that such a manifestation was a first step towards Lambeth. James, however, at the age of nine or ten, had more taste for the binnacle than the pulpit, and already had furnished himself with "a sweetheart," as a first step towards seamanship. The lady of his love was worshipped by him with a fervour that Dante hardly knew for his Beatrice; but the amour had a sad conclusion. The maid died, and the lad who loved her shipped on board the Harriett, sought comfort, and found much misery and a little edification, in three successive voyages to Lisbon. He suffered from storms, from captivity, from fatigues endured in long travel a-foot, from want, from cruelty, and from the savage oppression which was then exercised by pressgangs. Had it not been that his jailer's daughter fell in love with him, and he with the jailer's daughter, there would hardly have been a sunny memory of this eventful time. He came home a wiser and a taller man, was sick of the sea, bound himself to a bookseller and instrument-maker at Devonport, wrote a bad tragedy in his leisure hours, destroyed it as an impious production, turned Calvinist and gloomy, sought refuge and a change among the Baptists, became preacher, so bewildered himself that he again took to the sea in order to clear his intellects, deserted from the king's ship on whose books he was rated, was lucky enough not to be discovered, studied the law and got disgusted with its unmitigated rascality, became an idle man, did what idle men do, fell in love, and, for want of better occupation, married. He was not yet in his majority. His means consisted of a share in the property of his mother, lately deceased, and which was held by a trustee. Impatient, the young husband commenced life at Devonport, as a bookseller and nautical instrument maker, upon borrowed money, to be repaid when he became of age. Ere that period arrived the trustee had defrauded him; and at the end of a year or so the married couple young were embarrassed by debt, kept awake by a baby, and Mr. Buckingham protests that the embarrassment fell upon him through the villainy of others, and not by his own imprudence. He does not remember that it was all brought

upon him by commencing to be happy upon borrowed means. He who borrows plays a game at which two may lose. In no case can the borrower justify himself by asserting that he cannot be blamed.

This concludes the first of the three parts into which the volumes are divided, and we will take advantage thereof to make an extract or two from their amusing pages.

Here is a funeral in the olden time, or rather what followed the funeralworse than the gladiatorial fights first introduced by the son of Brutus, as honours paid to the paternal corpse:

Dinner was ordered at the inn of the

village for the largest number that the largest room would contain, and nearly a hundred persons sat down to table together at two o'clock. The dinner was

abundant, and the supply of wine and spirits profuse. At the head of the table sat the chief mourner, a relative of the deceased. On his right was the clergyman who had conducted the burial service, and on his left the widow in her full mourning weeds. Almost every one drank a glass or two of brandy before commencing dinner, and some even before grace almost after every change of dishes, so was said, and these drams were repeated that both the eating and drinking were more voracious than I had ever witnessed before. On the cloth being removed, pipes and tobacco, with lighted candles and decanters of brandy, rum, and gin, with hot water and sugar, were freely supplied. Fortunately my youth, being then about eight years old, saved me from the necessity of joining in this revel; but the female portion of the guests did not retire till almost every man at the table had drunk three or four tumblers of hot spirits and water, or toddy as it was called, and most of them were already far advanced towards being drunk. It was then proposed to send for the parish choir and sing anthems, which was done, the drinking going on at the same time without abatement, and nearly all present joining in the choruses. From anthems they passed at last to patriotic songs; and this unseemly revel was kept up till midnight, as I heard from some who remained till then; for I had repaired to bed, after tea, gusted; and many of the later sitters, I at an early hour, being tired and dis

and insensible beneath the table. In short, was assured, were found at daylight, drunk all that I have ever heard of an Irish wake seems to have had its counterpart in this barbarous Cornish funeral, from which I

was too happy to escape, and return home on the following morning.

This sort of revelry was not confined to after the funeral. The fun began as soon as Death had entered. The presence of the Inevitable appeared to be a signal for the mourners to be merry. Mr. Buckingham tells us that the customary mode, at least in Cornwall, was thus:-" The corpse was first brought from the dwelling-house, and the coffin placed on a bench made of chairs reversed, before the door; here a hymn or psalm was sung, and glasses of brandy were handed round, at the close, to every one present, whether assistants or mere spectators." Upon this stimulant the assembly got more inspired, sang and drank more frequently, and in this condition, hoisted the defunct, carried the body a certain distance, and then imbibed more brandy and bellowed forth more psalms, in testimony of their sympathy. The same scene and incidents marked every resting-place between the dwellinghouse and the church; and if at the grave-side the mourners became overwhelmed with grief, there were compassionate friends who stood by to deluge them with the panacea, allpowerful brandy. The custom of exposing the body, it may be observed, was a very ancient one. It originated in a desire to show to the public that the deceased had come by his death fairly. Britannicus was thus exposed to the gaze of the Romans; but, in order to conceal the livid traces of the poison by which he had been slain, his body was painted, and the Romans smiled grimly at the deceit put upon

them.

