respectfully. They asked me, would I not step into the bar and take a glass of wine or spirits? I have said that I never drank either; and suspect that my mother furnished my host with some of these stores out of those fishing-boats of which she was owner. "If I had an only son, and such a goodlooking one," Mrs. Boniface was pleased to say (can I, after such a fine compliment, be so ungrateful as to forget her name?)" If I had an only son, and could leave him as well off as Mrs. Duval can leave you, I wouldn't send him to sea in war-time, that I wouldn't." "And though you don't drink any wine, some of your friends on board may," my landlord added, "and they are always welcome at the 'Blue Anchor.'" This was not the first time I had heard that my mother was rich. "If she be so," I said to my host, "indeed it is more than I know." On which he and his wife both commended me for my caution; adding with a knowing smile, "We know more than we tell, Mr. Duval. Have you ever heard of Mr. Weston? Have you ever heard of Monsieur de la Motte? We know where Boulogne is, and Ost- "Hush, wife!" here breaks in my landlord. "If the Captain don't wish to talk, why should he? There is the bell ringing from the 'Benbow' and your dinner going up to the Doctor, Mr. Duval." It was indeed as he said, and I sat down in the company of my good friends, bringing a fine appetite to their table.

The Doctor on his arrival had sent a messenger to his friend, Captain Pearson, and whilst we were at our meal, the Captain arrived in his own boat from the ship, and insisted that Dr. and Mrs. Barnard should take their dessert in his cabin on board. This procured Mr. Denis Duval the honour of an invitation, and I and my new sea-chest were accommodated in the boat and taken to the frigate. My box was consigned to the gunner's cabin, where my hammock was now slung. After sitting a short time at Mr. Pearson's table, a brother-midshipman gave me a hint to withdraw, and I made the acquaintance of my comrades, of whom there were about a dozen on board the Serapis. Though only a volunteer, I was taller and older than many of the midshipmen. They knew who I was, of course the son of a shopkeeper at Winchelsea. Then, and afterwards, I had my share of rough

jokes, you may be sure; but I took them with good humour; and I had to fight my way as I had learned to do at school before. There is no need to put down here the number of black eyes and bloody noses which I received and delivered. I am sure I bore but little malice: and, thank heaven, never wronged a man so much as to be obliged to hate him afterwards. Certain men there were who hated me: but they are gone, and I am here, with a pretty clear conscience, heaven be praised; and little the worse for their enmity.

The first lieutenant of our ship, Mr. Page, was related to Mrs. Barnard, and this kind lady gave him such a character of her very grateful humble servant, and narrated my adventures to him so pathetically, that Mr. Page took me into his special favour, and interested some of my messmates in my behalf. The story of the highwayman caused endless talk and jokes against me which I took in good part, and established my footing among my messmates by adopting the plan I had followed at school, and taking an early opportunity to fight a well-known bruiser amongst our company of midshipmen. You must know they called me "Soapsuds," "Powder-puff," and like names, in consequence of my grandfather's known trade of hairdresser; and one of my comrades bantering me one day, cried, "I say, Soapsuds, where was it you hit the highwayman ?" "There!" said I, and gave him a clean lefthanded blow on his nose, which must have caused him to see a hundred blue lights. I know about five minutes afterwards he gave me just such another blow; and we fought it out and were good friends ever after. What is this? Did I not vow as I was writing the last page yesterday that I would not say a word about my prowess at fisticuffs? You see we are ever making promises to be good, and forgetting them. I suppose other people can say as much.

Before leaving the ship my kind friends once more desired to see me, and Mrs. Barnard, putting a finger to her lip, took out from her pocket a little packet, which she placed in my hand. I thought she was giving me money, and felt somehow disappointed at being so treated by her. But when she was gone to shore I opened the parcel, and found a locket there, and a little curl of glossy black hair. Can you guess whose? Along with the locket was a letter in French, in a large girlish

hand, in which the writer said, that night and day she prayed for her dear Denis. And where, think you, the locket is now? where it has been for forty-two years, and where it will remain when a faithful heart that beats under it hath ceased to throb.

At gunfire our friends took leave of the frigate, little knowing the fate that was in store for many on board her. In three weeks from that day what a change! The glorious misfortune which befell us is written in the annals of our country.

