capital. My uncle had the satisfaction this time of being ruined in very good company; three doctors of divinity, two county members, a Scotch lord, an East India director, were all in the same boat-that boat which went down with the coal mine into the great water pit!

on the table-so with this advertisement suddenly had been paying the shareholders out of their own turned up Uncle Jack. With inconceivable satisfaction did the new landowner settle himself in his comfortable homestead. The farm, which was about two hundred acres, was in the best possible condition, and saving one or two chemical preparations, which cost Uncle Jack, upon the most scientific principles, thirty acres of buckwheat, the ears of which came up, poor things, all spotted and speckled, as if they had been inoculated with the small-pox, Uncle Jack for the first two years was a thriving man. Unluckily, however, one day Uncle Jack discovered a coal mine in a beautiful field of Swedish turnips; in another week the house was full of engineers and naturalists, and in another month appeared, in my uncle's best style, much improved by practice, a prospectus of the "Grand National, AntiMonopoly Coal Company, instituted on behalf of the poor householders of London, and against the Monster Monopoly of the London Coal Wharfs.

"A vein of the finest coal has been discovered on the estates of the celebrated philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esq. This new mine, the Molly Wheal, having been satisfactorily tested by that eminent engineer, Giles Compass, Esq., promises an inexhaustible field to the energies of the benevolent and the wealth of the capitalist. It is calculated that the best coals may be delivered, screened, at the mouth of the Thames, for 18s. per load, yielding a profit of not less than forty-eight per cent. to the shareholders. Shares £50, to be paid in five instalments. Capital to be subscribed, one million. For shares, early application must be made to Messrs. Blunt and Tin, solicitors, Lothbury."

Here, then, was something tangible for fellowcreatures to go on-there was land, there was a mine, there was coal, and there actually came shareholders and capital. Uncle Jack was so persuaded that his fortune was now to be made, and had, moreover, so great a desire to share the glory of ruining the monster monopoly of the London wharfs, that he refused a very large offer to dispose of the property altogether, remained chief shareholder, and removed to London, where he set up his carriage, and gave dinners to his fellowdirectors. For no less than three years did this company flourish, having submitted the entire direction and working of the mines to that eminent engineer, Giles Compass-twenty per cent. was paid regularly by that gentleman to the shareholders, and the shares were at more than cent. per cent., when one bright morning Giles Compass, Esq., unexpectedly removed himself to that wider field for genius like his, the United States; and it was discovered that the mine had for more than a year run itself into a great pit of water, and that Mr. Compass

That Uncle Jack should win my heart was no wonder; my mother's he had always won from her earliest recollection of his having persuaded her to let her great doll (a present from her god. mother) be put up to a raffle for the benefit of the chimney-sweepers. "So like him-so good!" she would often say, pensively; "they paid sixpence a-piece for the raffle-twenty tickets, and the doll cost £2. Nobody was taken in, and the doll, poor thing (it had such blue eyes!) went for a quarter of its value. But Jack said nobody could guess what good the ten shillings did to the chimneysweepers." Naturally enough, I say, my mother liked Uncle Jack! but my father liked him quite as well, and that was a strong proof of my uncle's powers of captivation. However, it is noticeable that when some retired scholar is once interested in an active man of the world, he is more inclined to admire him than others are. Sympathy with such a companion gratifies at once his curiosity and his indolence; he can travel with him, scheme with him, fight with him, go with him through all the adventures of which his own books speak so eloquently, and all the time never stir from his easy-chair. My father said "that it was like listening to Ulysses to hear Uncle Jack!" Uncle Jack, too, had been in Greece and Asia Minor, gone over the site of the siege of Troy, eaten figs at Marathon, shot hares in the Peloponnesus, and drunk three pints of brown stout at the top of the Great Pyramid.

I was still more delighted than my father with Uncle Jack. He was full of amusing tricks, could conjure wonderfully, make a bunch of keys dance a hornpipe, and if ever you gave him half-acrown, he was sure to turn it into a halfpenny. He was only unsuccessful in turning my halfpennies into halfcrowns.

We took long walks together, and in the midst of his most diverting conversation my uncle was always an observer. He would stop to examine the nature of the soil, fill my pockets (not his own) with great lumps of clay, stones, and rubbish to analyse when he got home, by the help of some chemical apparatus he had borrowed from Mr. Squills. He would stand an hour at a cottagedoor, admiring the little girls who were strawplatting, and then walk into the nearest farmhouse, to suggest the feasibility of "a national straw-plat association." All this fertility of intellect was, alas! wasted in that "ingrata terra" into which Uncle Jack had fallen. No

T is about three hours after daybreak-a' the Molly Carew, this vessel had, for some five light breeze coming and going; the water sparkling, flashing, breaking into ripples that scintillate as if each drop were a glowing sapphire; the sea-birds skirling round and about on rapid wing; the sky already one blaze of sunlight - when that excellent, English-built, double-screw steamer, the Stormy Petrel, Captain Frank Hay, from Liverpool, steams into the port of Nassau, having made the run out in the short space of thirteen days and eleven hours from the moment of lifting anchor at Birkenhead. The history of the Stormy Petrel may be told, and her portrait sketched, in a few lines.

