course. Looking, however, to the redeeming points of his character, he is entitled to a seaman's highest consideration; especially when the habits of the time in which he lived, and his dissolute associates, are remembered. Shortly after I had completed this sketch, I sent a copy of it to the active-minded Captain Basil Hall, who, in a letter, dated 22nd November, 1837, replied thus:

Thanks for your pamphlet about Dampier. I have, however, already carefully read and studied every word of it in the U. S. Journal, and was greatly interested and instructed by the perusal. You probably did not recollect, or did not know, that I had taken especial pains to record my opinion of the said worthy. I really do not remember in which of my books the passage is, though I think it is in a work I wrote on South America. It relates to the land and sea breezes, and I quote his words which are exceedingly eloquent, and more descriptive of the phenomenon than anything I had ever read: and I steal some one's phrase who calls him the Prince of Voyagers. I should certainly not have mentioned this circumstance at all, had you not talked of expanding your notice in a fresh edition. In which event, perhaps, you might think it worth while to do me the honour --for I really should feel it such-to add my hearty testimony to those voyagers you quote, who are proud to pay their homage to this wonderful fellow.

When fallacies once obtain, they are difficult to eradicate. After I had circumstantially described his death in Coleman Street, London, A.D. 1715, the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica still adheres to the hackneyed story, asserting that after the return of Woodes Rogers, in 1711, "nothing further is known of the life of Dampier; and we are equally ignorant of the place and time

of his death." A man signing himself " "Leonidas " (why unknown?) wrote rather a crisp letter to the editor, asking why, if our hero departed this life in 1715, Admiral Hardy should so distinctly affirm that he died in the East Indies, on the 24th of February, 1700. To this question we can only reply-non so.

In consequence of a doubt expressed in another quarter as to the date of the navigator's birth, the Rev. Rowl. Huyshe, vicar of East Coker, was written to; and his answer, dated 5th of February, 1839, gave us the following extract from those authentic registers-the parish records :

1652, the 8th of June. Baptized William the sonne of William Dampier and Joane his wife.

The vicar kindly added-" our registers are old, and I have no doubt but that on a closer inspection I may be enabled to discover more entries of the name." It further appears that our Dampier was christened by the Rev. William Walwyn, a very orthodox royalist, who afterwards published a sermon, which he preached at East Coker, on the 24th of May, 1660, as a pæan for the restoration of Charles II.; it was intituled God save the King.

1838.

The Cinque Ports.-This designation was given by the Normans; though an association of maritime towns for mutual aid in those parts was anterior to William's invasion. The account here given, resulted from an antiquarian penchant for the tales of our early naval exertions; and the fall of those towns from their high estate is as much to be attributed to the long-continued retrocession of the sea, which has injured or ruined their harbours, as to any moral decline.

On Nautical Superstition.-Bayle has rightly said that "La crédulité est une mère que sa propre fécondité étouffe tôt ou tard." The credulity and prejudices of a people are inseparably connected with their intellectual advance; and as the latter enlarges, the former will diminish-for they are to each other as a curve and its co-ordinate lines. Now if a disposition to believe more than is warranted by reason, be the real meaning of superstition, then, to a certain extent, the existence of this faculty in the hardy tar is pardonable. With slight powers of observation, and still less reflection, he is not an adept at tracing causes; and his tales are therefore generally of the squall, the fight, or the phantom. His mind is also primed for impressions, by the witch of Endor, and the sublime but appalling ghost which

appeared to Eliphaz. Jack, however, is not the only credulous man of Her Majesty's lieges, for Lord Byron—a bit of a fatalist himself-tells us :

I merely mean to say what Johnson said,

That in the course of some six thousand years,
All nations have believed that from the dead

A visitant at intervals appears :

And what is strangest upon this strange head,

Is, that, whatever bar the reason rears

'Gainst such belief, there's something stronger still

In its behalf, let those deny who will.

On Naval Biography: Strictures on Sir John Barrow's Life of Lord Howe.These strictures were evoked by some rather loose opinions given by Sir John, on the composition of the naval administration, which is viciously at variance with reason. They also treat of the retirement of Senior Captains, a measure which has since been carried into effect-a consequence of the long peace.

