From Jerrold's Magazine.

THE PRICE OF A GARTER AND THE PRICE OF A LIFE.

AMID the chaos of printed rubbish, the piles of undigested evidence, the marshalled columns of unapproachable statistics, which every prorogued parliament patriotically prepares for the buttermen and trunkmakers of its country, may be found those records of our yearly national expenditure, that gigantic family account-book, that dismal edition of" that's the way the money goes;" in fine, the long series of volumes called the "miscellaneous estimates and civil contingencies." Chance, not choice, led us the other day to glance at the items noted last session. We were mechanically running our eye along page after page, and column after column, detailing the mass of matters upon which our taxation is expended, when sud denly we came upon the two following items placed almost side by side, as though wooing observation and criticism. And they shall have both. First, however, read them :

66

The amount issued to pay rewards to the crews of the boats "Earl Grey," 66 "Po," Sparrow," "Duke of York," and Caroline," for saving the lives of the crew of the "Shepherdess," wrecked on the Goodwin Sands,

Fees paid to the officers of the Order of the Garter, upon the installation of his Majesty the King of the French as Knight Companion,

439 3 4 And now, English reader, do you not feel inclined, as we did, to start with indignant astonishment from your seat-to fling away as a filthy thing, this parliamentary-sanctioned document-to protest with every energy of your soul, against the system which sanctions such moral monstrosities, which rates so high the consequence of an unmerited bauble, and which passes almost with, so to speak, a monetary sneer-a pounds-shillingsand-pence scoff-over an exploit in which precious human life was adventured-by which precious human life was saved.

With no record of the fourteenth century have we to do; with no musty account of the gaudy glories of an ancient tourney, of a Field of Cloth of Gold; with no memento of the empty show of the old pageantry of knight-errantry; with no antiquarian-saved morsel of the cost of that spirit of chivalry, sceptred by a two-handed sword, which revelled in the droit du seigneur, and amused itself with the extraction of Jewish teeth; in fine, with no item, of the national expenses, paid in the days when the curfew toll extinguished fire and candle, and the thick-walled holds of robber nobles, blotted the desart of England; with no record of those Young England-loved ages have we to deal, but with items of our own timesexpenses noted by a parliament we ourselves are constitutionally feigned to have elected. Yes, it is this age of utility, of humanity-this age made the glorious thing it is, by the abounding, extending, ennobling.spirit of commerce-this age which appreciates the blessings of our sailors and our ships; it is this country which toasts its wooden walls, sings about them, goes into raptures about them, proclaims that it owes its all to them, which lavishes its hundreds in presenting a glittering trinket to a foreign monarch, and grudges its tens

of pounds to the dauntless preservers of the most valuable lives our island rears.

People of England, why should you pay Louis Philippe's garter expenses? What interest have you in those solemn chapters, those gilded mummeries in which this said garter is distributed to the accident of accidents; the reward of rank, never the guerdon of merit; the trapping of mindless nobles, never the badge of glorious thinkers or doers? Why should you give the fruits of toilsome days and exhausting nights over to defray expenses which can never benefit you? Workmen at the forge and at the loom-were one of you to speak as Demosthenes spoke, to think as Socrates thought, to write as Shakspeare wrotethink you that for him would be reserved, to him would be offered, that order so highly prized by its donors; that strip of ribbon for which hereditary legislators break their pledges; and by means of which, corrupt and corrupting ministers distribute their bribes? We know the man of mind would spurn the badge of the man of rank; but so do not think the silly dukes, the mindless marquesses, who, for the sake of that same order, wheel from one bench to another in parliament; leap and cringe, and bow and bend before a sneering minister's will. People of England! the Order of the Garter is not for you, your champions, your heroes. It is reserved for rank, for those who do what they like with their own, who would bring their black footmen into your chamber of legislature, who launch the thunder of their sneers upon you the "unwashed, swinish multitude."

But yet they graciously condescend to take your money for the defrayal of the puerile mummery of their investiture. There is no vulgarity in hard cash-that is an affront which can always be pocketed. Here you see, for fees exacted upon one of the grave occasions in question-paid probably to some worthless flutterer of the court-for some such service as writing a name in a register, or holding a sword or a mace in a childish ceremony-the sum of £439. Not that the amount is of the slightest consequence; but the principle is. It is all-important. The people's money paid for what the people have no interest in, for what profits them not, for what concerns them not

this is the principle, and to it we call attention. And now look to the other picture. Look to the infinitesimal sum paid for the inestimable service. Yet have we not interest in it-profit in itconcern in it? We are a seafaring people. Close by our greatest commercial river lies perhaps the most dangerous and the most fatal shoal in the world. Within its shifting sands thousands of gallant ships lie buried; they are the bottomless grave of hundreds of thousands of gallant hearts, which met their fate as they bounded with gladness to see the dear white cliffs again; or, with a sterner joy, beheld them fading across the water as all hopefully they ploughed their way towards a southern world.

And on the coast, by these sad Goodwin Sands, live a hardy race, whose lives are passed in saving life-whose eyes are never off the tortuous channels and mazy world of sandbanks-and whose boats are never on the beach when a distressed ship is on the reef.

