ree
horns of Canary, would smile and chat in his own dry manner with his
friends and domestics, asking minute questions about their neighbours
and acquaintance; or when scholars or clergymen shared his simple
repast, affecting a droll anxiety--rich and pleasant in the conqueror
of Tromp--to prove, by the aptness and abundance of his quotations,
that, in becoming an admiral, he had not forfeited his claim to be
considered a good classic.'

The care and interest with which he looked to the well-being of his
humblest followers, made him eminently popular in the fleet. He was
always ready to hear complaints and to rectify grievances. When
wounded at the battle of Portland, and exhorted to go on shore for
repose and proper medical treatment, he refused to seek for himself
the relief which he had put in the way of his meanest comrade. Even at
the early period of his cruise against the Cavalier corsairs of
Kinsale, such was Blake's popularity, that numbers of men were
continually joining him from the enemy's fleet, although he offered
them less pay, and none of that licence which they had enjoyed under
Prince Rupert's flag. They gloried in following a leader _sans peur et
sans reproche_--one with whose renown the whole country speedily
rang--the renown of a man who had revived the traditional glories of
the English navy, and proved that its meteor flag could 'yet terrific
burn.'

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Robert Blake: Admiral and General at Sea._ By Hepworth Dixon.
London: Chapman and Hall. 1852.

[2] _Biographical and Critical Miscellanies._

[3] _History of Great Britain_, c. lxi.

[4] He had been lamed for life, by a wound in the thigh, at the battle
of Portland, 1653.

SUMMER LODGINGS.

In the dominions of the Czar, the backs of the serfs suffer a weekly
titillation as insufferable, although not so deadly, as the less
frequent knout. When it comes to Wednesday, they begin to imagine that
they are not exactly comfortable; on Thursday, the natural moisture of
their skin seems fast drying up, and they are in an incipient fit of
the fidgets; on Friday, the epidermis cracks all over, or
makes-believe to do so; and on Saturday, the whole population, with a
shout of impatient joy, rush to the bath-house of the village, like a
herd of bullocks in the dog-days to the river, and boil themselves in
steam. When thoroughly done, they come out, beautifully plumped, as
the cooks say, and feeling fresh and vigorous, and as fit