sive to a delicate frame as to leave nothing to humanity but his wishes and his tears. His audience, however, more than participated in his feelings, and bestowed a larger bounty than perhaps his most eloquent address could have obtained.

In his domestic life our preacher has himself experienced that happiness which he has been the instrument of procuring to so many thousands of his fellow-creatures. In the year 1798 he married a very amiable and accomplished young woman, the daughter of Goddard Richards, Esq. of Grange in the county of Wexford: who has presented him with two girls and a boy. Thus in the bosom of domestic happiness, and amid the admiration and respect of a most extensive circle of friends, Dean Kirwan continues a brilliant example of the incalculable benefits the talents and benevolent zeal of a single pastor of the christian church can confer on his native country and posterity.

SIR HOME RIGGS POPHAM,

K. M. AND A CAPTAIN IN THE ROYAL NAVY.

THE cross of St. George which now waves triumphant on every sea, and is known and respected in the remotest regions of the habitable world, was but a few centuries since confined to far humbler limits. Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, the greatness and independence of which have passed away like a dream, na

vigated

vigated the Mediterranean with their war-gallies and their merchantmen, while we crept along our own coasts, permitted our wool to be exported for the benefit of foreigners, and in return were supplied with all the articles of luxury from abroad. At that period too, the Hans Towns, now dwindled into comparative insignificance, became the emporia of commerce. The sovereigns of Spain and Portugal had also acquired great honour by the patronage of a Magellan and a Columbus, before our Henry VII. invested Giovanni Gaboto, an Italian adventurer who happened to settle at Bristol, with the power and the means of prosecuting the discoveries of that fortunate Florentine, who without any of the merit of an original discoverer, found means to confer his name on the New Continent.

If such was the deplorable situation of English commerce at the end of the fifteenth century, that but few of our vessels ventured beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and we were obliged to recur to the experience of a stranger for the conduct of a voyage which ended in the discovery of Newfoundland, what must have been the state of Ireland? That fair portion of the British isles was at this period a prey to anarchy and confusion, the theatre of contention between hostile chiefs, and the favourite spot in which either the gold or the religion of Rome, Madrid, and Paris, found means to form parties adverse to the interests of England.

The able historian of the reign of Charles V. has justly observed, that navigation and ship building

are

are arts so nice and complicated, that they require the ingenuity as well as the experience of many successive ages to bring them to any degree of perfection. It was impossible, therefore, in times such as those, that the country to which we now allude should have assumed any degree of maritime importance. It accordingly happened, that at a later epoch, while the sister island under better auspices was fitting out fleets for both the Indies, the Irish were creeping along the shores of their rivers in coracles made of leather, like the Esquimaux, or sailing from one headland of the coast to another, in boats but little larger than the canoe of an Indian.

Happier times succeeded after a long interval. The inhabitants of that country, in consequence of the removal of a variety of impolitic restraints, were at length suffered to participate in our commerce. Their prosperity was at last discovered to be intimately connected with our own. The adventurous sons of Hibernia were no longer suffered to fight and bleed for foreign countries. They settled in, and helped to colonize, the dominions of Britain in the East and West Indies; they entered by multitudes into our army as they became more commercial, a taste for

* Virgil, who was an antiquary as well as a poet, recurs to the early history of Rome, in order to describe Charon ferrying his frail leathern boat across the marshy Styx:

"gemuit sub pondere cymba

Sutilis, et multum accepit rimosa paludem."

1805-1806,

Dd

Eneid. VI. 414.

naval

naval affairs of course prevailed, and they have of late crowded into our fleets. By our short-sighted penal laws we drove them to seek their bread among our enemies; by milder and wiser means we have united them to the general fortune of the state; and it only wants a generous extension of the same beneficent policy, to render both protestants and catholics alike interested in the stability of the empire.

Sir Home Riggs Popham, of whose life we are now about to present an outline, was born in Ireland, about the year 1762. His father, having married twice or three times, had a very numerous family, and the boys of course were obliged to seek their fortune in different quarters of the globe. The eldest, whom we shall find occasion to mention hereafter, entered into the military service of the East India Company, in which he at length obtained the rank of a general officer, after long and meritorious exertions; while Home, of whom we now propose to treat, and who was a younger brother, after receiving the necessary preliminary education (which this narrative will prove not to have been defective), entered as a midshipman into the British navy. During the American war he attained the rank of lieutenant; and in consequence of the peace that ensued, the

* Major now General Popham was then upon the Bengal establishment, and had already distinguished himself by a gallant exploit. Having learned that the dominions of the Rannah or Queen of Ghod were invaded by the Mahrattas, he marched to her relief, drove the enemy before him, and surprised the strong fort of Gwalior, until then deemed impregnable.

greater

greater part of our ships being laid up in ordinary, he had a fortune and almost a profession to seek. He was, therefore, induced to turn his eyes towards the East, where the brother before alluded to had already distinguished himself. He accordingly repaired thither, visited most parts of India, and, having evinced a genius for nautical topography, was appointed, at the special recommendation of Lord Cornwallis, one of a committee sent in 1788 to survey New Harbour, in the river Hoogly, which had been represented by Mr. Lacam as a proper place for a dock-yard. He also appears in 1791 to have commanded a country-ship*; and being bound from Bengal to Bombay in 1791, during a very tempestuous monsoon, he was obliged to bear up for the Streights of Malacca, and anchor at Pulo Pinang, now called Prince of Wales Island. This event led to the discovery and survey of the southern passage or outlet, which induced him to think that the great desideratum of a marine yard might be effectually obtained there.

In 1791, a chart was accordingly engraved and published, with the leave of the government, and at the sole expence of a public-spirited individual †, then sheriff of Calcutta, impelled by no other view than the good of the service.

*This was formerly a very common occurrence; for the late Governor Johnstone, and the father of the present Admiral Stirling, both commanded American merchantmen while lieutenants in the navy, during the time of peace.

† Anthony Lambert, Esq.

"I feel it incumbent on me," says Captain Popham, in a letter dated Calcutta, December 29, 1791, "to relate the particular