emely hazardous to be
attempted, sent for the man, and expressed his wish that he would
volunteer. "General," said he, "send a man who has NOT GOT a purse of
gold."

The strongest incitement to courage is withdrawn by the possession of
wealth. Other worldly possessions also affect it. Lord St. Vincent,
when he heard that any captain had married, used to observe,
emphatically, "that he was damned for the service,"--no compliment to
the officer, but a very handsome one to the sex, as it implied that
their attractions were so great, that we could not disengage ourselves
from our thraldom, or, in fact, that there were no such things as bad or
scolding wives.

Finally, this _quality_, which is considered as a _virtue_, and to
entitle us to the rewards bestowed upon it by the fair sex, who value it
above all others, is so wholly out of our control, that when suffering
under sickness or disease, it deserts us; nay, for the time being, a
violent stomach-ache will turn a hero into a poltroon.

So much for a dissertation on courage, which I should not have ventured
to force upon the reader, had it not been to prepare him for the
character which I am about to introduce; and when it is pointed out how
many thousands of officers were employed during the last war, I trust it
will not be considered an imputation upon the service, by asserting that
there were some few who _mistook their profession_.

The acting captain of the _Aspasia_, during the early part of his career
in the service (had there been such a thermometer as I have described,
by which the heat of temperament in the party would have been precisely
ascertained), on placing its bulb upon the palm of his hand, would have
forced the mercury something between the zero and courage negative,
towards the zero--"more yes than no," as the Italian said; but now that
he was a married man, above fifty years of age, with a large family, he
had descended in the scale to the absolute zero.

It may, then, be inquired, why he requested to be employed during the
war? Because he liked full pay and prize-money when it could be
obtained without risk, and because his wife and family were living on
shore in a very snug little cottage at Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, which
cottage required nothing but furniture and a few other trifles to render
it complete. Marriage had not only subtracted from the courage of this
worthy officer, but, moreover, a little from his honesty. Captain
Capper