jocular observations on one of Marryatt's sea-life novels, and the effects on a landsman of a long voyage of perusal over three volumes of salt-water subjects, in which the author was continually splashing in grand style.

"I have been reading Peter Simple.' It is very good. But one is never on land for a moment. I feel grogged and junked after it."

Nevertheless, the writer eulogized the talents and the worth of the author.

The surest and best test of moral worth and social excellence is to be found in the appreciation of a man's character by his own people in the immediate precincts of his own hearth and household, in the small circle of friends and relatives—those nearest and dearest to him.

By that test if Marryatt be judged, the fine, manly, and kindly qualities of the man will be found in no respect inferior to those intellectual ones of the author, which are now generally admitted.

Captain Marryatt died at his residence, Langham, in Norfolk, August 2d, 1848, in his fifty-sixth year.

LETTERS FROM CAPTAIN MARRYATT.

"Spa, June 17th, 1836. "MY DEAR LADY BLESSINGTON,-I have received all your packets of letters, and am very much obliged to you, not only for the letters, but also for thinking about me when I am so far out of the way, which, you know, is not very usual in this world, and therefore particularly flattering to me. As you will perceive, I am now at Spa, after a month's sojourn at Brussels. Spa is a very beautiful and a very cheap place, but it is deserted, and it is said that there will be no season this year. There are only two or three English families here, and they are all cock-tails, as sporting men would say.

"We are therefore quite alone, which pleases me. I was tired of bustle, and noise, and excitement, and here there is room for meditation e'en to madness, as Calista says, although I do not intend to carry my thoughts quite so far. I write very little, just enough to amuse me, and make memorandums, and think. In the morning I learn German, which I have resolved to conquer, although at forty one's memory is not quite as amenable as it ought to be. At all events, I have no master, so if the time is thrown away, the money will be saved.

I believe you sometimes look at the Metropolitan ;' if so, you will have

They

observed that I commenced my Diary of a Blasé in the last number. say at home that it is very good light Magazine stuff, and is liked. I mean, however, that it shall not all be quite nonsense. I hope the Book of Beauty' goes on well. I know that you, and Mrs. Norton, and I, are the three looked up to to provide for the public taste.

“Stanfield, I understand, is getting on very well indeed with the drawings for my history. I think, with respect to yours, I would next year make some alteration. Instead of having the letter-press in detached pieces, I would weave them together, much in the same way as the Tales of Boccacio;' some very slight link would do, and it should be conversational. It is astonishing how much a little connection of that kind gives an interest and a reality to a work. In the ‘Tales of a Pasha,' a great part of the interest is in the conversations between the Pasha and those about him, and the stories become by it framed like pictures. In any work whatever there should never be a full stop. It appears to me there will be a new era in annuals, and that, in future, they will become more library works, and not so ephemeral as their present title indicates; but it will first be necessary that the publishers of them discover their own interest to be in making them what they ought to be, and going to the necessary expense.

Of course I do see the English papers, and I am very much disgusted. Nothing but duels and blackguardism. Surely we are extremely altered by this reform. Our House of Lords was the beau ideal of all that was aristocratical and elegant. Now we have language that would disgrace the hustings. In the House of Commons it is the same, or even worse. The gentleman's repartee, the quiet sarcasm, the playful hit, where are they? all gone; and, in exchange for them, we have, You lie, and You lie. This is very bad, and, it appears to me, strongly smacking of revolution; for if the language of the lower classes is to take the precedence, will not they also soon do the same? I am becoming more Conservative every day; I can not help it: I feel it a duty as a lover of my country. I only hope that others feel the same, and that Peel will soon be again where he ought to be. I don't know what your politics are, but all women are Tories in their hearts, or perhaps Conservatives is a better word, as it expresses not only their opinions, but their feelings.

