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up the Baltic, at that time was commanded by Admiral Sir Hyde Parker. Lord Nelson was only second in command, but it was his division which made the attack, and the Raisonnable was attached to Sir Hyde's division. I have often heard my father speak of it, and in the language of a disappointed veteran, who considered that he had that day been prevented, by the waywardness of fortune, from adding another laurel to his brow. His ship was in sight of the battle, and could distinctly see the fire of the floating batteries silenced, and their colours struck to the victorious squadron. I pretend not to give any reasons why there were not more ships engaged, or why Sir Hyde Parker was not there himself; one thing is very certain-there were ships enough there to do the execution intended, and that day added another immortal wreath of glory to Lord Nelson's fame.

As my father destined me for the navy, so he intended my education should be exclusively adapted for that profession. His own notions of learning were rather of the "old school cast." He believed that a sailor had no business with the refined and elegant kinds of literature; it was an effeminacy which he despised, and I think if any one had proposed to him that I should be instructed in Latin, to add to my acquirements as a scholar, and dancing, to give a freedom and ease to the motion of my body, he would have been disposed to have applied his foot to that person's seat of honor! What! he that remembered Hawke, Keppel, and Palliser, and had served under some of the later worthies of the sea, when the point of merit was, he who best knew and could best perform the rough and multifarious duties of a seaman, to propose to mingle with them the learning of a book-worm, and the manners of a dancingmaster-it would have been an abomination in his opinion for which he would have cut the acquaintance of his best friend. The plan he laid down for my education was a very simple one-at the early age of six he sent me to a village schoolmaster to be taught the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic; after which he proposed to take me in hand himself, and teach me navigation and French; this latter accomplishment was to be subsidiary to the purposes of my future career. He had cause frequently, in early life, to regret his ignorance of it, and so highly was this useful and pleasing language esteemed in his profession, and so seldom was it spoken by officers in his day, that this acquisition, of itself, was a valuable recommendation, and not unfrequently procured an officer both advancement and patronage. When a young lieutenant (he was promoted to that rank in 1779), he saw the probable advantage this might throw in his way, and determined some short time prior to the eruption of the French revolution to reside in France, and make himself a perfect master of the language. He did so, and in the course of two or three years made such a proficiency in it as to pass for a Frenchman, even with the natives of that country itself.

During the three years, from 1810 to 1813, the flames of war were raging actively from one end of the continent to the other, but Spain was the great theatre of contention, and may be considered as the political cause of Napoleon's ultimate downfall, as it gave the first check

to the flight of the Imperial Eagle and taught other nations, politically dead, to estimate their strength, and look forward with renovated hope to a brighter day-again to shake off the morbid apathy into which defeat had thrown them, and measure their power once more with the colossus of Gaul. It was during this ever-memorable period that, as a young boy, I was living with my father, who was training me "in the up way that I should go ;" I mean, he was instructing me in navigation and French, and rapidly qualifying me for the naval profession. To do him justice, there was no point of nautical information which it was possible for my tender mind, (God save the mark! it is not very tender now,) to comprehend that he did not impart to me, sometimes by kindness, sometimes by thumps, and sometimes by hard drilling at my lessons: nor did he deem it sufficient to confine me to the mere abstract science of my intended profession. He thought it necessary that I should be acquainted with the world as it was, both as to its geographical and political circumstances; and with map on table, and spectacles on nose, I think I see him now tracing, with an old favorite porcupine quill, the various countries of Europe, their boundaries, their forms of government, and the mutations some of them had lately undergone. France and the French Revolution were to him fruitful themes, and from his denunciations of the whole proceedings of that moral eruption, it was easy to gather that he was heart and soul a Pittite. If ever the old gentleman warmed into eloquence, it was when declaiming against Robespierre and Jacobinism; and, like Hamilcar towards his son Hannibal, he made me swear on my allegiance to my country, eternal hostility towards a Jacobin.

