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Many of the Captains here have expressed a desire that I would give them a general notice when ever I go to court; and if they are within five hundred miles, they will come up to attend me! Now all this is very pleasing.; but, alas! my love, until we have peace, I shall never be happy and yet, how we are to make it out in peace, I know not,with high rank and no fortune. At all events, we can do as we did before. It is true I have the chief command, but there are neither French nor Spaniards on the sea, and our cruisers find nothing but neutrals, who carry on all the trade of the enemy. Our prizes you see are lost. Villeneuve's ship had a great deal of money in her, but it all went to the bottom. I am afraid the fees for this patent will be large, and pinch me: But never mind; let others solicit pensions, I am an Englishman, and will never ask for money as a favour. How do my darlings go on? I wish you would make them write to me by turns, and give me the whole history of their proceedings. Oh! how I shall rejoice, when I come home, to find them as much improved in knowledge as I have advanced them in station in the world: But take care they do not give themselves foolish airs. Their excellence should be in knowledge, in virtue, and benevolence to all; but most to those who are humble, and require their aid. This is true nobility, and is now become an incumbent duty on them. I am out of all patience with Bounce. The consequential airs he gives himself since he became a Right Honourable dog, are insufferable. He considers it beneath his dignity to play with Commoners' dogs, and, truly, thinks that he does them grace when he condescends to lift up his leg against them. This, I think, is carrying the insolence of rank to the extreme; but he is a dog that does it.-25th December. This is Christmas-day; a merry and cheerful one, I hope, to all my darlings. May God bless us, and grant that we may pass the next together. Everybody is very good to me; but his Majesty's letters are my pride: it is there I feel the object of my life attained."

And again, in the same noble spirit is the following to his father-in-law :—

"I have only been on shore once since I left England, and do not know when I shall go again. I am unceasingly writing, and the day is not long enough for me to get through my business. I hope my children are every day acquiring some know ledge, and wish them to write a French letter every day to me or their mother. I shall read them all when I come home. If there were an opportunity, I should like them to be taught Spanish, which is the most elegant language in Europe, and very easy. I hardly know how we shall be able to support the dignity to which his Majesty has been pleased to raise ine. Let others plead for pensions; I can be rich without money, by endeavouring to be supe rior to everything poor. I would have my services to my country unstained by any interested motive; and old Scott and I can go on in our cabbage-garden without much greater expense than formerly. But I have had a great destruction of my furniture and stock; I have hardly a chair that has not a shot in

it, and many have lost both legs and arms-without hope of pension! My wine broke in moving, and my pigs slain in battle; and these are heavy losses where they cannot be replaced.

I suppose I shall have great demands on me for patents and fees: But we must pay for being great. I get no prize-money. Since I left England, I have received only 1837., which has not quite paid for my wine; but I do not care about being rich, if we can 84

but keep a good fire in winter. How I long to have a peep into my own house, and a walk in my own garden! It is the pleasing object of all my hopes." In the midst of all those great concerns, it is delightful to find the noble Admiral writing thus, from the Mediterranean, of his daugh ter's sick governess, and inditing this postscript to the little girls themselves:

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! I am

How sorry am I for poor Miss sure you will spare no pains for her; and do not lose sight of her when she goes to Edinburgh. Tell her that she must not want any advice or any comfort; but I need not say this to you, my beloved, who are kindness itself. I am much obliged to the Corporation of Newcastle for every mark which they give of their esteem and approbation of my service. But where shall we find a place in our small house for all those vases and epergnes? A kind letter from them would have gratified me as much, and have been less trouble to them."

"My darlings, Sarah and Mary,

"I was delighted with your last letters, my blessings, and desire you to write to me very often, and tell me all the news of the city of Newcastle and town of Morpeth. I hope we shall have many happy days, and many a good laugh together yet. Be kind to old Scott; and when you see him weeding shilling! my oaks, give the old man a

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May God Almighty bless you."

The patent of his peerage was limited to the heirs male of his body; and, having only daughters, he very early expressed a wish that it might be extended to them and their male heirs. But this was not attended to. When he heard of his pension, he wrote, in the same lofty spirit, to Lord Barham, that if the title could be continued to the heirs of his daughters, he did not care for the pension at all! and in urging his request for the change, he reminded his Lordship, with an amusing naïveté, that government ought really to show some little favour to his daughters, considering that, if they had not kept him constantly at sea since 1793, he would probably have had half a dozen sons by this time, to succeed him in his honours!