"I never thought that I should feel a pleasure in idleness; but I do now I had done too much, and I required repose, or rather repose to some portions of my brain. I am idle here to my heart's content, and each day is but the precursor of its second. I am like a horse, which has been worked too hard, turned out to grass, and I hope I shall come out again as fresh as a two-year old. I walk about and pick early flowers with the children, sit on a bench in the beautiful allées vertes which we have here, smoke my cigar, and meditate till long after the moon is in the zenith. Then I lie on the sofa and read French novels, or I gossip with any one I can pick up in the streets. Besides which, I wear out my old clothes; and there is a great pleasure in having a VOL. II.-O

coat on which gives you no anxiety. I expect that by October I shall be all right again.

"I am afraid this will be a very uninteresting letter; but what can you expect from one who is living the life of a hermit, and who never even takes the trouble to wind up his watch-who takes no heed of time, and feels an interest in the price of strawberries and green peas because the children are very fond of them? I believe that this is the first epoch of real quiet that I have had in my stormy life, and every day I feel more and more inclined to dream away my existence.

"Farewell, my dear Lady Blessington; present my best wishes to the Count D'Orsay, beau et brave. I have found out a fly-fisher here, and I intend to be initiated into the sublime art. There is a quiet and repose about flyfishing that I am sure will agree with me. While your line is on the water, you may be up in the clouds, and every thing goes on just as well. Once more, with many thanks, adieu. F: MARRYATT."

"Wimbledon, January 3d, 1840.

Many thanks for your kind wishes, and your invitation, which I am sorry to say that I can not accept, being confined almost totally to my room. I regret this the more, as you are aware how very much I admire Mrs. Fairlie, and how happy I should have been to meet her and her husband, as well as Count D'Orsay and you.

"And now permit me to enter into my defense with respect to the lady you refer to. I was fully aware that I laid myself open to the charge which you have brought forward, and, moreover, that it will be brought forward as one in which the public feelings are likely to be enlisted; if so, my reply will be such in tenor as I now give to you.

"The lady has thought proper to vault into the arena especially allotted to the conflicts of the other sex. She has done so, avowing herself the champion of the worst species of democracy and of infidelity. In so doing, she has unsexed herself, and has no claim to sympathy on that score. I consider that a person who advocates such doctrines as she has done at this present time, when every energy should be employed to stem the torrent which is fast bearing down this country to destruction, ought to be hooted, pelted, and pursued to death, like the rabid dog who has already communicated its fatal virus; and allow me to put the question whether you ever yet heard, when the hue and cry was raised, and weapons for its destruction seized, that the populace were known to show the unheard-of politeness of inquiring, before they commenced the pursuit, whether the animal so necessary to be sacrificed was of the masculine or feminine gender? I wage war on the doctrine, not the enunciator, of whom I know nothing, except that the person, being clever, is therefore the more dangerous.

"As for your observation that the lady never wrote a line in The Edinburgh,' I can only say, that, although it is of no moment, I did most truly and

sincerely believe she did, and my authority was from her having been reported to have said to a friend that she had paid me off well in “The Edinburgh.”' That she did say so I could, I think, satisfactorily prove, were not my authority (like all other mischievous ones) under the pledge of secresy; but the fact is, I cared very little whether she did or did not write the articles, though I confess that I fully believe she did.

"As for the attacks of petty reviewers, I care nothing for them. I take it from wherever it comes, as the sailor said when the jackass kicked him ;' but I will not permit any influential work like 'The Edinburgh' to ride me roughshod any more than, when a boy, I would not take a blow from any man, however powerful, without returning it to the utmost of my power. But a review is a legion composed of many; to attack a review is of little use : like a bundle of sticks strong from union, you can not break them; but if I can get one stick out, I can put that one across my knee, and, if strong enough, succeed in smashing it; and in so doing I really do injure the review, as any contributor fancies that he may be the stick selected.

