Under England's flag

That branch of the military profession to which I was destined (the Royal Engineers) requires an early dedication to its peculiar studies. We are put under military discipline while we are yet boys, and are in many respects good soldiers before we come to be men. Hence a consequence is derived to this service which I think is favourably felt by its members in after life; and this is, that their companions in arms and in the labours and dangers of war are, for the most part, those with whom they have shared the yoke of education, and the more than redeeming pleasures of youthful fellowship. Much doubt, therefore, in the selection of friends, and much of the disappointment and injury which so often accrue from a bad choice, are hereby spared, since at a period when Nature seldom permits any sustained disguise, each young mind has furnished itself with friends, chosen, as it were, in the castle of truth. Here it has obtained the knowledge of which to seek and which to shun. Thus, when at the age of seventeen or eighteen I assumed the sword of a British officer, the branch of service into which I entered contained numbers of my chosen friends, whose hearts I knew to the bottom, and who knew mine. A character on both sides was already established which we would have died rather than sully, and certainly the advantages of this emulous friendship did not terminate with the individual, but extended to the service in which they were employed. Of all my early friends, I never knew one who was not eager and importunate to be placed in the front of danger and of enterprise, or who thought even for a moment of sparing any extent of labour, peril, loss of liberty, or life itself in the service of his country; and most of these, in the flower of youth and dawn of military glory, have fallen in battle.

After about a year spent on a home station, in compliance with my earnest request, I was nominated, early in 1805, to proceed with a foreign expedition, going, no one knew whither, under the command of Sir James Craig.

This order plunged me immediately into a new state of existence, wherein every sort of agitation, activity, and conflicting emotion succeeded to the monotony of routine duty. I exulted that I was so early to taste of foreign service, and the note of preparation and outfit was well suited to the stirring propensity of youth; but in the midst of all my satisfaction and ardent hope there did lurk a fear and a dread at the bottom of my heart of something I had first to encounter.

My father and mother had accustomed the hearts of their children to such unbounded tenderness and love as is sure to draw a proportionate return; and in spite of the commonness of such separation, I knew better than any one else could that the thoughts of my departure would make that home unhappy whose happiness and peace I prized above all other things.

I knew that my incomparable father, whatever he might feel, had no wish to make a home soldier of his son. I knew he would both mourn and approve my departure. But it was a thing which lay in my way and hung at my heart, and my first object on arriving in London was to seek my new commanding officer, and gain his consent to my making a hurried journey to take leave of my friends.

The name of my new chief I had long known, for his fine person and dark flashing eye had been pointed out to me when a boy as belonging to the finest officer in the service, and his manner and conversation were all that a raw boy could hope to find in a young man, of kindness, genius, and experience. My heart beat with the thoughts of serving under such a master, of being trained to actual service under his eye, and (youthful vanity perhaps added) of being made by him as fine and clever a fellow as himself.

He entered at once into the feelings which made me so desirous to make a journey home, and the moment he could ascertain that the time would serve, “Be off then, Boothby,” he said, “but make all the haste you can back; and if I have left London, lose not a moment in getting to Portsmouth.”

Away I went. The parting scene was more trying even than I anticipated, but “Time and the hour run through the roughest day,” and I was soon on my way back to London. I had seen my father’s venerable form and manly features shaken with childish weeping as he held me to his breast, and though long the pang of that sight dwelt in my mind—for I have ever since cherished that sacred picture as one of the holiest my memory can retain—I never shall forget the relief and lightness I felt from having got through this sad passage of tears and lamentations. On arriving in London I feared that my Chief had left it, so I hastened to that second mother who had spent the short interval of my absence in collecting all the various articles desirable for an officer in the Mediterranean, to which we were supposed to be destined.

I found her in her drawing-room, where every sofa, cabinet, chair, and table was covered with my clothes and linen, which hers and other kind hands were marking. The perpetual consciousness of doing kind and useful acts had made an angelic smile the inseparable companion of her face, and with that loved, that dearly-remembered smile did she now receive me.

To all the stores she had so laboured to procure for me she had added as her own present a complete writing-box and dressing-case combined—a luxury of peculiar value to me, which my own funds would have found it difficult to compass; but finding me uneasy lest I should be left behind or be thought tardy by my commander, “Go,” she said, “you shan’t wait for your baggage; we will have it all packed up, and I will send my butler with it to Portsmouth, that I may be sure of its reaching you.”

