that respecting the killed of the two British ships, making their united complements appear greater than they were by 34 men. "Three of the Cyane's men deserted to the Americans; but, generally, the two crews resisted the repeated offers to enlist with the enemy. It was stated by the British officers, at the court-martial, that the crews of the two ships were, for three weeks, kept constantly in the Constitution's hold, with both hands and legs in irons, and there allowed but three pints of water during the 24 hours. This, too, in a tropical climate! It was further proved, that, after the expiration of three weeks, upon the application of Capt. Douglas, one third of the men were allowed to be on deck four hours out of the 24, but had not the means of walking, being still in irons; that, on mustering the crews when they were landed at Maranham, five of the Levant's boys were missing; that, upon application and search for them, two of them were found locked up in the American captain of marines cabin; that a black man at Maranham was employed as a crimp and enticed one of the Levant's boys to enter the American service. Upon these facts, let the reader employ his own thoughts: if he possesses a British heart, he will need no prompter." "British heart," indeed! Where was the British heart when James Tompkins and his comrades were impressed! Where was the British heart when they were so treated day after day? But who is to believe this story? It is nobody's story but yours; it is your own miserable story; and entitled to no belief. You have no British official account of the action. Does not this speak volumes! Would there not have been such official account of the action, if a good excuse could have been made out for this defeat and capture! You take your details, you say, partly from the information of the British officers engaged. Why do you not name one at least of the number. You talk of Capt. Douglas, and you say, with a species of national vanity that deserves not only beating but kicking, that "personal consideration in battle was never the character of a DOUGLAS.”- A Douglas indeed! Why not of a Douglas, you ridicuJous coxcomb? Sad experience has taught me that roguery in collecting money is characteristic enough of " a Douglas," for "a Douglas" once robbed me in this way of a pretty many thousands of dollars. This, however, is a specimen of the nauseous flattery which you never fail to bestow on every Scotch officer that comes in your way. Your story about the breast of a Turk might do well enough, if we could possibly believe the fact that you state; but upon what ground are we to believe you? You are flatly contradicted by the American official account; and there is no English official account. Were not the English Government pretty good judges of what they ought to do in such a case? If they did not publish their official account, had they not their reasons for it, think you? In short, Captain Stewart says that he captured the two ships in forty minutes; and what ground is there for disbelieving him? You are exceedingly offended at the boastings of the Americans. You have forgot all Dibdin's songs, I suppose? You have forgot all the songs, and all the odes, and all the plays, of all the pensioned parasites? You have forgot Neptune coming in his watery car to surrender his trident to that wonderous hero, King George the Third! You have forgot, doubtless, all the disgusting, all the sickening, all the loathsome, all the literary, vomit-producing flattery incessantly poured forth upon our navy, and all connected with it? Of all the boasters upon the face of this earth, we have been the greatest, the most shameless, the most contemptible and ridiculous. However, it was not until 1814, that this boasting assumed a regular official charac ter. Then it was that the victory of the Serpentine River came to crown all the boastings of this nation of boasters. You complain that Capt. Stewart, after captur ing the two English ships, "was welcomed at Boston by federal salutes; that he landed under a salute; that he was escorted to the Exchange Coffee-house by troops, amidst the repeated cheers of citizens of both sexes, who filled the streets, wharves, and vessels, and occupied the houses, while a band of music played national airs." You are exceedingly offended at this, and seem to curse the manager of the play-house for having craved leave to anBounce, that the gallant Captain Stewart and the officers of the Constitution would, in their full uniform, honour the Theatre with their presence. You seem to be enrag ed at this enthusiasm of the people, and at this little trick of the play-house men; and yet not one word did you say about the victory on the Serpentine river! On that famous sea in Hyde Park, the two fleets met, in order to give the foreign sovereigns, their whiskered followers, and the enlightened people of this royal Wen, ocular demonstration of the superiority of British skill and valour. The Yankees were superior in number of ships, and guns. Long and obstinate was the fight, but, at last, as the newspapers told us," the shouts of half a million of people communicated to the sky that Britannia still ruled the waves!" The citizens of Boston were very soon afterwards taking their turn; but, they had something to boast of. One of their ships had taken two English ships, which, every man must allow, ought to have taken her. There was really something to boast of. If you had been there, indeed, to explain to them, as you have done to me in pages 466 and 467, that the Levant was "built of fir;" that the Cyane's "timbers were rel ten," that her breeching bolts drew out,” if you had been present at Boston to explain all this, as nicely as you have explained it to me, how you would have set the Yankees a laughing! The play-house