On the very evening whilst Captain Pearson was entertaining his friends from Winchelsea, he received orders to sail for Hull, and place himself under the command of the Admiral there. From the Humber we presently were despatched northward to Scarborough. There had been not a little excitement along the whole northern coast for some time past, in consequence of the appearance of some American privateers, who had ransacked a Scottish nobleman's castle, and levied contributions from a Cumberland seaport town. As we were close in with Scarborough a boat came off with letters from| the magistrates of that place, announcing that this squadron had actually been seen off the coast. The commodore of this wandering piratical expedition was known to be a rebel Scotchman: who fought with a rope round his neck to be sure. No doubt many of us youngsters vapoured about the courage with which we would engage him, and made certain if we could only meet with him, of seeing him hang from his own yard-arm. It was Diis aliter visum, as we used to say at Pocock's; and it was we threw deuceace too. Traitor, if you will, was Monsieur John Paul Jones, afterwards knight of his Most Christian Majesty's Order of Merit; but a braver traitor never wore sword.

We had been sent for in order to protect a fleet of merchantmen that were bound to the Baltic, and were to sail under the convoy of our ship and the Countess of Scarborough, commanded by Captain Piercy. And thus it came about that after being twenty-five days in his Majesty's service, I had the fortune to be present at one of the most severe and desperate combats that has been fought in our or any time.

I shall not attempt to tell that story of the battle of the 23rd September which ended in our glorious Captain striking

his own colours to our superior and irresistible enemy. Sir Richard has told the story of his disaster in words nobler than any I could supply, who, though indeed engaged in that fearful action in which our flag went down before a renegade Briton and his motley crew, saw but a very small portion of the battle which ended so fatally for us. It did not commence till nightfall. How well I remember the sound of the enemy's gun of which the shot crashed into our side in reply to the challenge of our captain who hailed her! Then came a

broadside from us-the first I had ever heard in battle.

TH

NOTES ON DENIS DUVAL.

HE readers of the Cornhill Magazine have now read the last line written by William Makepeace Thackeray. The story breaks off as his life ended-full of vigour, and blooming with new promise like the apple-trees in this month of May: *the only difference between the work and the life is this, that the last chapters of the one have their little pathetical gaps and breaks of unfinished effort, the last chapters of the other were fulfilled and complete. But the life may be left alone; while as for the gaps and breaks in his last pages, nothing that we can write is likely to add to their significance. There they are; and the reader's mind has already fallen into them, with sensations not to be improved by the ordinary commentator. If Mr. Thackeray himself

could do it, that would be another thing. Preacher he called himself in some of the Roundabout discourses in which his softer spirit is always to be heard, but he never had a text after his own mind so much as these last broken chapters would give him now. There is the date of a certain Friday to be filled in, and Time is no more. Is it very presumptuous to imagine the Roundabout that Mr. Thackeray would write upon this unfinished work of his, if he could come back to do it? We do not think it is, or very difficult either. What Carlyle calls the divine gift of speech was so largely his, * The last number of Denis Duval appeared in the Cornhill Magazine of June, 1864.

especially in his maturer years, that he made clear in what he did say pretty much what he would say about anything that engaged his thought; and we have only to imagine a discourse "On the Two Women at the Mill," "* to read off upon our minds the sense of what Mr. Thackeray alone could have found language for.

The

Vain are these speculations or are they vain? Not if we try to think what he would think of his broken labours, considering that one of these days our labours must be broken too. Still, there is not much to be said about it: and we pass on to the real business in hand, which is to show as well as we may what Denis Duval would have been had its author lived to complete his work. Fragmentary as it is, the story must always be of considerable importance, because it will stand as a warning to imperfect critics never to be in haste to cry of any intellect, "His vein is worked out: there is nothing left in him but the echoes of emptiness." decriers were never of any importance, yet there is more than satisfaction, there is something like triumph in the mind of every honest man of letters when he sees, and knows everybody must see, how a genius which was sometimes said to have been guilty of passing behind a cloud toward the evening of his day, came out to shine with new splendour before the day was done. Denis Duval is unfinished, but it ends that question. The fiery, genius that blazed over the city in Vanity Fair, and passed on to a ripe afternoon in Esmond, is not a whit less great, it is only broader, more soft, more mellow and kindly, as it sinks too suddenly in Denis Duval.

This is said to introduce the settlement of another too-hasty notion which we believe to have been pretty generally accepted: namely, that Mr. Thackeray took little pains in the construction of his works. The truth is, that he very industriously did take pains. We find that out when we inquire, for the benefit of the readers of his Magazine, whether there is anything to tell of his designs for Denis Duval. The answer comes in the form of many most careful notes, and memoranda of inquiry into minute matters of detail to make the story true. How many young novelists are there who haven't much genius to fall back upon, who yet, if they desired to set their hero

* "Two women shall be grinding at the mill, one shall be taken and the other left."