ment and vexation. Through the representations of this man, I had given up the sweets of childhood to endure the severest hardships and privations. I had toiled unflinchingly in my duty; I had fought the battles of my country, and could show my honourable scars; and thus to have the "red flag at the fore" torn down by the hand I expected to raise me!-my pride, and every feeling of my heart, revolted against it. I was determined to persevere.

Other six years passed away, in which I was a partaker of some of the most brilliant achievements of the war, when I was honoured, after thirteen years' servitude, with a lieutenant's commission. But even then it was not gained by any desperate act of valour, or by those feats which are dear and precious to every British sailor's heart; but simply by obtaining (through the present of a handsome Cashmere shawl) the interest of a fair lady, highly esteemed by the First Lord of the Admiralty. However, I got the white lapels, and that was, as Moriarty observed, "the first step up the ratlines" towards the "red flag at the fore."

After this, things went on tolerably ill among some sharp fighting and many hard knocks. My poor mother slipped her cable for the blessed haven of eternal rest. My sister got married to a pirate, who plundered my father's property,

and then cast her adrift upon the world. The old gentleman's gray hairs were brought with sorrow to the grave, my sister's coffin was soon placed upon his breast, and I was left desolate.

Still the "red flag at the fore," like a will-o'the-wisp, lured me on. I conducted one of the fire-ships at Lord Cochrane's attack upon the French fleet in Basque Roads; had the command of a gun-boat at the storming of St. Sebastian, and was with the army at the sortie from Bayonne, in which I got a crack on the head-not big enough to jump in, to be sure, but it set my brains spinning for a month. I commanded a fast-sailing schooner charged with despatches for Wellington, when he was expected to occupy Bordeaux, and entered the Garonne in the dead of the night, lighted on my way by the flames of a French eighty-gun ship that had been set on fire to prevent her falling into the hands of the English; and having anchored in a secure position, left my vessel in a four-oared boat, passed the batteries undiscovered, and executed my orders as the brave marshal stood in the great square, with white flags and beauty greeting his arrival.

Peace came: Bonaparte was elbowed off to Elba, and the "red flag at the fore" was as far off as ever. My vessel was paid off, and after many years of activity, I entered upon a life of indolence. But as Dr. Watts very wisely ob

serves, in one of the hymns which I was compelled to learn at school when a child,

"Satan finds some mischief still,

For idle hands to do;❞—

so I e'en got married. The fair lady (she is now peeping over my shoulder) attracted my attention at church by the broad and bright ribands that graced the front of her bonnet. They reminded me of the "red flag at the fore," and an inglorious sigh escaped. Now every body knows that a sigh is the beginning of love, for Byron says,

"Oh, love! what is it in this world of ours

That makes it fatal to be loved? Ah, why
With cypress dost thou wreath thy bowers,
And make thy best interpreter a sigh?”

Well, but to make short of it, I got married; but no sooner had Napoleon returned from Elba, than I was again at my duty. I was sent by Sir Pulteney Malcolm, then naval commander-inchief at Ostend, with a party of seamen to man the great guns in the army under Wellington on the plains of Waterloo, and the "red flag at the fore" once more opened on my view. It was on the very morning after the decisive battle, that between Brussels and Bruges, I met the first detachment of prisoners coming down from the

field, and was ordered to take charge of them to Ostend. There were about two thousand officers and men, most of them wounded and without a single application or dressing to the mangled parts; yet their devotion to Napoleon was unabated, and with their stiffened limbs sore with laceration, and their bodies gashed and scored with sabre cuts, they still shouted, Vive l'Empereur!”

The battle of Waterloo ended the war; Bonaparte was despatched to St. Helena, and all prospects of promotion are over. My noble patron has accomplished the number of his days, and no "red flag at the fore" will ever fall to my lot, unless indeed I include a certain Bardolphian tinge to the most prominent feature of my face, which has been red at the fore for some years past; but excepting the half-pay of a lieutenant, a small remnant of prize-money, and a wife and seven children, I am as poor as a churchwarden's charity-box.

THE PRISONER.

"It is thou liberty! thrice sweet and gracious goddess, whom all in public and in private worship, whose taste is grateful and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change."

STERNE.

TWENTY years had floated down the stream of time since my escape from a French prison, and my almost immediate embarkation for the East Indies with cheerful prospects and with a glowing heart. Hope and enterprise urged me on in my career, and the efforts of my industry were crowned with complete success. But ah! how dear the purchase; an Asiatic clime had undermined my constitution, and ill health had rendered me peevish and discontented; so that I determined once more to visit the land of my nativity, and I embarked in an Indiaman for that purpose.

Only those who have been long estranged from the home of their fathers, and are returning to it with ardent expectation and thrilling apprehensions-only those can tell the mingling sensations