It is delightful to read and extract passages like these; but we feel that we must stop; and that we have already exhibited enough of this book, both to justify the praises we have bestowed on it, and to give our readers a full impression of the exalted and most amiable character to which it relates. We shall add no more, therefore, that is merely personal to Lord Collingwood, except what belongs to the decay of his health, his applications for recall, and the death that he magnanimously staid to meet, when that recall was so strangely withheld. His constitution had been considerably impaired even before the action of Trafalgar; but in 1808 his health seemed entirely to give way; and he wrote, in August of that year, earnestly entreating to be allowed to come home. The answer to his application was, that it was so difficult to supply his place, that his recall must, at all events, be suspended. In a letter to Lady Collingwood, he refers to this correspondence, and after mentioning his official application to the Admiralty, he says:

"What their answer will be, I do not know yet, but I had before mentioned my declining health to 3 F 2

Lord Mulgrave, and he tells me in reply, that he hopes I will stay, for he knows not how to supply my place. The impression which his letter made upon me was one of grief and sorrow: first, that with such a list as we have including more than a hundred admirals-there should be thought to be any difficulty in finding a successor of superior ability to me; and next, that there should be any obstacle in the way of the only comfort and happiness that I have to look forward to in this world.'

In answer to Lord Mulgrave's statement, he afterwards writes, that his infirmities had sensibly increased; but "I have no object in the world that I put in competition with my public duty; and so long as your lordship thinks it proper to continue me in this command, my utmost efforts shall be made to strengthen the impression which you now have; but I still hope, that whenever it may be done with convenience, your lordship will bear in mind my request." Soon after he writes thus to his family:-"I am an unhappy creature-old and worn out. I wish to come to England; but some objection is ever made to it." And, again, "I have been very unwell. The physician tells me that it is the effect of constant confinement-which is not very comfortable, as there seems little chance of its being otherwise. Old age and its infirmities are coming on me very fast; and I am weak and tottering on my legs. It is high time I should return to England; and I hope I shall be allowed to do it before long. It will otherwise be too late." And it was too late! He was not relievedand scorning to leave the post assigned to him, while he had life to maintain it, he died at it, in March, 1810, upwards of eighteen months after he had thus stated to the government his reasons for desiring a recall. The following is the editor's touching and affectionate account of the closing scene- -full of pity and of grandeur and harmonising beautifully with the noble career which was destined there to be arrested :

"Lord Collingwood had been repeatedly urged by his friends to surrender his command, and to seek in England that repose which had become so necessary in his declining health; but his feelings on the subject of discipline were peculiarly strong, and he had ever exacted the most implicit obedience from others. He thought it therefore his duty not to quit the post which had been assigned to him, until he should be duly relieved, and replied, that his life was his country's, in whatever way it might

be required of him.' When he moored in the har bour of Port Mahon, on the 25th of February, he was in a state of great suffering and debility; and having been strongly recommended by his medica attendants to try the effect of gentle exercise on horseback, he went immediately on shore, accom. panied by his friend Captain Hallowell, who left his ship to attend him in his illness: but it was then too late. He became incapable of bearing the slightest fatigue; and as it was represented to him that his return to England was indispensably necessary for the preservation of his life, he, on the 3d of March, surrendered his command to Rear Admiral Martin The two following days were spent in unsuccessful hon; but on the 6th the wind came round to the attempts to warp the Ville de Paris out of Port Ma westward, and at sunset the ship succeeded in clearing the harbour, and made sail for England. When Lord Collingwood was informed that he was again at sea, he rallied for a time his exhausted strength, and said to those around him, 'Then I may yet live to meet the French once more.' On the morning of the 7th there was a considerable swell, and his friend Captain Thomas, on entering his cabin, observed, that he feared the motion of the vessel dis turbed him. No, Thomas,' he replied; I am now in a state in which nothing in this world can disturb consolatory to you, and all who love me, to see how me more. I am dying; and I am sure it must be comfortably I am coming to my end.' He told one of his attendants that he had endeavoured to review, as far as was possible, all the actions of his past life, and that he had the happiness to say, that nothing times of his absent family, and of the doubtful congave him a moment's uneasiness. He spoke at test in which he was about to leave his country involved, but ever with calmness and perfect resigna tion to the will of God; and in this blessed state of mind, after taking an affectionate farewell of his at tendants, he expired without a struggle at six o'clock of fifty-nine years and six months. in the evening of that day, having attained the age

"Áfter his decease, it was found that, with the exception of the stomach, all the other organs of life were peculiarly vigorous and unimpaired; and from this inspection, and the age which the surviving members of his family have attained, there is every reason to conclude that if he had been earlier relieved from his command, he would still have been in the enjoyment of the honours and rewards which would doubtless have awaited him on his return to England."

