courage into seamen, by making them see by experience what mighty things they could do, if they were resolved; and the first that taught them to fight in fire as well as in water." During the life of Blake he had been honoured with a gold chain, put round his neck by the Protector, who, on being informed of his death, ordered him a pompous funeral at the public charge; but, it has been said, "the tears of his countrymen were the most honourable panegyric on his memory." If any other were required, it may surely be found in the choice of his name for a royal ship of the line, in the fourteenth year of a war arising out of the mischiefs of republicanism. The tribute paid to the memory of so determined a republican as Blake, in conferring his name on a seventy-four gun ship in the royal navy, in the 49th year of the reign of his late Majesty, 1808, forms a noble and dignified contrast with the puerile virulence and jacobinical frenzy, exercised by the revolutionists of France against every name which bore the remotest allusion to talents or virtue distinguished under any form of government at variance with their own. And this name of Blake may be considered as an evidence, not only of the triumph of distinguished naval worth, but as the firmest triumph of the true principles of freedom over the wild fanatical frenzy of the French revo lution. ANECDOTES, WITTICISMS, &c. When the Glasgow was stationed in the Mediterranean, her commander, the Honourable Captain A. Maitland, an officer of handsome private fortune, maintained when at Malta, Leghorn, and Naples, a sumptuous table, at which not only British officers, but ladies and foreigners of distinction, were received with a liberality and urbanity which reflected the highest credit on their munificent host. On one of these occasions, when guests of no ordinary importance were invited, a sailor belonging to the crew of the barge employed in bringing forward the several dishes to the captain's cabin, rolling his eyes and licking his lips in anticipation of a regale on the remnants, as the several dainties, both foreign and British, passed in rapid succession through his hands, exclaimed to the coxswain, "My eyes and limbs! the skipper tucks in a precious lot of good things under his belt!" " Why not?" replied the coxswain. "Did you never know that the captain was a reg'lar built epicure?" "Epicure! epicure! what the devil's that!" demanded our innocent lambkin. "Why, you know-nothing lubber!" cried his intelligent instructor, with a look of ineffable contempt, "an epicure's a fellow as can eat any thing, to be sure." To prove the sort of stuff our tars are made of, has been well compared to the toughest of all materials hearts of oak, it is only necessary to mention a well attested anecdote of the conduct of the Barfleur's ship'scompany, on the occasion of Sir Robert Calder's declining to renew his engagement with Villeneuve. As soon as it was discernible that such was the intention of the admiral, from the circumstance of the course of the British fleet continuing unchanged under easy sail, whilst Villeneuve "bore up" in a contrary direction, an unusual bustle was observable on the forecastle of the Barfleur. The risible muscles of her gallant commander (Sir George Martin) were destined to be put to the proof by the following address from the chief-boatswain's-mate, who now stood before him as spokesman of the crew, assembled aft in a body: "Please, sir, axes your pardon, but the ship's company bid me say, they wished as how you'd command o'the fleet, sir; 'kase, sir, it looks (hope no offence, sir), as if the admiral was inclined to tarn tail on the enemy-mean no harm, sir,— but we're all on us old Triumphs* never did the like afore, and it's very hard for old hands to take to a new trade." The smile, which had been excited by the comic manner in which this veteran deputation had opened its mission, had, before the conclusion of this honest appeal, yielded to an expression more of "sorrow than of anger." The captain was, as in duty bound, obliged, however, to suppress his feelings, and dismiss them with a slight rebuke. To the fifes' shrill sound, While the joke goes round, We step with a pleasing delight; Dry nippers clapp'd on, We soon hear the song, 'Heave, heave, my brave boys, and in sight.' Then the sails are all trimm'd, and the anchor we stow, Britain's white cliffs recede from our view; Bound to sea on a cruise, we look out for the foe As one man is the whole of our crew: And the Mate's hoarse bawl, play, And the tri-colour plainly discern: 'Cock your locks,' cries the Captain, 'now keep her way Steady! Point your guns right at her stem; Now the shots shake her, Bold lads follow me!' Then our ensign, so brave, o'er the tri-colour flies, Back to England our course we pursue; The breezes are fair-moor'd in port with our prize And the King gives poor sailors their due; Grog, fiddles, and lasses so