As an incident of sailor's humour, the following may be cited as a specimen of a rather rough joke: the Custom House officers had boarded the Harriett in search of contraband goods.

While the searcher was on deck, the seaman went up the main rigging, carrying with him four empty bottles, which the searcher, however, believed to be full ones, and, going out on the main-topgallant yard, he pretended to hide two of them in the folds of the topgallant-sail, which was furled on the starboard side, and two others in the same sail on the larboard side, each nearly out to the yardarm. He then descended on deck, and joined the rest of the crew. The searcher

then asked the sailing-master of the ship to send a man aloft to take out from the

topgallant-sail four bottles of wine, which

he declared he had seen with his own eyes one of the seamen secrete there, for the purpose of smuggling. The officer refused to comply with such a request, adding that if they were worth seizing they were worth going after by himself. Not to be defeated in his purpose, the searcher mounted the rigging, reached the masthead, and lay out on the starboard yard-arm, to take the bottles there concealed, when the seaman who had hid ments, let go the starboard lift from on them there, watching the searcher's movedeck, by which the yard was topped up, in a perpendicular, instead of a horizontal position; in consequence of which the searcher fell from the yard; and but that his fall was broken by his body lighting on several of the ropes that intercepted his descent, and landed him at last on the stretched-out netting spread like an awning across the quarter-deck, he would in all probability have broken his neck, and dislocated every bone in his body.

When ruin stared Mr. Buckingham, his young wife, and their little child in the face, the husband did not lose heart. He looked around him to see where he might occupy a vantageground whereon to fight his great battle of life. He soon had a prospect of sailing under a brother-in-law to the West Indies; but this was somewhat far off, and present emergency was pressing. He therefore left his sad household and made his way to London. For a time he wandered about the metropolis, making acquaintance with nought but misery. It was characteristic of the man and his spirit, shilling in going to the British Forum, not so much that he spent his last but that when there, and finding the in favour of celibacy, the young Cornonce celebrated Gale Jones lecturing ish Benedict rose with trembling yet indignant heart, and delivered a warm address in favour of matrimony. They who are in straitened circumstances and ready to despair may read this portion of the volumes before us with profit. They are highly creditable to the autobiographer. Man could not well see more misery than he endured; misery so intense, that, when he found occupation as a printer at fourteen shillings a week, it seemed to him as if fortune and he were again "hail fellow; well met!" and the salary ap

peared so magnificent that he generously sent nearly half of it weekly into Cornwall, as help towards the support of his wife and child..

At length, better fortune came, and our hero was now chief officer on board the William Fenning, West Indiaman. Across the Atlantic he made various voyages, endured great variety of fortune or adventure, laboured hard, read much, noted largely, and remembered the graphic incidents with which he has studded his book for the benefit and amusement of his readers. He even wrote poetry of an amiable but indifferent aspect, save perhaps one song which he prints in these volumes, and which he wrote, as he assures us, when he was fast asleep. There is much that is written by gentlemen quite awake that is nearly as bad.

As a sailor, the author would seem to have been too polished and honest for his times. He, at all events, suggests, in his "faithful and candid" record, that ashore or afloat he was more refined and less knavish than his fellows. He was active enough on board, was not afraid of hostile foe nor threatening tempest, and was doubt less a good sailor in every respect. But therewith he was something of the student "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," pored over books (when off duty) like a philosopher, and is probably the only man alive who ever read Telemachus from beginning to end-three times!! The "chief officer" was cited in ladies' circles ashore for his civilised behaviour. He was none of your Trunnions, but rather a Modus," who had gone afloat to suit his humour, study at leisure during bright nights beneath a tropical moon, and find welcome ashore, not from Polls and your partner Joes, but from nice young ladies with a penchant for equally nice young men.

Mr. Buckingham left his ship because he would not lie to serve the owners. Again the battle of life pressed heavily on him, but he bore the brunt of it manfully, and well was he sustained by the comforting presence or the encouragement from afar of a wife, touching whom Mr. Buckingham speaks in terms of deservedly high praise and warm affection. It is such women who make men conquerors in their struggle with the world, or GENT. MAG. VOL. XLIII.

who, if conquest be not achieved, can find a compensating consolation for every defeat.

By sea and land the autobiographer now wandered, but always with a fixed purpose in view. He again had a fair prospect of success, when the failure of a commercial speculation at Malta again buried him and his under an avalanche of ruin. He once more protests that he is blameless for such result, but the speculation was made upon borrowed money, and it may be questioned whether Mr. Buckingham would not have fared better had he trusted entirely to his own resources.