The remainder of this article, containing discussions on the practices of flogging in the Navy, and of Impressment (to both which Lord Collingwood, as well as Nelson, were opposed), is now omitted; as scarcely possess ing sufficient originality to justify its republi cation, even in this Miscellany.

The notion entertained of a Bishop, in our antiepiscopal latitudes, is likely enough, we admit, not to be altogether just:-and we are far from upholding it as correct, when we say, that a Bishop, among us, is generally supposed to be a stately and pompous person, clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day-somewhat obsequious to persons in power, and somewhat haughty and imperative to those who are beneath himwith more authority in his tone and manner, than solidity in his learning; and yet with much more learning than charity or humility -very fond of being called my Lord, and driving about in a coach with mitres on the panels, but little addicted to visiting the sick and fatherless, or earning for himself the blessing of those who are ready to perish

"Familiar with a round

Of Ladyships a stranger to the poor' decorous in manners, but no foe to luxurious indulgences-rigid in maintaining discipline among his immediate dependents, and in exacting the homage due to his dignity from the andignified mob of his brethren; but perfectly willing to leave to them the undivided privileges of teaching and of comforting their peoole, and of soothing the sins and sorrows of their erring flocks-scornful, if not openly hostile, upon all occasions, to the claims of the People, from whom he is generally sprung and presuming every thing in favour of the royal will and pierogative, by which he has been exalted-setting, indeed, in all cases, a much higher value on the privileges of the few, than the rights that are common to all, and exerting himself strenuously that the former may ever prevail-caring more, accordingly, for the interests of his order than the general good of the church, and far more for the Church than for the Religion it was established to teach-hating dissenters still more bitterly than infidels-but combating Both rather with obloquy and invocation of civil penalties, than with the artillery of a powerful reason, or the reconciling influences of humble and holy life-uttering now and hen haughty professions of humility, and egularly bewailing, at fit seasons, the severity of those Episcopal labours, which sadder, and even threaten to abridge a life, which all other eyes appears to flow on in almost unbroken leisure and continued in dulgenc!!

This, or something like this, we take to be the notion that most of us Presbyterians have been used to entertain of a modern Bishop: and it is mainly because they believed that

If this notion be utterly erroneous, the picture which Bishop Heber has here drawn of himself, must tend powerfully to correct it. If, on the other hand, it be in any respect just, he must be allowed, at all events, to have been a splendid exception. We are willing to take it either way. Though we must say that we incline rather to the latter alternative-since it is difficult to suppose, with all due allowance for prejudices, that our abstract idea of a Bishop should be in such flagrant contradiction to the truth, that one who was merely a fair specimen of the order, should be most accurately characterised by precisely reversing every thing that entered into that idea. Yet this is manifestly the case with Bishop Heber-of whom we do not know at this moment how we could give a better description, than by merely reading backwards all we have now ventured to set down as characteristic of his right reverend brethren. Learned, polished, and dignified, he was undoubtedly; yet far more conspicuously kind, humble, tolerant, and laboriouszealous for his church too, and not forgetful of his station; but remembering it more for the duties than for the honours that were attached to it, and infinitely more zealous for the religious improvement, and for the happiness, and spiritual and worldly good of his fellowcreatures, of every tongue, faith, and complexion: indulgent to all errors and infirmi ties-liberal, in the best and truest sense of the word-humble and conscientiously diffident of his own excellent judgment and neverfailing charity-looking on all men as the children of one God, on all Christians as the redeemed of one Saviour, and on all Christian teachers as fellow-labourers, bound to help and encourage each other in their arduous and anxious task. His portion of the work, accordingly, he wrought faithfully, zealously, and well; and, devoting himself to his duty with a truly apostolical fervour, made no scruple to forego, for its sake, not merely his personal ease and comfort, but those domestic affections which were ever so much more valuable in his eyes, and in the end, we fear, consummating the sacrifice with his life! If such a character be common among the dig. nitaries of the English Church, we sincerely congratulate them on the fact, and bow our heads in homage and veneration before them. If it be rare, as we fear it must be in any church, we trust we do no unworthy service in pointing it out for honour and imitation to all; and in praying that the example, in all its parts, may promote the growth of similar virtues among all denominations of Christians, in every region of the world.