British navy, and constantly heard below decks, in every man-of-war afloat? The shepherds of the sea must be allowed to understand their own pastoral doric, and Charles Dibdin is their Allan Ramsay. Both may have made mistakes, but confound us if either of them was a Cockney.

Having taken a slap, without any malice aforethought, at "Honest Allan," let us lay our hand civilly on Mr Southey's shoulder. His Life of Lord Nelson is a better Admiral's Manual than his friend Mr Coleridge's Manual is a statesman's; yet we doubt if either will be much read by people who are employed near the helm. Mr Southey manages nautical phrases very adroitly-but you see the landsman in every page. He describes a hundred things about a ship or a fleet engaging, or in line-of-battle, which no seaman would ever allude to; and thus, by keeping somewhat ostentatiously to the letter, loses hold of the spirit. This we say on the authority of an Admiral, who (then a captain) fought a ship at Trafalgar. And nobody indeed can read his volumes, and then a few pages of the Naval Chronicle, without feeling the difference. Neither is Mr Southey a good hand at describing a land-battle, or at sketching a campaign. Let Sir Walter alone for that he has both the eye and soul of a soldier.

Campbell has written the two finest sea-songs in the world. Yet "Ye Mariners of England" might, we think, have been all that it is, and more an Ode of the Sea. The language is too much that of pure poetry, and he dreads the familiarity of nautical expression. Naval men, except they have a strong feeling of poetry, rarely feel that strain as a landsman might expect, and it is utterly unknown below decks. A very few of the finest sea words would have glorified it exceedingly. "The meteor flag of England" burning in the troubled night of danger, is a grand image, and we are satisfied. But it is not nautical ;and grand as the image is, no British poet should ever, in our opinion, speak of the flag of England but in the strictest language of the profession. There is the greatest sublimity in the very simplest expressions in common use respecting almost everything that regards the navy, and, above all, in everything regarding the flag. It would

also appear from one stanza, that our admirals have been in the practice of engaging in great fleet actions on a leeshore; and when Mr Campbell says that "Britannia needs no bulwarks, no towers along the steep," he says what is not perfectly true; nor does he give a good reason for it when he adds,

her march is o'er the mountain wave, her home is on the deep." For harbours should be, and are, protected by forts; and although it is allowable to say, that Britannia's march is o'er the mountain wave,meaning thereby that her fleets walk the occan,-yet it is not allowable to say, in the same sense, that her "home is on the deep;" for her home is on the land, and London alone contains a million and a half of inhabitants. Depend upon it, these are not hypercriticisms. We would most willingly live a thousand years in purgatory to have written that song; but these are blemishes nevertheless, and the poem is not perfect. What a discovery!

A thought struck us just now to go over all the poets who have poetized about the sea, and expose their blunders; but we hear the whistle-so all hands on deck.

But what of the Naval Sketches? Why, they are excellent-often extremely amusing—the author is a genuine son of a gun, and his volumes are worth purchasing. We shall, therefore, give two or three extracts, mingling off-hand remarks as we jog along, and thus manufacturing, by our joint wits, a concluding article almost as entertaining as a Noctes.The author's chief object is to present the public with a view of the habits, manners, and peculiarities of the profession. That is right; and all mankind will agree with him, "that it is equally distinguished by the splendour of its achievements, and the originality of its character-at once the essential protector of our mercantile enterprise, the nurse of British independent feeling, and the constitutional security of our maritime greatness, and national prosperity." But the Captain is not willing to confine himself to that one great and glorious subject,-(had he done so, how infinitely better had been his volumes ?)-but he must needs enter at length into such ticklish questions as "the redress of grievances,-the remedy of evils,-the suggestion of alteration or

improvement in the principle or discipline of the service," which, he complains, have been left almost entirely in the hands of public Boards. Now we cannot help thinking, that the Captain, if determined to write on such affairs, should have come out with a first-rate octavo, full of facts and arguments, blazing away from every tier, and smashing the Admiralty, just as Lord Exmouth and Sir David Mylne smashed the batteries of the Algerines. But, by the frequent introduction of such topics, and at times when you are no more looking for them than for a sudden sermon from Dr Stainier Clark, the amiable reader is so irritated, that he threatens to desert the "Barky," and leave the "Skipper" to his own lugubrious and out-of-tempore meditations. He is a capital tongue at a tale or an anecdote; and by tales and anecdotes might the "habits, manners, and peculiarities of the profession" have been illustrated from stem to stern of his work. But no; he will "argufy the topic," and involve you in the war of words. Often when you are