gay; Cries Heave! and the anchor's away.' ADVICE TO A FLIRT. No longer this flirting, dear Fan, Away then with humming and hawing, So settle my fate-for I feel * Nautical phrase; also the fair lady's name. THE GREENWICH A Greenwich pensioner! Did any of my readers ever ponder on that strange composition of battered humanity and blue serge! Did they never feel a something approaching very near gratitude on passing, in the metropolis, a Greenwich pensioner, who with his honest, carved-out, unabashed front, looks as bluntly and as wonderingly at the bustle and splendour around him, as does an unsophisticated wether suddenly removed from South Downs to Cheapside, whilst shaking his woollen coat beneath the whip of the coachman to the Lord Mayor. What a mixture of gravity and wonderment is in the poor brute's countenance? how with its meek, uplifted head, it stares at the effulgent vehicle,-runs leaping at the coach-wheels, mistaking them for hurdles-falls, awe-struck, back, at the gilt and beavered greatness of the footman's cocked hat-then, suddenly awakened from its amazement by the lurcher's teeth or the driver's stick, makes an unlucky spring of some three feet into the air, catches a glance of its figure in the mirrored [No. 4. PENSIONER. walls of a silk-mercer's, and, startled at the sight, dashes through the first court-carrying perhaps a few yards upon its back, some red-faced, nankeen -gaitered little stock-broker; whose spattered small-clothes are for a time unregarded, in the mighty rush of drovers, butchers, dogs, and idlers. Now such is the real Greenwich pensioner. When I say real, I mean one who abhors London worse than he does a Frenchman; who thinks there is nothing to be seen in it, unless indeed, it be Nelson's tomb, in St. Paul's, or the Ship public-house, in Tooley street. London is to him a never-failing source of merriment; that is, whilst he is out of it. He sits at Greenwich, and looking as sagely as a starling ere he snaps at a fly, at the piled-up clouds of smoke hanging over the metropolis, or indeed almost propped upon its chimney-pots, and, stretching forth his stick, significantly points them out to his former shipmates, asking them. if they do not think "there is something dark over there-something of an 'ox-eye' to the west?" He, indeed, never ventures to London, unless it be for a fresh supply of tobacco or to pay a quarterly visit to his grand-daughter, the upper housemaid in a gentleman's family-and who, indeed, thinks with horror upon his call, because the neighbours laugh at the cock'd-hat and the shoe-buckles of her relative; but principally because Richard, the baker's young man, declares he hates all sailors. The visit is never a very lengthened one, especially if the girl lives far to the west: for her grandfather has to call upon Will Somebody, who set up, with his prize-money, a publichouse in Wapping: so off he starts, hurries up the Strand, touches his hat from a point of principle as he nears Somerset House; puts out more canvas, and away for Temple Bar. The pensioner has not yet, however, sat for his picture. We have all read of crabs being despoiled of their claws, locusts of their entrails, and turtles of their brains, receiving in lieu thereof a pellet of cotton, and yet retaining life, and appearing, in the words of the experimentalizing and softhearted naturalist 66 very lively and comfortable." Now, the real Greenwich pensioner distances all these; he is, indeed, an enigma : nature knows not what to make of him. He hath been suspended, like a schoolboy's bob-cherry, a hundred times over the chaps of death, and yet still been snatched away by the hand of Providence-to whom, indeed, his many hurts and dangers have especially endeared him. Ye of the land interest," ye soft-faced young sparks, who think with terror upon a razor on a frosty morning,— yesuffering old gentlemen, who pause at a linen-draper's, and pass the flannel between your fingers, as time verges towards October-ye martyrs to a winter cough-ye racked with a quarterly tooth-ache- all ye of household ailings, look upon this * See Vaillant and Redi. hacked, shivered piece of clay, this Greenwich pensioner :-consider of how many of his powers he is despoiled-see where the cutlass and the boarding-pike have ploughed up and pierced his flesh; see where the bullet has glanced, singeing by: and when you have reckoned up-if they are to be reckoned—his many scars, above all, look at his hard, contented, weather-barnacled face, and then, gentle spectators, com plain of your rheums, your jointtwitchings, and your corns! Why, this Greenwich pensioner is in himself a record of the last forty years' war. He is a breathing volume of naval history: not an event but is somewhere indented in him with steel or lead: he has been the stick in which the English Mars has notched his cricket-matches, when twenty-four pounders were balls. and mainmasts wickets. See, in