elements at sea! This combination of agreeable events was enjoyed by us with a pleasure the more unfeigned, as it so immediately succeeded a situation as much the reverse as possible. About ten o'clock A. M. we saw a frigate inshore of us, and at two o'clock a boat came to us with fish and potatoes, which we purchased from them. The southwest coast of Ireland exhibits an appear ance of cultivation, though not of much rural beauty or diversified scenery. The land lies easy, though, here and there, the country is hilly: but in general I observed the most easy ascents, laid out with the most exact symmetry into fields of corn, potatoes, clover, &c.; the scene was rich in cultivation, but naked to the eye, from being utterly destitute of wood. Along the coast I observed many extensive farms, and some very handsome houses. A chain of signal posts is established here, to give notice of the approach of an enemy. On the 28th we were opposite to Dungarvon, a town and bay in the county of Waterford. The country here appeared better wooded and more diversified. What a pity that so fine and fertile a country should be the abode of faction, violence, massacre, and rebellion!-that a region so blest by Providence should be desolated by the scourge of civil dissension-should be torn and divided by domestic enmity the most cruel and bitter. But it is to be hoped that the time is not far distant when the odious distinctions of party will be done away with, when the good sense of the Irish nation will see the folly of preying on itself, by illiberal and destructive antipathies-when all parties will feel the policy and the necessity of being united by ties of mutual interest and affection. The Irish are a brave and a generous people-they will be a loyal and a happy people, when the demon of discord shall cease to persecute them. Most of this day we had but little wind, and that little contrary; at night it freshened, and continued increasing till past midnight, when it blew with great violence, and being right ahead of us, the shippitched prodigiously, and threw up the water about her. The morning of the 29th, therefore, presented to us a different prospect from that which had animated our hopes on the 27th. On that day we had anticipated our arrival at Liverpool in fortyeight hours at farthest; and we should not have been disappointed had the wind continued as it then stood: but our hopes are ever misleading us; what we hope for we are too apt to assure ourselves will come to pass. With all the violence of the wind, we were making but little way, and, unless it should veer round a little, we were uncertain how long we should be beating up against it in our way to port. On this occasion it was the opinion of the Captain passenger that we ought to run into Milford Haven, and wait for a fair wind: this opinion he grounded on the supposition, that the vessel was making little or no way, with the wind against her as it was, and that if it came on to blow harder, and any of our principal sails gave way, we should be exposed to the dangers of a lee-shore, having none to replace them, and enable the ship to beat from off it. This opinion our Captain ridiculed-which was right (being no seaman) I did not attempt to determine. I only began to repent that I had not availed myself of the opportunity of going direct to Bristol in a packet-boat, which we spoke the day before, bound from Cork to that port; my only motive for which was a desire of seeing that part of England which I should have to travel from Liverpool to Bristol. As the day advanced, the wind gradually fell, and at last, about midday, almost died away; about five o'clock P.M. it again sprung up, and nearly from the quarter from which we wished it. Our hopes and spirits were now elevated in proportion to the depression they had sustained in the morning. Indeed, for a week past our spirits were alternately raised and sunk, like the mercury in a thermometer, according to the various changes of the weather and operations of the elements, which had been as capricious as ever I had witnessed them at sea. At this time we were about mid-way between Ireland and Wales, part of the former lying on our left, and the mountains of Pembrokeshire on our right, both distinctly within view. About eight o'clock on the morning of the 80th we descried Holyhead, a promontory of an islet of that name, divided by a narrow slip of the sea from the island of Anglesea, on the coast of Carnarvonshire; and soon after we passed the Skerries, a cluster of rocks insulated from Anglesea, with a light. house on them, From Holyhead to 1 廉 the Skerries is a distance of ten miles, which the ship ran in the very short time of fifty ininutes; this was owing to its being spring tide, and, having it in our favour, we computed that it carried us at the rate of six miles, and the wind at nearly six miles more, an hour. The coast of Anglesea beyond the Skerries presented to us a pleasing landscape, rising by a gentle ascent from the verge of the ocean, and displaying a variety of cultivated fields of different shades of verdure, relieved by the yellow of the ripened corn and the fields already reaped. As we sailed further along the coast, the country appeared still more beautiful and more diversified; innumerable little hills and tufts of wood continually arose to view, and enlivened the prospect. This could not fail of delighting the hearts of people who had been at sea so long, and had experienced so recently the fury of the elements. We saw a number