Leadenhall, or the still more maritime Minories, the Card with its Card-inal Points, is an undeciphered hieroglyphic. It did not violently surprise me, therefore, to see a simple-looking creature of this latter class go and take a long wondering look into the binnacle, like a child peeping at the tortoise in an Italian's showbox; and doubtless, to his callow apprehension, the veering Guide was as much a thing of life and instinct as the outlandish reptile to the urchin. It was not until after a tedious poring at it— long enough, if there were any truth in animal magnetism, for the Needle and the Man to have understood one another by mutual sympathy-that the wonderer made up to the steersman, and begged for an elucidation of the marine mystery. Fortunately for the querist, the helmsman, along with all the characteristic good-nature of his fraternity, had none of the coyness, as to the secrets of the craft, with which the ripe sailor is apt to treat the raw voyager; perhaps not without cause. The nautical truths, masonic, may deserve to be obtained by degrees of probation in the present case the unreserved communication of occult knowledge led to anything but a satisfactory result. No one could take more pains-call them pleasures rather than the honest man at the wheel, to explain the use and properties of the Compass: he boxed it again and again for the benefit of the gaping neophyte; a benevolent smile, and the twinkling of his blue eyes, declaring that he felt amply repaid by the supposed proficiency of his pupil,-when, all of a sudden, his well-earned pride was dashed to the deck by the pupil's turning away on his heel, with a hunch of his shoulders, a blank look, and a dissatisfied grunt, exclaiming,

“Well, arter all, I don't see how the turning round of that 'ere little needle can move about the rudder!"

I should have been no Christian man, but a brute beast, had I not sympathized with the feelings of the steersman. Contempt took the lead. All "the dismal hiss of universal scorn," ascribed to Milton's devils, seemed condensed into his whistle. Next came Resentment, wishing back the Cockney-Tailor to his shopboard, sitting on his own needle-and then came Pity, inducing the milder reflection,

"I wonder the poor gentleman's friends allows him to go about by himself!"

I doubt whether the force of contempt and pity could further go: and yet to confess a truth-shall I?-dare I?—say, that to the intense sea-ignorance which incurred the scorn, anger, and compassion of our Palinurus, I look back with ENVY?

Methinks, every British Heart of Oak recoils, and every British head of the same material shakes itself, at such an avowal! Every lip that ever helped to chorus Rule Britannia, curls itself up-noses which never sniffed sea-weed tacitly snub me,-eyes which never glimpsed the ocean avert themselves in disgust. I am bespattered with salt-water oaths and tobacco-juice. The Thames Yacht Clubs, on the strength of having learned to bellow "Elm a-lee!"—" Ard-hup!" and "Oist away!" agree to run me down. The very clerks of the Navy Pay Office propose to seize me up to the dingy fresh-water Neptune in their fore-court. Captain Basil Hall swears on his best anchor-button, to keel-haul me daily, for six months, in "the element which never tires." The last of the Dibdins asks for my card. Campbell flares up

with the "Meteor Flag of England," and

vows to knock me

down with its staff;-nay, our Sailor King* himself repudiates

me, as a subject, for not relishing his High Seas!

* Written in the time of William IV., who had been in the Navy

It can't be helped. When one is confessing, there is no place under the sun like the Ocean for "making a clean breast of it :" -and am not I here staggering and tumbling-soberly tipsy— aboard a lubberly Dutch-built hull, becalmed in a heavy swelldreaming, when I can sleep, that I am a barrel-churn, revolving with my inside full of half-turned cream or incipient butter;and finding, when I awake, that dreams do not go so altogether by contraries?

If this perpetual motion hold, the cargo of cheeses we shipped at Dordrecht, flat as single Glo'sters, will be delivered in London spherical as bowls! The Jung Vrouw herself, before she reaches the Nore, will be a washing-tub! I have doubts whether the salt beef, produced at this day's luncheon, was, originally, a round. The leathern conveniency that I brought aboard, a fair and square trunk, is already almost a portmanteau;-and, what is worse, every several morsel I have swallowed this blessed day without bliss, seems rolling itself into a bolus or a pill,-whether of opium or ipecacuanha, I leave you to divine. If the calm should continue, I may become-who knows?—a Ball myself—a Master Biffin! Every half-hour, on feeling my knees and elbows, I find joints by this friction losing some of their asperities, and getting obtuser. A little more, and I shan't have a good point about me!

Is such as this a season to be squeamishly retentive in delivering one's sentiments? Or, rather, is not open candour inevitable; seeing that you cannot have any reserve even with the merest stranger? It is impossible to keep your feelings to yourself. In spite, then, of Britannia, the Yacht Club, the Navy Pay,-of Dibdin, Campbell, and Basil Hall,-of the Lords of the Admiralty, with Portsmouth, Devonport, and Gosport, to boot-in spite

of the Royal William, nay, in spite of my very self, the truth will out!-not sneaking out, or stepping out, or backing out, but bolting out, in a plain unequivocal straightforward style. I DO evny the simple man, with his sheer ignorance about rudders and compasses. I do detest and abominate the ocean-or to phrase it more mildly -the sea and I cannot agree with each other-there is sure to be falling out between us-we can never be bosom friends.

The Marine Society must despise me for it; my Elder Brethren of the Trinity House will long to dispose of me as Joseph was made away with by his elder brethren; Boatswain Smith will preach, write Tracts and distribute them, against me: the Greenwich Pensioners will bind themselves by a round robin to kick me with their knottiest legs; Long Tom Coffin himself will be for fetching me, with a shroud in one hand, and a dead-light in the other; but I cannot eat my words.

It is no time, when you cannot keep your legs, to "stand bandying compliments with your sovereign," that is, Neptune. If he were present at this moment, in this cabin, I would tell

him, from this my seat on its floor, that he might very much improve his paternal estate, to wit, by levelling, and still more by draining it.

I would flatly say to him, lying flat on my face as it now happens, that a few little gravel walks, merely across and across it, would be of rare advantage both for show and use. For 'tis a sorry pleasure-garden that is all fish-pond; and, finally, I would broadly hint to him, from the broad of my back, as I am at this present But this is bullying Taurus behind his back. There is no sea-god present, only the Skipper. How he skips in such weather, give him his pick of all the ropes in the ship, is a miracle I would fain see ere I believe in it. For my own part

Perhaps, without

I cannot even step deliberately over a thread. going too curiously into the Doctrine of Predestination, as regards the soul, it may hold good as concerns the body. Undoubtedly there be some men born to sit fast upon horses; others to fall off therefrom as if they had soaped saddles. Some to slide and skate upon the ice; others only to slip, straddle, and sprawl upon it. Some to walk, or at least waddle, on ships' decks; others to flop, flounder, wallow, and grovel thereon. That is my destiny. None can be more safe on the Serpentine, or sure in the saddle;-but Fate, long before my great-great-great-grandfather was put to his feet, forbade me sea-legs. An average pedestrian on land, on the caulked plank I am a born cripple, hopeless of cure. Put me apprentice to the Goodwin, or the Dudgeon Light, at the end of my term you shall find me as unsafe on my soles as when I first paid my footing. Even now, whilst Hans Vandergroot and his crew are comfortably promenading, I rock and totter, balancing one end against the other, like a great rickety babe, until, after some posturing and scram