The numerous and agreeable novelties continually presenting themselves to the view of the young adventurer, during this interesting voyage, could not fail to prove highly gratifying.  He was beholding a new world, while he was gaining practical skill in a new profession:  and, if the latter might be considered as a substitute for the school studies so lately quitted at North Walsham; the former amply compensated the loss of those hours of vacation amusements, the enjoyment of which he might now recollect without any regret.  The enervating influence of the torrid climes had no ill effect on his constitution; which was radically good, though partaking of his mother’s slightness and delicacy:  and he had been too virtuously educated, hastily to indulge that rash and dangerous intemperance which proves so often fatal to inconsiderate Europeans, on their first visiting the West Indies.  With a considerable store of local and professional information, he returned to England about the middle of the year 1772.

It has been said that, at this period, his mind had acquired, without any apparent cause, an entire horror of the royal navy; that Captain Suckling, who beheld with anxiety the critical situation of his nephew, was soon convinced, by the sentiment he appeared to indulge in—­“Aft, the most honour; but forward, the better man!”—­his too credulous nephew had acquired a bias utterly foreign to his real character; and that it was many weeks before all the firmness of the captain, assisted by his thorough knowledge of the human heart, could overcome these prejudices in his nephew, and reconcile him to the service on board a king’s ship.

Admitting the truth of this relation, it would be natural to suppose that Mr. Rathbone, who was probably a worthy but disappointed man, had inspired the youth with his own aversions to serving in the royal navy, without a due consideration being made for the differences of their respective interests.  This gentleman, with the utmost purity of design, might wish to prepare the nephew of his friend for mortifications and disappointments to be expected in the profession he had just embraced; it was not his fault, if pictures, which he perhaps feelingly and faithfully pourtrayed from the life, excited too much abhorrence in the mind of his young pupil.  The sentiment of “Aft, the most honour; but forward, the better man!” might come with no ill grace from the lips of Mr. Rathbone, but could never originate with a boy of thirteen.  So far, the fact may be supported by some degree of probability, but it seems incapable of proof.

In the family, no such circumstance appears to be remembered.  It is well recollected—­in some degree, to the contrary—­that, on a slight intimation from his father, of a wish that he might entirely quit the sea-service, he resolutely declared, that if he were not again sent out, he would set off without any assistance.

It may, however, be taken for granted, that he wished for more active employment in seamanship, than he could well expect to obtain, on board a man of war, in the capacity of a midshipman.  The mode which his uncle is said to have adopted for what is called the recovery of the original bias of his nephew’s mind, was to work on the ambition which, it is on all hands agreed, he in a supereminent degree possessed, to become a thorough seaman.