of small craft plying along the coast, and some vessels outward-bound steering different directions. At about half past one o'clock a pilot came on board of us; and soon after, the wind shifting against us, and the tide turning, we were carried back six or seven miles; a mortifying circumstance to us, who were so anxiously wishing for port: towards evening, however, both tide and wind coming in our favour, we were again carried fast forward. On the 31st, we sailed gently along with the tide and a light wind. At noon we passed the mouth of the Dee; a river partly navigable, which divides Cheshire from Flintshire: we had then a view of Cheshire, Lancashire, and Wales. The view of the latter was charming; the hills, of which we had a full and distinct prospect, exhibited at once to the eye a picture of plenty, cultivation, and sylvan beauty, that could not fail to please even the lukewarm admirer of the simple scenes of nature. About one o'clock the city of Liverpool appeared in view, and soon after the ship came to an anchor a little beyond the entrance of the river Mersey, the tide not serving to carry her into dock. The passengers, however, hired a boat, and proceeded up to the city. The scene was now altered; all was liveliness and bustle; the shore appeared crowded with people; the church bells were ringing, and the river was covered with vessels and boats of all de scriptions plying to and fro. On landing, we hired coaches, and put up at the Talbot Inn. Having now got to a land of plenty, and, as I supposed, cheapness, I felt an unwonted satisfaction in the idea, and particularly as it was my native country, from which I had been so long absent. What, then, is this amor patriæ? Is it a pure independent principle which cannot be extin guished in the breast? Or is it only that attachment which we simply feel for the spot where we first drew our breath, &c. and where probably we spent the happiest and most innocent moments of our lives? That there is a certain pride or self-congratulation which we feel as Englishmen, &c. is evident enough; but, in my opinion, the strongest tie is that which affects our individual interests and happiness: that country, as I have already remarked, to which we are most endeared by kindness, friendship, and hospitality, is the country for which we feel the truest affection. But to return to the Talbot Inn: I soon found that I was mistaken in my idea of the cheapness of the country I had got to, or rather, perhaps, of the place I was in; for a bill was presented to us of three guineas for a dinner for six; which amount they made a shift to swell it to by enormous charges for liquors, fruits, &c. This was much more extravagant than I had experienced in the hotels in America to be. But having now finished my voyage, I will proceed to give a sketch of my fellow-voyagers, and the manner we were accommodated. It is said that first impressions should not always be trusted to; it is impossible one can form a true judgment of characters from a transient acquaintance: the idea, however, which 1 formed of these my new acquaintance proved to be tolerably correct. The widow was lively, affable, and chatty, desirous of pleasing, and not difficult to please, but at times it filled me with regret to see her sink into mo mentary fits of melancholy musing, propast sorrows and once-happier days; but a gleam of mingled joy and hope soon returned to sooth her, when she gazed on her child, on whom she doated with a fondness truly maternal. Her health was completely restored in the course of the passage, and she seemed to enjoy it, by the indulgence of a hearty appetite, for she certainly had somewhat more of the epicure in her than is usually found in her sex. The married lady, whose husband accompanied her, was precisely such as I thought her the first moment of our acquaintance, aftable, lively, amiable, and unaffected; and so much do I wish her well, that I sincerely hope I am wrong in my conjecture that the man to whom she is united is one of rather an opposite disposition, though he seemed to take infinite pains to make us believe that he was all good-nature -quite a composition of milk and water. The lady with the large family of birds, negro children, & about her, bad, I thought, a little too much resemblance in disposition to the foregoing gentleman. She was continually professing meekness, forbearance, kindness, humanity, forgiveness-in short, all the milder virtues; while she had not the art to throw a plausible veil over her natural bent. The Passenger-Captain would have been a very agreeable companion, divest him of two characteristics -hastiness of temper, and an invincible opinion of himself, from which arose a forwardness and confidence that was by no means amiable, and an unyielding positiveness in whatever he advanced that admitted of neither appeal nor qualification. If you desired to cultivate his good graces, you must on no account call in question whatever he chose to sav! And to doubt his consummate skill and knowledge in seamanship would have been downright heresy. Our Captain was just such as I have described him, the homespun, downright seaman, but mingling with this bluntness a portion of low conning, which he had acquired from his commerce with mankind; by some of whom having been over-reached, he had contracted a suspicious opinion of the whole. Between these two sons of Neptune there was a perpetual difference of nautical opinions, each despising the other for his supposed ignorance and inexperience. As