ther in imagination, the pride of the British empire humbled in the dust. This sign I carefully noted at the time; but I did not then draw the attention of the public to it, as I was not then absolutely convinced of the justice of my theory, and as I wished to submit it, in some measure, to the test of experience. The delay has, I lament to add, served but to confirm my first impressions. The impious custom alluded to has now become prevalent among our seamen (tars I can hardly call them), and the progress of decay in these pillars of the state has since become rapid. Pig-tails gracefully platted down the back have disappeared. The cheeks are no longer of unequal protuberance, owing to an ample plug of the pungent herb. Jack prefers wish-wash tea or radical powder to grog," the liquor of life." Instead of pronouncing the names of ships, such as the Billy Ruffian and the Polly Famous, according to their true English significations, he twists the words so that you would actually suppose them to have been taken out of Lempriere's Dictionary. The eternal fiddle no longer goes it on Point and the Barbican. Sailors may be seen walking arm in arm with soldiers, or steering up the street, like a steam-vessel in the wind's eye, without making a single tack. And things have come to such a pitch, that tars may be seen begging with two legs on and both eyes open. In short, Jack has now become an amphibious animal. What need we say more? The decline has been almost as great and as rapid among the officers. The lieutenants have got epaulettes. The button in which Rodney fought and Nelson died has been changed; and a naval officer may now enter a room in plain clothes, and not be known for a sailor. 0% tempora! O mores! Where shall we: now find a Piper, a Trunnion, or a Morgan? Alas! the breed is extinct! Then again, admirals are equerries and grooms of the chamber. Post-captains are aides-de-camp. Commanders are no longer captains. The first-lieutenant is no better than an adjutant. The mid is such a dandy, that he might be taken for an aspirant: he no longer orders duck and green peas in the middle of winter, and can pass a dock-yard maty without a frown. The master is a petit-maitre. The purser smells more of rose-water than of cheese. The surgeon might pass for a fashionable accoucheur, the boatswain for a serjeant-major, and the carpenter for an upholsterer. The marine officer can now venture to hold up his head. The chaplain is no longer caterer to the mess, taking more care of the bodies than of the souls of his flock. The duty fore and aft is carried on without a single oath; and to sum up all, the wooden walls of Old England are going headlong to perdition. What is the consequence? The British flag has been tarnished. The Americans have beat us on our own element. Men of war have made way for steam-vessels, with a chimney for a mast and a column of smoke for a pendant. Naval officers command them, with a thermometer for a speaking-trumpet; the captain stands over the boiler and directs the paddles. The glory of the British navy evaporates in steam, or is con densed into a bucket, and the safety. of a gallant crew lies in a valve. when a British line-of-battle ship was led by the nose by a floating tea-kettle! Oh! that I should live to see the day || expect to cut such capers in the air as we have done on the sea. We shall have too many and too powerful competitors on that element, which is alike open to all. Balloons, I suppose, will next come into play. Then adieu to the greatness of Old England! We cannot "Delenda est Carthago!" THEODORO PALEOLOGUS. IN the chancel of Llandulph church there is a mural monument, with the following inscription: "Here lyeth the body of THEODORO PALEOLOGUS, of Pisaneo in Italy, descended from the imperyal lyne of the last Christian Emperors of Greece; being the sonne of Camilio, being the sonne of Prosper, the sonne of Theodoro, the sonne of John, the sonne of Thomas, the second brother to Constantine Pa leologus, the eighth of that name, and the last of the lyne that raygned in Constantinople, until subdued by the Turks; who married with Mary Balls, of Hadleye in Suffolke, and had issue five children, Theodoro, John, Ferdinando, Maria, and Dorothy; and departed this life at Clyfton the 21st of January, 1636." B. are engraven two turrets, with the figure of an eagle having two heads, and resting a claw upon each turret. Amidst the awful gloom, the solemn stillness of Hadley chapel, Mary, the daughter of a renowned knight, aspirates at the foot of the cross her evening prayers. The first hawthorn-blossom is less fair than her slender neck, shaded by ringlets of glossy chesnut-brown, flowing even lower than the skirts of her embroidered purple vesture. The graceful arch of her eyebrows, her polished forehead, and hazle eyes, brilliant, yet sweet in their various lustre, are raised in devotion to the symbol of Divinity; and the drops that tremble on her long silken eyelashes are shed from a heart solicitous to know and obey the truth. Reared by her mother in the superstitions of the church of Rome, and impressed with