Built for Messrs. Bodger and Twelvetrees, of Leadenhall Street, and originally known to the commercial world by the less euphonious name of

years past, plied as a merchant steamer between Liverpool and the Mauritius. She was an iron boat, trim and graceful enough, of 1,070 tons burden and 350 horse-power. Her length was 279 feet; her breadth of beam, 35 feet; her ordinary rate of speed, thirteen and a half knots (i.e., fifteen miles) an hour. She drew eleven feet of water when loaded, and six feet four inches when unloaded; and her consumption of coal at half-speed was just twenty tons in twenty-four hours. At her fullest speed, she consumed about thirty. She carried coal for twelve days. Such was the Molly Carew; such, with certain novel peculiarities lately superadded, is the Stormy Petrel.

For the Molly Carew has changed owners, been re-christened, and, with a view to the new class of

There is an insect in America named the "Katydid," on account of its emitting a sound resembling that combination of syllables.

That

work in which she is now about to be employed, has undergone sundry alterations and repairs. Her speed is now increased to fifteen and a half knots an hour. She used to carry passengers and "an experienced surgeon;" but now her cabin accommodation is of the scantiest, every spare inch of space below decks being given up for the stowage of cargo, and everything above deck being cleared away so as to bring down the visible proportions of the Stormy Petrel to the lowest minimum. The coal-bunkers, by means of an ingenious contrivance originated by De Ben-nonce, not far from the lighthouse at the mouth ham himself, are disposed in the form of upright recesses lining the hull on either side of the waist of the vessel; thus, as it were, armour-plating with coal that important part where the engines are placed. Her spars are reduced to a light pair of lower masts, with only a "crow's nest on the foremast for a watch, and no cross-yards whatever. Her boats are lowered to the level of the gunwales. Her funnel, of the "telescope " kind, lies low and raking aft. And her hull is painted of a dull, bluish, sea-green hue, which even by daylight is scarcely distinguishable from that of the waves, and by night, or in the lightest fog, is wholly invisible. The Stormy Petrel, it should be added, burns only anthracite coal, which yields neither smoke nor sparks; and her engines are so constructed that, in case of a sudden stop, the steam can be blown off noiselessly under water.

Such are the outward lineaments and characteristics of the vessel which steams into Nassau Harbour this glorious early morning in the month of June, 1861, seeking fresh coal and a pilot; and a more stealthy-looking craft, or one more cleverly adapted to thread the perilous ways of a blockaded coast, never dropped anchor in that wild far-away British port. For the Stormy Petrel is bound for Charleston, having on board an assorted cargo of Manchester goods, ready-made clothing, and munitions of war; and this is her first trip in the character of a blockade-runner.

This passenger (who puts up, by the way, with a mattress and rug in the supercargo's cabin, and enjoys none of the usual passengers' comforts) is a certain ex-senator, magistrate, and planter of South Carolina, now stealing home to Charleston under the assumed name of Heneage. supercargo (charged with the care and sale of the present cargo, and with the purchase of as much raw cotton as the vessel can carry back from Charleston to Nassau) is Temple De Benham. And now the Stormy Petrel anchors, for the of the harbour, keeping well away from the quays, which, however, are soon alive with spectators. De Benham hangs over the ship's side, sweeping the shore with his glass-that low-lying palmfringed shore, with its stunted shrubs, whitewashed houses, and dazzling coral sands all ablaze in the sunshine; watching the little silver fish that keep perpetually leaping and springing along the surface of the water; inhaling the soft and perfumed air; and revelling in this his first glimpse of the New World. The captain at once despatches his first mate to the town to purchase fuel, but permits none of the others of his crew to go on shore. The Stormy Petrel, however, is soon beset by a swarm of small boats filled with free niggers of both sexes, clamorous, grinning, importunate, who offer bananas, alligator pears, pine-apples, cocoa-nuts, shaddocks, and other tropical fruits for sale. Towards mid-day, the Stormy Petrel is brought in closer to the shore and moored alongside a private wharf, so as more conveniently to take the coal on board.

The crowd upon the quays, though constantly shifting and changing, continues, meanwhile, to increase. Here are sailors, soldiers, English officers wearing white linen hats with a flap behind the neck, porters, free niggers, and all the miscellaneous loungers of a small British West India station. A motley crowd, gathered together, apparently, from every quarter of the little town-a crowd to whom this low-lying seagreen steamer is evidently an object of the intensest curiosity.

And now towards evening, when the cooler breeze is beginning to set in from the sea, and the band is playing in front of the barracks, and the harbour is gay with pleasure-boats, the Stormy Petrel, having taken in her coal, moves out again to her former anchorage, and there awaits the arrival of her pilot-a seasoned, experienced, New Englander, native of a certain well-known

Not the boat alone, however, but her captain and crew are alike new to the work. Indeed, the work in itself is new. Blockade-running, so soon to develop into an organised system, has as yet scarcely begun; and the Stormy Petrel is the first well-appointed vessel in the field. But her commander has been accustomed to the navigation of these waters before ever the war was dreamed of on either side, and knows the whole coast and all the West India Isles by heart. He is a West-of-England man-a born sailor-short, active, hairy, broad-shouldered, taciturn, cross-whaling-station, yclept Martha's Vineyard, on the grained, fearless as a lion, and about forty-four years of age. This officer, with three mates, a chief engineer, two assistant engineers, eight firemen, six seamen, supercargo, and one passenger are all the souls on board.

coast of Massachusetts-one Zachary Polter by name, who comes off presently in a row-boat with his wife, and has a private interview with the captain before bidding her good-bye.

This man's price for running the Stormy Petrel