Antecedent, therefore, to the age of thirteen, after which a boy ought never to commence his naval career, it appears to matter extremely little what he learns, provided his mind be kept fully occupied. It will be better, no doubt, if a boy’s taste happen to lie in that direction, that his occupations at school have as direct a reference as possible to his future pursuits. If, for instance, he have a turn for mathematics, or for modern languages, he ought certainly to be indulged in his fancy. But the essential objects to be attended to, at this stage of his education, lie a great deal further from the surface, and consequently make much less show. The formation of character, upon the solid basis of religion, and a due cultivation of manners, especially of those branches which relate to temper and self-denial, are quite within the range of education antecedent to the age of thirteen. If, then, a boy be only well grounded in his principles, and if he be taught to think and feel and act like a gentleman, before he is turned adrift on the wide ocean, and he have also acquired habits of industry and obedience, together with the ordinary elements of knowledge—reading, writing, and so on—it matters little, as I conceive, whether he has acquired much information besides—for all else that is wanting will follow in good time.
The consideration of what system of instruction should be pursued afterwards, at the naval college, or on board ship, is a totally different affair, and deserves to be treated by itself.
CHAPTER II.
FIRST GOING AFLOAT.
I know not what other persons may have felt on these occasions; but I must own, that, in spite of all my enthusiasm, when the actual time came for fairly leaving friends and home, and plunging quite alone and irrevocably into a new life, I felt a degree of anxiety, and distrust of myself, which, as these feelings were quite strange, I scarcely knew how to manage. I had been allowed to choose my own profession, it is true, and was always eager to be off; yet I almost wished, when the actual moment arrived, that I had not been taken at my word. For the first time in my life, I knew what was meant by the word responsibility, and all the shame of failure stared me in the face. When at school, nine-tenths of my thoughts had always rambled abroad, to those unknown regions, upon which my imagination loved to feast, day and night. Still, I can well remember, my heart sunk within me, and I felt pretty much as if I were on the verge of death, when the carriage that was to convey me away, drove up to the door. I still believed that there was, even on this earth, a new and a much better world before me; but when I tasked my judgment, to say upon what grounds this belief rested, the answer was so meagre, that I began to dread I had done a mighty foolish thing in setting out to seek for it.
“What a scrape I shall be in,” I said to myself, “if the gloomy representations of these sad fellows the poets be true pictures of life! What if this existence of ours be but a scene of gradually-increasing misery! How shall I be able to get on at all, if a sea life be not more enjoyable than that of the High School of Edinburgh? and what kind of figure shall I cut, when driven back, by sheer distress, to petition my father to take me home again, to eat the bitter bread of idleness, or to seek for some other profession, wherein all the rubs and tugs may prove just as bad as those of the sea, and possibly not very much better than those of school?”
I took good care, however, to let none of these unworthy doubts and alarms find any expression in word or in look; and, with a heart almost bursting, I took leave of the holyday scenes of the country I had loved so well, and which, to my young fancy, appeared the most beautiful spot on earth,—a judgment which, as I before observed, a tolerably extensive acquaintance with the rest of the world has only tended to confirm. Of course, I had a regular interview and leave-taking with my capital friends the fishermen, whom I had long held to be the best-informed persons of my acquaintance, merely because they knew most about ropes and ship matters generally. I cannot say that these worthy mariners stood the test of after-communication, quite so well as the romantic coast-scenery near which they resided. I remember, on returning from my first voyage, going down to the beach, in my uniform jacket, and in no very modest spirit, to shew off my superior nautical attainments to these poor fellows, who had been sticking fast to their rocks during the interval, much after the fashion of their own shell-fish. Their reception, of course, was highly flattering; but their confined views of the profession, and scanty knowledge of many of its details, made me look back with wonder to the time when I had hailed them as first-rate masters in the noble art of seamanship.
On the 16th of May, 1802, I left home; and next day my father said to me, “Now you are fairly afloat in the world, you must begin to write a journal;” and, suiting the action to the word, he put a blank book into one hand, and a pen into the other, with a hint for me to proceed at once to business. The following is a fair specimen of the result, which I certainly little imagined was ever destined to attain the honour of being printed:—
“May 17.—Journey to London.—Left Dunglass. Breakfasted at the Press Inn, and changed horses. Got to Belford; changed horses. Alnwick—dined there, and got to Morpeth, where we slept. Up early; breakfasted at Newcastle. Stopped at Durham. Walked forward till the chaise should overtake us; got into the chaise. Stopped to give the horses some drink. Saw two deep draw-wells. Observed some coal-carts at Newcastle coal-pits. The wheels are so constructed, that they run down-hill upon things in the road, which are made for the purpose. The horse follows the cart, to draw it up the hill, after it has emptied the load.”
The rest of the journal is pretty much in the same style—a record of insignificant facts which lead to nothing, useless as memorandums at the time, and of course not more useful at the distance of eight-and-twenty years. I would give a good deal, at this moment, to possess, instead of these trashy notices, some traces, no matter how faint, of what was actually passing in my mind upon the occasion of this journey. The resolutions we make at such a period, together with the doubts and fears which distract us, may have a certain amount of value, if then jotted down in good faith; but if these fleeting thoughts be once allowed to pass without record, they necessarily lose most of their force. There is always, indeed, something interesting, and often much that is useful, in tracing the connexion between sentiment and action, especially in the elementary stages of life, when the foundations of character are laid. But the capacity of drawing such inferences belongs to a very different period of life; and hence it arises, that early journals are generally so flat and profitless, unless they be written in a spirit which few people think of till too late.
I shall have so many better opportunities than the present of speaking on the copious subject of journal-writing, that I shall merely remark, in passing, for the consideration of my young readers, that what most people wish to find recorded there, is not so much a dry statement of facts, however important these may be, as some account of the writer’s opinions and his feelings upon the occasion. These, it may be observed, are like the lights and shades and colours of a painting, which, while they contribute fully as much to the accuracy of a representation as the correctness of the mere outline, impress the mind of the spectator with a still more vivid image of the object intended to be described.