"Sing us something, Cutty," said Jack; "it will be a real boon at this moment."

"I'll sing like a grove of nightingales for you, when I have wet my Lips; but I am parched in the mouth, like a Cape parrot. I've had two hours of your governor below stairs. Very dry work, I promise you." "Did he offer you nothing to drink?" asked Jack.

"Yes, we had two bottles of very tidy claret. He called it 'Mouton."' "By Jove!" said Augustus, 66 you must have been high in the

governor's favour to be treated to his Bra Mouton.""

"We had a round with the gloves, nevertheless," said Cutbill," and exchanged some ugly blows. I don't exactly know about what or how it begun, or even how it ended; but I know there was a black eye somewhere. He's passionate rather."

"He has the spirit that should animate every gentleman," said Temple. "That's exactly what I have. I'll stand anything, I don't care what, if it be fun. Say it's a ‘joke,' and you'll never see me show bad temper; but if any fellow tries it on with me because he fancies himself a swell, or has a handle to his name, he'll soon discover his mistake. Old Culduff began that way. You'd laugh if you saw how he floundered out of the swamp afterwards."

"Tell us about it, Cutty," said Jack encouragingly.

"I beg to say I should prefer not hearing anything which might, even by inference, reflect on a person holding Lord Culduff's position in my profession," said Temple haughtily.

"Is that the quarter the wind's in ?" asked Cutbill, with a not very sober expression in his face.

Sing us a song, Cutty. It will be better than all this sparring," said Jack.

"What shall it be?" said Cutbill, seating himself at the piano, and running over the keys with no small skill. "Shall I describe my journey to Ireland ?"

"By all means let's hear it," said Augustus.

"I forget how it goes. Indeed, some verses I was making on the curate's sister have driven the others out of my head." Jack drew nigh, and leaning over his shoulder, whispered something in his ear.

"What!" cried Cutbill, starting up; "he says he'll pitch me neck and crop out of the window."

"Not unless you deserve it-add that," said Jack sternly.

"I must have an apology for those words, sir. I shall insist on your recalling them, and expressing your sincere regret for having ever used

them."

"So you shall, Cutty. I completely forgot that this tower was ninety feet high; but I'll pitch you downstairs, which will do as well."

There was a terrible gleam of earnestness in Jack's eye as he spoke this laughingly, which appalled Cutbill far more than any bluster, and he stammered out, "Let us have no practical jokes; they're bad taste.

You'd be a great fool, admiral"-this was a familiarity he occasionally used with Jack-"you'd be a great fool to quarrel with me. I can do more with the fellows at Somerset House than most men going; and when the day comes that they'll give you a command, and you'll want twelve or fifteen hundred to set you afloat, Tom Cutbill is not the worst man to know in the City. Not to say, that if things go right down here, I could help you to something very snug in our mine. Won't we come out strong then, eh?" Here he rattled over the keys once more; and after humming to himself for a second or two, burst out with a rattling, merry air, to which he sung,

With crests on our harness and breechin,

In a carriage and four we shall roll,

With a splendid French cook in the kitchen,

If we only succeed to find coal,

Coal!

If we only are sure to find coal.

"A barcarole, I declare," said Lord Culduff, entering. "It was a good inspiration led me up here."

.

A jolly roar of laughter at his mistake welcomed him; and Cutty, with an aside, cried out, "He's deaf as a post," and continued,

"One of the fishermen's songs," said Lord Culduff, as he beat time on the table. "I've passed many a night on the Bay of Naples listening to them."

And a wild tumultuous laugh now convulsed the company, and Cutbill, himself overwhelmed by the absurdity, rushed to the door, and made his escape without waiting for more.

149

Captain Marryat at Langham.

Ir is now many years since Frederick Marryat died, and it may seem strange to some that whereas others, his contemporaries, of like note, and more recently gone from the stage of life, are represented upon our library-shelves biographically, there is still a gap where the life of the author of Peter Simple ought to be; but it was his own expressed desire that no memoir of him should be published after his death. But for this prohibition, his life, however inefficiently, would before now have been written; but with the remembrance of it, those who knew him best, and therefore could best perform the task, must look upon that wish of his as a command.

Yet for some time past a notice of Captain Marryat has been called for; and I think I shall not be in any degree infringing on his prohibition, by recalling my own personal recollection of him in his later years.

But first, as a contrast, I must speak of the days when he was a young man, when he published his first works. Living at Sussex House, Hammersmith, which he had purchased of the Duke of Sussex, to whom he was equerry at the time, he had kept up a round of incessant gaiety and a course of almost splendid extravagance. He had always displayed a remarkable facility in getting rid of money. Indeed, he used himself to say that he had "contrived to spend three fortunes;" for he had inherited not only his share-no small one-of his father's property, but also that of one of his brothers, who had died early, and left to him his portion, together with a pretty little number of thousands which he had acquired as heir to his uncle, Samuel Marryat, Q.C.

