CHAP. XI.-The Midshipman's Adventure; or, the Sufferings IFE on land is the antipodes of life at sea. The citizen rises to traverse the same streets, look upon the same buildings, and return at eve to the same spot. This uniformity has a beauty for many minds; some of our most stirring associations and much of our richest poetry arise from the strong mysterious love for the places where the boy has grown into the man, and where the circling thoughts of a whole life have concentrated the passionate energies. We invest the objects constantly around us with a portion of our being; we intrust, as it were, our noblest thoughts to the keeping of the ancient trees, which were old when we were children. The rivulet where the wild flowers grew sixty years ago can talk to us of deeds and days long past. The ancient house, where we first tried the patience of our worthy nurse, is as garrulous as an old man when he meets a schoolfellow after a lapse of fifty years. Now all these local associations, this poetry of place, and solemn music rising from things visible and tangible, springs B from the fixity of the scenes amidst which we move. Being ever with us, our nature has linked itself to their nature; all we have done or suffered seems to have been observed and recorded too by mysterious, silent witnesses-the walls of our house, books of our library, or the ancient elms of our village lanes. We should not feel thus had we lived in a hundred different places instead of one; each would have acquired too small a portion of our confidence to possess that wonderful power by which familiar scenes rule the soul and secure her love. The sailor is ever in motion; his skies, lands, and seas are constantly changing; earth meets him under all her aspects, and he is on visiting terms with every land from the equator to the pole. Fixity he has none; the very stars change in their courses for him. At one time the Bear takes his departure, at another the Southern Cross gleams nightly on the waters. These constant movements and ceaseless introductions to things new, in heaven, earth, and seas, have for some a powerful charm. Such minds are the Arabs of nature, dwellers in tents; "here to-day, gone to-morrow;" delighting in rapidly varying, rather than in concentrated emotion. "A life on the ocean wave is distinguished in almost innumerable respects from life on land; it must, therefore, exhibit human nature under many peculiar aspects. As the reader will, in the following pages, see the sailor struggling with calamities—at one time driven far over the wild waters by contending tempests, at another dashed like a sea-weed on the desolate shore, or silently enduring the horrors of famine, amid impenetrable chains of ice-so it is desirable that some general description of sea life should precede such adventures. When we are about to lead a friend through an unknown land, it is natural to place before him a map of the regions through which he must pass, the rivers he will probably cross, and the mountains, the gigantic shadows of which will fall each sunset along his path. So let the writer now place this outline of "Life at Sea,' ," with its thousand lights and shadows, variable as the multitudinous heavings of the ocean itself, before the reader, ere he enters into a closer acquaintance with the perils encountered on the deep. The very words "Life at Sea" have in them something to |