obliquely off the land with the after-yards braced up for the starboard-tack, and the sails full. The head-yards square. The cable was cut, the head-yards braced up, and all sail instantly made. Thus we appeared to be standing off the land, but the swell prevented our gathering headway. The cable had hardly been cut, when the wind fell lighter and came more a-head; and instead of making way off the land, we only did so sideways before the swell, and towards the ledge of rocks we had left-In this helpless sort of state, without an anchor to let go, and without wind enough to blow out a candle, the successive casts of the lead gave warning of the rapidly approaching fate of our nice little frigate-" By the deep six -quarter less six-and a half-five-and a quarter-five," &c., until with the announcement of" And a quarter-three," we felt her stern touch as her head rose to the swell. The bumpings became more and more in earnest as the waves hove her farther on the rocks. Soon afterwards the sky overcast, and the wind began to whistle through the rigging with all the blustering appearance of a rising gale from the southward.

A PLAN FOR PROVIDING SEAMEN FOR THE BRITISH NAVY WITHOUT RESORTING TO IMPRESSMENT.

THE impressment of seamen to man the British Navy has always been considered as an act of imperative state necessity, palliated, however, by the apprehension of some imminent threatened danger, or by some great and obvious national advantage; but it is a proceeding repugnant to the principles of the constitution, subversive of personal liberty, and offensive to humanity.. Under this conviction, I beg leave to submit the following propositions to His Majesty's Government, which, if approved of, may be arranged into legal form, and become an act of the Legislature.

I propose that all seamen employed in and belonging to the British Navy shall be registered, and their descriptions entered alphabetically in books to be kept at the Admiralty for that purpose.

That all seamen and apprentices in the service of merchants or shipowners, in the United Kingdom, shall be registered, and their description entered in books to be kept by the mayors or other chief magistrates, of all and every port, harbour, or place, in which such ships or vessels are fitted out or employed in the service of any merchant or shipowner, for commercial, or any other purpose whatsoever. That all fishermen and watermen, and all their apprentices or assistants, and all persons employed in the management of vessels for sea, in any port, harbour, bay, or river, shall be registered, and their description entered in a book, to be kept by the mayor, or other chief magistrate, of the port, harbour, or place, in which such fishermen, &c. are employed, or have their residence.

That a copy of the said registers and descriptions of the seamen, apprentices, fishermen, and watermen, as aforesaid, shall be transmitted on the first day of every month in the year, by the said mayors, or chief magistrates, of each port, harbour, or place, where such registers are directed to be kept, to the Secretary of the Admiralty, noting distinctly all additions, casualties, and alterations, which

may have taken place during the preceding month, and specifying the number of seamen, seamen's apprentices, fishermen, watermen, &c. then in their respective districts; distinguishing those actually at sea, their destination, and the probable period of their absence or return, in order that the Lords of the Admiralty may be perfectly acquainted, at all times, with the number and description of seamen, &c. which, upon any emergency, may be obtained for the public

service.

That when seamen, &c. are required for the navy, a requisition for the number of men of each class wanted, shall be transmitted by the Lords of the Admiralty to the mayor, or other chief magistrate, of each port, harbour, or place of registry, and a naval officer appointed to receive the said seamen, &c., and the selection of the said seamen, &c. shall be made by a committee, consisting of the mayor, or other chief magistrate, and two merchants or shipowners, to be nominated by the said mayor, or chief magistrate; and the number of seamen, &c. shall be selected in the most impartial manner, and delivered to the said naval officer; and the seamen so delivered to him, shall be considered as having actually entered His Majesty's service, and be entitled to bounty and pay from the date of their selection, and be bound to serve the public for five years, and no longer; at the end of which period, or as soon as possible after its expiration, every seaman, &c. shall be entitled to his discharge from the captain or commanding officer of the ship in which he shall have served. And if the said discharge contains an honourable acknowledgment of his services, such seaman, &c. shall, after six months' residence in any city or borough in the United Kingdom, become an elector, and have a right to vote at the election of members to serve in the House of Commons. And as often as seamen, &c. are required for the service of the navy, by casualties at sea or by the discharge of men who have fulfilled their engagements to the public, requisitions shall be constantly made in the manner already mentioned, and the number of each class selected and delivered to the naval officers appointed to receive them.

