Grand Pilot of Castile. The French still call the mates of
merchant vessels--that is, the officers who watch about, take
charge of the deck--_pilotes_, and this designation is not
impossibly reserved to them as representing the _pilote
hauturier_ of former times, the scientific guide of ships _dans
la haute mer_, as distinguished from the _pilote côtier_, who
simply hugged the shore. The last class of pilot, it is almost
superfluous to observe, is still with us and does take our ships,
inwards or outwards, across the bar, if there be one, and does no
more. The _hauturier_ has long been replaced in all countries by
the captain, and it must be within the experience of some of us
that when outward bound the captain as often as not has been the
last man to come on board. We did not meet him until the ship,
which until his arrival was in the hands of the _côtier_, was
well out of harbour. Then our _côtier_ left us."

Prodigious!

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Note, Oct. 21, 1893.--The nuisance revived again when Mr.
Nettleship the younger perished on Mont Blanc. And again, the friend
of Lowe and Nettleship, the great Master of Balliol, had hardly gone
to his grave before a dispute arose, not only concerning his parentage
(about which any man might have certified himself at the smallest
expense of time and trouble), but over an unusually pointless epigram
that was made at Cambridge many years ago, and neither on him, nor on
his father, but on an entirely different Jowett, _Semper ego auditor
tantum?_--