would have been the place for you to go to, where you would have occasioned more entertainment than all the other actors in the scenery. If you had told the Bostonians, as you told me, "that the Cyane was so slow that every merchant vessel ran by her, and that the Levant's officers declared that she could but just outsail her companion," how the Yankees would have laughed! They would have wondered, as I do, first, that there should have been two such ships in that glorious great British navy; second, that " a Douglas," and a Gordon Falcon, should have got into two such ships; and, third, that, being in two such ships, they should have gone in pursuit of the Constitution, with a view to disable her, if not to take her. I have no room for more, and more, I trust, is not necessary. I cannot, however, conclude without bestowing my serious reprehension on your endeavours to disguise, to gloss over, to palliate, the inglorious acts of which you pretend to have written the history. When a disposition to do this is entertained by a people, that people is manifestly destined to sink. The disposition arises from their not daring to look truth in the face. It arises from their consciousness of inability to recover what they have lost. God forbid that such a disposition should become general in England; but if you do not produce this mischievous, dishonourable disposition, it seems to me it will be for want of ability, and not for want of desire. It is invariably the case that the greediness for praise is in an inverse proportion to the merit of the party. Of this you have probably experienced the truth; but there arises a further inconvenience, and that is, when you have begun to bestow unjust praise, you lay the foundation of clain upon you to proceed to all lengths in the same course. After writing the book which you have sent to me, and upon which I have made these observations, there is nothing in the way of praise that any officer in the navy has not a right to demand of you; and if you refuse, reason why you should not be liable to his lash. see no To the officers of the navy I beg leave to observe, that I deem their profession highly honourable; that I think it ought to be held in great esteem by the people; that I deem the navy of the greatest importance to the country; that I am convinced that it would require the greatest skill and most undaunted courage on their part to enable them to maintain the dominion of the seas; and that to induce them to attain to this skill and to display this courage, they are not, I trust, to be told that a few pounds difference in weight of metal, that a few tons difference in point of size, or that a few men or boys more or less, will ever be thought of by their country a sufficient ground of apology for their pulling down of that flag, which has for so many ages been borne triumphant through the seas. To the government I say, that there must be a new system of promotion, and a new rate and manner of distributing prize money. Captain Dacres was indignant at seeing British seamen on board the American frigate which had beaten and captured him. He was particularly offended at an Irishman, whom he saw sitting coolly making buck-shot to fire at his countrymen. Alas! remember poor Cashman, who was hanged as a rioter, in 1817! Think of his fate and the buck-shot will sink out of your Read his address to the judge who sight. condemned him, and the buck-shot will wholly escape from your mind: I "My Lord: I hope you will excuse a poor friendless sailor for occupying your time. Had I died fighting the battles of my country, I should have gloried in it; but I confess that it grieves me to think of suffering like a robber, when I call God to witness that I have passed whole days together without even a morsel of bread, rather than violate the laws. I have served my king for many years, and often fought for my country. I have received nine wounds in the service, and never before have been charged with any offence have been at sea all my life, and my father was killed on board the Diana frigate. I came to London, my Lord, to endeavour to recover my pay and prize money, but being unsuccessful was reduced to the greatest distress, and being poor and pennyless, I have not been able to bring forward witnesses to prove my innocence, or even to acquaint my brave officers, or I am sure they would all have come forward in my behalf. The gentlemen who have sworn against me must have mistook me for some other person, there being many sailors in the mob; but I freely forgive them, and I hope God will also forgive them, for I solemnly declare that I committed no act of violence whatever." He This poor fellow made a will and left his prize money to his brothers! He had been many months starving in London. was an Irishman, and as brave a man as ever died.-There can be no doubt that if Cashman had received, in time, the money due to him, he would never have been in the mob upon that occasion. I have not time to write any thing more at present. I break off abruptly; but a man like you merits no ceremony from WM. COBBETT. LETTER FROM MISS INDIGO AT WORTHING, TO HER FRIEND MISS MARIA LOUISA MAZARINE IN LONDON. "I know very well that those who are commonly called learned women, have lost all manner of credit by their impertinent talkativeness and conceit of themselves!