That this plan may be easily carried into execution, and prove perfectly efficient, little doubt can be entertained. The committee of each port or harbour, where seamen and seafaring people are employed and reside, will, from local information, be the most competent persons to conduct the selection of the proper proportion of each class required for the public service. This committee will relieve the Government from every imputation, perform an important public duty, and be justly entitled to the thanks and gratitude of their country. The officers of the navy will also be relieved from an irksome and distressing service, and have the heartfelt satisfaction of commanding men who have not been violently forced into the navy, and compelled to serve during a long war, or to the end of their lives, without the hope of revisiting their friends or firesides.

The impartial selection of men for the navy will have much more of a voluntary than of a compulsory character; their feelings will not be wounded by violent coercion-their treatment on board ship will be very different from that too often inflicted upon impressed men; they know that they can only be required to serve for a short

period, they will, therefore, perform their duty with alacrity, fight the battles of their country gallantly, and after their period of service expires, return to their native homes with honour, and take their station in society as freemen and constituents of one branch of the legislature of their country. The political privilege thus held out will be a great stimulus to good conduct, and elevate them in their own eyes, as well as in the estimation of their fellow citizens. The British navy under the proposed arrangement, and officered, as it confessedly is, by the most gallant, scientific, and experienced commanders in the world, would become the theme of well-merited and universal admiration.

It is hardly possible, in considering a question connected with the British navy, to overlook the eminent services of the corps of Marines, whose conduct on all occasions has been distinguished by fidelity, honour, and bravery; this truly excellent body of military men have not been treated with that impartiality, fairness, and justice, to which they have the most indisputable claims-they are soldiers to all intents and purposes, yet their highest and most honourable grades, and accompanying emoluments, are not conferred on officers of the corps, but bestowed on Admirals and Captains of the navy. This is a deep wound to the honour of the corps, it implies a stigma which its officers never deserved, and justice demands that a practice so revolting to professional sensibility should be immediately reformed.

The companies of marines are never brigaded, and therefore do not require generals, or even colonels to command them; and by removing the naval officers, now placed over the heads of their own captains, and who are of no use whatever, a great saving would accrue to the public; and, surely, nothing can be more ridiculous than the vesting an Admiral, or a Captain of the Navy, with military rank and considerable emolument in a service with the duties of which he is totally unacquainted. What would the navy think, if a General of Hussars was appointed to command a squadron of ships of war? yet such an appointment would not be a whit more outre and ridiculous that the practice which I have mentioned.

Now I ask, would it not be a great improvement in the Marine service, to form the entire body into regiments, or battalions, under the command of a Colonel, brought up in their own ranks, assisted by another field officer with the rank of Major, (for that of Lieutenant-Colonel should be abolished in the service,) and when not employed on service, these battalions might form the garrisons of Portsmouth, Plymouth, Chatham, &c., and be ready for embarkation at an hour's notice. A considerable augmentation of the Marines would be highly desirable, and prove truly beneficial to the public service; their duty in the navy renders them familiar with the sea, and they might be instructed in the exercise of artillery, and become useful auxiliaries in every duty required on board a ship-of-war. And should an attack at any time upon an enemy's coast be deemed necessary, the marines would be a much more efficient force on such a service than troops of the line, who are in general so much affected by sea-sickness, as to be very unfit for some time to act with vigour; whereas, the marines are inured to the sea, and perfectly qualified for every duty.

1st September 1831.

ALFRED.

'COLLOQUIES WITH FOLARD.

NO. V.

"Ne desdaignez, vous, que desirez suivre le train des armes, au lieu de lire des Amadis ou Lancelots, d'employer quelque heure à me connoistre dedans ce livre."-MONTLUC.

It is a fact for which I cannot precisely account that, often as, since our first interview, in my morning readings and noon-tide rambles, I have yearned for the society, and invoked the apparition of my mysterious Colloquist, he has never risen upon my daylight visions. Touching this point in his quality, it must be confessed that the Chevalier hath proven himself but a capricious and unsocial sprite: whether it be that, by the law of his nature, he is invisible in the sun-beams—or is himself repugnant to a closer scrutiny of his incorporeal elements-or merely that he liketh not to snuff the meridian air. But on the particular cause of so ungracious a reservation, it were little else than perplexity to cogitate; and, as I deal only in matters of strict verity, I protest against its being accounted to me for a fault that I trouble not myself in fanciful speculations upon so inexplicable a reality, and have resolved to entertain no farther question of its evidence. "Seeing," saith the time-honoured adage, "is believing;" and, if any man lack the capacity of belief, let him, for exposition of that defect in his physical conformation, betake himself unto the science of craniology.

