As Sir Octavius protested that he wanted neither seamanship, navigation, nor just ideas of naval discipline, he induced the Admiralty not to appoint a captain under him to the Terrific; but, as he could not, with any respect to decency, put in the plea that he wanted no religion, so, much to his annoyance, he had a chaplain appointed to his ship. We respect the sacred calling, and honour its ministers, and, therefore, when we describe what a chaplain was sixty years since, our motives must not be misunderstood, though the accuracy of our picture may be doubted.

In the first place, they were not the men of learning and piety that now are a grace and a blessing to his Majesty's navy. No man in orders, whilst he could procure a curacy on shore, would accept a chaplaincy afloat. We forget the exact amount of the remuneration then offered them, but it was so low, that it was an insult. When the persecuted divine got on board his ship, he was repelled by all classes, and reverenced by a few individuals only, who dared not betray their feelings. He was shifted about from ship to ship continually, all being anxious to pass him away as an incumbrance. If Captain A. wanted a couple of good sail-makers, and Captain B. could spare them in exchange for two able seamen, the latter would not let the former have them, unless he relieved him of his chaplain into the bargain. Against the general contempt no man can bear up; and generally, not being the élite of the profession, they soon gave way to circumstances, and always settled down into the captain's sycophant, and generally into the captain's spy.

To the ship's company they were neither of spiritual, nor any other service; and, as to their reading the funeral service over the dead, we have seen that imposing rite performed by officers, in a manner as pious, as effective, and as solemn, as ever stoled clergyman, or even mitred bishop, could have achieved. The chaplains of that time were never to be found encouraging the departing soul,

strengthening the wavering faith, or endeavouring to penetrate the hardness, or shame the depravity of the human heart. If they were of any utility at all, they were useful after a strange fashion. The instructors of the midshipmen in what? in the articles of their faith? in making them humble, self-denying, and truly christian ? none of those; but in geometry and trigonometry, plane and middle latitude sailing; not how to perform a work of grace, but to work a day's work. For doing all this, they were usually paid at the rate of half-a-crown per month by each pupil.

For my own part, startling as my opinion may be, I shall state it, but with all humility. Chaplains have no business on board of his Majesty's fleets in time of actual war. I have come to this conclusion from motives of religion only. There is an air of hypocrisy about the thing. Under the new and blessed dispensation, we are taught to worship Him as a God of love; to resist oppression and injustice, not by bloodshed and murder, but by returning good for evil; by offering our cloak to the robber of our coat, and the left cheek to the smiter of our right. We know, from the depravity of our common nature, we cannot act up to this scale of perfection; all I say is, that it looks something like a pious mockery, to place a person who is bound, by everything solemn and holy, to preach all this, in a machine armed with the most deadly and dreadful engines of destruction that can be devised, wherewith to commit homicide by wholesale. I have often inwardly smiled, on a Sunday, in the Toulon fleet, when we were doing all we could to bring the French into action, at the pious unction which the chaplain bestowed on the part of the litany which says, "From battle, murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord deliver us." Surely, surely, this is a grievous mockery.

We know not whether this particular petition is now omitted, but we do know that then it was always constantly used; and we also know, that it is in direct opposition to the articles of war, in which officers and men are imperatively and very properly enjoined, with ferocious perspicuity of expression, to do their utmost to kill, slay, lay waste, burn and destroy, under the penalty of death. This is both the tone and the meaning of the article of war, though we have it not by us, to quote it verbatim.

But let us suppose that this absurd discrepancy of praying to be delivered from battle, at the time that we are doing our best to seek it, should have been noticed in the proper quarter, and that particular petition left out, when the litany is now read, then there will be thousands of our fellow-Christians, who may not come to the foot of the throne of mercy with a petition emphatically christian, or-but we will not point still more sharply the horns of this dilemma.

Again, as one chaplain is generally found to be one too many in every ship, we do not think that the most pious, and the most

eager for the diffusion of religious instruction, would desire many; and yet liberty of conscience is a birthright of Englishmen. Very often, there are more Catholics and more Presbyterians in particular ships, than of any other persuasion: and yet I have seen professors of all manner of religions started, with the rope's-end, by the boatswain's mates, into the church rigged out on the maindeck; an intolerance and a profanation that ought to prevent those who practise them from affecting indignation at the Inquisition.

I myself served on board a three-decker, with a young clergyman regularly educated at Oxford, a person of good moral character, and that serious yet gentlemanly behaviour that extorted respect. But in the course of a few months, his position began to act vigorously and materially upon his character. With the best intentions in the world, instead of being an organ set apart for the ministry of divine instruction, he rapidly became one of us. I solemnly assert, that, to the best of my belief, he never made a man on board a better Christian; but we made him an excellent sailor. Here was a man, under the most favourable auspices for our captain was decidedly of a religious turn-who, in spite of himself, became a worse divine, without making any one on board a better

man.

For these reasons, and for many others that I could adduce, I do not think that an ordained priest should be one of the requisite persons on board of ship of war. The union of Church and State, which, as far as my literary abilities and opportunities permitted me, I have always upheld, has very often embarrassed both; let us, however, preserve the principle, but not seek to work it out to minuteness in detail, and raise a cry of "Church and Navy." The convicted felons in our common gaols have the liberty of conscience in choosing the particular minister who shall administer to them heavenly instruction. If it be physically impossible that seamen afloat should enjoy this privilege, let them enjoy it as often as they come into harbour; but do not compel the Catholic or the Baptist to make one of an unwilling congregation, from the doctrines of which he conscientiously dissents.