After this failure he travelled through the East, with various objects in view. The details of his travels will interest those who are not acquainted with the localities, or who do not remember what the author has said, written, and lectured upon them. To all others there is too much of generalities and too little of personal history. We are glad to arrive with the wayfarer in India, where the personal adventure becomes more distinct, and the narrative proportionally more attractive. At Bombay, Mr. Buckingham hoped to be able to establish himself, but he was not aware that, by a strange law, no one could reside in India, without permission, except a foreigner. As Englishmen were supposed to be unworthy of such liberty, Mr. Buckingham was advised to call himself an American, but this he very properly refused to do. Why permission should have been denied him as an Englishman it is not easy to say. Such, however, was the case, and just at the moment when the author thought he had fortune at his feet, an order, by which he was expelled from India, flung him once more to the foot of the height which he had toilsomely and gallantly ascended. For such issue he maintains that he was not worthy of reproach, and in this conclusion we heartily agree with him.

We add here one or two samples from the measure which we have thus cursorily examined :—

While at Nassau I was thrown into the company of more than one of the old buccaneers, as well as some of the wreckers, as they are called; and most original characters they were. In complexion, from constant exposure to the sea atmosphere 4 F

and the sun, they had reddish-brown skins, approaching almost to that of North American Indians, jet-black hair, changed to iron-grey, hanging in curls over their necks and shoulders, loose sailors' costume, open and hairy bosoms, and large virgin-gold ear-rings, lengthening the lower lobe of the ear by their massive weight. One of these men boasted that he had taken his from the ears of an image of the Holy Virgin in a Roman Catholic church, which he and his comrades had plundered on the coast of Peru. Another, being sensible of his own deficiencies, as he could neither read nor write, had his two sons educated in England-one at Oxford, who now held a living in the Established Church, and another at Eton, who was now a post-captain in the navy; while his three daughters were educated in one of the first establishments near London, and were all married to men of fortune or title. Though the children had frequently entreated their father to leave New Providence and settle in England, as he had ample means of so doing in great comfort, he had constantly declined complying with their wishes, habit having rendered his present way of life and present companions, many of them comrades in his buccaneering enterprises, so much more agreeable than any new mode of life he could adopt, that he was afraid to make the change.

They preferred sangaree and cold punch, with freedom of dress and speech, to port wine and the tightly buttoned-up restraints of fashionable life. And the old gentlemen were right. Their sons and their daughters, however affectionate, doubtless thought so too. The Rev. rural Dean, would have been aghast at introducing his sire to the Bishop, who would have seen before him a jolly individual, looking something like Mr. T. P. Cooke in Dirk Hatteraick; and the Baronet's lady would perhaps have blushed at a "papa" whose voice roared like a tornado, and who would have asked for a pipe in the drawing-room-as big a savage as the Reverend Doctor Parr! As a sample of adventure in India we give an admirable scene, where the stage is almost entirely occupied by Mr. Buckingham and a tiger," after dinner," at least as regards the former. The tiger had not yet dined.

I had gone to dine in Salsette with Col. Hunt, the governor of the fort of Tannah, about seven or eight miles from Bombay, and as I had an appointment at home in

the morning, and the night was remarkably fine, with a brilliant moon-light, I declined the hospitable invitation of my host and hostess to remain with them during the night, and ordering my palanquin to be ready at 10 o'clock, I left Tannah at that hour for Bombay; great portion of the way was over a level plain of some extent, and while we were in the midst of this, the bearers, of whom there were eight, four to carry and four for a relay, with two mussauljees or lantern-bearers, who carried their lights in the moonlight as well as in the dark, as a matter of etiquette which it is thought disrespectful to omit,-in short the whole party of ten, in an instant disappeared, scattered themselves in all directions, each running at his utmost speed: I was perfectly astonished at this sudden halt, and wholly unable to conjecture its cause, and all my calling and remonstrance was in vain. In casting my eyes behind the palanquin, however, I saw to my horror and dismay a huge tiger in full career towards me with his tail almost perpendicular, and with a growl which too clearly indicated the intense satisfaction with which he anticipated a savoury morsel for his hunger. There was not a moment to lose, or even to deliberate. To get out of the palanquin and try to escape would be running into the jaws of certain deathto remain within was the only alternative. The palanquin is an oblong chest or box, about six feet long, two feet broad, and two feet high; it has four short legs for resting above the soil; its bottom and sides are flat, it on the ground, three or four inches only and its top is gently convex to carry off the rain. By a pole projecting from the centre of each end, the bearers carry it on their shoulders, and the occupant lies stretched along on a thin mattress, on an open cane bottom like a couch or bed, with a pillow beneath his head. The mode of entering and leaving the palanquin is through a square opening on each side, which when the sun or rain requires it may be closed by a sliding door; this is usually composed of Venetian blinds, to allow light and air, in a wooden frame, and may be fastened if needed by a small brass hook and eye; everything about the palanquin, however, is made as light as possible to lessen the labour of the bearers, and there is no part of the panelling or sides more than half an inch thick, if so much. All I could do therefore was in the smallest possible space of time to close the two doors and lie on my back. I had often heard that if you can suspend your breath and put on the semblance of being dead the most ferocious of wild beasts will leave you; I attempted this by holding my breath as long as possible, and remaining as still