the way home, and in a sea-spirit I passed that evening. The following song was the result, and my chief aim was to make it true and simple, so that a sailor-even my Tom-might not object to hear, nor fail to understand it.

Tom and I took a silver parting at the park gate, better friends than ever, for the sake of Trafalgar.

The ships appointed to reinforce the Mediterranean fleet, were despatched singly, each as soon as it was ready."—Southey's Life of Nelson, p. 323.

"At this time he was not without some cause of anxiety; he was in want of fri. gates the eyes of the fleet, as he always called them."

"They were observed so well that all their motions were made known to him; and, as they wore twice, he inferred that they were aiming to keep the port of Cadiz open, and would retreat there as soon as they saw the British fleet; for this reason he was very careful not to approach near enough to be seen by them during the night." -Ibid. p. 328.

Fearing that if the enemy knew his force they might be deterred from venturing to sea, he kept out of sight of land, and desired Collingwood to fire no salute, and hoist no colours."-Ibid. P. 322.

Down in the cabin sits he then,*
As in his parlour's chair;

And absent loves,t and all his men,t
Are folded in his care.

The guns are good, the crew is good,
And deadly the intent;

The vessel offers all its blood-
Will carnage be content?

The very waves are stunn'd to hear
Such long dun thunder keep
Its roar and horror, far and near,
Over the mid-sea deep!

The God of Battles from his throne
Looks down through lurid light,
And claims the victor for his own
To hallow the great fight.

As triumph shouted oft and oft,§
The dying hero's eyes

Flash'd light, Death could not render soft,

Nor anguish agonize.

Home came the news that on the sea
England was all alone!!!

Home came the mighty victory

To wring a nation's groan!
Though joy from every window glared
"Twas joy that still must yearn;
Mourning and joy together pair'd—
The lamp-light and the urn!

He sleeps beneath the lofty dome,-
His sailors saw him home;

They rent his flag above his tomb,

Each got a charm to roam!

"Having seen that all was as it should be, Nelson retired to his cabin, and wrote the following prayer :-

"May the great God whom I worship grant to my country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory, and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it; and may humanity after victory be the predominant feature of the British fleet! For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him that made me, and may his blessing alight on my endeavours for serving my country faithfully! To Him I resign myself, and the just cause which is intrusted to me to defend. Amen. Amen. Amen.'"-Southey's Life of Nelson, p. 329.

See the memorandum respecting Lady Hamilton and his daughter, Horatia Nelson. Ibid. p. 329.

"One of the last orders of this admirable man was, that the name and family of every officer, seaman, and marine, who might be killed or wounded in action, should be, as soon as possible, returned to him, in order to be transmitted to the chairman of the Patriotic Fund, that the case might be taken into consideratiou for the benefit of the sufferer, or his family."-Ibid. p. 327.

"As often as a ship struck, the crew of the Victory hurraed; and at every hurra a visible expression of joy gleamed in the eyes, and marked the countenance of the dying hero."-Ibid. p. 341.

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Officers and men were in the highest spirits at the prospect of giving them a decisive blow; such, indeed, as would put an end to all further contest on the seas." -Ibid. p. 324.

"So perfectly, indeed, had he performed his part, that the maritime war, after the battle of Trafalgar, was considered at an end. The fleets of the enemy were not only defeated, but destroyed."-Ibid. p. 350.

"At his interment, his flag was about to be lowered into his grave, the sail. ors, who assisted at the ceremony, with one accord rent it in pieces, that each might preserve a fragment while he lived."-Southey's Life of Nelson, p. 350.

The mainmast* makes his latest berth-
Oh! were not ship-wood press'd
Around his gracious form on earth,
He could not take his rest!

COLIN CLINK.

BY CHARLES HOOTON.

BOOK THE SECOND.

CHAPTER XIV.

The "Yorkshire House."-Its company.-And an adventure.