bis blinded eye is Howe's victory on the glorious First of June; that stump of what was once an arm, is Nile; and in his wooden leg, read Trafalgar. As to his scars, a gallant action, or a desperate cutting-out, is noted in every one of them. And what was the old fellow's only wish, as with a shattered knee, he lay in the cockpit under the surgeon's hand —what was his earnest supplication to the wet-eyed messmate who bore him down the hatchway! Simply, that he would save him one of the splinters of the mainmast of the Victory, to make of it a leg for Sundays! His wish was granted; and at Greenwich, always on the seventh day, and also on the 21st of October, is he to be seen, propped upon the inestimable splinter, which from labour, time, and bees'-wax, has taken the dark glossiness of mahogany. What a face he has ! What a certain consciousness of his superiority on his own element at times puffs out of his lip, and gives a sudden twitch to his head! But ask him in what quarter sets the wind-and note, how with his one eye, he will glance at you from top to toe; and, without ever raising his head or hand to make a self-inquiry, answers you at once, as though it was a question he was already prepared for! And so, indeed, he is; it being his first business, on rising, to consult the weather. The only way to gain his entire confidence, is at once frankly to avow your utter ignorance, and his superiority; and then, after he has leered at you with an eye, in which there is a meeting of contempt, goodhumour, and self-importance, he is wholly your own; and will straightway launch into the South Seas, coast along the shores of Guinea, -where, by the bye, he will tell you he once fell in love with a negress, who, however, jilted him for the cook, and then he will launch out about Admiral Duncan,-take you a voyage with him round Cape Horn, where a mermaid appeared, and sung a song to the ship's crew; and who, indeed, blew aside the musket-shots that were ungallantly fired at her in requital of her melody. But our pensioner has one particular story; hear him through that, suffer yourself to be wholly astounded at its recital, and, if you were not a landman, he would instantly greet you as his dearest friend. The heroes of this same story are our pensioner and a shark: a tremendous shark that used to be the terror of the harbour of St. Thomas's. Upon this shark, and the piece of the mainmast of the Victory, is our pensioner content to rest all his importance during his life, and his fame with posterity. He will tell you that he being caterer of the mess, let fall a piece of beef out of the port-hole, which this terrible shark received into its jaws, and twisted its body most provokingly at the delicious mouthful. Hereupon our pensioner, - it was before, he reminds you, he had lost a limb-asks leave of the first lieutenant (for the captain was on shore) to have a bout with the shark: leave being granted, all the crew are quickly in the shrouds, and upon the hammock-netting, to see Tom-" tackle the shark." Our pensioner now enters into a minute detail of how, having armed himself with a long knife, he jumped overboard, dived under the shark, whom he saw approaching with distended jaws, and inflicted a tremendous wound with the knife in the belly of the fish; this is repeated thrice, when the shark turns itself upon its back-a boat is let down, and both the conqueror and the conquered are quickly received upon deck. You are doubtless astonished at this; he, however, adds to your surprise, by telling you that the mess regaled off the piece of beef recovered from the fish; be more astounded at this, although mingle no doubt in your astonishment, and he will straightway promise some day to treat your eyes with a sight of a set of chequer-men, cut from the very dorsal bone of the immolated shark! To be the hearer of a sailor's tale, is something like undergoing the ancient ordeal of redhot ploughshares; be innocent of unbelief, and you may, as was held, journey in safety; doubt the smallest point, and you are quickly withered into nought. What an odd contrast to his early life is the state of a Greenwich pen-sioner! It is as though a part of the angry and foaming sea should lie stagnant in a bathing-tub. All his business is to recount his former adventures to plod about, and look with a disdainful eye at trees, and brick and mortar; or, when he would indulge in a serious fit of spleen, to walk down to the river's side, and let his gall feed upon the mishaps of London apprentices, who, fearless of consequences, may have ventured some five miles from home in not a "trim-built wherry." A Greenwich pensioner fresh from sea is a most preposterous creature; he gets up every morning for a week, a month, and still finds himself in the same place; he knows not what to make of it-he feels the strangeness of his situation, and would, had he the patience and the wit, liken himself to a |