e hundred men, each of them, or nearly so, cohabiting with an
unfortunate female, in the lowest state of degradation; where oaths
and blasphemy interlarded every sentence; where religion was wholly
neglected, and the only honour paid to the Almighty was a clean shirt
on a Sunday; where implicit obedience to the will of an officer, was
considered of more importance than the observance of the Decalogue;
and the Commandments of God were in a manner abrogated by the Articles
of War--for the first might be broken with impunity, and even with
applause, while the most severe punishment awaited any infraction of
the latter.

So much for the ship in the aggregate; let us now survey the
midshipmen's berth. Here we found the same language and the same
manners, with scarcely one shade more of refinement. Their only
pursuits when on shore were intoxication and worse debauchery, to be
gloried in and boasted of when they returned on board. My captain
said that everything found its level in a man-of-war. True; but in
a midshipman's berth it was the level of a savage, where corporal
strength was the _sine qua non_, and decided whether you were to act
the part of a tyrant or a slave. The discipline of public schools, bad
and demoralizing as it is, was light, compared to the tyranny of a
midshipman's berth in 1802.

A mistaken notion has long prevailed, that boys derive advantages from
suffering under the tyranny of their oppressors at schools; and we
constantly hear the praises of public schools and midshipmen's berths
on this very account--namely, "that boys are taught to find their
level." I do not mean to deny but that the higher orders improve by
collision with their inferiors, and that a young aristocrat is often
brought to his senses by receiving a sound thrashing from the son of a
tradesman. But he that is brought up a slave, will be a tyrant when he
has the power; the worst of our passions are nourished to inflict the
same evil on others which we boast of having suffered ourselves. The
courage and daring spirit of a noble-minded boy is rather broken down
by ill-usage, which he has not the power to resist, or, surmounting
all this, he proudly imbibes a dogged spirit of sullen resistance and
implacable revenge, which become the bane of his future life.

The latter was my fate; and let not my readers be surprised or
shocked, if, in the course of these adventures, I should display some
of the fruits of that fatal seed, so early an