nt's wooden leg, or a foremast-man's pigtail--was, at one
time, a wild, thoughtless, rollicking man, with very broad shoulders
and a very red face, who talked incessantly about shivering his
timbers, and thought no more of eating a score or two of Frenchmen
than if they had been sprats. Such was the effect of the veracious
chronicles of our countryman Tobias, and the lifelike descriptions of
old Trunnion, and Tom Bowling, and the rest. The jack-tar, as
represented by him--with the addition, perhaps, of a few softening
features, but still the man of blood and 'ounds, breathing fire and
smoke, and with a constant inclination to luff helms and steer a point
or two to windward--has retained possession of the stage to the
present time; and Mr T. P. Cooke still shuffles, and rolls, and
dances, and fights--the beau-ideal and impersonation of the instrument
with which Britannia rules the waves. And that the canvass waves of
the Surrey are admirably ruled by such instruments, we have no
intention of disputing; nor would it be possible to place visibly
before the public the peculiar qualifications that constitute a
first-rate sailor, any more than those which form a first-rate lawyer.
The freaks of a young templar have as much to do with the triumphs of
Lord Eldon, as the dash and vivacity of any fictitious middy have to
do with the First of June. Sailors are made of sterner stuff; and of
all classes of men, have their highest faculties called earliest into
use, and kept most constantly in exercise. Let no man, therefore,
think of the navy as a last resource for the stupidest of his sons. He
will chew salt-junk, and walk with an easy negligence acquired from a
course of practice in the Bay of Biscay; and in due time arrive at his
double epaulettes, and be a blockhead to the end of the chapter. But
all this stupidity, we humbly conceive, might have found as fitting an
arena in Westminster Hall, or even in Westminster Abbey--with
reverence be it spoken--as on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war; for we
maintain it is of less consequence for a man to be a great pleader or
an eloquent divine, (where the utmost extent of evil resulting from
the absence of eloquence and acuteness is a law-suit lost or a
congregation lulled to sleep,) than that he should be active,
energetic, skilful, in one of the "leviathans afloat on the brine."
Science, zeal, courage, and self-reliance, are very pretty qualities
to find in the fool of the family--and wi