Down to Portsmouth then I went on the outside of the Mail, in the highest health and the ardent spirits of youth—spirits that made, I suppose, even my body buoyant and elastic, for the Mail overturned in the night and threw me on the road without giving me so much as a scratch or a bruise. It was about twenty miles from London when we met a team of horses standing in a slant direction on the road, the night very foggy with misting rain, and the lamps not penetrating farther into the mist than the rumps of the wheelers. The coachman, to avoid the waggon, turned suddenly out of the way and ran up the bank. Finding the coach swaggering, I got up, with my face to the horses, hardly daring to suppose it possible that the Mail could overturn, when the unwieldy monster was on one wheel, and then down it came with a terminal bang. During my descent I had just time to hope that I might escape with the fracture of one or two legs, and then found myself on my two shoulders, very much pleased with the novelty and ease of the journey. I got me up, and spied the monster with his two free wheels whirling with great velocity, but quite compact and still in the body, and as soon as I had shaken my feathers and opened my senses I began to think of the one female and three males in the inside, whom I supposed to be either dead or asleep. I ran to open the door, when the guard, having thought of the same thing, did it for me, and we then took out the folks one by one, like pickled ghirkins, or anything else preserved in a jar, by putting our hands to the bottom. We found that the inmates were only stupefied, though all had bruises of some kind, and one little gentleman complained that he was nipped in the loins by the mighty pressure of his neighbour, who had sat upon him some time after the door was opened, to recollect himself or to give thanks for his escape.

The lady told me “she was terribly hurt indeed,” and so, when we got to the supper place, I gave her a kipperkin of boiled port wine with much spice. She agreed it was very nice, and looked more cheery, but the rest of the inside passengers seemed to think that it would not look well to eat after being overturned.

Not one on the outside was hurt in the least degree, and I, being on the top of the coach, had the farthest fly.

I had not been without my fears that on arriving at Portsmouth I should have to hasten on board, and perhaps sail without my baggage; but the wind had changed, all the troops were not yet embarked, and nobody seemed to be thinking of anything but gaiety and amusement, or the not unpleasant business of laying in comforts for the voyage.

Sir James Craig and Lefebure were lodging together, and kindly took me in till I could provide myself better. With Lefebure I had early acquaintance, and since entering the Army we had been employed in neighbouring stations, and I knew that under Sir James Craig’s command he had come to be reckoned perhaps the best officer of his early standing. He, I found, was to be of our company, as well as Hoste and Lewis, two more of my earlier friends.

Our second in command was Sir John Stuart, whom I saw for the first time. The best and bravest could not have chosen fitter company than every one of these. Sir James Craig and Sir John Stuart were of great experience and superior rank. Sir John Stuart had served long at Gibraltar; Sir James Craig everywhere. The rest might be called equals, for in youth, inexperience, and rank they were about equal, but of the whole party I was the junior officer.

Two excellent vessels, a ship and a brig, were appointed for our accommodation, and some of us were allotted to the ship and some to the brig.

Each party now addressed itself to the important task of laying in a comfortable sea stock, and the two ships agreed, as opportunity should occur, that they would interchange fresh meat on the voyage.

For our part we provided several sheep and pigs, a milch goat, and a great many ducks and fowls, with hay and grain for their provender, a prodigious quantity of eggs and potatoes, butter, cheese, and lard, of pickles, sauces, spices, portable soup, white and brown maccaroni, vermicelli, and celery seed, with a variety of other stores, but particularly a great stock of bottled porter, a barrel of ale, and a pretty allowance of wine and spirits.

The procuring and embarking of all these various things, animate and inanimate, fell in equal portions to Lewis and myself. It was no light task, but neither was it bad fun. Lewis was a pleasant, lively, and most efficient colleague; many a voyage did we make to Spithead; many an hour did we spend on board to see proper accommodation prepared for our live stock, and to place our stores out of the reach of damage or of breakage.

The general obligation of such provisioning makes the streets of Portsmouth like a rabbit-warren, the scarlet purchasers popping in and out of the shop doors incessantly in long succession.