In the course of some subsequent conversation, Colin's friend the coachman ascertained that his "green" passenger came from some place in the county of York, and instantaneously concluded, by a peculiar process of reasoning, that our hero ought of necessity to put up at a "Yorkshire House." He forthwith recommended him to a tavern of some notoriety in the city, backing his recommendation with the assurance that, as he was but raw in London, it would be better for him to be amongst his own countrymen.

In the "Yorkshire House," then, we will suppose him. His first business, after having refreshed himself, was to call for ink and paper, and indite an epistle to Squire Lupton, giving him not only an explicit statement of the cause of his precipitate retreat from Bramleigh, and his consequent inability to attend at the Hall on the appointed day, but also detailing the horrible scene of the lawyer's confession respecting the situation of James Woodruff, which had led to his recent attempt and compelled that retreat. This being done, and duly despatched, he hastily prepared himself, fevered and confused in brain as he was by the long night-journey, to take a turn in the streets. He longed, as every stranger does who first enters this mighty city, to wander among its endless maze of houses, and witness the vastness of its resources. He passed down one of the by streets into Cheapside; wondered at the numbers of caravans and carts, the coaches and cabs, which blocked themselves to a temporary stand-still in the streets branching from either side; marvelled what all the vehicles that shot along could be employed for; where the contrary and cross currents of human beings could all possibly be setting in; or how the enormous evidences of almost inconceivable wealth, displayed on all sides, could ever have been thus accumulated. As he ruminated, the crowd every now and then half spun him round, now one way, now another, in the endeavour to pass or to outstrip him. Some belated clerk, hurrying to his duty, put a forcible

* "Part of L'Orient's mainmast was picked up by the Swiftsure. Captain Hallowell ordered his carpenter to make a coffin of it; the iron as well as wood was taken from the wreck of the same ship. It was finished as well and as handsomely as the workman's skill and materials would permit. Hallowell then sent it to the admiral, with the following letter:

"SIR,-I have taken the liberty of presenting you with a coffin made from the mainmast of L'Orient, that when you have finished your career in this world, you may be buried in one of your trophies. But that that period may be far distant is the earnest wish of your sincere friend,

"BENJAMIN HALLOWELL.""—Ibid. p. 158.

but inoffensive hand upon his shoulder, and pushed him aside; the butcher's boy (and butchers' boys are always in a hurry) perhaps poked the projecting corner of his wooden tray or the shank of a leg of mutton into his ear; the baker drove a loaf into his ribs; the porter knocked his hat off with the box on his knot; the merchant pushed it into the gutter, in order to avoid treading upon it, and the policeman, standing front outwards by the lamp-post, smiled as sedately as a wooden doll, whose lower jaw is pulled down with a string, and, when advice was useless, kindly told him to take care of his hat."

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By the time he had passed through Fleet Street, and round along Oxford Street, and Holborn, his head was in a whirl. In the course of a few short hours his senses had received more numerous and striking impressions than had been made upon them probably during the whole course of his previous life. London seemed a Babel, and himself one of those who were lost utterly in the confusion of tongues, -tongues not of men merely, but of iron and adamant, rattling together their horrible jargon, until his ears sounded and reverberated like two shells beside his head, and his brain became bewildered as if with (that which he had happily never yet experienced) a night's

excess.

About seven o'clock in the evening he returned to his inn. Having placed himself quietly in a retired corner of the parlour of the "Yorkshire House," and immediately beneath a sloping skylight extending the whole breadth of the room,-a position which very strongly sug gested the idea that he was sitting under a cucumber-frame, Colin amused himself by making silent remarks upon the scene before him. Sundry very miscellaneous looking personages formed the principal figures of the picture, and were relieved by numerous accessories of mutton-chops, biscuits, broiled kidneys, pints of stout, and glasses of gin-punch; the whole being enveloped in an atmosphere of such dense smoke, as gave a very shadowy and mysterious character to every object seen through it.

"There's a fly on your nose, Mr. Prince," remarked a lean hungry. looking fellow; "a blue-bottle, sir, just on the end there."