Aboard a ship, on some calm day,
In sunshine sailing far away,
Some glittering ship that hath the plain

Of ocean for her own domain,

and you are on the best possible terms with masts and mariners, and forgetful of all the miseries of the mud-world, the author slaps you on the shoulder, and awakens you out of your billowy panorama, by loud ejaculations about dry-rot, club-houses, patronage, levee days, and the Quarterly Review. On one of those occasions, we flung him overboard, and as we were going at nine knots, were not without hopes of the captain's being drowned; but up he came bobbing, from ten fathoms, cocked hat and epaulettes, and capturing a hen-coop thrown over by "one of the young gentlemen," he was picked up and restored to his Majesty's service. We by no means say that he does not frequently treat the subject of grievance and reform with great spirit and vivacity; but it is done in a rambling ineffective way, and leaves ignorant people like us in utter doubt of the truth or falsehood of his serious charges, or jocular caricatures. But he has launched his book; and we take her as we find her, believing, that with all faults she will

be found on the waters after many days. Her masts are rather tauntshe is somewhat crank, methinks, and rather too sharp in the bows-but she carries a good weather helm notwithstanding the man at the wheel knows his duty decently well-so may she have a prosperous cruise, and when she must be laid up in ordinary, may hers never be the disgrace of being metamorphosed into a Newgate and Old Bailey hulk.

Now that we have suggested the subject of grievance and reform, will the Captain allow us to give in a list ?— "First-day-afloat" by a Middy is not a very good performance. There is no keeping in the character of the Middy, who, a daredevil at home and school, is a chicken-hearted blubberer in the barge and on board. And, although doubtless there may be, and have been, such rum concerns as the lieutenant to whom he is consigned, yet such a figure and character is not an illustration of anything either prevalent or peculiar, and we turn away from the ineffectual caricature. Yet the following is good

"Although a mere boy, never shall I forget the overwhelming and indefinable impression made on my mind upon reaching this wonderful and stupendous floating structure. The immensity of the hull, height of the masts, and largeness of the sails, which had been loosened to dry, so far exceeded every anticipation I had formed, that I continued, unmindful of what was going on in the boat, to gaze on her in dumb amazement, until awakened from my stupor by the coxswain, who now gruffly exclaimed,- Come, master! come! mount a' reevo, 'less you mean to be boat-keeper.'

"The youngster, who had not opened his lips on the passage, now turned round to give vent to a repartee, which, from its homeliness, served materially to humble him in my estimation,

Give us none 'o your jaw, Mr Jones,' said this young Triton, scampering up with the black close at his heels. I now seized the side-rope, and was assisted in my awkward attempt by the coxswain, who followed in my wake, no doubt looking out for a slipperybend.'

-a nautical anomaly.

The chapter on Naval Inventions is not worth a curse. It looks well to the eye-in the contents-Inman, Seppings, Captains Packenham, Phillips, Hayes, Burton, Truscott; Lieutenant Halahan, &c.; but the execution is most miserable, and evidently from an unscientific pen, that can only avoid blundering, by keeping to uninstructive generalities. How differently would Naval Inventions have been handled by Croker or Barrow! Another miserable chapter is that entitled "Naval Authors." He proses away, in a style fifty times more tiresome than our own introductory paragraph to this article, about the "literary productions" of Collingwood, Parry, Franklin, Lyon, Smith, Cochrane, Hall, Goldsmith, and Heathcott -Marshall's Biography, Naval Histories-Inconsistencies, infidelities, and fallacies of James, &c. for about thirty pages, and not one word does he utter that any human being will ever be able to forget, for to remember a single syllable is impossible. This is mere book-making; neither is it peculiarly becoming or graceful in an "Officer of Rank" to sport reviewer of his brother-blues. It is taking the job out of the proper hands, and converting himself into what he so much fears and dislikes, a critic. So, avast hauling there, Jack.

The Club house is what is technically called "a failure." The caricature is not in the spirit of Cruikshanks -there is not even likeness--and the chapter is too stupid even for a Bore. A Bore is a thing that must be listened to, just as a ghost is a thing that must be stared at, till your hair stand on end. But this chapter is not enunciable. We have been present at the experiment-saw it tried thrice, and fail. An elderly naval-officer, as brave and determined a man as ever gave orders through a speaking-trumpeta lawyer famous for grinding the

hardest cases through his teeth-and a resolute virgin of threescore-all tried it in succession-but Tabitha alone mistressed the bottom of the

fourth page. That abomination which the author calls a tart debate," is a great slobbering pudding debate, or rather it may be likened to a "sticket haggis," which, to the dismay of all the diners, overflows the table from prow to poop, with a moving bog of the most greasy and vulgar matter.