Let us not be met for a moment by the canting cry of " mercenary considerations;" let us not be told that the Deal and Ramsgate boatmen have an eye to salvage as well as to saving life. Well do we know that were not one penny to be made of

the hazardous trip, a single sailor would never drown amid the surf of the Goodwin Sands without the lives of dozens being adventured if possible to save him. But we grant in a moment that the Deal boatmen live principally by the profits they derive from their salvage expeditions to the Goodwins. Will any man grudge it?" The laborer is worthy of his hire; and if his life be risked any time he labors, is he not worthy of a greater hire. This whole world labors in some shape or other for hire? Lawyers, parsons, doctors, authors, all have their fees of one kind or another. As a rule, the medical man does not step in to arrest disease and prolong life without being paid for it; the minister does not expound the heavenward duties of his flock without his due in tithe pigs. This is all as it ought to be. All must live; none can live without submitting in some sort to that great law which keeps the social fabric together the law which rewards fairly services performed duly.

The boatmen, then, who pass their lives in their galleys and luggers, battling with the stormy seas of the channel; ever on the look-out for distressed vessels; ever risking their lives to save those of others; it may be those of hapless foreigners-is there, can there be, any class of our maritime population more valuable; more worthy; not merely of that empty admiration which fills no belly and covers no back, but of those substantial marks of our national gratitude which would make their homes more comfortable, their boats more seaworthy, their wives and orphans something better than mere paupers; when the sea had swallowed, as too often it does, those who had up to that hour won the family bread; and won it by a life of toil, watching, and danger?

We grudge our taxation often; but sure are we that not a voice would be raised against the increased expense-were thousands, instead of tens of pounds, to be voted by parliament to those brave fellows who from time to time, in the midst of dangers unknown by those who live on shore, dash to sea in the driving storm of a winter's night to save a drowning crew.

Ah! ye gentlemen of England, whose notion of the English channel is founded upon the experience of a two hours' run on a sunny summer's afternoon from Dover to Calais, how little do you know of the same strait in the times of winter's wrath. We have seen the channel in all its phases; we have seen it in its fury, when the elements raved and roared about us; we have seen an ill-fated ship dashed upon the dread Goodwins; we have seen the noble fellows of Deal plunge their boats through the boiling surf, and dash out amid the wildest fury of the tempest; we have seen all this; we have seen from afar despairing crews succored by their brave deliverers; and we ask the reader to follow us in a brief sketch of such a scene:

again to that long-drawn whistle almost as sharp and deafening as the shriek of escaping steam. It is the gust driving through the half-struck rigging of the beached boat, under whose lee we are crouching. How it sings in the blocks, and seizes the untied ends of ropes, and blows them out as straight as wires. You can feel the stout staves of the lugger tremble upon the shingle as the full fury of the squall falls like a driving sheet of iron upon its broadside. But these sounds are only fitfully heard; one continuous roar, dull, heavy, yet ever and anon waxing awful in its deep diapason power, and again occasionally broken, by a rattling shaleing noise, makes up the prevailing music of the storm. It is the thunder of the surf; now for a moment it waxes comparatively faint; and you hear the sound as it were wandering along the beach, as the long extending ridges of foaming water dash their bursting forms on shore, running, so to speak, along the line of coast, clothing it all with a dread barrier of frothing, tumbling water. The lull endures but for a moment; the ocean is gathering strength for another onset; you almost feel it coming; and then, crash! on rushes the mighty wave, towering and mounting, and curling as it approaches, and then pitching its whole weight of green and white water upon the beach, dashing up the sloping shingle in an avalanche of foam, white as creaming milk; swallowing the dull grey expanse of pebbles in its phosphorescent brightness; and then having exhausted its power and its volume, rushing back in a broad torrent down the beach, sweeping to sea tons of rattling, scraping shingle, to be thrown onward again by the succeeding wave.

Look forth-ha! that was a gust, a fearful one. Is this rain? No, no. You feel it salt on your lips, smarting in your eyes; it is the spray caught up by the tempest, and dashed ashore in blinding showers. All is dark-dark; the broad belt of surf shines before you with a cold brightness, beyond it all is dim and troubled, but here and there you catch white blotches speckling the dark surface of the ocean. These are the combing waves curling and breaking in the Downs. And markyou catch it at intervals, now tossed high, now disappearing in the sea-a light. It is the Gull light-ship, tossing and struggling in the tempest, but steady to her moorings, and guiding by her warning lantern, running ships through the principal passage in the sands.

And now breaks out the moon. Her light comes pale and fitfully through the jagged, torn edges of driving clouds. You see the scud flying rapidly athwart the sky-dim, grey, watery clouds

is little; in broken sentences, and confined to the noting of the shifting of the wind half a point, or an inquiry as to whether "that schooner, her that carried away both topmasts off the Foreland, had passed the Gull afore sunset." Now and then a woman, muffled in her shawl, steals down from the town to exchange a word with her husband, or brother, or father, and to hope to God he will not go to sea to-night. And then the shrinking creature departs, and the watch is renewed. Our friends are Deal boatmen on the look-out.

