ld readily describe the different sensations to which their
successive occurrence gave rise, from the startling hour when my
father first told me that my own request was now to be granted, for on
the very next day I was to go to sea--up to that instant when the
still more important announcement met my ear, "Those whom God hath
joined together let no man put asunder!"

"It is easy to be cheerful when one is successful," says a high
authority; and there are "few people who are not good-natured when
they have nothing to cross them," says another equally profound
recorder of common-places; but the secret of good fortune seems to lie
far less in making the most of favourable incidents, or in submitting
manfully to disastrous ones, than in studying how to fill up to
advantage the long intervals between these great epochs in our lives.
So that there is, perhaps, no point of duty which affords more scope
for the talents of a superior than the useful and cheerful employment
of the heads and hands of his officers and people during those trying
periods of inaction which occur in every service. Sir Samuel Hood
possessed this faculty in a wonderful degree, as he not only kept us
all busy when there was nothing to be done, but contrived to make us
happy and contented, though some of our prospects were poor enough in
all conscience. My own, for example, since I was placed at the tip of
the tail of his long string of private followers; and when the
Admiralty List came out, on which I had built so many beautiful
castles in the air, my poor name was not upon it at all. I had not
expected to be first or second, or even third; fourth I had reckoned
upon as possible; fifth as probable; sixth as certain; so that my
horror and disappointment were excessive when this kindest of
commanders-in-chief broke to me the fatal news, in the following
characteristic manner.

A telegraphic signal had been made from the flagstaff at the
Admiral's house to the ship, in these words:--

"Send Mr. Hall on shore, with a crow-bar, two pick-axes, and two
spades."

All the way to the landing-place I puzzled myself with thinking what
on earth could be the object of these tools; little dreaming, good
easy lieutenant! that I was so soon to dig the grave of my own hopes.
The Admiral received me at the door with his coat off; and holding out
his remaining hand (his right arm was shot away in action), he
squeezed mine with even more than his wonted kindness.

"I