which is expressly averred by some of the most distin guished of his successors in the same line to have been one of the principal incentives which urged them to follow the same path to renown. A RODNEY. LLUSION has been made to some of the gallant men who, in the century after the death of Blake, maintained the credit of British seamanship. It may almost be said that each successive generation saw an increase both in the number of such heroes and in the brilliancy of their exploits. It was well for England that such was the case, since the very same year which witnessed the last of Cook's labours in the peaceful path of discovery which he had chosen, saw us also engaged in the most formidable war in which we had ever been engaged, France and Spain joining their forces to crush us by sea, while our armies were engaged on the other side of the Atlantic in a contest in which the most sanguine were beginning to see that success was hopeless. It was at such a crisis that he of whom we are now to speak established a fame which none of his predecessors had equalled, and which not one of those who have followed him has ever surpassed. George Brydges Rodney, descended from a knightly family of great antiquity in Somersetshire, was born on the 19th of February, 1718, at Walton-on-Thames, where his father, who had served as a cavalry officer in the Wars of the Succession, had settled after his marriage with Miss Newton, a daughter of Sir Henry Newton, Judge of the Admiralty. He was sent to the celebrated school at Harrow for a year or two; but at twelve years of age he quitted it for the navy, in which, as promotion in those days was rapid, he obtained post rank by the time he was twenty-four, and was appointed to the command of the Plymouth, a fine two-decker of sixty-four guns, by Admiral Matthews, a brave and skilful officer, whose professional career was subsequently cut short by the disgraceful misconduct of his second in command, and the still more shameful judgment of a court-martial, which acquitted the criminal and condemned the commander, who had only been robbed of a glorious victory by that officer's disobedience. The truth was that the spirit of faction and partisan enterprise which had just driven Walpole from the Ministry, at that time and long afterwards infected the navy. More than once an opponent of the Ministry shunned to promote the victory of the fleet in which he was serving, lest a decisive triumph should strengthen the Government. And courts-martial were animated by a similar spirit, acquitting those whose guilt was notorious; while so little was any attempt made to disguise the motives by which the judges were, or were expected to be, actuated, that on one occasion the leaders of one political party quitted their duties in Parliament and repaired to Portsmouth, to form the daily escort of an officer under trial to the court. We shall see hereafter that this grievous and disgraceful spirit, so different from that which had animated Blake, continued to operate for many years, and more than once baffled Rodney's welllaid plan sin his very last command. For a year or two, in the Plymouth and other ships to which he was transferred, he was chiefly employed in escorting convoys of merchantmen from the Spanish and Portuguese ports, a duty which he seems to have performed with signal success, and in the performance of which, while captain of the forty-gun frigate Ludlow, he on one occasion fought and captured the St. Maloes, a French frigate with an equal number of guns but a much more numerous and powerful crew. From the Ludlow he was transferred to the Eagle, a fine sixty-gun two-decker belonging to Admiral Hawke's fleet; and in her, October, 1747, he had a share in that great officer's first victory. In number Hawke was superior to his antagonist, M. L'Etendeur, but in the size and strength of his ships he was so greatly inferior to him, that the apparent inequality of the two fleets was little more than nominal. To that victory no single officer except Hawke himself contributed more than Rodney, nor did any one suffer more severely from the superior size of the French ships. For he singled out as his antagonist M. L'Etendeur's flagship, the eighty-gun Tennant, and her heavier fire placed the Eagle in no slight danger till the Admiral himself came to his assistance. The Eagle had lost her foretopmast, and her wheel had been shot away. But Rodney quickly repaired her damage, and not only boarded and took the Fougueux (sixty-four), but when M. L'Etendeur at last fled with the remnant of his fleet which had escaped capture, he, with Captain Saunders of the Yarmouth, and Captain Saumarcy of the Nottingham, pursued the flying enemy, overtook them, and continued the fight till night, separated the combatants, and secured the Frenchman's escape. In the spring of 1748 he was appointed to the command on the Newfoundland station with the rank of commodore. But the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle put a stop for awhile to further warlike operations; and as at the general election of 1752 he was elected as representative of Saltash, he returned to England to take his seat in Parliament. In 1753 he married a sister of the Earl of Northampton; but his happiness was of short duration, as Lady Jane died in little more than three years. He was not, however, allowed very long time for mourning; for the Seven Years' War had already broken out, and his services were far too highly esteemed for him to be allowed to remain idle. He was at once appointed to the Dublin, a fine seventy-four, which was first attached to the fleet with which Hawke was sent against Rochefort; and when that attempt failed, through the incapacity of the general who was joined with Hawke in command, he was sent across the Atlantic to join the fleet on the Newfoundland station under Admiral Boscawen. Boscawen, who was as skilful an officer as any in the service, lost the credit of his operations in that quarter, the most important of which, the capture of Louisburg and the reduction of Cape Breton, were |