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The concluding observations on “the extension of Britain,” and her colonial interests, are in a forcible and liberal tone, but as they take rather too political a turn for our pages, we recommend the anxious reader to the volume itself, which is altogether the production of an original thinker and an impartial writer.

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SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

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THE CRUISE OF H.M.  SHIP TORCH.

A Fragment.

I was the mate of the morning watch, and, as day dawned, I had amused myself with other younkers over the side, examining the shot holes and other injuries sustained from the fire of the frigate, and contrasting the clean, sharp, well-defined apertures, made by the 24 lb. shot from the long guns, with the bruised and splintered ones from the 32 lb. carronades; but the men had begun to wash down the decks, and the first gush of clotted blood and water from the scuppers fairly turned me sick.  I turned away, when Mr. Kennedy, our gunner, a good steady old Scotchman, with whom I was a bit of a favourite, came up to me—­“Mr. Cringle, the captain has sent for you; poor Mr. Johnstone is fast going, he wants to see you.”

I knew my young messmate had been wounded, for I had seen him carried below after the frigate’s second broad-side; but the excitement of a boy, who had never smelled powder fired in anger before, had kept me on deck the whole night, and it never once occurred to me to ask for him, until the old gunner spoke.

I hastened down to our small confined berth, and there I saw a sight that quickly brought me to myself.  Poor Johnstone was indeed going; a grape shot had struck him, and torn his belly open.  There he lay in his bloody hammock on the deck, pale and motionless as if he had already departed, except a slight twitching at the corners of his mouth, and a convulsive contraction and distension of his nostrils.  His brown ringlets still clustered over his marble forehead, but they were drenched in the cold sweat of death.  The surgeon could do nothing for him, and had left him; but our old captain—­bless him for it—­I little expected, from his usual crusty bearing, to find him so employed—­had knelt by his side, and, whilst he read from the Prayer Book one of those beautiful petitions in our church service to Almighty God, for mercy to the passing soul of one so young, and so early cut off, the tears trickled down the old man’s cheeks, and filled the furrows worn in them by the washing up of many a salt spray.  On the other side of his narrow bed, fomenting the rigid muscles of his neck and chest, sat Mistress Connolly, one of three women on board—­a rough enough creature, heaven knows, in common weather; but her stifled sobs showed that the mournful sight had stirred up all the woman within her.  She had