fond reverence for her deceased pa Mahomet, second Emperor of the Turks, says of Thomas, the brother of Constantine, that in the great country of the Peloponnesus he found many slaves, and not a man but Theodoro Paleologus. After defending the castle of Sa-rent, the arguments of her beloved limonica a whole year against the and loving father incline her to the Turks, and all hope of relief being reformed faith. Her snow-white taabandoned, he made his escape from per fingers hold a rosary, but her that fortress, and fled to Italy, where enlightened reason questions the efPope Pius II. allowed him a pension ficacy of this papistical rite, and an till his death. It is probable that instructor approaches to set at rest Theodoro, the descendant of Tho- her wavering convictions. Her rapt mas, sought an asylum in England, spirit heeds not the jarring hinges in consequence of the hostility to the of the ponderous gate, until a faint Greeks shewn by Pope Paul V. and groan dispels the pious entranceGregory XV. Above the inscrip- ment. A youth, wrapped in a dark tion, upon an escutcheon of brass, mantle, has sunk beside her; she 1 starts up, drops the rosary for ever: in a moment the chapel lamp is in her hand, and with eager curiosity she examines the features of the stranger, The hue of death is upon his countenance, the seat of manly beauty; and through a rent in his cloak, the welling tide of life oozes apace. Mary unties his sash, the costly workmanship of foreign artisans: but she observes not the rich texture of his apparel; her thoughts are only of the wound in his side, and she hastens to apprise her father. Happily her step-dame has gone to visit her brother, the Lord Royderne, where she has been seized with a tedious sickness. Before the haughty Lady Balls has recovered and come home, the stranger is restored to health. upon the pillow of suffering; and Mary, searching for a remedy he had brought from Italy, opens a packet containing an imperial ring. Her confiding soul could not harbour a thought that its dearest object had purloined the royal signet; or, if found by accident, that he would not have sought out the rightful owner. He must be himself the representative of the Grecian dynasty. Anxiously she waited his convalescence; she would not disturb his weakened frame by agitating interrogatories till his strength should be renewed. He recovers; she inquires, and he confesses his name and style as Theodoro Paleologus, son to the illustrious hero, Thomas II. brother of Constantine Paleologus, the eighth of that baptismal name; but he was un...He had refused to tell his name der a solemn vow not to disclose it, and lineage, requesting to be known until the hand of Providence should by the appellative of Pisaneo. He be manifested in leading to the disloves Mary, whose tender cares pro- covery. Flying from his persecutors longed his life; and fervidly admiring in Italy, he had taken refuge in Engin Pisaneo all the attributes of a he- land, and journeying in quest of an ro, she cautions him to reveal nothing asylum, he was beset by robbers, to her father, as he would impart it wounded, and succoured by the loveto his dame, and she would make it ly Mary: yet on the bed of languishpublic, far as birds skim the air, or ing his ring had not been observed, rivers lave the grassy turf of Eng- and therefore he was bound to conland. Mary perceives her step-mo- ceal his name; but the trustful Mather casting looks of suspicion uponry had committed to him her happiher and Pisaneo, and certain theness, without searching profoundly wrath of her father would be excited, into the mystery enveloping his fate; she elopes with her lover, and they and the descendant of mighty emsettle in happy obscurity at Llan- perors, and the fair offspring of dulph in Cornwall, where the Romish knightly valour, unknown, poor, and || faith is abjured by Mary, and she neglected, had laboured for the neembraces the doctrines professed by cessaries of life, and found wealth in her spouse. each other and in their children. Two sons entwine the nuptial tie more firmly on their parental hearts, when the political and religious troubles of England are aggravated by contagious disease. Pisaneo is laid Notwithstanding this discovery, Mary arose with the sun, in cheerful contentment to resume her household cares, and then to join Theodoro in weeding their little garden, chair appropriated for the head of the house: benumbed and exhaust and gathering herbage for their cow. Summer and autumn have passed away in calm enjoyment. The hearted, the guest raises his feeble hand of Theodoro was lightened by shar- in thankfulness, but the inarticulate ing with his best-beloved the secret words sink from his colourless lips? of his origin, and her esteem for The hosts administer a cordial, and him rose higher, because he conde- chafe his shivering limbs: reanimated scended so far beneath his exalted by skilful persevering appliances, the pretensions. The flame of civil war wanderer, recalled to conscioustiess rages through the wintry season; but and memory, raises his eyelids to peace and love