for the author of these remarks himself, he has no doubt but he was considered, in his turn, as a whimsical sort of a being. Be this as it may, this groupe, such as I have described them, were huddled for three weeks together in a confined cabin of not more than twelve feet square, together with a cabin-boy, a white servant, two negro women, twonegrochildren, two cats, a lap-dog, and five or six of the feathered creation! for there was not an inch of room any where else in the vessel for their reception. Around this cabin, or rather cage, was strewed trunks, portmanteaus, dressingcases, &c. &c. so that there was hardly room to pass freely along between them; and at the sides were births, as they are called, for the Captain and male passengers. I need not describe what we had to endure while confined, as we often were, by the foul weather, to this place. But had we all been actuated by a desire to please each other, the time might still have been passed agreeably. enough; but this was not always the case, as may easily be, inferred; patience then, became our chief remedy on such occasions-the meek-eyed goddess who so often assuages the ills and sweetens the bitterness of human life. As for my own part, I am conscious I did what lay in my power, not only to avoid the little cavils and contradictions that are apt to occur even in the best bred companies, but to contribute all in iny power to make every body around me cheerful; though such well-meant efforts are not always regarded, particularly by the ill-natured and envious, with that complacency they seem to deserve, Our evenings were pretty agreeably spent in card-playing, which we all eagerly resorted to as a relief from ennui! to which some of the party seemed at times a prey during the tedium of the long days; to rid themselves of this irksome vacancy, or, in plainer language, to kill the enemy, Time, they would court the oblivion of unwilling and unscasonable slumbers, thus blotting as much as possible from existence! How inconsistent are we! We complain of the shortness of human life-the rapidity of duration--and yet we often not only foolishly lavish it away, but seem anxious to annihilate portions of it as it passes along-never more to return! A taste for reading, if not carried to such a length as to interrupt the more serious and important concerns of life, is desirable, as it enables us to enjoy, in the most agreeable manner, many moments that would otherwise be dark. ened by a melancholy wearisomeness, This taste or fondness I have often congratulated myself on being possessed of: often have I enlivened a dull and cheerless hour by the indul, gence of it. On this occasion I had provided myself, among other books, with a collection of narratives of ship : wrecks, fires, and other disasters by sea, which I used to amuse myself with a perusal of. I grew fond of reading these recitals of horror on the element on which they had occurred. Amid the howling of the winds and the dashing of the waves, I thought myself present at these scenes of distress, and commiserated with a livelier feeling the wretched sufferers and victims of such calamities! I have felt my heart so appalled with the dreadful pictures of human despair and agony here drawn, that I have laid aside the book; but it was only to resume it again. In short, I was shocked and agitated, but still it was an amusement, and that was all I wanted. I remember, one day, reading one of these narratives to the widow lady-I have said that she had an only child on board with her-On coming to a passage, which, after exhibiting the dreadful situation in which a ship was, expecting every moment to be swallowed by the merciless waves, and which soon after happened, painted in the most affecting manner, among the sufferers, the wife of the Captain, with an infant in her arms, kneeling in an agony of unutterable woe at the feet of her husband (who had already given all up for lost), as if imploring the succour which, alas! he could not give! she felt herself so affected and terrified, that I shut the book, without going on to the awful catastrophe. The next day after our arrival in Liverpool we all separated; one went to the south, another to the north; and thus were we again scattered over the face of the earth, after being a while together, perhaps never to meet each other more. by some remarkable defects, nor the gentlemen their own wives by the same rule. An author may find out a reviewer by instinct; and any body may tell an author. are Ladies and Gentlemen, You are sufficient judges of the art to know that all portraits must be viewed in a proper light; as, for example, a poor RELATION at a distance, a MAN OF MERIT in a corner, and a FASHIONABLE COXсомв conspicuously to the eye, at the same time handsomely framed and glazed, being generally done in water colours. The outlines of these pictures tolerably correct; and though the colouring of some of them may be considered a little too high, yet there are many of the intimate acquaintance of the originals who will not find out that fault-the lights and shades are well preserved, and the likenesses striking. I beg the favour, however, that if any lady or gentleman should fancy that they see their own picture, that they may be assured it is not her, or him, unless it is handsome, and well varnished. It will be proper for me, and perhaps somewhat entertaining to you, if I give a short history of each worthy original whom the artist has described in this kit-cat collection. Ishall not, however, be