believe,' says he.

In 1814, when he was thirteen years of age, he was carried by his
father to Chichester to the Bishop's Palace. The Bishop had heard
from his brother the Admiral that Charles was likely to do well,
and had an order from Lord Melville for the lad's admission to the
Royal Naval College at Portsmouth. Both the Bishop and the Admiral
patted him on the head and said, 'Charles will restore the old
family'; by which I gather with some surprise that, even in these
days of open house at Northiam and golden hope of my aunt's
fortune, the family was supposed to stand in need of restoration.
But the past is apt to look brighter than nature, above all to
those enamoured of their genealogy; and the ravages of Stephen and
Thomas must have always given matter of alarm.

What with the flattery of bishops and admirals, the fine company in
which he found himself at Portsmouth, his visits home, with their
gaiety and greatness of life, his visits to Mrs. Buckner (soon a
widow) at Windsor, where he had a pony kept for him, and visited at
Lord Melville's and Lord Harcourt's and the Leveson-Gowers, he
began to have 'bumptious notions,' and his head was 'somewhat
turned with fine people'; as to some extent it remained throughout
his innocent and honourable life.

In this frame of mind the boy was appointed to the CONQUEROR,
Captain Davie, humorously known as Gentle Johnnie. The captain had
earned this name by his style of discipline, which would have
figured well in the pages of Marryat: 'Put the prisoner's head in
a bag and give him another dozen!' survives as a specimen of his
commands; and the men were often punished twice or thrice in a