-it is a wrong method and ill choice of books that makes them just so much the worse for what they have read." Swift's Letter to a Young Lady. AH! my dearest Maria Louisa! sign a coarser appellation; culverkeys, mentioned in Walton's Angler; mithridate mustard, or charlock; the primula, or primrose; violets, (you remember Shakspeare's sweet lines you who are still enjoying at the Institution the lectures of the most elegant of all professors; you who twice a week have an opportunity of wit nessing his ingenious experiments in pneumatics, aërostatics, and hydrostatics, while he explains all the different 'ologies of the alphabet, from anthology to zoology! you who are, perhaps, at this moment inhaling the gas of nitrous oxide or gas of paradise, how do I envy you your sensations and associations! Most joyfully do I sit down to perform my promise of writing an account of my journey to Worthing, not to indulge in the frivolous tittletattle to which so many of our sex are addicted, but to attempt a scientific journal worthy of our studies, and of the opportunities afforded us by our constant attendance at so many of the learned lectures in London. Nothing occurred on the road worthy of particular mention the indications of the barometer, the mean temperature of the thermometer, and the contents of the pluviometer, will be found in the tables which we have agreed to interchange weekly. In the meadows through which we occasionally passed, I observed several fine specimens of the mammalia class of quadrupeds, such as the bos taurus, or common ox; the ovis aries, of Linnæus, or sheep; the equus caballus, or horse; the asinus, or ass, both Jenny and Jack; and the capræa hircus, or common goat, both Billy and Nanny. By-the-by these vulgar methods of discriminating genders are very unscientific, and may often lead to mistakes. Learned language cannot be too pre eise. "Violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, lolium and fumaria, or darnel and On our arrival at Worthing, we dined with our friends the Tomkins family, where we had the scapula of the ovis, or a shoulder of mutton, with a sauce of macerated cepa, two birds of the gallinaceous tribe served with sisymbrium, or water-cresses, and the customary vegetables of brassica, lac tuca, and spinacia, through none of which the aqueous fluid had been sufficiently allowed to percolate. There was also soup which retained so considerable a portion of caloric, that it scalded my palatic epidermis, and the piper nigrum, or black pepper, with which it was seasoned occasioned a very unpleasant degree of titillation in the whole of the oral region. In the afternoon, the water in the kettle not having been raised to 212 of Fahrenheit, or that point at which evapora tion commences, the thea viridis, or green tea, formed an imperfect decoc tion, in which state, I believe, its diaphoretic qualities are injurious. Mrs. Tomkins declared she never drank any thing herself but the simple element; but I informed her that if she meant water, it was by no means a simple element, but compounded of oxygen and hydrogen; and I availed myself of this opportunity for instructing her that atmospheric air is also a mixture, containing about seventy-three parts of azotic, and twenty-seven of oxygen gas, at which the ignorant creature only exclaimed, “Well, I have seen myself a good many red gashes In the hedges, I recognised some curious flowers, particularly the bellis, of the order polygamia superflua, vulgò the daisy; the cardamine, to which Shakspeare has given the vulgar name of the lady's smock; the caltha, or marigold, with its radiated discous flower, to which the lower orders as- across the sky, particularly at sunset." She was dressed in a gown woven from the filaments of the phalana bombyx, or silkworm, dyed in a red tincture of the small insect called coccus ilicis by Linnæus, which is found on the bark of the quercus coccifera. By way of changing the conversation, which was turning upon Mrs. T's proficiency in music, I asked her in allusion to the geological controversy, whether she preferred the Vulcanian or the Neptunian systems, when the silly girl replied with a stare that she had not heard of either of the tunes !! But, my dearest Maria Louisa, I may confess to you, that I am daily more and more horrified by the sad blunders of mamma, who has not, like us, received the benefits of scientific instruction, and yet, while she sits at the window knitting, will every now and then catch a word which she fancies she understands, and betray the most pitiable ignorance in her attempts to join the conversation-For instance, while I was this morning explaining to Miss Tomkins the difference between hydrogen and oxygen, she exclaimed, without taking her eyes from her work, "Well, it's a liquor I never taste my1 self, but in my time Booth's was reckoned the best gin." We had been visiting a house in which I complained of an unpleasant empyreuma. "Child!" cried mamma, "I think an empty room a very unpleasant thing certainly, but you may depend upon it, there was not one in the whole house." While I was maintaining that bismuth and cobalt were different ores, she imagined in her imperfect hearing, and still more deficient comprehension, that I was talking of the two London coaches, and added with a nod, "Yes, my dear, they start at different hours, the Sidmouth at six in the morning, and the Cobourg at eight in the evening." After dinner, I took occasion to observe that cheese was obtained from curd by separating the whey by expression, when she told me there was no way of expression, no, not all the talking in the world, that would ever make a cheese!! Alluding to a short essay I had written upon the reflection of light, she interrupted me by desiring I would not indulge in light reflec 66 tions, as I should be only subjecting myself to similar remarks from others; and when I was describing a resinous matter obtained by precipitation, she shook her head and exclaimed, “ Impossible, child, nothing is ever gotten by precipitation: your poor dear father was always telling you not to do things in such a violent hurry.”