Between two and three weeks passed over not unpleasantly, for letters and various accidents had extended my acquaintance amongst the staff of the army, and tended to wear off any feeling of strangeness.

The general impression was that Malta was our destination in the first instance, as indeed it was known that we were charged with despatches for that island.

On the 18th of April 1805 we set sail—a numerous fleet of transports under the convoy of the Queen, a three-decker, having the Commander of the Forces on board and his staff, and the Dragon, a seventy-four, carrying Sir John Stuart, the second in command, and his staff.

The army was supposed to be from 8000 to 10,000 strong, accompanied as well by four companies of artillery, and a prodigal supply of all warlike stores.

From Journal Notes

Began to blow hard as we made the Scilly Isles, chops of Channel so rough, landsmen on beam ends. In Bay of Biscay, increased to squally gale. One entire day in cabin. Great confusion from violence of motion. Every day afterwards on deck.

April 26, 1805.—Delightful starlight night. Fleet in compact body with lights astern; silence only broken by mellowed sea noises. So happy a time for the feast of thought, that I could not leave deck till after midnight.

April 27.—Voyage ten days old. Wrote to my father.

May 7.—Put in to the port of Lisbon.

The orders issued to the troops are to be ready to land at a moment’s notice with artillery and every preparation of war in case of emergency, but no one allowed to go on shore on any account whatever.

Hence we conceive that some attempt from the French fleet (said to be at Cadiz) is thought possible; and should it approach the Tagus, the Commander-in-Chief had determined to land his forces and seize the batteries commanding the river, and this, we conceived, would be excellent fun. Meantime, however the orange groves might tempt us with their fragrance and their verdure, no one was allowed to land. The Portuguese boats, though, brought us off plenty of oranges still attached to their green branches, which tickled the imagination to heighten their zest, and to quench our salt-sea thirst after fruit and freshness.

The Orpheus frigate (it is said) sends intelligence into the Tagus that Lord Nelson blockades Cadiz with such a force as the combined fleet dare not encounter. Whatever the intelligence was, however, it produced orders to sail.

We hear that General Junot blustered a good deal at a British armament entering the Tagus, and declared that the first man that set foot on shore should be the signal for his departure. He was spared the trouble, however, for this afternoon we set sail, having received orders to be on the alert to repel any attack from gunboats as we approached the gut of Gibraltar. Good amusement in drilling all hands on board to the service of the great guns and small arms.

May 12.—A beautiful breeze brought us off Cadiz, where we passed through great Nelson’s fleet, lying to, and, as we imagined, blockading the combined fleet, who had by this time got to the West Indies. We were now at the point where precaution was necessary.

As junior I took the first watch. A most beautiful moonlight night showed to admiration the coast of Barbary, terminated by Ape’s Hill, and on the other hand the not less sublime outline of the Spanish land.

The moon with her immeasurable column on the waters, silvering the prominent points in the dark grandeur of these newly seen and far-famed shores, while the fleets in quiet approached it with swift wings, and the keel-ploughed deep seemed kindling with diamonds and with fire—a sight never, never to be forgotten! Nor do I know the price that (after experience of its sublimity) could have bought this watch from me.

I felt sure that if any attempt were made on us, we should distinguish ourselves, but the blessed wind was too fair and strong, and the whole fleet glided along in silent and unspeakable triumph, the elements that had opposed now inviting to accelerate our speed, the sparkling waves pursuing but to push us forward, and the winds never drawing breath from our full canvas, transparent with the peerless moon. Lewis took the second watch, and in four hours I was again to relieve him, but before they had elapsed he came into the cabin and told me I need not disturb myself, as we were close under the Rock. But we had scarcely composed ourselves before a desperate cannonading began. Up we both jumped, and being nearly dressed, ran on deck cursing the gunboats. But it was only the Spanish batteries saluting the dawn of the birthday of the Prince of Peace!!!