Let the captain and officers not only enforce morality, but also, to the utmost of their power, encourage religion. Let them, by their conduct, inculcate a proper reverence for the Sabbath, mildly and discreetly punish all impious or blasphemous expressions, and if any particular set of men choose to evince their devotion by any public acts, at proper times, the Sunday more especially, they should neither be ridiculed nor reviled, but, as far as the good of the service would permit, properly protected. The captain, who is in general a member of the Established Church, should regularly perform divine service every Sunday, to all of his persuasion, men as well as officers; but no compulsion; no driving people, with popes'-ends, into the temporary church. Invite, entreat, as much

as you will, but, I repeat, let there be no compulsion. And now I have said my say.

This talking of chaplains has set me preaching, not vengeance, but as the saying is, with a vengeance; but, as I don't intend to be thus prosy again, I may be forgiven my digression, and be allowed to plead "benefit of clergy."

The chaplain that the Commodore possessed was a very common sort of person indeed; he was a vulgar man, and decidedly a worldly one. But I am not going to draw this man's character elaborately. I shall merely say that he loved good eating, and, though the most unimaginative of men, believed in ghosts. The latter, in my eyes, was no failing. I believe in them myself—but of this hereafter.

Now, as we wish to get rapidly forward with this part of our story, we will omit all minor details, and bring the reader, with the squadron, at once fast nearing the English coasts, in the latter end of February, 17—, the squadron having been now nearly seventeen months on their protracted and pursuing course. Ships were now repeatedly spoken with: and, as might have been expected, from the unremitting exertions of the Commodore, he had headed his chase, and was then between them and their port; for it was well known that the French would not, after so long an absence from Europe, run through the Gut of Gibraltar.

The Commodore also now heard news to him still more annoying. Two general actions had been fought, in neither of which had he been a participator. This intelligence did not add a little to his exasperation. However, notwithstanding the almost disabled state of his vessels, he was determined to wait for a last chance, and to keep the sea as long as he could, in the chops of the channel, just at the approach of the equinoctial gales, He was determined, if his vessels would hold together long enough, to capture or destroy his enemy yet.

He and Augustus had never been reconciled: and, lately, the Commodore had ceased to manifest the involuntary respect that the youth's irreproachable conduct had extorted. The uncle had become trebly irritated by the unswerving, cool contempt that his nephew took but little pains to conceal that he entertained for his commander. Tale-bearing, and the insidious whisper of the sycophant, had been doing their noisome work; so that when the estranged relatives first viewed together, after an absence so long, the deep blue outline of their native land, Sir Octavius was in the worst possible state of mind towards his protégé.

It was the last night in February: the little squadron having made the Land's-end on the previous day, were now lying to, in a strong north-western gale, under close-reefed topsails. It was a clear and cloudless, though moonless night, and bitterly cold; and this was felt in an increased degree by those who had just passed through

the heats of the tropics. At seven bells in the first watch, that is, according to landsman's time, half-past eleven at night, the Commodore eame upon deck, followed by the chaplain, and they both ascended to the poop. Sir Octavius, as was his nightly wont, first swept the horizon with his night-glass, counted his squadron, and attentively marked the position of each vessel, the chaplain standing shivering beside him. This gentleman, having only the safety of souls committed to his care, had not forgotten to cater to the comforts of his own body, and having nothing to do with the temporal preservation of the ship and its mortal contents, had not imposed upon himself those restrictions in his potations, under which the Commodore always laid himself at sea. They had dined together, and, whilst the man of war had contented himself with sipping claret through the long evening, the man of peace had been drinking hot grog. But I would not have it inferred that the latter was tipsy; he was only a little sentimental, and gifted with the double-sight he sometimes possessed of seeing ghosts, or of seeing reasons why they were not to be seen.

After the Commodore had completed his survey, and given some few words of instruction to the officers of the watch, as the ship was careening over to leeward greatly by the violence of the gale, he clapped his iron hook upon a belaying pin and looked down on the quarter-deck. The lieutenant in charge was walking the weather side, somewhat sheltered by the bulwark; but to leeward there was one figure, tall, slight, and eminently graceful. It moved slowly, with a measured tread, and, by the faint star-light, the face looked very pale. Ever and anon, the bounding waves would rush down from to windward like a storming host full on the broad and reclined beam of the seventy-four, and then, assailing as if they would surmount her sides, dash themselves into whirling spray, that came in intensely cold and light showers upon the youth, who scarcely noticed them so much as to shake away the moisture of the dripping shower. And still, like a mere automaton, he walked and turned, and turned and walked, apparently impassible to the wind, or the wave, or the heeling of the ship. That youth was the midshipman of the watch, Augustus Astell, and, though he knew it not, the Earl of Osmondale. In the short space of time that he had been to sea, his two uncles, and their father, had died successively.

As he paced that comfortless, cheerless deck, his heart, his soul, his very thoughts were at home: at that very moment, he was conversing with his mother, and saying to her the sweetest, tenderest things that filial love could prompt, or gladden the maternal heart. And yet, as if conscious of this abstraction from the dismal present, he would rouse himself, as if by an effort, and coming to the break - of the quarter-deck, every five minutes, exclaim, in a loud, melodjous, yet melancholy voice, "Keep a good look out on the lee