"The only method, therefore, by which you can retaliate upon a review like 'The Edinburgh,' is to select one of its known contributors, and make the reply personal to him. For instance, I have advised 'The Edinburgh' to put a better hand on next time. Suppose that it attacks me again, I shall assume that their best hand, Lord B-, is the writer of the article, and my reply will be most personal to him; and you must acknowledge that I shall be able to raise a laugh, which is all I care for. You may think that this is not fair; I reply that it is; I can not put my strength against a host: all I can do is to select one of the opponents in opinion and politics, and try my strength with him. This I am gratified in doing until the parties who write a review put their names to the article; as long as they preserve the anonymous, I select whom I please, and if I happen to take the wrong one, the fault is theirs and not mine. So recollect, that if I am attacked in ‘The Edinburgh' (should I reply to the article when I publish my Diary of a Blasé' in June next), my reply will be to Lord B, and will be as bitter as gall, although I have the highest respect for his lordship's talents, and have a very good feeling toward him. Many thanks for the 'Governess,' which I have just read. My mother finished it last night, and pronounced it excellent. I prefer giving her opinion to my own, as none will ever accuse her of flattery, although you have me. I read it with some anxiety, owing to my having intended to have made the sister of 'Poor Jack' a governess for a short time, and I was afraid that you would have forestalled me altogether. As far as the serious goes, you have so; but you have left me a portion of the ludicrous. I think I shall portray a stout, well-formed girl of nineteen, kept up in the nursery by a vain mother, with dolls, pinbefores, and all other et ceteras—that is, if I do venture to come after you, which will be hardly fair to myself. Are you not tired of writing? I am most completely, and, could I give it up, I would to-morrow; but, as long as my poor mother lives, I must write, and therefore, although I detest it. I wish to write a long while yet

"I have just returned from Norfolk, where I was wet through every day, and, to escape cold, filled myself with tobacco smoke and gin: these antagonistical properties have had the effect of deranging me all over, and I am miserably out of tune, and feel terribly ill-natured. I feel as if I could wring off the neck of a cock-robin who is staring in at my window.

"This is a long letter, but it is your own fault; you have sowed wind, and have reaped the whirlwind. If I have written myself down in your good opinion, I must, at all events, try to write myself up again.

"F. MARRYATT.”

"Monday, Jan. 3d, 1842.

"I write you this shabby-looking note to thank you for your kind present. I intended to call upon you, but have been prevented, and must now defer it till my return from the country at the end of the week. I leave now directly.

"You will be surprised to hear that Mr. Howard is dead. He went out to dine with a friend on Christmas day, and after dinner was, I believe, well, but broke a blood-vessel. He could not be removed from the house, but lingered until Thursday evening, when he expired.

"That is all I have heard. Poor devil! perhaps it is all for the best, as his prospects were any thing but encouraging.

“Kind regards to Miss Power, and the count, par excellence.

"F. MARRYATT."

"Manchester Square, June 8th, 1841.

"If you can not command the services of your friends when you are unfortunate, they are of little value.

"I do not therefore think you are wrong in asking me again, and I assure you that if I can find any thing to help your book, I will do it with pleasure. "The misfortune with me is, that I can not force ideas-they must be spontaneous; and the very knowledge that I am to do so and so by a certain time actually drives all ideas out of my head, and leaves me as empty as a drum. "If you do not have it, I can only say it will not be my fault.

"F. MARRYATT."

"3 Spanish Place, Manchester Square, September 6th. "In reply to your kind inquiries, allow me first to observe that I have two most splendid grumbles on my list, so splendid that I hardly know how to part with them. Now for grumble the first: When Sir James Graham was at the Admiralty, he was pleased to consider that my professional services entitled me to some mark of his majesty's approbation, and accordingly he asked his majesty to give me the star of the Guelph, and knighthood. To this request his majesty, King William, was pleased to reply, in his usual frank, offhand way, 'Oh yes-Marryatt, I know-bring him here on Thursday' (the day of application having been Monday). But it appears that, while my