The individual thus addressed was a sinister-looking man, who, it afterwards appeared, was a native of Leeds, in which he had formerly carried on business, and contrived to scrape together a large fortune. In mercantile phraseology, he was a "thirty thousand pound man;" and, though as ignorant and surly a brute as ever went on two legs, on account of his property he was looked up to and respected by everybody as ignorant as himself. On hearing his friend Hobson's remark, Mr. Prince suddenly seized the end of his own nose, and grasped it in his hand, as he was in the regular habit of doing whenever the fly was mentioned, while with a very shallow assumption of facetiousness he replied, "Then I've got him to-night, by go!"

Every individual in the company who knew his business properly now forced a laugh at the great man's witty method of doing things, while Hobson replied,

"I think not, Mr. Prince. He's too 'fly' for you again.”

"Look in your hand, Mr. Prince," suggested a thick-headed fellow, from the East-Riding, not unlike a bullock in top-boots. Mr. Prince thanked him for the hint; but declined adopting it, on the score that if he opened his hand he should lose him.

"Put him in Hobson's glass," said another.

"Well," replied Hobson, as we all know Mr. Prince is very poor, I'll give him sixpence if he will."

This hint at Mr. Prince's poverty was exceedingly relished both by the Prince himself and all the toadeaters about him. Its ingenuity seemed to delight them, as did also the reply made by the great man himself.

"I doubt whether you ever had a sixpence to spare in your life." Another mechanical laugh was here put in at Hobson's expense, which that gentleman not relishing quite so well as he would have done had the insinuation been made at the expense of any other person, he repelled it by challenging Mr. Prince to produce, there and then, as many sovereigns upon the table as any other man in the company. This touched Mr. Prince in a delicate place, and he growled out, with a horrible oath, that he could buy Hobson and all his family up with only the simple interest of his capital. At the same time he put his hand in his breeches-pocket, and drew forth a broad-bellied greasy black pocket-book, which he slapped heavily on the table as he swore there was more money in it than Hobson had ever even so much as seen together before. Hobson flatly denied it, and offered to bet glasses round that it did not contain twenty pounds more than his own. "Done!" roared Mr. Prince, as his clenched fist fell on the table, with a weight which made all the pipes and glasses upon it dance a momentary hornpipe. A comparison of pocket-books was immediately instituted. Mr. Prince's was declared to contain one hundred and seventy bank-notes more than Hobson's, and Hobson was called upon for the grog. This being more than he expected, he endeavoured to evade the bet altogether, by insinuating that he should not believe Mr. Prince's notes were good, unless he looked at them himself. Several voices cried together "No, no!" and the rest vented their opinions in loud exclamations of "Shame, shame!-Too bad!"-and the like.

Mr. Prince felt the indignity offered to his pocket-book most keenly. He looked unutterable things at Hobson, and bellowed loud enough to have been heard as far as Lad Lane, that "he would see him in"-(a very uncomfortable place, I can assure the reader, according to all accounts)-" before he would trust a single farthing of his money in the hands of such a needy, starving, penniless bankrupt as he was." Many of those present felt that this language was not exactly warrantable; but there were no cries of shame in favour of Mr. Hobson.

At this interesting period of the discussion, Colin's eyes chanced to be fixed very earnestly on the countenance of Mr. Prince, which that gentleman remarking, he forthwith turned suddenly on the young man with this abrupt demand :—

"What are you staring at, eh? Did you never see a man's face before."

"Yes," very quietly replied Colin; "I have seen many men's faces before."

"What do you mean by that, eh?" cried Prince. "What does he mean?" addressing the company. "Come-come, young man, I'll soon teach you how to know your betters." And he strode towards Colin, with the apparent intention of practically illustrating the system he maintained. The latter instantly rose on his feet to meet the foe. All eyes were now turned towards these two, while the squabble with Hobson appeared for the time to be wholly forgotten.