able to do more than describe them by the names and additions with which they were handed over to me in the catalogue, leaving it, Ladies and Gentlemen, to you to find out their real ones, which your private reasons, good-natured conjectures, and particular intimacies, will supply. Many of them will be, however, resemblances which may suit more than one. It is, I can assure you, a very general collection, though there are few or noge of the great PUBLIC CHARACTERS, for they have been taken off so often in bronze, crayons, casts, shades, and caricature, that they would furnish little or no novelty, and never look to advantage out of place. The portraits here to be viewed are the faces of old acquaintance, who, for instance, are of your parties at routs and balls, or whom you have seen and talked with at the opera or playhouses. f I beg leave to offer to your notice Portrait I. Observe, Ladies and Gentlemen, if you please, how well the artist has described the confusion of this gentleman's mind in his face: look at the eye, which the admirable Lavater has defined to be the seat of character, and see if you can find out the CHARACTER of the original. I am afraid that it would puzzle some grave physiognomists. Does any of you know FRANK FLUSTER, or, as he is usually styled, FRANCIS FLUSTER, Esq. -it is very like him. There are a great many people in the world, who, in spite of education and example, scramble through the duties and concerns of life without ever knowing properly what they are about, or being absolutely certain whether they stand on their heads or their heels. My friend FRANK FLUSTER is one of these. FRANK is one of the best creatures living, but he is always full of bustle and blunder. When he rises in the 'morning, he generally puts on one stocking wrong side outwards, and then pulls off both to put the matter to rights, by which means he dexterously changes the mistake only from the right leg to the left, but one stocking is wrong side outwards after all. Poor FRANK never understands exactly what is said to him; he is always on the move before you begin to speak, and actually out of sight before you have half finished your sentence. FRANK COMpletely establishes the proverb, not "a word to the wise," but that " a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse." He would have made an excellent performer, that is, supposing him to be perfect in his part, for half a cue would be enough for FRANK. Do not find fault, Ladies and Gentlemen, with the painter for not having given this face expression; it is, I assure you, very like. FRANK has more than once been known to wish a Jew a merry Christmas; and actually, at a public table, drank success to the abolition of the slave trade, to a Captain of a Guineaman. But these are the least of his blunders. One day a lady of fashion having asked Mr. Fluster what he thought of her aviary, which occupied a splendid gallery, he told her that she might call it the Bird Cage Walk. At another time he congratulated an author on the success of a new piece of his, which was absolutely dainned; and sent a long consolatory epistle to a young widow who had lost an old husband. It is not long since, that Frank happening to see a wire meat-safe at the door of a shop in Oxford-street, took it into his head that it was a breeding-cage for canaries, and had it sent home for that purpose: but the housekeeper, who understood these matters better, applied it to its proper use ; and when Mr. FLUSTER came home, he was amazed to find what he took to be his new breeding-cage filled with a cold collation. But Mr. FLUSTER'S most serious mistake was once when he was engaged by a friend, Mr. Tomkins, to carry a mes. sage to a gentleman from whom he thought he had received an affront at the opera the night before. The gentleman's name was Bullins, and he resided somewhere in Wimpole-street. Poor FRANK, who never thought of referring to the superscription of the letter, took it into his head that the name was Mullins, and which name presented itself on a brass plate before his eyes almost as soon as he entered the street. On being introduced, it happened that Mr. Mullins, who was surprised at a visit from a stranger, opened the letter without observing the cover, and was amazed at the contents: he was preparing to explain that he did not know the writer, when Mr. FLUSTER politely inquired if he was not at the opera the night before? to which he answered, that he most certainly was. Frank was outside the street-door before any thing farther could be said. The next morning Frank's friend was on the ground waiting for Mr. BULLINS, when presently he observed approaching a little man whom he had never seen in his life, but who had a brace of pistols in his hand, and his second by his side. The parties looked at each other attentively. They were both somewhat confused; Mr. Tomkins was perfectly astonished, and assured Mr. Mullins he was not the person; at which Mr. Mullins was very much pleased, and walked off without requiring any further explanation. But in this last instance FRANK FLUSTER did some good by his blunder; for Mr. TOMKINS had time to cool, and Mr. BULLINS to offer a sufficient apology, without the necessity of a second challenge. As this portrait, Ladies and Gentlemen, is not scarce, I shall not set it up very high, it is to be sold, I assure you, without reserve; and I think if there are any of the relatives present, that it should not be permitted to go out of the family. (To be continued.) G. B. 1 ( |