However, the wonderful and beautiful Rock would not let us leave the deck until broad daylight had unfolded all its features. To be so first seen, uprising like the very wall of heaven, and tracing its giant outline upon the dark blue of night, while mortals in their little ships are bounding upon the liquid diamond that bathes its foot, was fortunate, for of all the shows and sights I have ever seen, none so transfixed me with delight and splendid novelty as this glorious Pinnacle of Rock. Close to it we seemed, its peopled and fortified steep rising above us high up into heaven, light above light moving upon the rich darkness of his umbered face, so that to see where his long uneven ridge ended in the sky, the spectator’s head must hang back between the shoulder-blades. After a short sleep, curiosity called us early on deck, and it is impossible to conceive a scene more busy, beautiful, and variously attractive to an inexperienced eye than the Bay of Gibraltar at this time presented. In the first place, even to the most sedate mind, there is a sort of magnificent personality in the form and situation of the Rock fortress itself, difficult indeed to describe, but impossible not irresistibly to feel. There he rears himself proudly out of the blue water into the blue sky, while all around within the sweep of his thunder lies in uniform subjection. Vast mountains and bold shores shut in the horizon, but they approach not him; in the heart of a great kingdom, in the midst of enemies, within his own circuit he is unapproachably supreme. The moment friendly ships come within his shadow, the foe ceases to pursue, and retires in acknowledgment of his power.

On the other side of the Bay, the Spanish port and depot of Algeciras, about seven miles distant, furnishes, in time of war, objects of continual interest. Swarms of gunboats are assembled there, as well as in the African fortress of Ceuta, fifteen miles distant (other side of Gut), and in unfavourable winds infest, damage, and sometimes carry off the merchant vessels as their prey in the very sight of the impregnable fortress, whose garrison, from their parades and quarters, can quietly behold every vicissitude of their running contests, exhibited on a scene beautiful beyond all description. The two fortresses, as daylight ceases and again returns, hear each other’s warning gun, and know that either keeps its watch, while vessels constantly approaching from east and west bring produce and intelligence from every part of the world, and every ship that arrives or passes through the Straits is subject to the inspection of every individual. No need to look into the arrivals—all passes under review, and each inhabitant has a place on that high theatre from which to contemplate the spectacle at his own pleasure.

Thus when our friends informed us when the combined fleet had gone up or down, and how long after Lord Nelson had followed (viz. a month), they told us not what they had heard, but what each officer had seen for himself, and had counted as the number of each fleet.

In good time some very old and early friends come off to invite us to the shore, and, to our inexpressible joy, leave is given us to land. We are not, however, to sleep on shore, and receive the most exact caution to be ready at a moment’s notice, as the greatest expedition will be made to proceed. My excellent little friend Archer, with whom I had been educated, was one of those who came alongside our ship to welcome his old friend and playfellow and to do the honours of Gibraltar.

It was now we were made acquainted with every point and chronicle of the Rock—where formerly endangered, where subsequently strengthened, whence terribly remembered by the enemy. These were subjects involved in a labyrinth which the practised eye of our Commandant could unravel at a glance, and in two days he knew more thoroughly the strength and power of this fortress than many a brave officer resident upon it for half his life.

Some fear subsists that we shall be detained some time at Gibraltar. We are still obliged to sleep on board, and to use precautions in case of attack from the gunboats. If the expedition is broken up, some of us may be ordered to remain. Should I like it or no?

It is a great local confinement, and often entails spare sea diet, but there are garrison amusements, balls, private theatricals, and the most delectable library I ever saw for a not learned man; the apartment splendid, the prospect beautiful, the arrangement admirable, the decorous stillness of those who enter most auspicious, and the terms very easy and encouraging—a trifling half-yearly contribution and entrance of three days’ pay conferring a perpetual share. Bathing in extreme luxury. Also the corps to which I belong have a most gentlemanlike and well-regulated mess, and handsome quarters most enviably situated. So that however disappointed I should be in ulterior views, I determined to think I might be worse pleased than by being ordered to remain here. Yet I learn from friends at headquarters that Sir James Craig by no means expects that his army will be dispersed or its ulterior object changed.

June 15.—In statu quo, thoroughly tired of the place by this time, and most anxious for despatches to send us on our way.

