starts in his sleep as in imagination he sprung at the bar. In this state he continued for some time, till the effects of the liquor gradually passing off, his bodily senses resumed their sway, and his dream was mixed with a half-waking consciousness of reality. Dim returning recollection carried him back to the moment when he was sitting drinking with Wolfe; and being half-conscious of his present recumbent position, he fancied that the usual result of his debauches had overtaken him, and that he had fallen asleep on the floor of the tent. The jolting of the waggon he imagined to be his companion endeavouring to rouse him by shaking; and as the roughness of the motion gradually awoke him, he turned round on his back, gave his shoulders an impatient twitch, and called out in a peevish tone :

66

D-n Dick! what the debbil him shake for him want sleep."

"Potz-tausend !" cried the Dutchman, turning round at the sound of the negro's voice, and giving him a smart slash with his whip; " lie still you dam nigger!" The sharpness of the blow effectually roused poor Tom, who started up from his recumbent posture, opened his eyes, and gazed around him with a look of perfect bewilderment. Memory was now completely at fault; the cords on his wrists and ancles, the Dutchman with his pipe in his mouth, and his whip in his hand, the two grinning Hottentots, the waggon itself, all were an inextricable riddle. Astonishment at first rendered him motionless; and it was not till after repeated contemplation of the objects around him, and frequent rubbings of his eyes to satisfy himself that all was not a dream, that he endeavoured to rise to his feet. In this attempt, however, he was completely baffled by the cords on his legs; and after various unsuccessful struggles he at last rolled fairly over on his side into a corner of the waggon. Another application of the Dutchman's whip, accompanied by an exhortation to lie quiet, roused all the fire of Tom's naturally choleric disposition; and regaining with some difficulty his sitting posture, he began to curse and swear at a furious rate, mixing his maledictions with sundry interrogatories as to where he was, who dared to bind him,

and so forth. To all this the Dutchman phlegmatically replied, that he had better be quiet, otherwise be would flog him into good manners; and that there was no use making a work, for that he had fairly bought him as his slave-and his slave he was.

"And who sell me slave, you dam Dutch tief?" roared Tom, half-choked with fury. A huge volume of tobaccosmoke from the Dutchman's pipe was the only reply.

"Who sell me, I say?" again roared Tom. Puff, puff, went the pipe, but not a word in the way of answer. Tom then went into another tirade of curses; but finding that all his eloquence produced no other effect than that of making the Dutchman apply more assiduously to his tobacco, he, at last, philosophically determined to give himself up to his fate, and trust to fortune.

The whole day they continued their route along the sea-coast, only stopping once to bate the team, and refresh themselves with a little beer and cheese. A part of this fare was thrown to Tom, but he indignantly spurned it, and again they continued their journey. Towards evening they left the shore, and took a direction towards the interior of the country. After a drive of some hours, they arrived at what appeared to be a small farm-house, where their conductor intimated they should pass the night. Tom was removed from the waggon, and thrown among some straw in an outhouse, while the Dutchman and his companions adjourned into the principal dwelling. He had not been long in this situation when one of the Hottentots entered with a torch, bearing some bread and water for Tom's supper. The light of the torch gave him an opportunity of observing that the place where he lay was that in which the farm implements were kept, and, among the rest, several scythes, pruning-hooks, and soforth, lay scattered about. Tom, whose whole thoughts were bent on escape, immediately took advantage of this circumstance; and as soon as the Hottentot was gone, he managed to crawl near one of the scythes, against the sharp edge of which he rubbed the cords on his wrists till he fairly sawed them through. Having now the use of his hands, he speedily freed his ankles from their bindings, and waiting till all

was quiet in the farm-house, he sallied forth, and took the same road, as nearly as he could guess it in the darkness, by which the waggon had arrived. Meeting with no obstruction, he plodded on as fast as his active limbs would carry him; and after encountering a variety of difficulties, in the shape of jungles, morasses, and rivers, and having nothing to eat but the wild fruits that grew in his path, he arrived, towards the evening of the next day, at the sea-coast. Cheered by the prospect of his favourite element, and having the beach to act as a guide to his farther course, he persevered in his journey, notwithstanding hunger and fatigue, and the following day his sight was blessed by the appearance of the white tents of Canvass Town.

