erence to our resolutions,
they gradually recover their former strength, until they again break
forth, and we yield to their overpowering influence. A few days after I
had made the resolution, I found myself, like the sailor, _rewarding_ it
by writing more indefatigably than ever.

So now, reader, you may understand that I continue to write, as Tony
Lumpkin says, not to please my good-natured friends, "but because I
can't bear to disappoint myself;" for that which I commenced as an
amusement, and continued as a drudgery, has ended in becoming a
_confirmed habit_.

So much for the overture. Now let us draw up the curtain, and our actors
shall appear upon the stage.

Chapter II

"Boldly I venture on a naval scene,
Nor fear the critics' frown, the pedants' spleen.
Sons of the ocean, we their rules disdain.
Hark!--a shock
Tears her strong bottom on the marble rock.
Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries,
The fated victims, shuddering, roll their eyes
In wild despair--while yet another stroke
With deep convulsion rends the solid oak,
Till like the mine in whose infernal cell
The lurking demons of destruction dwell,
At length, asunder torn, her frame divides,
And crushing, spreads in ruin o'er the tides."
FALCONER.

It was in the dreary month of fog, misanthropy, and suicide--the month
during which Heaven receives a scantier tribute of gratitude from
discontented man--during which the sun rises, but shines not--gives
forth an unwilling light, but glads us not with his cheerful
rays--during which large tallow candles assist the merchant to calculate
his gains or to philosophise over his losses--in short, it was one
evening in the month of November of the year l7--, that Edward Forster,
who had served many years in his Majesty's navy, was seated in a snug
armchair, in a snug parlour, in a snug cottage to which he had retired
upon his half-pay, in consequence of a severe wound which had, for many
years, healed but to break out again each succeeding spring.

The locality of the cottage was not exactly so snug as it has been
described in itself and its interior; for it was situated on a hill
which terminated at a short distance in a precipitous cliff, beetling
over that portion of the Atlantic which lashes the shores of Cumberland
under the sub-denomination of the Irish Sea. But Forster had been all
his early life a sailor, and still felt the same pleasure in listening
to