At Sussex House were held those amusing conjuring soirées which Captain Marryat used to have in conjunction with his great friend, Captain Chamier, when they would display the various tricks of sleight-of-hand which they together had purchased and learnt of the wizards of that day; and when Theodore Hook was wont to bewilder the company with his ventriloquisms, and make them laugh with his funny stories and imitations. There half the men to be met were such as the world had talked of, and whose bon mots were worth remembering. Marryat lived then in the atmosphere of a court as well as in the odour of literature. The former air might easily be dispensed with without any loss of happiness, but one would have thought that intellectual society had become necessary to his existence. I remember him on the Continent some years later than this, at all sorts of places,-at Brussels, at Antwerp, at Paris, at Spa, -always living en prince, and always the same wherever he went,

throwing away his money with both hands,-the merriest, wittiest, most good-natured fellow in the world. As soon as he was known society was ready to applaud. Once, at a German table-d'hôte, where I also was present, for I begin now to speak from personal recollection,-he, in order to amuse his next neighbour, suddenly laid down his knife and fork and looked to the other end of the table. The other knives and forks went down. He coughed, and there was a dead silence. "I'll trouble you for the salt," said he, or something equally commonplace, whereupon there was a general roar of laughter. "There's nothing like being considered a wit," he whispered.

Later, I remember Captain Marryat living in Spanish Place, London. His establishment was not so superb as it had been at Sussex House, but his manner of living was as gay. It was an incessant round of dining out and giving dinners. At his table you met all the celebrities of the day. His intimate friends were men and women who had made their names of value. In Spanish Place it was I had last seen him in association with Bulwer Lytton, Dickens, Ainsworth, and John Poole, or with the beautiful Lady Blessington and D'Orsay; and now, after an absence of years, I travelled into Norfolk, to find him in a most out-of-the-way place.

I arrived one evening at the "Feathers Inn" at Holt, and discovered that I had yet four or five miles to go before I could reach Langham. So hiring one of those miserable old flies of former days, I got into it, and was jolted away, in a temper which might have borne improvement.

"What has come to him," argued I, "that he should, in the very vigour of life, retire from the world and live the life of a hermit? Well, perhaps after all, he may continue much the same sort of existence as he led of old. No doubt he has surrounded himself with every pleasure that society can give him. But he might have chosen a place a little nearer to civilization, instead of obliging me to drive four miles at eight o'clock in the evening in an old shanderydan like this."

I could not look at the country, for it was too dark; but I knew that it was nothing but a straight bare country-road along which we were going, so I had no solace but a grumble. Half-an-hour later, and grumbling was at an end. We paused a moment, the driver of the trap descended and opened a gate, and as he remounted and urged his horse to a final effort, I could see through the darkness that we were rounding a gravelled path.

Sounds are heard easily in the country: before the fly drew near the house lights were seen flashing in the hall, and we had not drawn up before the entrance when the door was flung open and several figures stood in the porch.

"Hullo!" said a voice.

"Why, is it you? Why didn't you give me notice, that I might have sent for you?" It was the same voice as of old-deep-chested, cordial, and cheery.

I easily made the excuse that I had fancied Holt was close by, and immediately afterwards I was in the porch. The early moon was out, and

shining upon the house, and I stepped back upon the gravelled path to look at it. It was an Elizabethan cottage-gabled, with heavy stacks of chimneys, and an overhanging thatch-built upon the exact model of that of George the Fourth at Virginia Water. It was built by Copland, the architect, who was a personal friend of Captain Marryat's, and with whom he exchanged Sussex House for this cottage. The vagary had been that the two houses should be exchanged exactly as they stood; but the idea of "all standing" having different meanings in the two different minds, he who got Sussex House as his portion came off very much the better of the two. But it had been through life the same with the present owner of Langham. If there was a quality for which there was in his mind no place, it was regard for his own interest.

As I re-entered the porch, I perceived several cocks and hens crouched down close to the threshold, and a brace of tame partridges moved away slowly to a little distance.

We went into the dining-room. It was a pretty room, walled with water-colour sketches by Stansfield; and at the further end by cases of books. There was an air of thorough comfort pervading the whole. I had not been expected; but nobody would have guessed the fact by the eatables which were almost immediately upon the table.

"Well!" said I, when the inward craving was appeased and silenced, and when consequently my good humour had returned, "this is all very nice; but what makes you live down here? I mean to carry you back to town with me. Everybody says that it is a shame that you should be out of the world like this."

with his back to the fireHe was not a tall man-five

He was standing upon the hearthrug, looking down at me as I sat at the table. feet ten-but I think intended by nature to be six feet, only having gone to sea when still almost a child, at a time when the between-decks were very low-pitched, he had, he himself declared, had his growth unnaturally stopped. His immensely powerful build, and massive chest, which measured considerably over forty inches round, would incline one to this belief. He had never been handsome, as far as features went, but the irregularity of his features might easily be forgotten by those who looked at the intellect shown in his magnificent forehead. His forehead and his hands were his two strong points. The latter were models of symmetry. Indeed, while resident at Rome, at an earlier period of his life, he had been requested by a sculptor to allow his hand to be modelled.

At the time I now speak of him he was fifty-two years of age; but looking considerably younger. His face was clean shaved; and his hair so long that it reached almost to his shoulders, curling in light loose locks like those of a woman. It was slightly grey. He was dressed in anything but evening costume on the present occasion, having on a short velveteen shooting-jacket and coloured trousers. I could not help smiling as I glanced at his dress-recalling to my mind what a dandy he had been as a young man.