As you may think, it was towards my father's profession that my
thoughts and my hopes turned, for from my childhood I have never
seen the heave of the sea or tasted the salt upon my lips without
feeling the blood of five generations of seamen thrill within my
veins. And think of the challenge which was ever waving in those
days before the eyes of a coast-living lad! I had but to walk up to
Wolstonbury in the war time to see the sails of the French chasse-
marees and privateers. Again and again I have heard the roar of the
guns coming from far out over the waters. Seamen would tell us how
they had left London and been engaged ere nightfall, or sailed out
of Portsmouth and been yard-arm to yard-arm before they had lost
sight of St. Helen's light. It was this imminence of the danger
which warmed our hearts to our sailors, and made us talk, round the
winter fires, of our little Nelson, and Cuddie Collingwood, and
Johnnie Jarvis, and the rest of them, not as being great High
Admirals with titles and dignities, but as good friends whom we
loved and honoured above all others. What boy was there through the
length and breadth of Britain who did not long to be out with them
under the red-cross flag?

But now that peace had come, and the fleets which had swept the
Channel and the Mediterranean were lying dismantled in our harbours,
there was less to draw one's fancy seawards. It was London now of
which I thought by day and brooded by night: the huge city, the
home of the wise and the great, from which came this constant stream
of carriages, and those crowds of dusty people who were for ever
flashing past our window-pane. It was this one side of life which
first presented itself to me, and so, as a boy, I used to picture
the City as a gigantic stable with a huge huddle of coaches, which
were for ever streaming off down the country roads. But, then,