—Upon my explaining to a friend that antimony derived its name from its having been indulged in too freely by some monks, she cried "There, my dear, you must be mistaken, for monks, you know, can have nothing to do with matrimony ;" and once when the professor showed me a lump of mineral earth, and I enquired whether it was friable, she ejaculated "Friable, you simpleton! no, nor boilable neither; These are why, it isn't good to eat." but a few specimens of her lamentable ignorance; in point of acute misapprehension she exceeds even Mrs. Malaprop herself,and you cannot conceive the humiliation to which I am constantly subjected by these exposures. As to the experiments, I have not yet ventured upon many, for having occasioned a small solution of continuity in the skin of my forefinger by an accidental incision, I have been obliged to apply a styptic secured by a ligature. By placing some butter, however, in a temperature of 96, I succeeded in reducing it to a deliquescent state; and by the usual refrigerating process, I believe I should have reconverted it into a gelatine, but that it refused to coagulate, owing, doubtless, to some defect in the apparatus. You are aware that a phosphorescent light emanates from several species of fish in an incipient state of putrefaction, to which has been attributed the iridescent appearance of the sea at certain seasons. For the illustration of this curious property, I hoarded a mackarel in a closet for several days, and it was already beginning to be most interestingly luminous, when mamma, who had for some time been complaining of a horrid stench in the house, discovered my hidden treasure, and ordered the servant to toss it on a dunghill, observing that she expected sooner or later to be poisoned alive Mamma has ent glorious struggle would never give the least encouragement to aMussulman. yes by my nasty nonsense. no nose for experimental philosophy; no more have 1, you will say, for terday I was walking with a prism before my eyes, comparing the different rays of the spectrum with Newton's theory, I came full bump against an open door, which drove the sharp edge of the glass against the cartilaginous projection of the nose, occasioning much sternutation, and a considerable discharge of blood from the nasal emunctories. The mucus of the nose is certainly the same substance as our tears, but being more exposed to the air becomes more viscid, from the mucilage absorbing oxygen. By means of nitrate of silver, I have also formed some crystals of Diana, and I have been eminently successful in making detonating powder, although the last explosion happening to occur at night, just as our next-door neighbour Alderman Heavisides was reading of the tremendous thunderbolt that fell in the gentleman's garden at Holloway, he took it for granted he had been visited by a similar phenomenon, and in this apprehension shuffled down stairs upon his nether extremity, being prevented from walking by the gout, ejaculating all the way "Lord have mercy upon us! fire! murder!"-Upon discovering the cause of his alarm, he declared that the blue-stocking hussey,(meaning me) ought to be sent to the Tread-mill, and mamma says she fully expects we shall shortly be indicted for a nuisance. In conchology, I cannot boast of any very important additions to my collection, having encountered few of what Hatchett calls the porcellaneous class, and none of the multivalves. Among the bivalves, however, I have met some curious specimens of the Ostrea edulis, or common oyster, the cardium or cockle, as well as several of the winkle and periwinkle class. While walking with my cousin George, who, as you well know, laughs at all my studies, and loses no opportunity of making a bad pun,we were accosted by a fisherman who asked us to buy some beautiful specimens of the mytilus, or common muscle, but George would not let me purchase, declaring that he was a staunch Hellenist, and during the pres But geology, or to speak more accurately geognosy, my favourite study, ah! my dearest Maria Louisa, could you imagine that I would leave my researches for a moment unprosecuted? No, no, I have pursued them with enthusiasm. Providing myself with a hammer and basket, I mounted a donkey, and, George accompanying me upon his favourite colt, we proceeded to the Downs, where we soon discovered a chalk-pit, exhibiting strata of flint in a horizontal direction, and some describing an angle of fortyfive degrees, occasioned apparently by partial subsidence of the soil. Being obliged to beat my donkey severely to get him forward, George observed that I was giving him a specimen of wacke, and as the colt whinnied, and the ass made a grunting noise, he added that I might now make an addition of whinstone and gruntstein to my collection. A piece of granite in a state of disintegration, displayed an interesting union of quartz, feldspar, and mica; and I stumbled upon a bit of sandstone or grit, divided by fissure into parallelopipeds. While I was admiring it, George came galloping up to inform me he had just discovered two beautiful specimens, one of amygdaloid, or toadstone, and the other of primitive trap, and as I had just been reading of the latter in Mr. Jameson's Sketch of the Wernerian Geognosy, I eagerly hastened to the spot. Guess my disappointment, my dearest Maria Louisa, when I found the former to consist of a large toad squatted upon a great pebble; and the latter to be nothing but a hole dug in the turf, and provided with a springe to catch wheat-ears, which George with a horse-laugh maintained to be an indisputable example of primitive trap. By way of making amends, however, for this unfeeling joke, he declared, with a very serious face, that he had passed a perfect specimen of quartz, and assisting me to dismount, he clambered with me to the top of a steep hill, and pointing to a sheep-pond appealed to my own candid bosom whether it did not contain a great many quarts of dirty water. |