d for his boys if I can get hold of him."

Prior to the year 1858, I may here explain, on a youngster being
nominated to a naval cadetship he was appointed to a sea-going ship at
once, going afloat there and then without any preliminary examination
and the roundabout routine subsequently enjoined, wisely or not, by "My
Lords" when the "competition wallah" system came in vogue. Unwittingly
I was, thus, one of the first to suffer from the change, the order for
cadets having to pass in certain specified subjects on board the
_Excellent_ before receiving their appointments having been issued
within a comparatively recent period of my getting my nomination.

This proviso, too, I may add, was saddled with the condition that all
cadets in future would have to go through a probationary period of three
months' instruction in seamanship in a training-ship, which was set
apart for the purpose ere they were supposed to have officially joined
"the service," and become liable to be sent to sea.

These regulations, to make an end of my explanations, continue in force
to the present day with very little alteration, the only difference, so
far as I can learn, being that youngsters now have to pass a slightly
"stiffer" examination than I did on entry, and that they have to remain
for two years on probation aboard the _Britannia_ instead of the three
months period which was esteemed sufficient for the "sucking Nelsons" of
my time in the old _Illustrious_. She was the predecessor of the more
modern training-ship for naval cadets, which turns them out now _au fin
de siecle_, all ready-made, full-blown officers, so to speak; though it
is questionable whether they are any the better sailors than Nelson
himself, Collingwood amongst the older sea captains, or Hornby and Tryon
of a later day. None of these went through a like course of study, and
yet they knew how to handle ships and manoeuvre fleets without any such
"great advantages" of training!

My moral reflections, though, have little to do with my story, to which
I will now return.

The date of the examination being so perilously near, and my studies
having become somewhat neglected during the long holiday I had spent in
sightseeing in London, my father thought the surer way to secure my
passing would be, as he had said, to procure the aid of a good tutor who
might peradventure succeed in tuning me up to concert pitch in the short
interval allowed me by the patent process of "cramm