To proceed, however, from this brief philosophical digression to the plain subject matter of my report, it was one evening last week,—and exactly nine months and three days since my fourth interview with the shade of Folard,—that, having adjourned from a hasty meal to my summer station in the bay window of my sanctum, and resumed my morning's favourite occupation among the martial chroniclers of other times until the deepening twilight gently forced its brief season of respite upon weary eyes, I had leaned back in my chair, and earnestly mused awhile on sundry passages of my reading, when, on a sudden, the staid antiquated form of the Chevalier burst upon my view in his accustomed seat.

"Montluc, Sully, Davila, Strada, Bentivoglio, and Rohan," said my aërial visitant, glancing around at the huge mis-array of tomes-" You have then, I perceive, taken heed to my counsel.”

"I have done my poor devoir, Chevalier, in the study of the second school of modern science, as it hath pleased you to define the Low COUNTRY wars, which closed the sixteenth century: albeit, sooth to say, with a success little better than indifferent. But your appearance after this unusual absence, comes opportunely to aid the researches and resolve the doubts of so sorry a querist."

"It may chance that my absence hath not been altogether voluntary: let it pass unquestioned. And now behold me to your wish, free to pursue our discussion of those progressive changements in the principles and practick of the art military, which fill the interval between the Italian and German wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This interval forming, as we have observed, the second great epoch in the rise of modern strategy, is illustrated principally by the events of the long struggle which followed the revolt of the Netherlands against the bigoted and cruel tyranny of Philip II.: though much contemporary exemplification may likewise be drawn from those

unhappy civil contests which, under the pretext of religion, so long agitated my own country, and reached their climax in the War of the League. Shifting the scene from the Italian campaigns, which afforded the first school of the modern science, you have now to survey a second and double arena of combat in the Low Countries and in France; and passing in review some of the great actions which signalized those famous theatres of soldiership, thence to deduce your own commentaries. But the correct observation of the martial characteristics which distinguished the second half of the sixteenth century, may only be gleaned from a close companionship with the contemporary writers of that bye-gone age. To judge from the accumulation of tomes among which you have entrenched yourself to the teeth, you are sufficiently impressed with this truth: for you have selected, I see, no despicable authorities wherewithal to commence; and among them, you have doubtless failed not, in especial, to seek converse with the ancient Gascon here, who has bequeathed for your edification so lively a recital of a fifty years' service."

"Indeed have I not: for he, whose young apprenticeship to arms was exercised in Italy under the immortal Bayard, and whose last years were consumed in the religious feuds of his country, may be said to have spanned two distinct ages of warfare with his single life. His Commentaries-which he so modestly declares that he has indited in imitation of Cæsar-form a curious link between these two memorable ages; and it was no common term of a warrior's life which could include the campaigns of Bicocca, Cerizolles, and Moncontour.* I, therefore, hold in great respect the authority of the renowned Messire Blaise de Montluc, Mareschal de France."

"There is certainly much insight into the service of his day and its transitional practice, to be gained from his pages: but his consummate vanity is intolerable, and his cold-blooded details of his butcheries are still more disgusting. He lacked equally the lofty generous spirit of the old chivalry, and the tempered mercy of more modern soldiership, He had all the vaunting egotism and loquacity, without the usual bonhommie, of a true Gascon; and all the cruelty of a Spaniard, without a particle of the Castilian dignity. In short, his whole life was no better than a ferocious gasconade."

"I am not disposed, Chevalier, to break a lance with you in defence either of our friend Montluc's humanity or modesty: yet some touches there are surely to be found in him of the spirit of the ancient chivalry. What can be more noble than his injunction, Mettez toute votre confiance en Dieu, et proposez tousjours l'honneur devant les yeux, discourant en vous mesmes, que si vos jours doivent finir sur la bresche, vous avez beau demeurer dans le fossé. C'est mourir en beste de ne laisser nulle mesmoire après soi.' Remember you also his quaint imprecation against the arquebuse: Que pleust à Dieu, que ce malheureux instrument n'eust jamais esté inventé, je n'en porterois les marques, les quelles encore aujourd'hui me rendent languissant, et tant de braves et vaillans hommes ne fussent morts de la main le plus souvent des plus poltrons, et plus lasches, qui n'oseroient regarder au visage celui, que de loin ils renversent de leurs malheureuses balles par terre. Mais ce sont des artifices du diable pour nous faire entre

• A.D. 1521–1569.