Earl St. Vincent and Captain Brenton.-The life of one of our greatest Admirals, written by a sea Captain, was too momentous a book to escape being reviewed in a professional journal: and, as we had long been of opinion that the severity of Lord St. Vincent had aggravated the aversion of sailors to the Royal Navy, the integrity of history demanded a modification of Brenton's éloge. Hence the overhaul, which, however, was made strictly under Othello's injunction, to

Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.

A Recollection of Tobago.-Dining on a day with my valued friend Sir Francis Beaufort, a guest remarked he had once heard, that I commanded an Indiaman before entering the Royal Navy; and was somewhat surprised on learning that, though I had sailed to both the East and West Indies, I was barely seventeen years of age on entering his Majesty's service. Having thereupon recounted the effect made on a youthful mind on my first visiting a man-of-war-the Centaur, of 74 guns-it was resolved (nem. con.) that the narration would be a welcome bit of chat for the U. S. Journal; whereupon I wrote this morceau of autobiography.

On Nautical Inventions and Naval Improvements.-This is a series of papers contributed, as reminders, to the Journal, between the years 1839 and 1847

a rife period of novel introductions-as occasion demanded. In them-among others the following subjects are briefly discussed; namely

A call to Men of all parties on the State of the Navy.-The opening of this year called up much inquietude, and we trust our ululation was not unheard. After drifting to leeward for several years, we were then as defenceless as our most designing enemies could desire; and all true Britons were impressed with such a sense of our danger-or panic as our false economists blindly choose to call itthat it was urgently necessary to sound an alarm. There can be no doubt of the enormous expense attending our high position, and the propriety of strict economy, therefore, is unquestionable; but there is a point beyond which economy cannot be carried without sacrificing efficiency, and it is matured judgment alone that can decide where that limit lies.

An Examination of the Law of Storms.-A lucubration intended to draw attention to the rotatory action of the wind in West India hurricanes, since called cyclones. This direction must have been long known, as we mentioned Captain Langford describing the storm as veering from the north to the northwest, and thence southerly, and losing its fury as it comes up to the south-east. This agrees with what Bryan Edwards states in his History of Jamaica, a century and a quarter afterwards-" All hurricanes begin from the north, veer back to west-north-west, west, and south-south-west, and when got to south-east, the foul weather breaks up." The fact of the cyclonic motion of these gales was probably long familiar to seamen; in Ramsay's allegorical discourse, built up on St.

Paul's transportation to Rome, published in 1681, he thinks the term Euroclydon "seems to import much of the American hurricane in it, which, rising in the east, whirls towards the north, and thence to the west, and, gathering force round the compass, comes to its fullest mischief in the south."

A Passage in the Career of Sir Sidney Smith.-From a long and intimate acquaintance with Sir Sidney, I became aware of his zeal and sagacity, and that though a determined, he was a generous enemy to our foes. His defence of Acre was really marvellous; for he sustained during sixty days, with an open breach through which fifty men could march abreast, nine vigorous assaults, made by some of the bravest troops in the world, and most gallantly repulsed them all. On the extension of the Order of the Bath, Sir Sidney, Lord Exmouth, Hallowell, Rowley, Gambier, Hardy, and other "Giants of those days," were decorated with the second class, the K.C.B.-ship. A picture of this, placed by the side of another which might now be drawn, would exhibit a downward tendency

that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr.

"The fountain of honour," said Bacon, "should not run with a waste-pipe."

1840.

Admiral Sir Henry Trollope, G. C.B.-In one of the Noctes Ambrosianæ, the Ettrick Shepherd is made to say-"I canna conceive a mair sacred, a mair holy task, than that which a mon taks upon himsell when he sits doon to write the life and character of his brither mon." And truly, though this was written. at the request of Sir Henry's brother, the late Rear-Admiral George Barne Trollope, I felt a revulsion in feeling bound to recount the veteran's death.

Captain J. C. Ross's Antarctic Expedition.-It was considered that the verbose, though well-drawn, instructions to Captain Ross required a vervolans, and this was it. Herein, be it remembered, the strange innovation was made, of calling the variation of the compass the declination! For the feeling of seamen on the point, see Lieutenant Raper's sarcastic remarks in the "Nautical Magazine" for July 1844, under the head of "Scientific Impertinences."

1841.

Raper's Navigation.-It was with great pleasure that I wrote a notice of this