the Duc de Chabelais on board
his ship when at Cadiz, the politeness of his reception caused the
Sardinian prince to exhibit his gratitude in some handsome presents to
the officers. One of Jervis's letters mentions, that the prince had
given to each of the lieutenants a handsome gold box; to the
lieutenant of marines and five of the midshipmen gold watches; and to
the other officers and ship's company, a princely sum of money.

"I pride myself," he adds, "exceedingly in the presents being so
diffused; on all former occasions they have centred in the captain."
In another letter he says,--"I was twenty-four hours in the bay of
Marseilles about a fortnight ago, just time to receive the warm
embraces of a man to whose bravery and friendship I had some months
before been indebted for my reputation, the preservation of the people
under my command, and of the Alarm. You would have felt infinite
pleasure at the scene of our interview." In a letter to the
under-secretary of the Admiralty, he says,--"My dear Jackson, you must
allow me to interest your humanity in favour of poor Spicer, who,
overwhelmed with dropsy, asthma, and a large family, and with nothing
but his pay to support him under those afflictions, is appointed to
the ---- under a mean man, and very likely to go to the East Indies.
The letter which he writes to the Board, desiring to be excused from
his appointment, is dictated by me."

He then mentions a contingency, "in which case I shall write for
Spicer to be first lieutenant of the Foudroyant, with intention to
nurse him, and keep him clear of all expense." Shortly after the
Foudroyant was paid off, Sir John Jervis was united to a lady to whom
he had long been attached, the daughter of Sir Thomas Parker, Chief
Baron of the Exchequer. Every man in England, as he rises into
distinction, necessarily becomes a politician. It was the misfortune
of Sir John Jervis, and it was his only misfortune, that he was a
politician before he had risen into distinction. Having had the ill
luck to profess himself a Whig, at a period when he could scarcely
have known the nature of the connexion, he unhappily adhered to it
long after Whiggism had ceased to possess either public utility or
national respect. But his Whiggism was unconscious Toryism after all:
it was what even his biographer is forced to call it, Whig Royalism,
or pretty nearly what Blake's Republicanism was--a determination to
raise his country to the highest eminen