to wash them all out.

We have said here briefly what the service will not do. It will not
change the nature of men, but it will mollify it into much that is
exalted, that is noble, and that is good. It almost universally raises
individual character; but it can never debase it. The world are too apt
to generalise--and this generalisation has done much disservice to the
British navy. It forms a notion, creates a beau-ideal--a very absurd
one truly--and then tries every character by it. Even the officers of
this beautiful service have tacitly given in to the delusion; and, by
attempting to frown down all _eposes_ of the errors of individuals,
vainly endeavour to exalt that which requires no such factitious
exaltation.

If I am compelled to say this captain was a fool and a tyrant, fools
indeed must those officers be who draw the inference that I mean the
impression to be general, that all captains are either fools or tyrants.
Let the cavillers understand, that the tyranny and the folly are innate
in the man, but that the service abhors and represses the one, and
despises and often reforms the other. The service never made a good man
bad, or a bad man worse: on the contrary, it has always improved the
one, and reformed the other. It is, however, no libel to say, that,
more than a quarter of a century ago (of course, now, it is all
perfection), it contained some bad men among its multitude of good.
Such as it then was I will faithfully record.

Oh! I left myself in bed. My reflections affording me so little
consolation, when they were located in the vicinity of Chatham. I
ordered my obedient mind to travel back to Stickenham, whilst I felt
more than half-inclined to make my body take the same course the next
morning. Not that my courage had failed me; but I actually felt a
disgust at all that I had heard and seen. How different are the sharp,
abrading corners that meet us at every turn in our passage through real
life from the sunny dreams of our imagination! Already my dirk had
ceased to give me satisfaction in looking upon it, and my uniform, that
two days before I thought so bewitching, I had, a few hours since, been
informed was to be soiled by a foul anchor. How gladly that night my
mind revelled among the woods and fields and waters of the romantic
village that I had just left! Then its friendly inhabitants came
thronging upon the beautiful scene; and pre-eminent among them stood my
good schoolmistr