It was his practice to make me read the newspaper to him of a morning, during breakfast, from which I became intimately acquainted with the whole nature of the war then raging, and the particular campaigns on the continent, both in Russia and Spain. Even now I remember the impressions that the various battles of Salamanca and Vittoria, Borodino and Moskwa, made upon me, as I read the bulletins, and traced out the geographical position on the map; and I take shame to myself in saying, that I rejoiced most heartily in reading the disastrous retreat of the French army from Moscow.

This warlike education at length begat such a fevered mania in me for guns and gunpowder, that I could never see a soldier without running after him to smell at his pouch, and like the knight of the rueful countenance, (whom in features I somewhat resemble,) I would steal into a back-court every time I read of a battle gained, and with a lockless musket which belonged to my father" thrice I'd slay the slain,” and run tilt in the act of charging bayonets against a cow-house door, disturbing the poor peaceable inmates, whose thoughts were more philosophically turned upon the best way of eating winter cabbages and turnips-when they could get them; or if my ambition was of a mounting nature, I would impress the first pig into my service that crossed my path, and away with me, stick in hand, slashing right and left, a veritable chasseur a-cheval!

I have now brought my juvenile history down to the period when I am about to embark for sea-and as I received a hint from more than one quarter the other day, not to be so long in my narratives, I shall close here, premising, reader, that this is but the introduction of what will follow hereafter.

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Beyond the poet's or the painter's power
To mimic and preserve! Nor burning words
Nor Art's well-blended hues could body forth
This glorious sight !-The sun is in the sea,
But o'er its liquid cell yon cloud-arch gleams
With lambent fire-fit bridge for forms of air!
On either side like green paths dropped with gold,
Or cowslip-covered fields in evening light,
The glittering vapours lie.-But ah! how vain
To breathe this feeble language o'er a scene
So like a gorgeous vision! Every tint
And shadowy form that charms the poet's eye
Now mocks his failing art!

D. L. R.

THE MAHAJUN'S DAUGHTER.

In one of the most populous cities of Hindoostan, Azeezoolah had, for many years, been an inhabitant. He had originally come from Caubul, of which country he was a native, and with a small capital, he brought with him, commenced the trade of a mahajun or banker.

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He was a devout and strict Mussulman, and if ever and anon compunctious visitings" would steal across his mind, touching the infringement of the Prophet's law regarding interest, (to which some of his creditors would have added the epithet exorbitant,) he would silence the "still small voice" by assuring himself it was his kismut-it was written in his destiny-it was the will of Allah. Besides for this venial transgression, (if it were one,) he had, in his own opinion, many set-offs; his neighbours could testify feelingly to the fervency of his daily devotion; and the strength of his lungs; and the deep sonorous twang of his voice, at the mosque, on a Friday, put to shame the luke-warm followers of Islam. Brought up in the doctrines of the Sheeah sect, he steadily adhered to its tenets, cordially damned his adversaries, and was known on one Molurrum to have cancelled the account of a debtor, for seizing out the Taburrah under the windows of a purse-proud and bigotted Soonie.

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The Prophet had been bountiful in many ways to the mahajun, he had bestowed on him a wife of perfect fulness, with a voice gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman." Their attachment for each other was greater than could have been expected from an union, in which the parties most concerned had had no vote.

Azeezoolah could retire to the zenanah, after the fatigues of the day, sure of a kind reception; his wife would often bring his hukka, and while away the evening by relating the playful fancies of her young daughter, their only offspring; and if clouds would now and then obscure the domestic sky, the mahajun knew he had always the means of dsssipating them; he could deprecate the most angry clamors of his better half with a Cashmere shawl, or tie her tongue with a string of pearls.

In his commercial affairs fortune was most propitious, and each succeeding year found the ledger and body of Azeezoolah sensibly increased. It happened to him as to others of his calling, that his person was a complete index of his worldly prosperity; as the Rupees flowed in, his body swelled out, and the mere sight of them seemed to have a fattening and nutritious effect. It was amusing to see him about noon, seated on his goodry, now paying away money, now earnestly persuading a constituent" how much his advantage had been studied, and a little after poring over his accounts, pretending to hear nothing, when an impertinent debtor assailed him for further advances. It was next to impossible that he could please or be pleased with every one, and sentences like the following would often arrest the attention of the passenger, "Not an

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