“All that is very fine, and very true,” said the veteran; “but when you have an older head upon your shoulders, and have seen a little more of our service, you will learn to trust at least as much to friends as to merit; and rely on it, that if you could make yourself out cousin-german to the old tom-cat at the Admiralty, you would fare all the better for it.  However, it’s all over now, and there’s an end of it; but make my compliments to your uncle, and tell him that you passed your examination in a manner highly creditable to you.”

So saying, he touched his hat to the serjeant’s guard, and slipped down the side into his gig.  As he descended, I said to myself, “D——­n your monkey face, you coffee-coloured little rascal—­no thanks to you if I have passed.  I suppose your father was breeches-mender to the first lord’s butler, or else you shared your mother’s milk with a lord in waiting, and that’s the way you got the command of the ——.”

Elated with the result of the day, I threw myself into the mail that evening, and reached my father’s house in a short time after.  My reception was kind and affectionate; but death had made sad havoc in my family during my late absence.  My elder brother and two sisters had been successively called to join my poor mother in heaven, and all that remained now to comfort my father was a younger sister and myself.  I must confess that my father received me with great emotion; his own heavy afflictions from the loss of his children, and the dangers I had undergone, as well as the authentic assurances he had received of my good conduct were more than sufficient to bury all my errors in oblivion; and he appeared, and I have no doubt really was, fonder and prouder of me than ever.

As to what my own feelings were on this occasion, I shall not attempt to disguise them.  Sorry I certainly was for the death of my nearest relatives; but when the intelligence reached me, I was in the midst of the most active service.  Death in all its forms had become familiar to me; and so little impression did the event make on my mind, that I did not interrupt the thread of my history to speak of it when it occurred.  I take shame to myself for not feeling more; but I am quite sure, from this one instance in my life, that the feelings are blunted in proportion to the increase of misery around us; that the parent who, in a moment of peace and domestic tranquillity, would be agonized at the loss of one child, would view the death of ten with comparative indifference, when surrounded by war, pestilence, or famine.

My feelings, never very acute in this respect, were completely blunted by my course of life.  Those fond recollections which, in a calm scene, would have wrung from me some tears to their memory, were now drowned or absorbed in the waste, the profligacy, and the dissipation of war; and shall I add, that I easily reconciled myself to a loss which was likely so much to increase my worldly gain.  For my eldest