several interests of the parties concerned. So large a mass of the merchant-seamen of the country are employed in the navy, and so many naval officers are in the merchant service in peace, that since seamen, by the very nature of their lives, are perpetually changing from one service to another, a kind of amalgamation takes place. Thus the discipline established on board our ships of war, under the sanction of official authority and long-established usage, pervades more or less the whole profession of the sea. In this view of the matter, the improved discipline of the navy has an important bearing on the well-being of the country, in all those relations connected with our insular situation; just as it might, by no strained authority, be said, that the education, discipline, and fixed doctrines of the Established Church have a salutary influence on the religious interests of the country, into whatever number of Christian sects the population may be nominally subdivided.-CAPTAIN HALL.

AT an anchor when a ship is well secured, safe and snug aloft, and has previously had time to fit her spare gear, make wads, spare points, and sea-gaskets, &c., after all this is done (without which no vessel of war can be in an efficient state), when a thoroughly rainy day sets in, it will be better now and then to give it to the ship's company for making and mending their clothes, instead of so continually applying it for working up junk, and exercises which cannot be properly carried out, &c. In these days of chain cables and consequent short allowance of junk, it is of the greatest consequence that all possible care should be taken of this article, and every sailor knows that on a rainy day much junk is so spoiled that it cannot be used afterwards for anything but oakum.

A miserable rainy day depresses the spirits of almost everybody, more or less, whether on shore or on board, but more particularly on board ships, where there is so little amusing novelty. If you pipe the hands to make and mend clothes, you then give employment to all the men on the lower-deck, one way or another. The crew feel more at their ease during this time than they do at any other; those who have clothes to make or mend go about them; some read, some write, some have a thorough overhaul at their bags, putting a stitch here or a patch there,

&c.; here and there a man trying to make his mess look smarter; a few songs going on in different parts of the deck; now and then a violin scraping, or a flute striking up.

Nothing pleases a ship's company on a rainy day more than letting them have a good overhaul at their bags; by doing this, they feel at home, as they know they will not be disturbed by the sweepers or lower-deck arrangements, until the lower-deck is ordered to be cleared up. In this way the men are made happier in their little improvements and amusements during a miserable rainy day. The time given to the ship's company, on such occasions, could not be better employed, and tells well in the appearance of the men's clothes. When this indulgence is given on a rainy day, a ship's lower-deck becomes a scene of merriment and fun, and the service gains by it in the long run in every possible way.

Whatever tends to order or arrangement in the way of the men making or mending their clothes, taking pride in keeping their bags and messes neat, &c., gives the habit of order, and you invariably see the best men the most cleanly and most careful about the neatness of their dress, &c. In many ships the hands are only allowed a few minutes to take their clothes out of their bags for that purpose, and then stow them again: this must be allowed to be a very neat way of keeping the lower-deck clean; however, it does not give the ship's company the same satisfaction as if you allow the men to have their bags until the decks are cleared up. They then have an opportunity of seeing all their little worldly property, giving their mustering suit a brushing, taking a little parcel out of some snug corner of their bags, and reading letters from wife, mother, child, or sweetheart; or now and then taking a peep at the certificates from former ships, and the elderly ones having an eye towards calculating their time for a pension. Some telling yarns of battles, or smart things done by former ships.

Between making, mending, reading, writing, songs, music, long stories, examination of bags, messes, &c., they are as highly amused and as happy as a rainy day will permit. Only those who have taken a quiet trip round a ship's lower-deck at such a time can fully comprehend the numberless ways a ship's company have of employing and amusing themselves, and the more they are left to themselves the greater their enjoyment.-CAPTAIN LIARDET'S Professional Recollections.'

1. Junk, pleces of old cable or old | to pieces, it forms oakum for filling the cordage, used for making points, gaskets, seams of ships.

mats, &c., and when untwisted and picked

Conceive.
Deity.
Nocturnal.

A DROWSY MIDSHIPMAN.

Patriotism.
Lieutenant.

Apparently.

Expressly.
Execute.
Suspended.

Presiding.
Summary.
Ingloriously,

and ends at suppose that a a cold middle

THE first watch begins, nominally, at eight, midnight; but people are much mistaken who sleepy-headed midshipman, with the prospect of watch before him, and just awakened out of a sound nap, is disposed to jump up at once, dress himself, and run upon deck. Alas! it is far from this, and no one who has not been exposed to the trial can conceive the low ebb to which patriotism, zeal, public spirit (call it what you please), sinks at such an hour, in the breast of the unhappy wretch who, in the midst of one of those light and airy dreams which render the night season of young people such a heaven of repose, is suddenly roused up. After being awakened by a rude tug at the clews of his hammock, he is hailed, after the following fashion, by the gruff old quartermaster:

"Mr Doughead !"

No answer. Another good tug at the hammock.

"Mr. Doughead! it's twelve o'clock, sir!"

"Very well, very well; you need not shake me out of bed, need you? What sort of a night is it ?"

