After the dear inmates were gone, I turned from the door of the house in disgust, and ran direct to my boat, like a dog with a tin-kettle.  When I got on board, I hated the sight of every body, and the smell of every thing; pitch, paint, bilge-water, tar and rum, entering into horrible combination, had conspired against me:  and I was as sick and as miserable as the most love-sick seaman can conceive.  I have before observed that we had arrived at Spithead, and as I have nothing new to say of that place, I shall proceed to sea.

We sailed for the North American station, the pleasantest I could go to when away from Emily.  Our passage was tedious, and we were put on short allowance of water.  Those only who have known it will understand it.  All felt it but the captain; who, claiming privilege, took a dozen gallons every day to bathe his feet in, and that water, when done with, was greedily sought for by the men.  There was some murmuring about it, which came to the captain’s ears, who only observed, with an apathy peculiar to Almack’s,

“Well, you know, if a man has no privilege, what’s the use of being a captain?”

“Very true, my lord,” said the toad-eater, with a low bow.

I will now give a short description of his lordship.  He was a smart, dapper, well made man, with a handsome, but not an intellectual countenance; cleanly and particular in his person; and, assisted by the puffs of Toady, had a very good opinion of himself; proud of his aristocratic birth, and still more vain of his personal appearance.  His knowledge on most points was superficial—­high life, and anecdotes connected with it, were the usual topics of his discourse; at his own table he generally engrossed all the conversation:  and while his guests drank his wine, “they laughed with counterfeited glee,” &c.  His reading was comprised in two volumes octavo, being the Memoirs of the Count de Grammont, which amusing and aristocratical work was never out of his hand.  He had been many years at sea; but strange to say, knew nothing, literally nothing, of his profession.  Seamanship, navigation, and every thing connected with the service, he was perfectly ignorant of.  I had heard him spoken of as a good officer, before he joined us; and I must, in justice to him, say that he was naturally good tempered, and I believe as brave a man as ever drew a sword.

He seldom made any professional remark, being aware of his deficiency, and never ventured beyond his depth intentionally.  When he came on the quarter-deck, he usually looked at the weather main-brace, and if it was not as taut as a bar, would order it to be made so.  Here he could not easily commit himself:  but it became a bye-word with us when we laughed at him below.  He had a curious way of forgetting, or pretending to forget, the names of men and things, I presume, because they were so much beneath him; and in their stead, substituted the elegant phrases of “What’s-his-name,” “What-do-ye-call-’em,” and “thingumbob.”