course of three days on board a transport, taking charge of his horses, heavy baggage, live-stock, &c., and join him at Barba-. does; he having been invited to take his passage on board the Aquilon frigate, accompanied by his brigade-major, Captain Roderic Grantz, (a Dutch Scotchman!) an arrangement with which I did not feel much flattered; but I heard all, and said nothing. I never met with a man of fewer words, or one less inclined to unbend with an inferior on first acquaintance; indeed his mind seemed to be oppressed with some overwhelming idea, which absorbed all lesser subjects; whether professional or domestic I knew not; but his reserve threw a damp over my native vivacity and spirit of inquiry, which compelled me to wait for such information as he thought proper from time to time to afford, without presuming to elicit any by even the most guarded question.

AFTER an invitation to breakfast at nine the next morning, I took my leave a little after ten; and having but a hundred yards to go to the inn, I found myself in a few minutes snugly seated at the fire-side of the coffee-room of the Crown, then crowded with officers of both services; from whose miscellaneous remarks I gathered more intelligence of what was then passing than I should have derived from my general's lips in a month. Various questions were put to me in the course of general conversation, which, from being unable to reply to, except in very evasive language, I was set down as a deep file, already initiated into the mysteries of the STAFF, and mysteriously silent and uncommunicative by virtue of my slashed sleeves and single-breasted coat.

Towards midnight, as the company began to drop off, I found myself seated almost alone in my corner, where I was in a manner fastened on by a rough-spun kind of character, in a rather shabby coat with a purser's button, whose peculiar mode of speech had rendered him an object of my particular observa-tion during the last hour. He knew every body, and every body seemed to know him. He had acquired the habit of adding " TOL LOL" to almost every sentence; but it was not so much the absurd words themselves that excited attention, as the very impressive and varied tone in which he uttered them,. which gave them so much force. He had a TOL LOL of glee, another of surprise, another of sorrow; but his TOL LOL of anger was really terrific. This man's name was PENNY, a purser in the navy, known at every port in England by the cognomen of "Tol lol Penny." This curious character took post directly opposite to me, in the box in which I was taking my negus and a bit of bread and cheese; and without farther introduction than having been in the same room together for nearly two hours, entered into familiar conversation with me, commencing with

"No intrusion, I hope, tol lol?"

"None in the least, sir. I regret that I have nothing before me to offer you to partake of; but if you will allow me

"No! no! my young gentleman," interrupted the purser, "swig your own tipple; and poor stuff it is, I guess, tol lol, Let every man crack nuts out of his own bag! Here, waiter, bring me a glass of grog: and, d'ye hear, let it be double shotted, tol lol."

On the arrival of his grog, "My service to you, sir," said he, and gulped down half the magnum at a draught.

I returned the compliment by drinking his good health in my bottom of negus, and called for another for the honour of the cloth. On asking him to eat a crust of bread and cheese"What! cheese!" said he; "cheese to a purser! Why you might as well offer physic to a doctor!-tol lol!--But dam'me! with submission, I will have a some'at with you in the grubbing way too, for I like the cut of your mug, though it is a little coxcombical or so. Don't be angry!-tol lol!-And then your handkerchief, bleached as white as the royal of a homewardbound Indiaman, smells like Sidney Yorke's of a frosty morning, when he appears on the esplanade, after he has hurried out from Poll Davis's crib. D'ye know Poll?" (A shake of the head expressed my ignorance of the name and fame of this beauty.) "Well, young 'un, the less you know of such craft as she, yct awhile, the better-that's all, I say-tol lol!-Sidney's as well; and every man to his taste. Well! here goes for a relish. Waiter! walk a kidney three times before the fire, and bring it me with a shallot as hot as the first broadside; and, d'ye hear, put a bit of butter not bigger than a bee's knee on bilge of it; mind that!-tol lol! Your general, young 'un, is an out and out good 'un, they say; but dam'me! he has been hardly hit. That's his look out-tol lol!"

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How?" said I, (with my curiosity strongly excited,) "I know nothing of his affairs!"

"Bam!" said the purser, with an incredulous smile. "Tell that to the marines!-tol lol!"

"Upon my honour, sir," I replied, "I really know nothing whatever of my general's affairs, nor ever saw him before this morning. His character as a brave officer, is sufficiently established; and of that alone I can speak."

“Well, then, I can tell you," (eagerly interrupted the purser,) "that a finer or more generous-hearted fellow never breathed. But he has a wife-worse luck for him!-tol lol!" "And what of her?" I anxiously inquired.

