It was soon after nine that the fire on board the Orient broke out. Brueys was dead: he had received three wounds, yet would not leave his post. A fourth cut him almost in two. He desired not to be carried below, but to be left to die upon deck. The flames soon mastered his ship. Her sides had just been painted, and the oil-jars and painting-buckets were lying on the poop. By the prodigious light of this conflagration the situation of the two fleets could now be perceived, the colours of both being clearly distinguishable. About ten o'clock the ship blew up, with a shock which was felt to the very bottom of every vessel. Many of her officers and men jumped overboard, some clinging to the spars and pieces of wreck with which the sea was strewn; others swimming to escape from the destruction which they momently dreaded. Some were picked up by our boats; and some, even in the heat and fury of the action, were dragged into the lower ports of the nearest British ships by the British sailors. The greater part of her crew, however, stood the danger to the last, and continued to fire from the lower deck. This tremendous explosion was followed by a silence not less awful: the firing immediately ceased on both sides; and the first sound which broke the silence was the dash of her shattered masts and yards falling into the water from the vast height to which they had been exploded. It is upon record that a battle between two armies was once broken off by an earthquake;-such an event would be felt like a miracle: but no incident in war, produced by human means, has ever equalled the sublimity of this coinstantaneous pause, and all its circum

stances.

About seventy of the Orient's crew were saved by the English boats. Among the many hundreds who perished were the commodore. Casa Bianca, and his son, a brave boy only ten years old. They were seen floating on a shattered mast when the boat blew up. She had money on board (the plunder of Malta) to the amount of six hundred thousand pounds sterling. The masses of burning wreck which were scattered by the explosion excited for some moments apprehensions in the English which they had never felt from any other danger. Two large pieces fell into the main and foretops of the Swiftsure, without injuring any perA port-fire also fell into the main-royal of the Alexander: the fire which it occasioned was speedily extinguished. Captain Ball had provided, as far as human foresight could provide, against any such danger. All the shrouds and sails of his ship not absolutely necessary for its immediate management were thoroughly wetted, and so

son.

rolled up that they were as hard and as little inflammable as so many solid cylinders.

The firing recommenced with the ships to leeward of the centre, and continued till about three. At daybreak the Guillaume Tell and the Généreuse, the two rears of the enemy, were the only French ships of the line which had their colors flying; they cut their cables in the forenoon, not having been engaged, and stood out to sea, and two frigates with them. The Zealous pursued; but, as there was no other ship in a condition to support Captain Hood, he was recalled. It was generally believed by the officers that if Nelson had not been wounded, not one of these ships could have escaped; the four certainly could not, if the Culloden had got into action; and if the frigates belonging to the squadron had been present, not one of the enemy's fleet would have left Aboukir Bay. These four vessels, however, were all that escaped; and the victory was the most complete and glorious in the annals of naval victory. "Victory," said Nelson, "is not a name strong enough for such a scene;"-he called it a conquest. Of thirteen sail of the line, nine were taken and two burnt; of the four frigates, one was sunk; another, the Artemesie, was burnt in a villanous manner by her captain, M. Estandlet, who, having fired a broadside at the Theseus, struck his colours, then set fire to the ship, and escaped with most of his crew to shore. The British loss, in killed and wounded, amounted to 895. Westcott was the only captain who fell: 3105 of the French, including the wounded, were sent on shore by cartel, and 5225 perished.

Thus ended this eventful battle, which exalted the name of Nelson to a level at least with that of the celebrated conqueror whose surprising success at the head of the French armies had then begun to draw the attention of the civilized world. Bonaparte had stained his laurels by the unprecedented baseness of his private conduct; he had not scrupled to turn Turk, and all his public proclamations were disgraced by the absurd phrases of Mohammedan superstition: Nelson, on the other hand, had no occasion of showing that he was an Englishman and a Christian: the first words of his despatches on this memorable occasion prove his gratitude to that Providence which had protected him: Almighty God has blessed his Majesty's arms."

The Life of Nelson.

THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR AND Death OF NELSON.

An incessant fire was kept up from the Victory, from both sides; her larboard guns

playing upon the Bucentaure and the huge Santissima Trinidad.

