ronet, and the tendency they had to hold up to obloquy whole classes of dignified persons. Wherein consists the obloquy, wherein the invidious and personal character of the enqui ry, I know not; except, indeed, that it may be called personal to seek the names of persons, respecting whom we are desirous of obtaining specific facts or information. Beyond that, (but though I do not suspect the right honourable gentleman of quibbling or punning upon the word,) it is no more personal, in any offensive sense of the term, to investigate what Privy Councillors receive out of the public purse, than to examine, as is constantly done, how the Sovereign himself spends the money which is voted for the Civil List. I am no admirer of this squeamish delicacy about confessing the receipt of money, when there is none as to the receiving of it. If men be not ashamed, nor have cause to be ashamed, of what they do, or have done, they will not shrink from the mention of it. A derives L.5000 a-year from the national purse in the shape of a sinecure or a pension, and A knows he has rendered the nation services which that sum does not overpay. He has no personal feelings to be wounded, nor will he regard it as invidious scrutiny, if they who pay the L.5000 ask to know his services. The more just his claim, the more unimpeachable his merits, the prouder will be his position, the more triumphantly will he come out of the enquiry. It can only be when enquiry would disclose insufficient claims, or establish the fact of no claims, that it will be resented as an invidious encroachment on personal feelings, and that offensive motives come into consideration. But it is holding up the Members of the Privy Council to obloquy! How? To enquire what they receive, with a view to ascertain whether they ought to receive it? If this involve any obloquy upon the parties concerned, it can be in no other way than as the consequence of dragging to light large and unmerited emoluments; and such obloquy an honest House of Commons should always be prepared to heap upon those who de serve it. It comes, in short, to this, whether they whose pockets are dipped into for the money, are to ask whether their pockets cannot be spared? As to the bastard delicacy, the spurious sense of honour, which only kicks at giving a reason for receiving thousands, but never falters at receiving them, I should be as little inclined to treat it with respect, as I should the delicacy of an Old Bailey witness, who considered it personal and invidious to have the truth twisted out of him. Give me the delicacy and honour which will not touch the gold that has not been fairly and honourably earned. Look, for example, to Šir G. Cockburn's speech. If every member of the Privy Council, in his own person, or by deputy, could stand up in the House of Commons, and give the same account of his emoluments, the country would be satisfied, poor and beggared as it is. “Let every member of the Privy Council," observed Mr Huskisson, "shew that he has earned his emoluments as deservedly as my honourable and gallant friend has, and depend upon it there will be no dissatisfaction created by the production of the original return." Not only would the country be satisfied, but the House would redeem its character, and the individuals themselves, instead of branding the enquiry as invidious and personal, must be grateful to the honourable Baronet for the opportunity he had afforded them of proving that they deserved what they received. The gallant Admiral's speech was a modest, manly, and unanswerable statement; such a one as might have made the waspish lord who provoked it (Lord Milton) ashamed of his coarseness, and the honourable Baronet, who brought forward the motion, regret the allusion he had made to his case. A REAL VISION. BY THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. 'Tis strange that people now-a-days persist Portentous light, wraith, death-watch, warning voice, Shall to our family ever once be named.” Good people! some enthusiasts would despise, And sphere of action! I would have them claim The hedgehog's tottering brood, all helpless things, Then, as a shred of elemental life, Point them the eyry o'er the dizzy cliff That claim'd their fellowship. The path that led I lay upon a mountain, on the brink Of that unmoulded hideous precipice That walls the western side of dark Loch Skene. I look'd up to the heavens-all was dark, Or demons crawling from the wrath behind. A poor secluded and bewilder'd boy, My heart was strengthen'd, and I felt myself But all at once my faithful dog began, Were nigh at hand. I cast my eyes around, Grew more and more intense; and then they turn'd And, staring at each other, tried to read Then stretch'd their sapient noses to discern If savour of humanity was there, Tramp'd with the foot, and whistled through the nose, Then fled with hesitating starts away. But, what alarm'd me most, my faithful dog Lay in extremity, with closed eyes, And trembling every limb. Sometimes he oped A dull and drumly eye towards the wraith, The spectre stretch'd itself upon the sward, Then turn'd its face to me; and then I knew I saw some forms around the couch of death, Like sunbeam from an opening of the cloud, But she was gone! my faithful monitress A blot on nature's cheek-a being lost Whom shepherds long with pity would have named, ALTRIVE LAKE. DAVY JONES AND THE YANKEE PRIVATEER.