And now the moon is obscured again. A heavy darkness settles down around; the gale which had lulled for a moment, bursts out again, and a tremendous sea pours its water up to the keel of the boat where we are stationed.

"Hillo, there goes! look out, mates!"

A general movement and exclamation, as, far to sea, what seems a tiny speck of light, suddenly glimmers forth, and then shoots rapidly into the air. A rocket!-watch again.-See, another! There is a ship in distress! An instant, and after a flash comes a smothered boom-there go her

tossed landward like a feather; a cloud of sparkling spray is over her; the sea rushes and tumbles like a cataract! Is she ashore? Not a bit of it. The surge roars up the beach. She is beyond it. Ha! again and again she has to buffet with a meeting sea, plunged head-down into them, and then rising all buoyantly, shaking her feathers, the crew baling cheerfully, the sails already dripping, but bellying and struggling as though they would tear the stout masts up by the step. Hurrah! fairly beyond the surf, and tearing madly along, close to the wind; not a gull, not a duck rides the sea more lightly? shooting three-fourths of her keel out of the sea, plunging into it with a roaring leap as though she flew to her yawning grave; in an instant again, feather-like, skimming the crest of the next surge, avoiding its fury by a dexterous twist of the tiller; the crew clinging sternly to the weather-rigging; the steersman, with compressed lips and firm resolute eyes, cool and fearless as though in his own distant home ashore, glancing warily from the struggling canvass to the run of the fast-following seas:-so does the gallant Deal lugger work her

gleaming lurid light breaks forth, it shows a dark shapeless mass, tossing spars and riven sails and white foam around-out in a moment.

"A brig on the Knock-that last sea went over him and put out his blue light-now, then, my lads look alive!"

It is the captain of the boat who speaks. The instant which the portfire burned had enabled him to ascertain-bearings, distances-all he wanted. In two hours, at most, he will be alongside.

All is bustle-people pour down as if by magic from the town-the wives of the boatmen are all tremblingly on the beach, bringing huge oil-cloth wrappers and well-greased sea-boots. A dozen sailors are in the boat making all snug. A rag of a foresail and spanker, both close-reefed, are hoisted; the furious wind strains and flaps the heavy wet canvass as though it were ladies' curl paper; the blocks rattle and the greased ropes cheep creakingly. A group has collected round the boat, rollers are beneath her keel; her crew, six or eight stout fellows, all oilskin and boots, are on board; the skipper already mechanically grasping the tiller with one hand, and, with the other arm twined round the staying of the mizenmast, steadying himself, as he anxiously watches the proper moment for the grand push across the surf. An old seaman stands beside him, and they talk almost as much by signs as by words to a third "ancient mariner," close by on the beach.

Twice have the captain's lips moved to give the decisive order, and twice has he paused. At length he sees his game. A huge sea has broken; half floating the boat, and scattering the group which stood beside it. The back water rushes into the sea, and there is a momentary lull.

"Now then my hearties, clap on, out with her!" The words come on the ear like pistol shots. There is a shout, and in a moment the warp of a kedge anchor, lying far beyond the surf, is seized by the crew. The boatmen on shore clap shoulder manfully to the starting boat. A steady drag on the warp, and she moves along her rollers-a moment, and she is fairly in the water. "Now, my men, haul! through the surf with her while the lull holds." The black mass heaves and pitches in the tumbling spray-on-on, out to sea! Heavens! look there; -a curling sea bursts in thunder; the heavy boat is

shoals, glancing by fields of foam which would engulph her in a moment, coolly calculating her distances and bearings, and fearlessly approaching the stranded ship.

We need not fully follow up the narrative of scenes which every winter sees enacted among the Goodwins; suffice it to say, that, in many instances, after braving a sea which we speak advisedly-not a seaman of any nation but our own would dare to face, after working their way through the terrible channels of the Goodwins, our Deal boatmen dash alongside the yielding ship, shelter themselves as much as possible under her lee, drag the despairing passengers and crew through the foaming water to their own plunging, dancing boat, and bear them off safely and triumphantly ashore.

And the records of such exploits, as left in our national official accounts of rewards and payments for national services, are such items as we have already quoted.

For idle court ceremony we disburse hundreds; for life freely perilled and dauntlessly saved we give units. A man dresses himself like a jackpudding, enacts the part of a solemn puppet in a raree-show-is Gold Stick, or Silver Stick, or stick of some sort or other-and for the mighty national service he receives hundreds of pounds!

Another leaves his home, his family, the safe dry ground, for a stormy sea, on a stormy nightbraving the most fearful sands and surf known to mariners-and saving the lives of helpless drowning men at the imminent risk of his own, and lo! the national purse-strings are untied, and one golden sovereign dealt bountifully out to him!

In each of the five boats above cited there was a crew of probably eight men, say that the sailors of the Shepherdess-we do not know her tonnagenumbered a dozen, this would make in all fifty-two lives adventured and saved. Government straightway comes forward with the munificent amount of fifty-three pounds!

It costs the country £439 to put a silly gewgaw on Louis Philippe's leg. Never mind; we economize in another item of expenditure. We owe all to our brave sailors, and we reckon their lives as worth just one pound apiece.