"Oh! nothing very uncommon now-a-days! only that they were not of the same

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'KIDNEY, sir," said the waiter, as he laid the smoking relish before the purser, three revolutions of whose jaws served to demolish it. When once more at liberty to talk, my companion continued: "No, dam'me! she has no more gratitude in

her than a middy's boy, or a -'s maid! When the general married her, three years ago, her old father, the Marquess of Mount-Mount-Mount-what the d-d Mount is it?-Oh! Mount Angus—had nothing but the honour of a name to give her; and your General was a colonel in the Guards; had, they say, twelve thousand a year; was a Parliament man: he and the Prince of Wales were as intimate as two pickpockets.* A year after he got spliced, nothing would serve him but to go campaigning with the Duke of York, leaving his beautiful wife, Lady Augusta, behind him in the north.” "What!" I suddenly inquired, was Lady Augusta Mordaunt, who lived near Newcastle, his wife?"

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'Yes, my hearty! his wife!-tol lol!—what of that?"

High Cliff Farm, Lady Augusta, and her beautiful garden! -Anna's description of their mutual fondness rushed on my mind at the moment.

"Well, sir, what followed?"

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Why, that after a year's absence, my Lady came it a little too strong amongst the gay 'uns in town; and she and one Colonel Harvey Headstrong, of the dragoons, were always seen The poor hugger-muggering together wherever she went. colonel (now your general) comes home on crutches, wounded, and suffering under the infernal fen fever of Holland; and hearing all the kind things his friends told him, he challenged the colonel, hipped him, and sent his whistle to sleep for one while,-tol lol! My Lady's mother made a great fuss about her daughter's HONOUR. (Good luck to it!—tol lol!) The. old Marquess too, of course, took her part. All her traps and desk were embargoed! and she was placed under quarantine, while the friends of both got up what you call an INVESTIGATION (a kind of petticoat court-martial.) Her papers were

overhauled; but nothing to damnify her being found, she was declared by all parties entitled to a clean bill! And she was accordingly received at court, and taken in tow by the queen once more!"

"And of course by her husband?"

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Belay, there!-That's a cat of another colour!—tol lol! My service to you again. No, no! they do say they have snoozed in separate berths ever since; and their only child is placed under the charge of the grandfather,—no great shakes himself!-tol lol!"

"This is a sad story you tell me, sir; and I assure you I never heard a syllable of it before. My general certainly bears the appearance of a man suffering great mental anguish;

*The purser might have found a more "savoury simile;" but I give his own rude expression,

and by your account, as well as my own slight observation, is little deserving his lot."

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Ay, ay, young 'un! that's the worst of it. He has acted too generously; he has settled an estate on her ladyship, and is now going to take a queer chance amongst the niggers in the West Indies. But if I had been him, dam'me! I'd have shown Missis another guess kind of game. I'd have had a whole serag-glio under her nose; have carried on till all was blue; kicked up old gooseberry; and had it all my own way, like a bull in a glass shop! What do you think of that?—tol tol!"--(Striking the table vehemently.)

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Why, I think he has acted a more noble part. Excellent man! how much I pity him! But what do her parents say?" "Why, as for the old Marquess, he's a nobody in his own house; and, as for my old lady,-mum!-they say she has been a clipper in her day-a regular touch and go! 'this! and no near Her eldest daughter, Lady Harriet Ashdale, slipped her cable one fine night, two winters ago, and took a trip to France with Sir Lionel Douglass, to see Mr. Robertspur. What can you expect? Did you ever hear of a tame bird coming out of a wild bird's nest? No, never! My service to you.-Tol. . . . lol!".

The night waned apace; the fire sunk to the very last bar of the grate; and the bar of the house was closed against farther calls. The purser, as fully inclined as myself for his bed, reeled out at nearly one to seek it at one of the night houses at the back of the Point; whilst I, preceded by a venerable chambermaid with her pan of coals, (a very proper personage for such a hotel,-but ah? how different from the auburnhaired beauty of Botley!) toddled up to the third floor, first seeing myself entered on the slate under the character of "No. 42, to be called at half-past seven."* I was too weary to keep awake many moments; but, on arising next morning, I thought on all the loquacious purser had told me. There was a gene

rous indignation in his manner while reciting his tale, which convinced me that he neither fabricated the story, nor exaggerated the leading facts. I felt for my poor general as a youth who abhorred dishonour and pitied its victim ought to feel; and, when I entered his apartment to breakfast, I saw ten thousand winning claims on my devoted regard, which escaped my ob

*Hotels and public-houses have a phraseology of their own. At an inquest held some years since on the body of a gentleman who died suddenly at a London hotel, one of the witnesses, Mr. Boots, deposed, that the chambermaid desired him to run for a doctor, as "Number four was in a fit!"-And at one of the suburban tea gardens, a waiter loaded with a tray containing tea and muffins for twelve, who observed a bolt before the bill was paid, roared out to a brother attendant-" Run, run, Bob, there's two teas and a glass of brandy and water escaping over the paling; catch'em."