Is a sort of stranded marine animal, that the receding tide of life has left high and dry on the shore. He pines for his element like a Sea Bear, and misses his briny washings and wettings. What the ocean could not do, the land does, for it makes him sick: he cannot digest properly unless his body is rolled and tumbled about like a barrel-churn. Terra firma is good enough he thinks to touch at for wood and water, but nothing more. There is no wind he swears ashore-every day of his life is a dead calm,-a thing above all others

he detests he would like it better for an occasional earthquake. Walk he cannot, the ground being so still and steady that he is puzzled to keep his legs; and ride he will not, for he disdains a craft whose rudder is forward and not astern.

Inland scenery is his especial aversion. He despises a tree "before the mast," and would give all the singing birds of Creation for a Boatswain's whistle. He hates prospects, but enjoys retrospects. An old boat, a stray anchor, or decayed mooring ring, will set him dreaming for hours. He splices sea and land ideas together. He reads of "shooting off a tie at Battersea," and it reminds him of a ball carrying away his own pigtail. "Canvassing for a situation," recalls running with all sails set for a station at Aboukir. He has the advantage of our Economists as to the "Standard of Value," knowing it to be the British ensign. The announcement of "an arrival of foreign vessels, with our ports open," claps him into a Paradise of prize money, with Poll of the Pint. He wonders sometimes at "petitions to be discharged from the Fleet," but sympathises with those in the Marshalsea Court, as subject to a Sea Court Martial. Finally, try him even in the learned languages, by asking him for the meaning of "Georgius Rex," and he will answer, without hesitation, "The wrecks of the Royal George."

"Sometimes they were put to the proof, by what was called the Fiery Ordeal."HIST. ENG.

SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.

THE DILEMMA.

Reed! it's very easy to say read.-THE BURGOMASTER.

I have trusted to a reed.-OLD PROVERB.

"Hoy!-Cotch!-Co-ach!-Coachy!-Coachee!--hullo

!-hulloo! -woh !-wo-hoay!-wough-hoaeiouy!"—for the last cry was a waterman's, and went all through the vowels.

The Portsmouth Rocket pulled up, and a middle-aged, domesticlooking woman, just handsome enough for a plain cook at an ordinary, was deposited on the dickey; two trunks, three bandboxes, a bundle, and a hand-basket, were stowed in the hind boot. "This is where I'm to go to," she said to the guard, putting into his hand a slip of paper. The guard took the paper, looked hard at it, right side upwards, then upside down, and then he looked at the back; he in the mean time seemed to examine the consistency of the fabric between his finger and thumb; he approached it to his nose as if to smell out its meaning; I even thought that he was going to try the sense of it by tasting, when, by a sudden jerk, he gave the label with its direction to the winds, and snatching up his key-bugle began to play "O where, and O where," with all his breath.

I defy the metaphysicians to explain by what vehicle I travelled to the conclusion that the guard could not read, but I felt as morally sure of it as if I had examined him in his a-b-ab. It was a prejudice not very liberal; but yet it clung to me, and fancy persisted in sticking a dunce's cap on his head. Shakspeare says that "he who runs may read," and I had seen him run a good shilling's worth after an umbrella that dropped from the coach; it was a presumptuous opinion therefore to form, but I formed it notwithstanding-that he was a perfect stranger to all those booking-offices where the clerks are schoolmasters. Morally speaking, I had no earthly right to clap an ideal Saracen's Head on his shoulders; but, for the life of me, I could not persuade myself that he had more to do with literature than the Blue Boar.

Women are naturally communicative: after a little while the female in the dickey brought up, as a military man would say, her reserve, and entered into recitative with the guard during the pauses of the key-bugle. She informed him in the course of conversation, or rather dickey gossip, that she was an invaluable servant, and, as such, had been bequeathed by a deceased master to the care of one of his relatives at Putney, to exert her vigilance as a housekeeper, and to overlook every thing for fifty pounds a year. "Such places," she remarked, "is not to be found every day in the year."

The last sentence was prophetic!

"If it's Putney," said the guard, "it's the very place we're going

through. Hold hard, Tom, the young woman wants to get down." Tom immediately pulled up; the young woman did get down, and her two trunks, three bandboxes, her bundle, and her hand-basket, were ranged round her. "I've had a very pleasant ride," she said, giving the fare with a smirk and a curtsey to the coachman, "and am very much obliged,"-dropping a second curtsey to the guard," for other civilities. The boxes and things is quite correct, and won't give further trouble, Mr. Guard, except to be as good as pint out the house I'm going to." The guard thus appealed to, for a moment stood all aghast; but at last his wits came to his aid, and he gave the following lesson in geography.

"You're all right-ourn a'n't a short stage, and can't go round setting people down at their own doors; but you're safe enough at Putney-don't be alarmed, my dear-you can't go out of it. It's all Putney, from the bridge we've just come over, to that windmill you almost can't see t'other side of the common."

"But, Mr. Guard, I've never been in Putney before, and it seems a scrambling sort of a place. If the coach can't go round with me to the house, can't you stretch a pint and set me down in sight of it?"

"It's impossible-that's the sum total; this coach is timed to a minute, and can't do more for outsides if they was all Kings of England.'

"I see how it is," said the female, bridling up, while the coachman, out of patience, prepared to do quite the reverse; "some people are very civil, while some people are setting beside 'em in dickies; but give me the paper again, and I'll find my own ways."

"It's chucked away," said the guard, as the coach got into motion; "but just ask the first man you meet-anybody will tell you."

"But I don't know who or where to ask for," screamed the lost woman after the flying Rocket; "I can't read; but it was all down in the paper as is chucked away."

A loud flourish of the bugle to the tune of "My Lodging is on the Cold Ground" was the only reply: and as long as the road remained straight, I could see "the Bewildered Maid" standing in the midst of her baggage, as forlorn as Eve, when, according to Milton,

"The world was all before her, where to choose
Her place-"