* We had refitted, and been four days at sea, on our voyage to Jamaica, when the gun-room officers gave our mess a blowout. The increased motion and rushing of the vessel through the water, the groaning of the masts, the howling of the rising gale, and the frequent trampling of the watch on deck, were prophetic of wet jackets to some of us; still, midshipmanlike, we were as happy as a good dinner and some wine could make us, until the old gunner shoved his weatherbeaten phiz and bald pate in at the door. "Beg pardon, Mr Splinter, but if you will spare Mr Cringle on the forecastle for an hour until the moon rises."-("Spare," quotha," is his majesty's officer a joint stool:")-"Why, Mr Kennedy, why? here, man, take a glass of grog."-"I thank you, It is coming on a roughish night, sir; the running ships should sir. be crossing us hereabouts; indeed more than once I thought there was a strange sail close aboard of us, the scud is flying so low, and in such white flakes; and none of us have an eye like Mr Cringle, unless it be John Crow, and he is all but frozen." "Well, Tom, I suppose you will go"-Anglice, from a first lieutenant to a mid-" Brush instanter." Having changed my uniform, for shag-trowsers, pea-jacket, and southwest cap, I went forward, and took my station, in no pleasant humour, on the stowed jib, with my arm round the stay. I had been half an hour there, the weather was getting worse, the rain was beating in my face, and the spray from the stern was flashing over me, as it roared through the waste of sparkling and hissing waters. I turned my back to the wes ther for a moment, to press my hand on my strained eyes. When I open See “Cruize of the Torch," in Numler for November last. VOL. XXVIII. NO. CLXVIII. E ed them, I saw the gunner's gaunt high-featured visage thrust anxiously forward; his profile looked as if rubbed over with phosphorus, and his whole person as if we had been playing at snap dragon. "What has come over you, Mr Kennedy ?-who is burning the bluelight now ?"—" A wiser man than I am must tell you that; look forward, Mr Cringle-look there; what do your books say to that?" I looked forth, and saw, at the extreme end of the jib-boom, what I had read of, certainly, but never expected to see, a pale, greenish, glowworm coloured flame, of the size and shape of the frosted glass shade over the swinging lamp in the gun-room. It drew out and flattened as the vessel pitched and rose again, and as she sheered about it, wavered round the point that seemed to attract it, like a soapsud bubble blown from a tobacco pipe, before it is shaken into the air; at the core it was comparatively bright, but faded into a halo. It shed a baleful and ominous light on the surrounding objects; the group of sailors on the forecastle looked like spectres, and they shrunk together, and whispered when it began to roll slowly along the spar towards where the boatswain was sitting at my feet. At this instant something slid down the stay, and a cold clammy hand passed round my neck. I was within an ace of losing my hold, and tumbling overboard."Heaven have mercy on me, what's that?"-" It's that skylarking son of a gun, Jem Sparkle's monkey, sir. You, Jem, you'll never rest till that brute is made shark bait of."* But Jackoo vanished up the stay again, chuckling and grinning in the ghostly radiance, as if he had been the "Spirit of the Lamp." The light was still there, but a cloud of mist, like a burst of vapour from a steam boiler, came down upon the gale, and flew past, when it disappeared. I followed the white mass as it sailed down the wind; it did not, as it appeared to me, vanish in the darkness, but seemed to remain in sight to leeward, as if checked by a sudden flaw; yet none of our sails were taken aback. A thought flashed on me. I peered still more intensely into the night. I was now certain. "A sail, broad on the lee-bow." The ship was in a buz in a moment. The captain answered from the quarterdeck-" Thank you, Mr Cringle. How shall we steer?"-" Keep her away a couple of points, sir, steady." -"Steady," sung the man at the helm; and a slow melancholy cadence, although a familiar sound to me, now moaned through the rushing of the wind, and smote upon my heart as if it had been the wailing of a spirit. I turned to the boatswain, who was now standing beside me-" Is that you or Davy steering, Mr Nipper? if you had not been there bodily at my elbow, I could have sworn that was your voice." When the gunner made the same remark it startled the poor fellow; he tried to take it as a joke, but could not. "There may be a laced hammock with a shot in it, for some of us ere morning." At this moment, to my dismay, the object we were chasing, shortened, gradually fell abeam of us, and finally disappeared. "The Flying Dutch man.""I can't see her at all now." And "She will be a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel that has tacked, sir.” sure enough, after a few seconds, I saw the white object lengthen, and draw out again abaft our beam. "The chase has tacked, sir, put the helm down, or she will go to windward of us." We tacked also, and time it was we did so, for the rising moon now showed us a large schooner under a crowd of sail. We edged down on her, when finding her manœuvre detected, she brailed up her flat sails, and bore up before the wind. This was our best point of sailing, and we cracked on, the captain rubbing his hands-" It's my turn to be the big un this time." Although blowing a strong northwester, it was now clear moonlight, and we hammered away from our bow guns, but whenever a shot told amongst the rigging, the injury was repaired as if by magic. It was evident we had repeatedly hulled her, from the glimmering white streaks along her counter and across her stern, occasioned by the splintering * Prophetic. See "Heat and Thirst," in Number for June last, |