But the most infernally punishing place in the whole book is the NorthWest Passage, upwards of seventy dim frozen leagues long, for, on the lowest principle, we compute a league to the page. We have made the voyage, not with Parry, but Glascock; and whatever the former may henceforth do, we now swear solemnly before the public, never again to accompany the latter officer on a voyage of discovery into the frozen regions. Such a dismal stagnation, rendered more so by the jests of men become desperate! But to drop all illustrative imagery, the chapter is a rank bad one, feeble, ignorant, and presumptuous, not worth payment, at the rate of three guineas a-sheet, by the Editor of the London Magazine. We do not wish to speak harshly to the "Skipper," for we love him heartily, as he will see by and by; but, confound him, why has he spoken so sneeringly of Captain Lyon? He finds fault with that admirable officer for saying "My men. The expression is full of kindness, affection, and pride; and we have only to hope, that if ever our friend finds himself on the verge of death and destruction, as Captain Lyon did, he will behave with equal fortitude and resignation-will, by a spirit as pious and unfaltering, support the courage of his crew-and if he and his ship be saved by a gracious Providence, that he will record the deliverance in language equally worthy of him as an officer, a man, and a Christian.

Finally, and to jump from real displeasure into good-humoured banter, is not the author sensible, now that we whisper it into his ear, of his prodigious vanity in anticipating the strictures of the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews? He treats us with the millionth repetition of that poorest of all measures for disarming the critic-a review by way of anticipation. Mere drivelling-and the Captain must have

dined that day with a rejected contributor. It is two hundred and fifty thousand chances to one against a notice of the Naval Sketches in either of these periodicals-a million to one against a notice in both. And should it so turn out, nevertheless, that the Skipper is taken up by Lockhart or Jeffrey, then he may depend upon being slumped into a gross, and dispatched in way of allusion, or perhaps sent to Coventry in that roomy old Diligence, the Single Paragraph. Towards none of the other periodicals does Commodore Pompous deign one word even of contempt; and he manifestly considers them as so many proas armed but with a single pattarero-a whole fleet of whom he will run down or break like bubbles in his hundred-andten-gun ship. By all this foolish upholding of his knowledge-box, bringing it back so as to make his nose perpendicular to the line of the horizon and of his own face, he placeth himself in a position so irresistibly ludicrous, that all landsmen must laugh, and, could they but see him, the whole fleet. Why, to take the altitude of such a giant with a quadrant, where could a trigonometrician find a base? Vanity, vanity-all is vanity!

Having now given vent to all our spleen, and all our bad or peccant humour, we hope, of every kind,-it is not possible to describe the light, airy, buoyant spirit of joyous philanthropy with which our whole critical nature doth at this blessed hour overflow. "Ha! my dear fellow-how are you, Glascock? Not a man living I should have been so obstreperous to take by the daddle! Do you know, Glascock, that these Naval Sketches of yours are most admirable. I always knew you to be a capital pen-and-inkman, but you have positively distanced yourself-beat yourself hollow-and past the judge's stand in a canter, while Former Self comes panting and hobbling in quite a break-down,' "And who," quoth the Captain, with a certain gruff courtesy, "who are you ?" Christopher North." Off goes the skipper's "fore and aft head-gear," (a terraqueous ex

"That sailors are a remarkably plain, downright race, no man acquainted with their character will deny. Devoid of all guile, a seaman never seeks to disguise his object; though he may sometimes be foundveering and hauling' to get rid of some difficulty which he imagines lies in his way. His narrative resembles a ship's course in working to windward, which is fain to yield obliquely to the blast, in order to weather her object indirectly, and fetch her port in the end; for though in a conversational cruise he may make twenty digressions, and fly off in chase of every strange sail heaving in sight, no sooner has he 'run 'em down,' than he will 'close-haul his wind,' and resume his original course as in the following sketch of Cornwallis's celebrated retreat :

"Come, Jem, spin us a yarn,' says one of the forecastlemen to another, one night as we were cruizing in company with the "Channel fleet" which were blockad ing Brest," Come, Jem, you've neither tipped us a stave or spun us a twist this week. Well, as it's a fine moonlight night,' says Jem, and no signs of reefing, and moreover, as that 'ere "jib-and-staysail Jack" hasn't charge o' the deck, but a gemman, as can keep the ship in her station without worrying the watch-I doesn't care if I do.

