dear to them, and hurried away, often through
the agency of secret enemies, into slavery. Was
it any wonder such unwilling men became
mutinous, and that captains had at last to trust for
half their force to thieves, beggars, and the
sweepings of cities? The old resident mentions
an infamous case of a young carpenter who,
during his dinner hour, strolling on the Barbican
Pier, was seized by the crew of a man-of-war
and carried off to the port-admiral's ship. The
mayor, not having backed the press warrant,
declared the proceeding unlawful. A town
sergeant was sent to the ship, but was told no
such man was on board. A marine, however,
letting out the secret, the mayor persisted, sent
the proper officers, and took the man away. It
was a common evasion of the port-admiral's
men to put their prisoner, ironed, into the boat
alongside, and then to say there was no such
person in the ship.

Haydon, the painter, mentions once seeing
the greatest of all the celebrities of Plymouth
streets in the old time: a little invalid man,
with a green shade over his eye, and wearing
a shabby well-worn cocked hat, and a
buttoned-up undress coat. Haydon, quite a child,
called out to his companion, "That's Nelson
—take off your hat." Nelson, who was leaning
on the arm of a taller man in a black coat
and round hat, touched his hat to the boy, and
smiled.

It was at Plymouth that good Dr. Trotter,
backed by the influence of Lord Howe, succeeded,
by regulations as to diet, and the use of lime-juice
and fresh vegetables, in stopping the ravages of
scurvy. "Ruptured in clambering up the sides
of vessels," says the old resident, "his own
health ruined, he was allowed to retire, after
his inestimable services, on a paltry one
hundred and eighty pounds per annum."

Two more traditions of Plymouth, and the
crow starts again on his aerial tour. It is still
remembered how the "Captain," a seventy-four
gun ship, that had borne Nelson's flag, caught
fire in Hamoaze. As it was impossible to
approach near enough to scuttle the hull, and
it was feared the ship would get loose and set
others on fire, the launches came and fired
heavy artillery at the blazing mass.

At that time sailors, on shore after a long
cruise, used to indulge in the wildest follies.
One mad fellow once hired twenty-four hackney
coaches, and drove out with them in long
procession after him. Admiral Penrose, once
meeting one of his sailors quite drunk and waving
two twenty-pound notes, seized one of the notes
and put it in his pocket. In two days the man
came on board drunk and penniless. When he
was sober, the captain returned him the money.

"Aye, aye, your honour," he said, "I
thought I'd money enough for a couple of days
longer, but I couldn't tell what had become
of it."

Northcote, the painter, was one of Plymouth's
celebrities, and Haydon sketches him
as a small, wizen, bald-headed man, with little
shining eyes, and speaking broad Devonshire.

"Heestoricaul painter?" he said to the
young enthusiast. "Why ye'll starve with a
bundle of straw under yeer head." The late Sir
Charles Eastlake was a Plymouth man, son of
the solicitor to the Admiralty. Turner was fond
of the neighbourhood of Plymouth. Mr. Cyrus
Redding describes him at a pic-nic on Bur
Island, watching the long, dark Bolt-head on a
rough day.  His "Crossing the Brook" was
taken from near New Bridge, on the Tamar.
He said he had never seen so many natural
beauties crowded into so small a compass. The
inhabitants of Plymouth loaded him with attention.
Prout, too, was another Plymouth man,
and so was the poet Carrington, whose name has
been graven on a granite altar on Dartmoor.

The crow, leaving the town, sails away
seaward to the Eddystone, where, after
Winstanley had perished, and Rudyard's
lighthouse had been burnt, that sturdy
Yorkshireman Smeaton raised the present
unshakable structure. Following that great and sure
guide, nature, he took the trunk of the oak as
his model of fixed and stubborn strength, and
the granite case of the building he dovetailed
and grafted into the solid rock of the gneiss
reef. Mr. Smiles describes very admirably
how, after a rough and dangerous night, Smeaton
used to ascend the Hoe, and look anxiously
south-west over the wild waters for his
lighthouse. "Sometimes in the dim grey of the
morning, he had to wait long, until he could
see a tail white pillar of spray shoot up into
the air. Thank God, it was still safe. Then
as the light grew he could discern his building,
temporary house and all, standing firm amid
the waters, and, thus far satisfied, he could
proceed to his workshops, his mind relieved for
the day."

The Plymouth Breakwater, which the crow
chose as his point of vantage, has a story
of its own, illustrating the energy and
perseverance of the engineers of the present
century. Earl St. Vincent proposed it, and
Mr. Rennie, in 1806, was first to survey the
Sound, and suggest a mole erected across
the Panther, Tinker, Shovel, and St. Carlos
reefs. He expected that it would require two
million tons of stone for the mole's three arms,
and an expenditure of about one million fifty-
five thousand two hundred pounds. Various
other plans were proposed, more or less
impossible, more or less absurd. One hundred
and forty wooden towers full of stones were to
be sunk in a double line; there was to be an
open-arched mole, like that at Tyre; there
were to be one hundred and seventeen
triangular floating frames and piers at different
points. Mr. Rennie at last received his order,
and set to work in 1811. Twenty-five acres
of Creston limestone were purchased, and ten
vessels and forty-five sloops prepared to bring
the stone. The first stone was laid in 1812,
and by March of the next year forty-three
thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine tons
of stone had been deposited. In March, 1814,
it bravely resisted a storm, and saved a French
vessel under its lee. In 1816 alone three
hundred and thirty-two thousand four hundred