Haggard and emaciated, with his clothes nearly torn off his back, the poor fellow presented himself at the Blue Boar, just as the usual party were sitting down to dinner. As soon as his arrival was announced, Captain Morley summoned him to give an account of himself; when he narrated, in his own graphic way, most of the circumstances I have endeavoured to describe above.

"And who you tink sell me slave ?" he cried, with great indignation, when he had concluded his story, at which we were all nearly convulsed with laughter.

Dat

"God knows!" replied Captain Morley, in vain endeavouring to look grave. "God know!" cried Tom; "berry true, Sair; but Tom sabe too? dam tief of de world Bolpe-so help me God, Sair, him sell me for tree hunder rix daller !"

Well, Tom," said the captain, "it will be a lesson to you in future never to get drunk! Where is Wolfe ?"

"W'ere um is, Sair? How me know w'ere um is! But if ebber me meet him again-'tand clear Massa Bolpe, dat's all !"

As for Wolfe we fairly gave him up for lost, all our inquiries concerning him being fruitless. It was not till nearly three weeks after the occurrence of these incidents, that information was brought one evening to the Blue Boar, that a stranger, supposed to be a sailor in disguise, had arrived in Canvass Town, and it was shrewdly suspected that he was the absent boat

swain's-mate. I was the next midshipman for duty; and two marines, who were of the shore party, being summoned, we proceeded, with Captain Morley, to the tent where the man was said to be. The marines remained outside, while the captain and myself entered. The tent in which we found ourselves was a miserable hovel, with no other flooring than the bare ground, and no furniture, save a few barrels and boxes, which served the purposes of tables and chairs, on one of which stood an empty bottle, with the remnant of a lighted candle stuck into its halfbroken neck. The only occupants of the place were three women and one man. In the appearance of the latter there was nothing very remarkable. He was apparently a farmer of the middle class; a tall robust fellow, in a broadbrimmed hat, bottle-green coat, cord breeches, ribbed worsted stockings, and laced half-boots. His dress was arranged with holiday neatness, and his well-shaven beard “showed like a stubble-field at harvest home." Captain Morley contemplated this group for an instant, and then apologised for having intruded upon them. "I was given to understand," said he, "that there was a man belonging to my ship here, but I find I have been misinformed, and am sorry for having disturbed you ;" and he was turning to leave the tent, when his eye accidentally encountered that of the young farmer. No sooner did the two glances meet, than there was an instant recognition on the part of Captain Morley.

"Marines!" he cried in a loud voice to the men without-and the two marines immediately appeared at his summons-" Seize that fellow, and take care that he does not escape!"

The marines laid hold of the man by the collar, one on each side, and Captain Morley left the tent, desiring them to follow.

"Avast heaving, shipmates!" said Wolfe-for the man was no other"let me light my pipe, will ye? If you were as hungry and as tired as I am, you wouldn't be in such a dd hurry to go on board to get flogged."

The two men relaxed their hold for an instant at this appeal, and Wolfe bent his head to the miserable candleend which stood on one of the boxes with which the tent was strewed.

ENGLAND is but a speck in the ocean, and yet her sway extends to the remotest corners of the globe. Her civilizing swarms have colonized in every clime, and her ports are filled with the tributary riches of all nations. The ancient Spanish boast is in her case literally realized. The sun never sets upon her dominions. Great, indeed, must be the responsibility of those rulers who are called upon to consult for the prosperity and to wield the destinies of more than sixty-one† millions of human souls.

For all this extent of empire Great Britain is indebted to her naval superiority. Without that, she could neither have acquired nor maintained it; nor, indeed, would there have been any sufficient guarantee for the preservation of her own independence. The ocean was, of old, designated by the epithet of "dissociabile," as if it only served to disunite and keep separate the different nations of the earth. Great Britain has subjected the winds and waves to her control, and converted the broad sea into a highway for her navies, by which even the most distant countries are brought more completely under her influence than were the provinces of imperial Rome under that of their gorgeous capital, when she was denominated the mistress of the world.