"Well, I believe I was telling you t'other night, there was three or four o' us drafted from the Brunswick, seventy-four into the Billyruffin,2 (the Ball-o'-ropeyarns, you know,) a ship as seed more sarvice nor any other what swam the seas. I did my duty in both ships alike -bowman o' the barge, and secondcaptain o' the fore-top-and, though I says it that shouldn't, could toss a bowoar and haul-out a weather earing with any fellow in the fleet. Well, you see, the time I means, we belonged to a squadron of five sail o' the line, two frigates and a brig, under old Billy-blue,3

3 Admiral Cornwallis.

as brave a fellow as ever wore a flag; and as we were running along the land one morn, close aboard the Penmarks, you see-to conitre, as they calls it, a French squadron as was skulking in Billile anchorage--down comes a galley-packet on the lower deck, to say as how the Feeaton frigate had diskivered more nor thirty sail of the enemies' fleet standingout on a wind, with every stitch they could crack. Well, you know, before you could turn the quid in your mouth, there was a nitty fore and aft in the ship.

"We'd three or four bullocks 'twixt the guns on the main deck, we'd got from a ship as either comed from Cawsand or Torbay; and blow me if I don't think they nosed the French were in sight, for they tarned to a-bellowing like a bunch of boatswains. Well, just as we'd turned the hands-up make sail, one on 'em breaks from his birth (seeing as how it wasn't for the second captain of the foretop to be lagging astarn on the forecastle ladder); he runs aboard o' me tail o'nend, takes me clean under the counter with one of his horns, and heaves me from the waist half way up the weather fore rigging, over the heads of all the other topmen. Why, Jem, a send like that was enough to have started your starn-post,' said one of the group which had assembled between the sick bay and starboard side of the galley. grate. It's as true as I am here, said Jem, and I took such a liking to the beast for it, that a'ter he was killed, cutup in the coppers, and his hide hung out on the spritsail-yard-arm, I gives a half pint o' grog to the butcher to make a marlingspike out o' the very identical horn what gave me the heave.

"Well, howsomever, we clapped on the canvass, and badgered along "on a bowline;" all night, as we stood at our quarters, we were trimming, tacking, manuvring, and taking every 'wantage o' the wind, what was weering and hawling just like the pull of a backstayfall; but it oftner favored the French-for at daylight, you see, they weathered our wake, coming up with us, "hand over fist," in three different divisions.

'Well, there was the Brunswick and we in the Ruffin' lagging together astarn,

(for it wasn't in the natur of neither to run from an enemy's fleet,) and, as they never larnt it from no one afore, no, not a leg would they willingly budge. Both on us started our water, cut our boweranchors away, bundled o'erboard the boats from the booms, and did everything mortal could think on to shove 'em long.

"Well,' says Sam Smith, (as was one o' the Brunswickers afore, and quartered with me in the top at the time,) 'Jem,' says he, fixing his eye like a firret, and fetching a heave from his heart as he looked at the ship as his brother was killed in; 'Jem,' says Sam, 'I've just been a-thinking the Barky was born to be banged.-I'll bet you,' says he, 'ay, six months' pay to your plush," (for it happened that day I was "cook o' the mess,") 'she's sarved out the same as the First o' June.

"Ay, that was the day, and had more on 'em stuck to their birds like the Brunswick, there had been less breezes and bloody noses at Sallyportstairs. I shall never forget it, as long as I live; we'd been trying for three days afore to bring Crappo to box, but 'twas only our weathermost ships (the Ruffin among 'em) what skrimaged at all on the first day; and as for the second day's work, why, the less we says of it, the better. Then, you know, on the third and fourth, both flyers and fighters was humbugged with fogs; though the 31st, to be sure, we might have brought 'em to a general scratch afore dark; but theadmiral wisely refar it for daylight, for Black Dick, you see, was summ'at deep in disarnment.

"Howsomever, the first o' the month was fixed for the fray. About five in the morning, just as the fog clears up, there was the Ruffin (first, as usual,) with the signal flying for the enemies' fleet in sight, nor'-west. There they was sure enough, about three or four points on the bow to leeward, formed in a long line o'-battle-ahead upon the larboard tack, and over their heads there hangs a cloud asblack as a hearse; as if, like the morning rainbow,7 it comed from aloft to warn the poor devils of their doom. Well, we cracks on, like "smoak and oakum," till we brings 'em a-beam; when just as the bell strikes six, up goes the signal to "bear up together