at the glass of a stereoscope. These were but
sudden glimpses—but short glimpses too. Then
the clouds would come rolling in from side to
side. Local doctors give him a prognosis of but
a few years. Then there will be a choral service
in the cathedral, with minor canons chanting,
and a tablet on the aisle-walls with the inscription
"Charles Fermor," with birth, death, and
all the rest. But not a word, of course, of the
old vanities, and selfishness, and weakness, and
the wretched mauled countenance. When the
men of his regiment come to hear of that demise,
some of them will say, "Poor Fermor!" They
will balance his character, and some good will
be discovered. It will be universally agreed
"it was all that infernal conceit of his." The
military verdict would be about right. That
ludicrous vanity was at the bottom of all. It
might have been "drawn" when he was a boy,
just as his double teeth might have been drawn.
But there had been no one to think of taking him
to the moral dentist's in time.

Young Brett, faithful to him to the end,
often made trips down to the cathedral town,
and walked by Fermor's side round the close, and
spoke to him with an assumed gaiety and
cheerfulness as "old fellow." And the dim dull eyes,
from which the colour of conceit had been long
washed out, rested on the honest boy with a
greater intelligence, and much comfort. Perhaps
it was at such moments that the clouds broke,
and the old Eastport sun came out for a few
seconds. The young wife found inexpressible
comfort when she saw Brett's brave face near
them. He knew the art of manly comfort, and
could impart it. He always went away himself
in deep distress, but left a little cheerfulness
behind.

He could take a kind and gentle view of
Fermor's course—at least a pitying one—as,
indeed, perhaps the kind reader, who has listened
to this story so far, may perhaps be inclined
to do. Poor miserable foolish Fermor! Even
here, looking back on this story, we may think of
him gently, with some allowance, and at least
draw a moral from his course.

Sometimes his faithful wife hears him articulate
with difficulty the name of Violet. Far away on
the coast of Eastport, which is thriving, and
gorgeous with plaster palaces and assembly-
rooms, and has its bathing machines, and pony
carriages, with infant postilions, in whose social
warp and woof gold pieces seemed to be woven
in—which has its two seasons, its express trains
from Town for business men—to which doctors
order patients—at Eastport, so flourishing, so
magnificent and pampered, strange to say, this
little romance has been kept alive. It has not
been choked out by the briars. The story is as
well known as that of Tolla at Rome. The
tradition is loved, and familiar to the bathing-
women on the beach. And most young girls,
having heard the outline from the maid in the
lodgings, or from the women on the beach,
find their way to a sheltered corner of the
now crowded graveyard, where charming flowers
come up thickly, watched periodically by a plain
good honest country gentleman, and tended
carefully by a professional gardener of reputation,
in the pay of a lady abroad—where there are
rings and bands of choicest colours, and where,
on a simple granite headstone, is carved the
pretty name of "VIOLET."

THE END OF NEVER FORGOTTEN.

TO CHINA IN A GUNBOAT.

OUR gunboats are among the issues of the
Russian war. During that war our navy
contained no vessels capable of carrying into the
creeks and inlets of the Russian coast a sufficient
weight of metal to make their approach formidable
to the enemy's forts and heavy field-batteries.
But most admirably was this deficiency
made good. In an incredibly short space of time
a fleet of small vessels was created, each vessel
of the gross burden of two hundred and thirty-
six tons, propelled by two engines of the
aggregate indicated power of sixty horses, armed
with one sixty-eight-pounder ninety-five-cwt. gun
amidship, and a thirty-two-pounder fifty-six-cwt.
aft. These boats measured one hundred and ten
feet over all, twenty-one feet extreme breadth,
and drew seven feet six inches of water. The
engines were supplied with steam from three
cylindrical tubular boilers.

It may easily be conceived that in a vessel of
this size, when space has been taken for a
magazine containing nearly four tons of
ammunition, shell-rooms, engine-room, coal bunkers
containing thirty tons of coal, provisions for
forty men for five months, tanks, store-rooms,
sail-bins, cooking place, &c., but little room
was left for accommodating her crew of six
officers and thirty-five men. But comfort is a
word not set down in any known nautical
dictionary.

With regard to rig, it is only fair to say that, as
these boats were an entirely new class of vessel,
and never calculated for long ocean passages,
a rig had to be suddenly improvised of square
yards on the foremast, and fore and aft rig aft.

The Civet was one of eight commissioned in
1859 to reinforce the China squadron, and within
a fortnight of hoisting the pendant was reported
ready to proceed to sea. On the 3rd of
November, she was made fast on the starboard
quarter of the Seahorse; her consort—a sister
gunboat—occupying the like position of the
port quarter, and all three steamed slowly out of
Plymouth Sound.

On the following morning the wind began to
increase, and the sea to rise sufficiently to make
a good offing from the land desirable. At about
ten o'clock in the forenoon the escort stopped,
some accident having happened to her engines;
and the consort, who was to windward of the
Civet, drifted on board, carrying away jib-boom
and one boat, and doing her some minor damage,
she receiving her fair share. Soon after this she
broke adrift, and had scarcely been taken in tow