who, in praising a public functionary, had said, that every one
either applauded him or left him without censure, a philosopher
replied, "How seldom then must he have done his duty!"

Of Sir Alexander Ball's character, as Captain Ball, of his measures
as a disciplinarian, and of the wise and dignified principle on which
he grounded those measures, I have already spoken in a former part of
this work, and must content myself therefore with entreating the
reader to re-peruse that passage as belonging to this place, and as a
part of the present narration. Ah! little did I expect at the time I
wrote that account, that the motives of delicacy, which then impelled
me to withhold the name, would so soon be exchanged for the higher
duty which now justifies me in adding it! At the thought of such
events the language of a tender superstition is the voice of nature
itself, and those facts alone presenting themselves to our memory
which had left an impression on our hearts, we assent to, and adopt
the poet's pathetic complaint:-


O sir! the good die first,
And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket.
WORDSWORTH.


Thus the humane plan described in the pages now referred to, that a
system in pursuance of which the captain of a man-of-war uniformly
regarded his sentences not as dependent on his own will, or to be
affected by the state of his feelings at the moment, but as the pre-
established determinations of known laws, and himself as the voice of