From this day till June 17th an alarm of preparations amongst the gunboats of Algeciras obliges us to remain on board, and this day it seems we are about to sail. Exceedingly rejoiced at those symptoms of departure, and hoping that the fine western breeze is to take us swiftly up the Mediterranean. No such thing. We beat about, now the African and now the European coast, in delicious weather, and the going quite close in to these bold shores, so as to contemplate their picturesque beauty, takes off much of the tedium of shipboard. The African side in point of beauty is not comparable to the Spanish—few tracts of coast, indeed, could rival, none exceed it, or the happy, brilliant accidents of night or day, of dawn or sunset, in which we were perpetually viewing it. The object of this cruise was to elude a meditated attack from Algeciras, as so large and spread-out a fleet of ships (not of war) were particularly liable to surprise, damage, and disablement where the enemy is always so near, the night so dark and starlight clear, and weather so serene for sudden operations.

June 25.—The fleet now commences its voyage, and we observe the Lively Frigate, having Sir James Craig on board, make all sail, and soon she vanishes from our view.

The voyage is only memorable to me from the unspeakable splendour of the sun’s setting and rising, which I chanced often to contemplate transfixed with wonder.

Towards the end of three weeks a good breeze, which had brought us off the island of Gozo, fell from us, and left us nearly becalmed about twenty miles from the harbour of Valetta, giving us full leisure to view the nature of the coast and the face of the country.

Great was our curiosity to see the mode of living on that brown island,1 of which fame had spoken so much.

When in England we get into a chaise to be driven to some place of note not seen before, we all know there is a sort of interest and stretching of necks as we come near to form some notion of what it will be like. But how much greater the interest when we get into a ship, spread our sails to the wind and our keel to the dark blue water, and set forth to visit some far-famed island long heard and read of as a far-distant thing, and now find ourselves skirting along swiftly by the very shore that girdles in its cities and its wonders; and the more barren, rocky, unadorned, and forbidding the first range of the shore we approached, the more we thirsted to see the high bastion of the capital frowning over the bright blue deep.

July 18.—A light air rose with the morning and wafted us into the harbour of Valetta. Here, as at Gibraltar, some of our comrades come off to welcome us, and though unknown at present, the strong bond of belonging to the same service, wearing the same coat, and hatched, as one might say, in the same military shell, induces them to hold out to us the ready hand of brotherhood and friendship.

Impatient as we were to get on shore and satisfy our curiosity, we had for the present enough to do in remarking the grandeur of the buildings, the spaciousness, security, and many branches of the harbour, and, above all, the stupendous character of the fortifications.

Valetta altogether appeared to me the most magnificent city I had ever beheld. Everything contributed to imbue the scene with traits fit for some splendid picture of growing Carthage; nothing mean or sullied, nothing to stain the clear clean hue of every colour; the sea, the sky, the transparent air, the chiselled stone, the native rock—all seemed as stainless, bright, and soignée as a Venetian painting, while the masses of shipping of every description, whose decks displayed a masquerade of divers costumes, brought the image of all nations before us, the gondolas and open boats, with gentlemen dressed as if for Court, with powdered heads uncovered, under umbrellas of every colour, and wearing silk coats, looking so enviably cool as they touched from ship to ship. All was so curious, so undeniably abroad, that we loved to realise all the anticipations of imagination, and might, I doubt not, have been amused during a much longer confinement than it was our lot to encounter.

July 19.—One day was all the trial our patience underwent, as on the 19th we were permitted to land and regale ourselves, like children, with touching and turning over the forms we had been viewing at a distance. From the point at which we landed, to which the fine streets of the city themselves descend, the ascent to the heart of the city is gained by stairs of vast width and breadth, but each giving a small and imperceptible rise. The whole street, indeed, is a grand escalier, of which the continuous houses of rich merchandise on either hand form the banisters. These stairs appear to be carved out of the native rock, and look as if a carriage and horses might safely descend, though I do not remember that they do.

We were now on shore, mixed up in the quarters of our brother officers, previously established here, and began a very pleasant kind of life, in despite of nightly mosquitoes and daily heat intense, reflected and reproduced from the glaring rock on which it everywhere smote; and this memorandum of the heat remains fixed in my memory—the noble streets of Valetta are extremely regular, and run in broad parallels at right angles with each other—when the sun, therefore, begins to decline, the streets which lie north and south are divided by broad lines of shade and sunshine—down the broad shade then the different parties walk and talk and lounge, with sauntering pace and head uncovered; but when one of the broad crossings must be passed, exposed to the sun’s fierce ray, you see every man put on his hat and dart swiftly across the bright space, as if escaping through a fire. Various commanders and married officers helped to furnish our society. Our new-found brethren put all their resources at our command, and mounting us on the beautiful barb or Arabian horses, or the scarce less beautiful ass of Malta, “showed us all the qualities o’ the isle.”

