stands 750 feet above high-water mark. This one was dedicated to St. Catherine in 1323. The top story was a lighthouse, and in the bottom was a cell for the priest. The pious people of that period blended the light of religion with the lights of benevolence, care, and caution.

To give the reader an idea of ship building at that period, the Betsy Cairns, which brought King William the Third to England, (1689,) was then several years old; she was sold to a merchant in the time of George I., and employed in the coal trade until February, 1827. She was then wrecked on Tynemouth Bar, and lost for want of timely aid; but her timbers, after a lapse of 140 years, were found in sound condition.

"The ship Discovery (now under the Belgian flag, and called the Rubens) accompanied Captain Cooke in his voyage of discovery, 1776. She cannot be less than seventy years old she has the appearance of a fine brig."—Portsmouth Paper, 1842.

In Dr. Southey's "Early Naval History of England" he states that Seius Saturnius was the first high admiral whose name appears in history, and the only Roman whose name has been preserved.

In 1294 England had three admirals; John of Bottetourt, William of Leyburn, and an Irishman, name not known.

Sir John Crombwell was, in the year 1324, admiral of the fleet to Gascony. I believe this is the first time that name occurs in our history.

The following list of distinguished men were originally cabin-boys:

Admirals.
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE,
SIR JOHN HAWKINS,
GENERAL DEANE,
COL. RAINEBOROUGH,
SIR JOHN NARBRUGH,
SIR WM. PENN,

SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVELL.

Vice Admirals.
SIR WM. BATTEN,
SIR JOHN LAWSON,
CAPT. BADILOW,
SIR T. TIDDEMAN,
CAPT. PEACOCK,
CAPT. GOODSON,
SIR C. MINGS,

SIR J. HARMAN,

SIR J. BERRY.

Rear Admirals. SIR R. STAINER, CAPT. HOULDING, CAPT. DEACONS, CAPT. SANSUM.

Number of masters, 1484; mariners, 11,515; and fishermen, 2299; in the sea counties, 1583.

The number of wherrymen between London Bridge and Gravesend was 957. There are now 8000.

The origin of the name "Union Jack" is supposed to have been given by the English sailors because King James, or Jaques, in 1607, united the St. Andrew's cross with the cross of St. George, as now used.

There is a chair now in the museum at Oxford, made of the oak which composed the ship Pelican, which carried Drake round the world in 1577.

The naval power of England at this time consists of seventysix war steamers and 600 other vessels of war; and she has on half-pay two admirals to every ship of the line, with other officers of all grades in proportion.

CHARACTER OF THE RULERS.

"Kings are ambitious, the nobility haughty, and the populace tumultuous and ungovernable."-BURKE.

I THINK it proper to give a short account of the different conduct of the rulers; for perhaps there never was a period in which there was so much difference, and in which a difference produced so much effect.

James I. was the son of the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots. He was a Presbyterian, and had been a pensioner of Queen Elizabeth while he governed Scotland. His personal appearance was most uncouth: his legs were too weak to carry his body, his tongue too large for his mouth; he had great goggle eyes, yet his rolling stare showed a vacant mind; his apparel was neglectful and dirty; his whole appearance and bearing was slovenly and ungenteel; and his unmanly fears were betrayed by his wearing a thickly wadded daggerproof doublet. He was a great sportsman. He degraded the order of knighthood by making more than one hundred knights. The total number of peerages conferred by him in the three kingdoms was two hundred and twenty-six, of which ninetyone only remain.

He showed his tyrannical disposition by ordering a man to be hanged, without any sort of trial, at Newark-upon-Trent, (1603,) on his first progress to London, who had been detected committing a robbery on one of his courtiers.

He loved coarse jokes and buffooneries: he was a great inventor of nick-names and practical jokes; and happy was the man who could so take them as to provoke in return a royal chuckle.

The following anecdote will explain the opinion and confidence which could be placed in this king: "Sir Paul Pindar brought home from Turkey a diamond valued at £30,000. The king wished to buy it of him on credit: this the sensible merchant declined, but favoured his majesty with the loan of

it on gala days. His unfortunate son and successor became the purchaser."-PENNANT.

"He was a bold liar, rather than a good dissembler."

The following verse is a fair description of him as a patron of the arts:

"James both for empire and for arts unfit,
His sense a quibble and a pun his wit;
Whate'er works he patronized he debased,

But hap❜ly left the pencil undisgraced." HAYLEY.

His son, Charles I., had a coldness in his character and temperament: he was of gentlemanly manners and decorous habits. He discountenanced his father's profligacy and excesses; so that a more general sobriety of conduct became the prevailing manners of the court. He was, for his amusement, a patron of the fine arts. But the progress of the sour, snappish, and rigid Puritans so excited the horror and hatred of the aristocracy, that he could not restrain them; and they, to show attachment to his cause, which was also their own, swore, bawled, drank, and intrigued by way of contrast. He had no more political good sense, but quite as strong a tincture of tyranny and haughtiness as his father.