We, therefore, regard the publication before us as both important and interesting; important, as developing the progressive growth of English naval greatness, and the various means by which it has been either advanced or retarded; and interesting, by reason of that exhibition of British valour which has conferred upon our naval heroes imperishable glory. May it not be also said to be a seasonable publication? It is, we think, but too clear that a disposition exists, on the part of our rulers, to practise, in the equipment of

our fleets, a sordid economy, which must, in the end, redound to our loss and our dishonour. Other countries are improving their navies at our expense. By our abandonment of the navigation laws, and by the extent to which we have suffered the principle of free trade to be acted upon, we have given encouragement, of which they have extensively availed themselves, to neighbours, who may at any moment be our enemies, largely to augment their power by sea. We cannot, therefore, but regard the work before us as a timely admonition of the necessity that is imposed upon us, and that never was more pressingly urgent, to take heed lest our foreign liberality and our domestic parsimony may not prove our ruin. Nor could such a subject have fallen into better hands. Robert Southey is a righthearted Englishman, whose noble intellect, from the first dawn of reason, was consecrated to the public weal. A youth of eighteen may easily be forgiven, if he was captivated, for a season, by democratic principles, at the first outbreak of the French revolution. But there is a difference between the errors of generosity and inexperience, and those of a corrupted nature. His was a mind which

"The holy forms

Of young imagination had kept pure." His heart had never contracted the leprous taint of infidelity; and the atrocious democrats, who filled France with carnage and Europe with horror, and at the sound of whose names humanity still shudders, soon wrought upon him their proper effect, and convinced him that the path of revolutionary wickedness was not the most direct road to genuine constitutional freedom. With increasing years and increasing knowledge, he felt and cherished an increasing love for the

happy institutions of his own favoured country; and as his genius expanded, it gave birth to works by which its constitution was defended and illustrated, and its literature enriched and adorned. Upon these it would not be to our purpose at present to expatiate, The time may not be distant when it will be permitted us to indulge ourselves and our readers with a more extended notice of the literary labours of this gifted and high-souled man, who as a poet, as an historian, as an essayist, as a biographer, will leave behind him greater and more varied claims upon the gratitude and the admiration of Englishmen, than any other individual of his age or nation, Nor will the work before us be regarded as the least of the benefactions which he has conferred upon his country, until degeneracy has progressed so much beyond the point which it has reached at present, that we become careless of national security and dead to national glory.

The first volume is occupied by a masterly dissertation upon the early naval history of England. The first authentic records represent it as the prey of successive shoals of northern pirates. They found the shores of Britain defenceless; they descended them and plundered and opupon pressed an uncivilized and divided people. By degrees, the invaders became settlers, who established themselves by right of conquest, and who may, naturally, be supposed to retain a strong predilection for the seafaring life to which they had been accustomed. If the reader has ever seen a parrot climbing, and observed the caution with which he secures his footing by one claw before he relinquishes thehold by the other,he may form a tolerably just idea of the tenacity with which the northern invaders clung to their naval force, while yet they were seeking to secure for themselves a permanent possession of the country. Indeed, by such precaution alone could they hope to protect themselves against the kindred hoards by whom the British seas were at that time infested, and who would have been quite as much justified in invading them, and compelling either a participation or a relinquishment of their advantages, as they were when they

first made war upon a helpless and an unoffending people; so that the naval power to which they were indebted for their conquest, they were compelled to maintain for their preservation.

The system of piracy (which, so far from being accounted dishonourable, was reputed as a kind of naval chivalry, by which the younger branches of royal or noble families might procure for themselves riches and distinction) was in full vigour at the time that the Danes commenced their depredations on the British islands. It was to repel and chastise these bold invaders that the illustrious Alfred first established his naval force :

"And as he went out with his first fleet himself, he may, without impropriety, be considered as the first British admiral. He invited into his navy not Freezlanders alone, who were, probably, at the time, his allies, but adventurers, of whatever nation, who were willing to forsake a piratical course of life. But he well knew that, though great present advantages might be derived from their services, no durable power could be established by such precarious means, and that it is only by maritime commerce that maritime dominion can be supported. On this, as on all other subjects, his views extended not only beyond those of his cotemporaries, but it may almost be said, beyond the possibilities of his age. He sent an ambassador to India, to the Christians in Malabar, and on the Coromandel coast, countries which no Englishman visited again till the sixteenth century; and whether the navigators made the voyage in his service or not, he obtained from Wolfstan an account of the manners and political state of the countries towards the east of the Baltic; and from Othere, a description of the land as far as the White sea and the mouths of the Dwina; parts which Richard Chanceler, in the year 1553, was the first European navigator who re-discovered."

In the reign of Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred, a great advance was made in civilization. Mints were established in all considerable towns, and a uniformity of coinage enjoined. But the interests of commerce were still more directly subserved and promoted by a law which passed, conferring honourable privileges upon enterprising