Stationed at Gozo was Edward Ker, one of my boyish friends, and one of our excursions was to visit him. We were delighted to meet, and though baked and broiled by sea and land in exploring curiosities, whatever we saw seemed to compensate our labour.

What pleased me most was a large steep rock, called the Fungus Rock, because it produces a fungus famous for its styptic power, and which the Grand Master (of the Knights of St. John) formerly distributed to the potentates of Europe. Though not for the fungus did I admire the rock, but for its stupendous eminence over a blue deep bay that lies still and unfathomable below. You pass from one rock to another at a terrific height in a basket sliding on a rope; and as I hung in the air and eyed the sapphire mirror below, I conceived an eager thirst to plunge into the cooling water; my companions consented to wait until I had descended and gratified my desire. When sporting about in this delicious bath, a good swimmer cannot conceive how people can sink in that salt sea, for the water seems so solid and buoyant it requires a great effort to keep below.

These rocks form almost such a cave as Virgil describes with such a thrilling stillness of words:—

It was like the place—nay, perhaps it was the place—whose inviolable stillness and stupendous barriers Virgil so divinely describes; and whenever those still words, “Aequora tuta silent” recur to my memory, so does this scene.

This is “secessu longo locus.”

A fleet from England declared to be in the offing was a subject of great interest at Malta. We used to repair immediately to the leads of the Palace, whose great height, carrying the sight clear over every obstruction of tower, church, and fortress, displayed the wide ocean to our view, covered with the expected ships, their swelling sails as white as wool, and the sea and sky more blue and bright than all comparisons.

Pleasant and full of expectation it was to watch them successively steering into the narrow port; some stately and huge, plumed with the pennant of command, displayed the broad and checkered sides of battle; others more humble, but innumerable; all in gallant trim and guided seamanlike.

Then eager for the mail! the image of home imprisons the truant soul, and brings it back to its first tenderness; the sight of the well-known but long-suspended hand, the endearing accents which distance has made so infrequent; that day, at least, is sacred to home; and if the tidings have been cheering, though the eye may glisten and the cheek of the young soldier may flush with unwonted tenderness, yet is his heart neither solitary nor sad; his friends partake of some reflection of the kindness that his soul is inwardly pouring out to his parents and his brothers.

It is time to close the chapter on Malta, but before leaving I wrote home to my mother.

I cannot tell what the affairs of the continent tend to. We get no news, as the French detain the good, and the Neapolitans the bad. It was verging towards winter before Sir James Craig’s expedition actually embarked. I had permission to dine and sleep ashore the day of embarkation. In the night I was seized with cholera—often in that country so fatal. No assistance and no remedy of any kind was to hand. It took its course, and in the morning I felt weak and languid, but, thanks to youth and great strength of constitution, I was well.

At daylight I went on board with a feeling of exhaustion, but no remains of disease.

In a few hours afterwards the fleet set sail, and the weather became almost immediately murky and unpropitious. We made our course round the western point of the island of Sicily without any precise knowledge of our destination. For three weeks in that Cerulean sea did we struggle with weather as moist and murky and with an atmosphere as thick as ever shrouded the chops of the British Channel. But at length the wind moderated and inclined abaft the beam, the sky and sea resumed their blue, and the classic shores of Italy beautified by degrees the farthest horizon. Soon, as evening fell, we were gliding between the fairy isles of Ischia and Capri with a smooth and steady course into the Bay of Naples.

How we watched, how we strained our eyes and wearied our arms with poising the telescope to pry into the beauteous recesses of those approaching shores! But now the night had fallen, and a dark and spangled curtain threw its veil over the beauties we were gazing at, and when we came to an anchor it was too profoundly dark for even the imagination to take hints from surrounding forms. So we went to bed and wished for day—for a day without clouds.