It had been part of Nelson's prayer that the British fleet might be distinguished by humanity in the victory which he expected. Setting an example himself, he twice gave orders to cease firing upon the Redoubtable, supposing that she had struck because her great guns were silent; for as she carried no flag, there was no means of instantly ascertaining the fact. From this ship, which he had thus twice spared, he received his death. A ball fired from her mizzen-top, which, in the then situation of the two vessels, was not more than fifteen yards from that part of the deck where he was standing, struck the epaulette on his left shoulder, about a quarter after one, just in the heat of action. He fell upon his face, on the spot which was covered with his poor secretary's blood. Hardy, who was a few steps from him, turning round saw three men raising him up. They have done for me at last, Hardy!" said he. "I hope not!" cried Hardy. "Yes!" he replied: "my back-bone is shot through." Yet even now, not for a moment losing his presence of mind, he observed, as they were carrying him down, that the tiller-ropes, which had been shot away, were not yet replaced, and ordered that new ones should be rove immediately; then, that he might not be seen by the crew, he took out his handkerchief, and covered his face and his stars. Had he but concealed these badges of honour from the enemy, England perhaps would not have had cause to receive with sorrow the news of the battle of Trafalgar. The cockpit was crowded with wounded and dying men, over whose bodies he was with some difficulty conveyed, and laid upon a pallet in the midshipmen's berth. It was soon perceived upon examination that the wound was mortal. This, however, was concealed from all except Captain Hardy, the chaplain, and the medical attendants. He himself being certain, from the sensation in his back, and the gush of blood he felt momently within his breast, that no human care could avail him, insisted that the surgeon should leave him, and attend to those to whom he might be useful: "For," said he, "you can do nothing for me."-All that could be done was to fan him with paper, and frequently to give him lemonade to alleviate his intense thirst. He was in great pain, and expressed much anxiety for the event of the action, which now began to declare itself. As often as a ship struck the crew of the Victory hurrahed; and at every hurrah a visible expression of joy gleamed in the eye and marked the countenance of the dying hero.__But he became impatient to see Captain Hardy; and

as that officer, though often sent for, could not leave the deck, Nelson feared that some fatal cause prevented him, and repeatedly cried, "Will no one bring Hardy to me? He must be killed! He is surely dead!" An hour and ten minutes elapsed from the time when Nelson received his wound before Hardy could come to him. They shook hands in silence: Hardy in vain struggling to suppress the feelings of that most painful and yet sublimest moment. "Well, Hardy," said Nelson, “how goes the day with us?" "Very well," replied Hardy: "ten ships have struck, but five of the van have tacked, and show an intention to bear down upon the Victory. I have called two or three of our fresh ships round, and have no doubt of giving them a drubbing." "I hope," said Nelson, "none of our ships have struck?" Hardy answered, "There is no fear of that." Then, and not till then, Nelson spoke of himself. "I am a dead man, Hardy,” said he: "I am going fast:-it will all be over with me soon. Come nearer to me. Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair and all other things belonging to me." Hardy observed, that he hoped Mr. Beatty could yet hold out some prospect of life. Oh, no!" he replied: "it is impossible: my back is shot through; Beatty will tell you so." Captain Hardy then once more shook hands with him, and, with a heart almost bursting, hastened upon deck.

66

By this time all feeling below the breast was gone; and Nelson, having made the surgeon ascertain this, said to him, "You know I am gone. I know it. I feel something rising in my breast,"-putting his hand on his left side,-" which tells me so." And upon Beatty's inquiring whether his pain was very great, he replied, so great that he wished that he was dead. "Yet," said he, in a lower voice, "one would like to live a little longer, too!" And after a few minutes, in the same undertone, he added, "What would become of poor Lady Hamilton if she knew my situation?" Next to his country she occupied his thoughts. Captain Hardy, some fifty minutes after he left the cockpit, returned; and, again taking the hand of his dying friend and commander, congratulated him on having gained a complete victory. How many of the enemy were taken he did not know, as it was impossible to perceive them distinctly; but fourteen or fifteen at least. "That's well," said Nelson; " but I bargained for twenty." And then, in a stronger voice, he said, "Anchor, Hardy,-anchor." Hardy, upon this, hinted that Admiral Collingwood would take upon himself the direction of affairs. "Not while I live, Hardy," said the dying Nelson, ineffectually endeavouring to raise

himself from the bed: "do you anchor." His previous order for preparing to anchor had shown how clearly he foresaw the necessity of this. Presently, calling Hardy back, he said to him in a low voice, "Don't throw me overboard:" and desired that he might be buried by his parents, unless it should please the king to order otherwise. Then reverting to private feelings: "Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy; take care of poor Lady Hamilton.-Kiss me, Hardy," said he. Hardy knelt down and kissed his cheek; and Nelson said, "Now I am satisfied. Thank God! I have done my duty!" Hardy stood over him in silence for a moment or two, then knelt again, and kissed his forehead. "Who is that?" said Nelson; and being informed, he replied, "God bless you, Hardy!" And Hardy then left him-forever.