"It rains a little, sir, and is just beginning to blow. It looks very black, sir.”

“Oh plague take it! Then we shall have to take in a reef, I suppose ?"

"It seems very like, sir. It is beginning to muffle.”

With this Mr. Doughead gives himself a good shrug in his blanket, turns half round, to escape the glare of light from the quarter-master's lantern, hung up within six inches of his face expressly to keep him awake, and in ten seconds he is again tightly clasped in the arms of Morpheus, the presiding deity of the cockpit at that hour. By-and-by comes down the quartermaster of the middle watch, who, unlike the young gentleman, has relieved the deck twenty minutes before.

"Mr Doughead! it's almost one bell, sir."

"Indeed!" exclaims the youth. "I never knew anything of it. I never was called."

"O yes, you were, sir. The man I relieved said you asked him what sort of weather it was, and whether we should have to take in a reef."

"I ask about the weather? That's only one of the lies he always tells, to get me into a scrape."

While they are speaking, the bell strikes one, indicating that

half an hour has elapsed since the first conversation took place touching the weather; and presently, before Mr. Doughead has got his second foot over the side of his hammock, the mid who is to be relieved by him comes rattling down the cock-pit ladder, as wet as a shag, cold, angry, and more than half asleep.

66 I say, master Doughy, do you mean to relieve the deck tonight? Here it's almost two bells, and you have hardly shown a leg yet. I'll be hanged if it is not too bad! You are the worst

relief in the ship. I am obliged to keep all my own watch and generally half of yours. I'll not stand it any more; but go to the first lieutenant to morrow morning, and see whether he cannot find ways and means of making you move a little faster. It's a disgrace to the service."

To all this Duffy has only one doggish reply, "I tell you again, I was not called."

The appeal to the first lieutenant, however, is seldom made, for all the parties concerned are pretty much alike. But the midshipmen are not slow at times to take the law of these cases into their own hands, and to execute summary justice, according to their own fashion, on any particularly incorrigibly “bad relief,’ as these tardy gentlemen are aptly termed.

One of the most common punishments, on these occasions, is called "cutting down," a process not quite so fatal as might be imagined from the term. Most people, I presume, know what sort of a thing a hammock is. It consists of a piece of canvas, five feet long by two wide, suspended to the deck overhead by means of two sets of small lines, called clews, made fast to grummets, or rings of a rope, which again are attached by a lanyard to the battens stretching along the beams. In this sacking are placed a small mattress, a pillow and a couple of blankets, to which a pair of sheets may or may not be added. The degree of nocturnal room and comfort enjoyed by these young gentlemen may be understood, when it is mentioned that the whole of the apparatus just described occupies less than a foot and a half in width, and that the hammocks touch one another. Nevertheless, I can honestly say, that the soundest sleep by far that I have ever known, has been found in these apparently uncomfortable places of repose; and though the recollection of many a slumber broken up, and the bitter pang experienced on making the first move to exchange so cozy a nest for the snarling of a piercing north-west gale, on the coast of America, will never leave my memory, yet I look back to those days and nights with a sort of evergreen freshness of interest, which only increases with years.

The wicked operation of "cutting down" may be managed

in three ways. The mildest form is to take a knife and divide the foremost lanyard or suspending cord. Of course that end of the hammock instantly falls, and the sleepy-headed youth is pitched out feet foremost on the deck. The other plan, which directs the after-lanyard to be cut, is not quite so gentle nor so safe, as it brings down the sleeper's head with a sharp bang on the deck, while his heels are jerked into the air. The third is to cut away both ends ot once, which has the effect of bringing the round stern of the young officer in contact with the edge of any of the chests, which may be placed so as to receive it. The startled victim is then rolled out of bed with his nose on the deck; or, if he happened to be sleeping in the tier, he tumbles on the hard bends of the cable coiled under him. This flooring is much more rugged, and not much softer than the planks, so that his fall is but a choice of miserable bumps.

The malice of this horse-play is sometimes augmented by placing a line round the middle part of the hammock, and fastening it to the beams overhead, in such a way that, when the lanyards at the ends are cut, the head and tail of the youth shall descend freely; but the nobler part of him being secured by the belly-band, as it is called, the future hero of some future Trafalgar remains suspended ingloriously, in mid air, like the golden fleece over the woollen-draper's shop.-CAPTAIN HALL.

THERE are many cases on record of individuals who, even with scarcely any other education than what they contrived to give themselves while serving in subordinate and laborious situations in the camp or on shipboard, have attained to great familiarity with books, and sometimes risen to considerable literary or scientific distinction. The celebrated English navigator, Dampier, although he had been some time at school before he left his native country, yet went to sea at so early an age that, considering he for a long time led a vagabond and lawless life, he must have very soon forgotten everything he had been taught, if he had not, in the midst of all his wild adventures, taken great pains both to retain and to extend his knowledge. That he must have done sc is evident from the accounts of his different voyages which he afterwards published. We have few works of the kind more