interesting or curious but as a mere matter of chance, which tends in some degree to shew the credulity of our seafaring countrymen. I had been in the habit of wearing in my pocket a broad silver piece given to me as a keepsake by my son George, who received his death at the siege of Charlestown in South Carolina the very day after he had taken command of an armed vessel, to which he was appointed. This piece had been beaten out from a dollar by a marine belonging to the Milford then on the American station, and presented by him to my son then a midshipman serving on board: on this piece the artist had engraved the Milford in full sail, and on the reverse my coat of arms, and upon my discovering that this same ingenious marine, now become a serjeant, was on the same quarter-deck with me, I had been talking with him upon the incident, and shewing him that I had carefully preserved his present, which to this hour I have done, and am now wearing it in my pocket. This man, though a brave and orderly soldier, had so completely yielded himself up to a kind of religious enthusiasm as to be plunged in the profoundest apathy and indifference towards life;

still he exhibited on this occasion some small show of sensibility at the sight of his own work, and the recollection of an amiable youth, now untimely lost. The wind was adverse to our course, our ship still labouring in a heavy sea, whilst strong and sudden squalls, which every now and then annoyed us, together with the incessant labour of the pumps, denied our people that repose, which their past toils demanded in this gloomy moment the fancy struck me to make trial of the superstition of the man at the helm by laying this silver piece on the face of the compass, as a charm to turn the wind a point or two in our favour, which I boldly promised it would do. I found my gallant shipmate eagerly disposed to confide in the experiment, which he put out of all doubt by clinching his belief in it with a deposition upon oath, quite sufficient to convince me of his sincerity, and something more than necessary for the occasion. Accordingly I laid my charm upon the glass of the compass with all the solemnity I could assume, whilst my friend kept his eyes alternately employed upon that and the dog-vane, till in a few minutes with a second oath, much more ornamented and em

broidered than the former, he announced to the conviction of all present a considerable shift of wind in our favour. Credulity now began to circulate most rapidly through the ship: even the officers seemed to have caught some touches of its influence, and my friend the meditative serjeant raised his eyes with some astonishment from his book, where they had been riveted to a few dirty pages loose and torn, as it seemed, out of Sherlock's volume upon death. My first prediction having succeeded so luckily, I boldly promised them a prize in view, and whimsical as the incident is, yet it so chanced that in a very short time the man at the mast-head sung out two ships bearing north standing to the southward; this happened at one o'clock; at half-an-hour past the sternmost tacked and made sail to the northward; we found our ship gaining fast upon her, and at four hoisted Dutch colours; at three quarters after hoisted St. George's ensign, and fired a shot at her; at five she hoisted French colours and fired a broadside into us, and at six she struck, and proved to be the Duc de Coigny private frigate of 28 guns, Mignionet commander, belonging to Gran

ville; this gallant Frenchman had scarcely pronounced his anathema against the man, that should offer to strike his colours, when his head was blown to atoms by one of our cannon balls the prize lost her second captain also and had 50 of her men killed and wounded: we had two seamen and one marine killed, and four seaman and one marine wounded.

This was a new and striking spectacle to a landsman like me, and though I am dwelling on an incident which to a naval reader may seem trifling, yet as it was my good fortune to be present at an animating scene, which does not occur to every man, who occasionally passes the seas in my situation, I presume I am excusable for my description of it.

When I witnessed the dispatch, with which a ship is cleared for action, the silence and good order so strictly observed, and the commands so distinctly given upon going into action, I was impressed with the greatest respect for the discipline and precision observed on board our ships of war. Such coolness and preparatory arrangement seemed to me a security for success and conquest. Our spirited purser Mr. Lucas performed better with his

musket than his violin, and whilst standing by him on the quarter-deck I plainly saw him pick off a French officer in a green coat, whom he jocularly called the parrot, the last of three whom he had dismissed to their watery graves. My melancholy friend the engraver had his arm shattered by the first fire of the enemy, which he received with the most stoical indifference, and would not be persuaded to leave the quarter-deck till the action was over, when going down to be dressed as my eldest daugh ter (now Lady Edward Bentinck) was coming up from below, he gallantly presented that very arm to assist her, and when, observing him shrink upon her touching it, she said to him

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Serjeant, I am afraid you are wounded-" he calmly replied-“To be sure I am, Madam, "else I should not have been so bold to have "crossed you on the stairs-" This was a strain of chivalry worthy of the days of old, and something more than Tom Jones's gallantry to Sophia Western, who only offered her his serviceable arm and kept the broken one unemployed. One other incident, though of a very different sort, occurred as I was handing her along the main deck from the bread-room,