The next morning our dreams were realised. Vesuvius stood close before us, solemnly breathing upwards his pillar of smoke.

Woods, with young plantations and viny hillocks, spread widely round him. To the right a fair town stood on the brink of the sea, while immediately behind it the steep mountains pushed their wooded peaks into the sky. Far to the left, and out of sight, or indistinctly discerned, lay Naples.

Soon a great number of Neapolitan boats came to the fleet to sell such things as they who have been cooped up at sea buy greedily—bread, fruit, game, and fish. Perhaps the parley thus obtained with these interesting foreigners, and the opportunity to take small flights in our grammar Italian, and to observe their dress, language, and grotesque extravagance of sound and gesticulation, were more acceptable to our curiosity than those dainties to our animal appetites.

We saw distinctly some parts of the great road to Naples, and it was quite a natural pantomime to witness a conversation between parties on the shore, perhaps discussing the object of our appearance and the probability of our movements—far too distant to overhear any sound, or see any minor hints of countenance or gesture. English folks, so seen at a distance, might have hardly been distinguished from statues or from trees. But the Italian’s body is a telegraph to the distant observer while his tongue and countenance are reasoning with his neighbour; now the orator, approaching his friend closely, with face and hands concentering towards his breast, seizes his collar or buttons, and shakes his arguments into his ears and mind with a gentle tremulation, as one coaxes gooseberries into a bottle, and again, all of a sudden, retrogrades from him, with head and hands and arms thrown back to mark the irreconcilable extremity of his contradiction.

The day following, one of my brother officers repaired to our chief’s ship, and they went on shore together.

On his return in the evening he excited our utmost envy, wonder, and curiosity by giving us an account of his adventures.

In exploring the country they had come to a vine-clad hill, whose farthest side ended in a precipitous bank scarped away by the hand of labour; and spread out below, proceeding out of the bowels of the hill on which they stood, they discovered an ancient Roman town in all its unruined dimensions of streets and squares, theatres and barracks, not gray with the hoar of antiquity, but with all its plastering and painting fresh from the hands of the workmen. The painted borders of the dwelling-rooms, the appropriate pictures of the ladies’ bath, the soldiers’ names engraven rudely on the walls of their barracks, the ruts worn by the Roman wheels, were all fresh despatched to us from former ages.

Of this inestimable present Pliny had described the packing up, by an eruption of Vesuvius, to which he was witness. It was only now half unpacked, and we might yet be at the unpacking of the remainder.

I was ready to jump out of the ship to see with my own eyes these incredible wonders, and when I could go, when I stood in these streets and called, without knocking, upon one ancient Roman after another (though it seemed hardly delicate to explore unbidden the private chambers, whose painting and fresh preservation seemed to infer an occupancy so recent) anticipation was beggared by the trance which that reality imposed.

They show one such things in the Museum of Portici, that the idea of imposture steals involuntarily upon the mind, but yet imposture is out of the question. The king is the showman, and asks nothing for his pains, nor is there any temptation to fabricate the commonest articles of every-day use into the semblance of antiquity in the midst of such a crowd of self-evident realities. Else, when I was shown an egg with a part of the yolk oozing from the crack, looking exactly as if boiled and cracked yesterday, a loaf of bread burnt to a cinder, and a quantity of grain in the same condition, and was told that these things had been baked by the hot ashes of Vesuvius and buried under them for 1700 years, my belief, I must confess, was a little shy. Yet I know not that it is more wonderful with respect to an egg, a loaf, and a heap of corn than with respect to the innumerable rolls of burnt manuscript which we found Mr. Hayter so busy in unrolling with infinite patience and ingenuity, the characters upon the charred papyrus being still perfectly legible.

With respect to other things, vast quantities of tools and kitchen utensils of every description, fit enough for modern use, also very well wrought golden ornaments and elegant glass vessels of all shapes—in these the interest was equally great, and the belief more easy.

To me Herculaneum, the Museum of Portici, and above all Pompeii, were objects of renewed visitation and inexhaustible interest; but far beyond all these artificial curiosities my mind was absorbed by that unutterable wonder of Nature whose irresistible devastations covered and formed the country all around. Indeed the recent destructive torrent yet bore upon its surface the shells of houses and habitations whose inhabitants had been expelled or destroyed.