Cromwell, who may be said to have had tyrannic sway from 1649 to 1659, was widely different from them both in his habits and manners; and, curious enough, was not really liked by anybody. He seemed like what is often displayed in common life-a talented mechanic in a large manufactory, whose range of talents just suited the place, from his general activity and powerful mental and various handy, ever-ready application; which embraces everything, and keeps altogether, though never liked by his employers or those employed under him. The following anecdote from Hanway's "Virtues in Humble Life," shows a curious feature in the history of this extraordinary period, 1655: "Two rabbies (Jews) had several interviews with Cromwell; they supposing that, as he had been so successful in subverting the church and state, he might perchance be the promised Messiah. He gave them no other countenance beyond a bare connivance at their admission. They came from Asia." App. viii.

This extraordinary man was a main instrument in killing the king; which is well expressed in the following enigma :

"The heart of a loaf and the top of a spring
Is the name of a man who beheaded a king."

Although the peers had been abolished as a branch of the

parliament, he had some aristocratic feelings about him, and exercised the kingly prerogative so far as to make Maurice Fenton, of Dublin, a baronet; and he himself had an intention of being king, if, in his own opinion, the different factions would have permitted it. He was nearly all his time engaged in war; and, strange to say, not brought up to it, nor taken to it until he was forty-three years old.

After Cromwell came Charles II., who was a splendid profligate, and whose court was overwhelmed with all the debaucheries of the French court.

After him came James II., who was sober and frugal in his habits and expenses. And he meant to be tolerant in religion. Then came William and Mary. William was a Dutchman, with plenty of war, in which he was personally engaged; but there was in his habits and manners a quiet, simple, and thoroughly unostentatious greatness.

After them, Queen Anne, who was most intolerant.

It must readily strike the reader that each of these characters, differing from each other, must have naturally affected the habits and manners of the court during their respective periods; and from the court downward, through the other grades of society; proving that "in human society nothing is stable," and that "the Protestant reformation has given great power to kings."—Dr. Dunham.

Dr. King, in speaking of the fatality which attended the house of Stuart, says: "If I were to ascribe their calamities to any other cause than an evil fate, or endeavour to account for them by any natural means, I should think they were chiefly owing to a certain obstinacy of temper which appears to have been hereditary in all the Stuarts, except Charles II.

CROUCHING MEANNESS OF THE COURTIERS.

"Surely the race was of another breed,

That met their monarch John at Runnymede."

IN all societies there must be forms of address to rulers and governors; but those forms need not be such as imply an abject, submissive crouching.

The letter announcing the death of Queen Elizabeth, from the council, in London, to James, in Scotland, begins: "Right High, Right Excellent and Mighty Prince, and our Dread Sovereign." The dedication of the present church of England

bible, which was translated in his reign, is too fulsome, too blasphemous to relate.

When he went in state to take possession of the Tower of London, (which was formerly the town residence of their sovereigns; Queen Elizabeth was the last who resided there,) a congratulatory oration was delivered, beginning, "To the High and Mighty King James of England, Scotland, France, (without an inch of land,) and Ireland, King defender of the Faith," When, after a great deal of fulsome rigmarole, it finished with the following quotation from Homer:

&c.

"It is not good that many heads bear rule in any land;

Let one be sovereign, king, and lord, and so decrees may stand."

I know the rule was to mix up a mess of sacred and profane adulation; it was the fashion; but that does not make it right, nor less censurable. It could not fail to have an injurious effect.

In the first proclamation he issued calling a parliament, he told the commons plainly what sort of men to choose; and, if they did not choose men of that sort, he should deprive them of their liberties and privileges. This is what was never done before.

The following is a loyal epigram:

"Martial, thou gav'st far nobler epigrams
To thy Don than I can to my James;
But in my royal subject I pass thee-

Thou flatter'd'st thine, mine cannot flattered be."

How well do the following satiric lines apply to them:

"Who would not laugh to see a tailor bow
Submissive to a pair of satin breeches?

Saying, oh! breeches, all men must allow

There's something in your aspect that bewitches.
Who would not exclaim, the tailor's mad?
Yet tyrant adoration is as bad."

A nobleman who tendered a petition without regarding a favourite roan palfrey and its tawdry trappings belonging to the king, got no answer. He again petitioned, and still no reply at length an inquiry was made to the royal noodle, through the lord treasurer, to ascertain the royal silence. James angrily exclaimed, "Shall a king give heed to a dirty paper, when a beggar noteth not the gilt stirrups ?" Hence, when the king rode out upon this, the noblest animal-of the two, the people used to say, "there goes three beasts," the horse, the ass, and the mule; meaning the gaudy saddle was the mule, that being between the horse and the rider.