adorn the cottage of gaze upon Mary, as she stooped over Theodoro and Mary. Their babes him to sustain his drooping head. are hushed in sleep; Mary is busied "My child! my child!" he wildly exwith her distaff; and the princely claimed. Mary looked upon him Theodoro, with the tools of a cob- with earnest attention. Alas! he was 'bler in his hand, repairs a shoe for so changed, that a slight disguisė, his slumbering boy, while he relates the tattered cloak of a mendicant, the adventures of his youth, and de- completely prevented all recognition scribes the smiling shores of Greece, of her honoured sire. She fell on the glowing climate and fertile lands her knees, and Theodoro kneeling of Italy; and still his thoughts and beside her, entreated forgiveness for speech reverted to the region of his their union, unsanctioned by his paancestral dominion, the cradle, the ternal benediction. "I pardon and nurse, the meridian glory of litera- bless you from my soul, my daughture, science, and the fine arts. ter, my son,” he replied; " and adorMary found her faculties expanded be the good Providence that conand soar, as it were, into a new be- ducted me, forlorn and helpless, ing, as she listened to her husband; to the dwelling of Pisaneo and my it red of his converse poured upon her intel- child."" lect a grandeur, an opulence, which, added to the dearer interchanges of connubial love, compensated to her for all the feudal magnificence she resigned in leaving the mansion of her father. She rose to spread the repast they had earned by pale lamplight; the table is prepared; Mary calls upon Theodoro to bless and to partake the viands; they are still untasted, when a low knock at the door craved admittance for a benighted wanderer; both in compassionate and hospitable speed hasten to unbolt the door; an aged man totters as he passes the threshold. Theodoro and Mary support him to the wicker Vol. IV: No. XXIV. ag "Pisaneo no longer," answered Mary; "I am the thrice-blessed consort of Theodoro Paleologus, the true representative of the Greek emperors. The royal signet suspended round his neck will confirm my assertion." Theodoro drew the signet from its concealment under his vest. "Mysterious Providence!" said the old man. "I sheltered a royal fugitive, and he hath made my race illustrious for ever. Theodoro, my son, timely was your escape from Suffolk. The Lord Royderne, brother to my relentless dame, has with her conspired my ruin, because I have embraced Y Y suries of Europe. You, my father, will watch over their opening minds, and form them to be wise and upright. Mary and I shall then be more at leisure to cultivate our small garden and attend our cattle." "My father, my dear ever-indulgent father," said Mary, " if you have brought us no gold nor silver, you have brought what no precious metal, no gems could purchase; you have extracted from our bosoms the sting of self-reproach for unfilial conduct." the Protestant faith. They accused || for all the gold in all the royal treame as an accomplice with Felton in the assassination of Buckingham. Felton was distantly related to me; but I was not in his confidencewhat avails guiltlessness unprotected, against malice armed with power? The fidelity of an ancient follower saved me from the unnatural cruelty of my wife and brother-in-law. They intended to seize my person, and send me abroad under the more unrestrained domination of Catholic priests, to compel me to submit as their proselyte. My former domestic warned me of their plot. I fled, and since I gave up all for conscience Bake, have been exposed to a thousand dangers. The God of mercies saw the integrity of my heart and shielded me, while oft I was obliged to pass even through the midst of bigoted and ruthless persecutors. I come to my children worn out by hardship and anxiety; I come destitute of all earthly possessions. I grieve that I must be burthensome, where signs of poverty are so mani-pendence, which endeared and unitfest." Squire Balls lived happily with his daughter and son-in-law in their lonely cottage, unheeded and secure; and when he was restored to his rights and properties in Suffolk, the family almost reluctantly quitted their calm seclusion, to resume the luxu ries and elegancies of their earlier years. Adversity nobly sustained had exalted in the opinion of each other all the members of that little circle; and the feeling of mutual de ed them, had become so habitual, that the returning tide of prosperity could not efface the impression. Generations have passed into oblivion, whilst the fame of Theodoro Paleologus still lives for the instruction of ages unborn. THE GRAVE OF THE SUICIDE. B. G. From the "FORGET ME NOT, a Present for Christmas and the New Year 1825," just published. Thou didst not sink by slow decay, Like some who live the longest; But every tie was wrench'd away, Just when those ties were strongest-BERNARD BARTON. solitary in the loneliest corner of the churchyard, beneath the frown of those dark trees, that in the storm WHOSE is that nameless grave, unmarked even by a rude stone or simple flower? And why is it lying |