It seems strange that after all the ruin which this terrible mountain has wrought with subterraneous thunder and ejected fire, the monuments of which endure through ages to tell the people what he has done, yet that all should be insufficient to frighten them away from his foot, while with smoke and fire and inward groans he threatens them daily with still further destruction. Nevertheless they hew the black vomit of his entrails into building stones, and over the spot where the house and its master were buried in a grave of fire do they build another dwelling for another inhabitant.

A curiosity, partaking of religious awe, led me to its summit. I had expected a peep into the mouth of the Inferno, a visible shaft, plumb down into the fiery bowels of the earth, but no mysterious, unfathomable gulf or chimney of the infernal foundry was to be seen. Cracks, indeed, red and white with fire, burnt a good pair of Hoby’s boots off my feet, as they crossed the region of the crater in every direction, and with their sulphurous vapour nearly stifled us all.

November 20.—At this time there was in the environs of Naples a corps of Russians, understood to be 18,000 strong, but what the allies might have hoped to achieve by uniting an Anglo-Russian force of 25,000 or 30,000 men with the native Neapolitan forces, which altogether might pass perhaps in round numbers for an army of 50,000 or 60,000, it is no part of my present object to retrace. The rapid progress of French victory on the Continent would naturally make the hopes under which the expedition left England perfectly inapplicable to the present period. We had intended to assume grand operations in upper Italy in conjunction with the main armies of Austria and Russia. But now it seemed to be the general opinion that if the Anglo-Russian corps could enable the Neapolitan army to protect the frontier of its Sovereign’s dimensions, more could not be expected.

On the 30th November (and let it be remembered that this was two days only before the overwhelming blow of the battle of Austerlitz) His Neapolitan Majesty reviewed the British forces on a plain between Castel-à-Mare and Naples. Many Russian officers were also on the ground. The King, the Hereditary Prince, and Prince Leopold (then about ten years old) arrived on horseback, the Queen in her carriage, bringing with her old Cardinal Ruffo, who, presently descending, showed us his red stockings. Old Ferdinand appeared in great glee, dressed in a white uniform, with a large cocked hat, and his hair tied in a thick queue. “Avançons, avançons, mon Général,” he said to Sir John Stuart, who was leading him down the line. “Your troops are magnificent! your Army is as fine as your Navy! Body of Bacchus, what an imposing front!” cried the old monarch as he rode up to the Queen.

That elegant ruin, standing up in her carriage and addressing Sir John Stuart, cried, “C’est superbe! magnifique! mon Général. Ce sont des soldats dignes des Anglais, dignes de nos dieux tutélaires.”

She was now old and hazed, but her figure was erect and her mien princely and graceful. Her form had not yet lost all its original brightness, nor appeared less than a queen in ruins.

The line now broke into column, and passed the King and Queen in reviewing order. All on the ground, even the Russian officers, were loud in praise of the appearance of our troops, and certainly 3000 soldiers never formed a more complete and warlike line. I was much amused with the juvenile Prince Leopold, who, dressed like a little field-marshal, and mounted on a superb little charger, richly caparisoned, as often as the officers saluted his Royal parent, lifted the cocked hat from his flaxen head (displaying a queue thicker than his father’s) with a grace the most measured and majestic. Before the Royal party left the ground the wintry sun approached the western wave and blazed upon the brass plates and steely muskets of the soldiers, which Coleridge, who dined with us afterwards, called “a beautiful accident,” and clothed in poetic phrase.

We were a good deal struck with the Royal equipage. It was an old shabby carriage drawn by six miserable horses, tied together with ropes, very ill representing, to our English eyes, the eight proud cream-coloured Hanoverians and the gilded trappings which attach them to the splendid vehicle of our own Sovereign.

December 10.—Early in December the restriction which kept us from visiting the capital was removed. Whether the motive had been to prevent our collision with our Russian confederates quartered in its environs, or whether French employees were still to be temporised with, I neither knew nor inquired. The army began its march to the frontier, and we who had duties still to perform in the neighbourhood of Naples freely satisfied our curiosity by frequent excursions to that interesting place.

Many paternal admonitions did we younger ones receive from the well-versed poet Coleridge to beware of the temptations of Naples, to beware the