, kind of homespun people. I met at their
table the worthy chaplain, Gordon. Some of his friends said he was too
mundane, and bowed to the pleasures of the world most unclerically. I
found him an agreeable, gentlemanly person in society, and a plain-sailing
parson in the pulpit. There were two officers here who were most amusing,
Captains Miller and Lyall, and when dining with them, which I frequently
did, I do not know which I enjoyed most, their dinner or their dry jokes.
I also became acquainted with Captain Blennerhassett, and sometimes took a
cold dinner at a small house he rented on the banks of the Meuse. We
dubbed it Frogmore Hall, in consequence of a vast quantity of those
creatures infesting it. Lord Blaney, who once wrote a book, principally on
the best mode of cooking, figured away here. He was a good-natured but not
a very wise man. He could not bear the midshipmen, because, he said, they
cheated him out of his best cigars and made him give them a dinner when he
did not wish for their company. This was, strange to say, sometimes the
case.

There were about twelve hundred prisoners at this depot, principally
officers of the army and navy, and a few masters of merchant ships, as
well as some people detained in a most unjust manner by a decree of
Bonaparte when the war broke out. About two miles from the town was a
racecourse, made by the officers and kept up by subscription, where, I was
informed, there was as much jockeyship practised as at Newmarket. It made
a variety, and the ladies say variety is charming. After residing in this
town, where every description of vice was practised, about a month, I
remarked that the mids, of whom there were about one hundred and twenty,
were idle, dissipated, and running into debt. The greater part of them
were fine lads. I proposed to Captain Otter the establishment of a school
for them, and said that if the requisite masters could be procured I would
superintend it. He entered into my views most willingly and wrote to the
Admiralty respecting them, informing their lordships the expenses for a
hundred midshipmen would not be more than eighty pounds a year. Not
receiving an answer, he established it at his own risk; whether he was
ever remunerated is a problem I am not enabled to solve. Six lieutenants
volunteered to assist me, and attended the school hours in turn.(7)
Everything went on exceedingly well for twelve months, when unfortunately
the Baron de Beauchene died, and