Nelson now desired to be turned upon his right side, and said, "I wish I had not left the deck; for I shall soon be gone." Death was indeed rapidly approaching. He said to the chaplain, "Doctor, I have not been a great sinner;" and after a short pause," Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country." His articulation now became difficult; but he was distinctly heard to say, "Thank God! | I have done my duty!" These words he repeatedly pronounced; and they were the last words which he uttered. He expired at thirty minutes after four,-three hours and a quarter after he had received his wound. The Life of Nelson.

CHARLES LAMB,

born in London, 1775, and educated at the school of Christ's Hospital, was a clerk in the accountant's office of the East India Company from April, 1792, until March, 1825, when he retired on a pension of £450 per annum; died 1834. From September, 1796, until his death he had charge of an elder sister, who at the time above stated, in a fit of insanity, stabbed her mother to death with a table-knife. Lamb broke off an engagement of marriage, and henceforth devoted himself to what he considered his first duty. This unfortunate girl-Mary Anne Lamb (died 1847)-was co-author with her brother of four juvenile works, viz.: Mrs. Leicester's School, Lond., 1808, 12mo; Tales from the Plays of Shakspeare, Lond., 1807, 2 vols. 12mo; 4th edit., with 20 plates by Wm. Blake, Lond., 1822; new edit., with 20 wood engravings by Harvey, Lond., Bohn, 1840, 1843, 1849, 1853, 1857; The Adventures of Ulysses, Lond., 1808, 12mo, 1845,

med. 8vo, 1857, 12mo; Poetry for Children, Lond., 1809, 2 vols. 12mo.

Lamb first appeared as an author in Poems by S. T. Coleridge, to which are added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd, Bristol, 1797, 12mo, and in the next year Lamb's (28 pages) and Lloyd's portions of this volume were republished as Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb, Lond.. 1798, 12mo.

Lamb subsequently published A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret, Lond., 1798, 8vo; John Woodvil, a Tragedy, etc., Lond., 1802, 12mo ; Mr. H- a Farce, 1806: not printed at the time; Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who Lived about the Time of Shakspeare, with Notes, Lond., 1808, cr. 8vo, and later, Lond., Bohn, 1854, post 8vo: he published a second series (The Garrick Papers) in Ifone's Every-Day Book : Works in Prose and Verse, Lond., 1818, 2 vols. 18mo; The Essays of Elia, Lond.. 1823, p. 8vo; Album Verses, with a Few Others, Lond., 1830, post 8vo; The Last Essays of Elia, Lond., 1833, cr. 8vo, again 1839, p. 8vo, both series, 1843, r. 8vo, 1847. fp. 8vo, and 1849. See Letters, with Sketch of his Life, by T. N. Talfourd, Lond., 1837, 2 vols. p. 8vo; Final Memorials, by T. N. Talfourd, Lond., 1848, 2 vols. p. 8vo, 1849, 12mo, 1850, 12mc; Prose and Poetical Works, with his Life and Letters by T. N. Talfourd, Lond., 1850, 4 vols. 12mo, revised and enlarged, 1852, r. 8vo, 1856, 4 vols. 12mo, 1867, r. 8vo.

"Those therefore, err, in my opinion, who present Lamb to our notice amongst the poets. Very pretty, very elegant, very tender, very beautiful verses he has written; nay, twice he has written verses of extraordinary force,-almost demoniac force, viz.: The Three Graves and The Gipsy's Malison. But, speaking generally, he writes verses as one to whom that function was a secondary and occasional function; not his original and natural function,-not an epror, but a úpepyov. . . . His [prose] works-I again utter my convictionwill be received as amongst the most elaborately finished gems of literature: as cabinet specimens which express the utmost delicacy, purity, and tenderness of the national intellect, together with the rarest felicity of finish and perfection, although it may be the province of other modes of literature to exhibit the highest models in the grander and more impassioned forms of intellectual power. Such is my very intimate conviction."-DE QUINCEY: Recollections of Charles Lamb.

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period

is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of olden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cook's Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother), was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury over all the East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father | and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from ?— not from the burnt cottage, he had smelt that smell before,-indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted-crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched akin with the flesh next to it, and was cram

ming it down his throat in this beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulder as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure which he experienced in his lower regions had rendered him quite callous to any inconvenience he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued:

You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what, what have you got there, I say ?"

"O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats."

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself, that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig.

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, “Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste!" . . with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.

Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious), both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of the litter.

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God has sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself,