a strict gentleman, whose favourite exclamation
was, "Britannia rules the waves, and I rule the
Britannia!" Now she has succeeded the
Illustrious as "training ship" for cadets and
novices, and is, therefore, important enough to
demand an article to herself. Observe, only
just now, that mizen-topsail of hers fluttering
in the wind: the youngsters learning to reef,
furl, &c., are the future Nelsons and Collingwoods
of the navy—gentlemen's sons making
their first acquaintance with the service. The
"old Victory" (such is her affectionate appellation
at Portsmouth) lies farther up the harbour,
on the side from which we are contemplating it.
There is a bit of historic oak for you, far more
memorable than the royal oak which sheltered a
king! A plate on her upper deck still marks the
spot where Nelson fell; and you can still
recognise in the cockpit how, by the dim yellow
light of lanterns, amidst faces in which the
grimness of the hot battle was softened by
grief, the life of the great naval hero ebbed
away. She is advancing to her centenary, our
old Victory, having been built at Chatham in
1763. But, last year, she was eight months in
dock for a thorough repair, and she has many
years of usefulness and honour before her yet.
She has witnessed changes in her time—changes
which may be summed up by saying that she herself
is of less tonnage than the Mersey frigate of
forty guns now lying at Spithead. Pass along
the harbour in a boat, and you will see many
such illustrations of naval change. Those
dirty-looking unpainted two-deckers, which have
obviously an ignoble future only in reserve for them,
were the crack vessels of the Mediterranean
station not so many years back. One "beat
off" a lee-shore, in Syria, during the terrible
gale of the winter of 1840, when the Pique
lost her masts, and the Princess Charlotte
"drove" with three anchors down. Another
was in command of the squadron which blockaded
Mehemet Ali. Both are superseded by
the screw ninety-ones out yonder—heavier,
roomier, and faster (take them all in all) than
any of their predecessors.

While we are thus observing and moralising,
there is a perpetual movement going on in the
harbour, as constant as that of the tide. A
lovely steam-yacht, neat and bright as a silver
spoon, rushes in: it is one of the Queen's "tenders."
A prosaic brigantine comes trailing after
her under dusky canvas, hailed through a
gigantic trumpet (which startles our coffee-room)
from the "Customs' watch-house" and made
to describe herself. She is loaded with coals,
the vital necessity of the navy in our day. The
man-of-war brig "bringing to" so prettily is the
Rolla, returned from a cruise in which she has
been exercising apprentices, or perhaps the little
Sea Lark, a tender to the Britannia, with
similar duties. The long huge black steamer,
her deck fringed with a line of scarlet coats, is
the Himalaya, the famous troop-ship bought by
Government from the Peninsular and Oriental
Company. Boats are endlessly on the wing;
shore-boats, sprit-rigged, whose masters know
every dodge of wind and tide (not to say every
art of getting double fare out of a poor
Cockney); man-of-war boats, with their measured
jerk in the row-locks ("jerk-work—work-jerk"),
Russian ones among them, with a peculiar
and less agreeable, but a strong "stroke"
all the same. Such, I say, is the coup-d'Å“il of the
harbour, ever changing, and yet ever the same;
enlivened now and then by a salute (setting our
coffee-room all agog, and giving rise to the
wildest rumours), perhaps by a court-martial
gun from the Victory, at eight A.M. In the
last case, one makes inquiry, and learns something
of the curious audacity and credulity of
the human mind. A seaman is to be tried who
deserted from the Maraschino, in America, and
came and offered himself at Portsmouth,
attracted by the bounty, in six months! There
is a good deal of desertion in these times, so
that officers make the best of it, and mark a man
only "run, with a query," if there is a chance
of his not having deserted in earnest. To
remove, also, all pretext for the offence,
"liberty," or leave to go ashore, is liberally
granted at present—one reason why we find our
squadron at Spithead now. Half of each of the
two "watchers" goes on shore for twenty-four
hours, being landed in her Majesty's gunboat
Blazer, at the public expense—a luxury at which
you hear a growl or two from rigid disciplinarians.
"The service is changed, sir," growled
one of these gentlemen in my hearing; "Jack's
as good as his master, now. When I joined the
service, you called a fellow 'a son of a So and So,'
and nothing was thought of it!" I need scarcely
say that he looked like a person who would avail
himself of the last-mentioned luxury, amply, but
I had not a tear to spare for his melancholy
position.

A ramble round the town, starting from our
head-quarters at Point? Agreed.

We have more than one choice. If we please,
we can stroll along to Southsea Common, and
see the Rifles exercising,—a very pretty sight
in its way. Or we can hear the band play on
the Parade at a stated hour,—a recreation to
which the polite world of Portsmouth is much
given. Or we may wander along the fortifications,
passing solitary sentries, long, clean cannon,
piles of shot, as neat as billiard-balls, earthwork
bastions, on which pink wild flowers grow,
here and there, as peacefully as if there had
never been a war in the world's history. But it
is naval Portsmouth that we have come to see,
and all that marks the nautical character of the
place has the chief claim on our attention.

Seaports are altogether sui generis, with their
own populations, own shops, own manners, and
own smiles. Something eccentric marks them
always, and permeates them, like that mystic
odour known to Sheerness, known to Devonport,
and of which all my mental chemistry failed
to give me an analysis during this late Portsmouth
visit. For instance, I see before me the
announcement, "Receiving House for the
Drowned;" and just below it, the "Fortitude
Tap." Is this accident, or stoical philosophy?