t once
pronounced to be the paymaster of a ship; as the then purser was, in
fact, more familiar with slops, tobacco, pork, dips, biscuit, and the
like, than with cash payments--for, excepting short-allowance dues, he
had very little meddling with money matters. But the Admiralty have
recently swamped the well-known and distinctive nautical title--despite
of its time-honoured claims to repute--and introduced the army
appellative, PAYMASTER, in its stead.

The pithy conciseness of the brackish tongue renders it eminently useful
on duty. In some of their sea-phrases the French, our great rivals, use
a heap of words more than we are wont to do. An instance is
given--supposing a ship of the former met with one of ours, and they
should desire to salute each other, the English commander would sing
out, "Man ship!" but the French captain would have to exclaim, "Rangez
du monde sur les vergues pour donner des cris de salut!" By the way,
there is a _ben trovato_ respecting the difficulty of doing our naval
tidings into French: a translator of note made quite a mull of a ship
being _brought up_ by her anchors, and of another which was stranded
from _borrowing_ too much; while "a man-of-war riding easily in the road
at Spithead" was rendered "Un homme de guerre se promenait a cheval a
son aise sur le chemin de Spithead." Some of the French terms, however,
are recommended by their Parisian stamp, as in calling iron bilboes "bas
de soie"--the waist-netting "Saint Aubinet"--the quarter-gallery a
"jardin d'amour:" but similar elegance was not manifested in dubbing the
open-hearted thorough-bred tar "un loup de mer."

In the work before us, the nautical import of the terms is duly
considered, and the orthography, as far as feasible, is ruled by
authority and custom, with an occasional slight glance at the probable
etymology of the words--slight, because derivation is a seductive and
frequently illusory pilot. Our language is said to have been arraigned
by foreigners for its hissing enunciation; but, regardless of the
rebuke, our pundits have, of late, unnecessarily increased the whistling
by substituting the sibilant _s_ for the vocal _z_, in all sorts of
cases. Happily this same _s_ not being yet acclimatized to the galley,
Jack will continue to give tongue to an enterpri_z_ing crui_z_e after
Portugue_z_e merchandi_z_e, and there anent.

The plan of our work may be said to comprise the treating _de omnibus
rebus nauticis_, for many