I think these were the notables of our party. I will not mention
the laughing ogling lady of Cadiz, whose manners, I very much
regret to say, were a great deal too lively for my sense of
propriety; nor those fair sufferers, her companions, who lay on the
deck with sickly, smiling female resignation: nor the heroic
children, who no sooner ate biscuit than they were ill, and no
sooner were ill than they began eating biscuit again: but just
allude to one other martyr, the kind lieutenant in charge of the
mails, and who bore his cross with what I can't but think a very
touching and noble resignation.

There's a certain sort of man whose doom in the world is
disappointment,--who excels in it,--and whose luckless triumphs in
his meek career of life, I have often thought, must be regarded by
the kind eyes above with as much favour as the splendid successes
and achievements of coarser and more prosperous men. As I sat with
the lieutenant upon deck, his telescope laid over his lean legs,
and he looking at the sunset with a pleased, withered old face, he
gave me a little account of his history. I take it he is in nowise
disinclined to talk about it, simple as it is: he has been seven-
and-thirty years in the navy, being somewhat more mature in the
service than Lieutenant Peel, Rear-Admiral Prince de Joinville, and
other commanders who need not be mentioned. He is a very well-
educated man, and reads prodigiously,--travels, histories, lives of
eminent worthies and heroes, in his simple way. He is not in the
least angry at his want of luck in the profession. "Were I a boy
to-morrow," he said, "I would begin it again; and when I see my
schoolfellows, and how they have got on in life, if some are better
off than I am, I find many are worse, and have no call to be
discontented." So he carries Her Majesty's mails meekly through