"Will ye no come back again,
Better lo'ed ye canna be,"
sung by the lads of a Scotch village, one feels that Charles Stuart did not wholly fail; the song outlives the dynasty, and relics of Prince Charlie are fondly cherished, while no man cares a halfpenny for his Hanoverian rivals.
The best life of Prince Charles is that by Mr. Ewald (London, 1875). Mr. Ewald alone has used the State Papers at the Record Office. Lord Stanhope's and Mr. Chambers's "Histories of the Forty-five" are also excellent; as are "Jacobite Memoirs," selected from Bishop Forbes's MS. "Lyon in Mourning." These works, with the contemporary tracts, and some MSS., with Lord Stanhope's "Decline of the Last Stuarts," and the Stuart Papers at Windsor, as given in Browne's "History of the Highland Clans," have been consulted in compiling this study of Prince Charles.[Back to Contents]
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK[14]
By Oliver Optic
(1728-1779)
As an example of the self-made man without fortune or the prestige of a distinguished family to assist him, perhaps there is none better and more instructive than the career of Captain Cook, the great English navigator and discoverer. At his birth, in 1728, his father was a farm-laborer, and his mother belonged to the same grade of society. They lived in the north of England, and were people of excellent character. On account of his honesty, industry, and skill in farming, his father was promoted to the place of head servant on a farm some distance from where he had been working; but it does not appear that he ever made any further advancement. James learned to read and write, and was instructed in some of the simpler rules of arithmetic, which was the extent of his school learning, a very slender outfit for one of the distinction to which he attained in a lifetime of fifty years.
At the age of thirteen James was bound as an apprentice to a dry-goods dealer in a small way in a considerable fishing town. The business did not suit the youth at all, for he had before cherished the idea of going to sea, and his surroundings in a seaport doubtless increased his yearnings in that direction. A disagreement between the apprentice and his employer enabled him to procure his discharge, and he engaged his services to the Messrs. Walker, a couple of Quakers, who owned two vessels employed in the coal trade. He passed the greater portion of his term, and a considerable period after its expiration, as a common sailor on board of the ship Free Love, where he obtained a thorough knowledge of seamanship. From this humble sphere he was promoted to be mate of one of the Walker ships. His life in this capacity was uneventful, though he was all the time learning navigation and storing his mind with the information which was to enable him to distinguish himself in later years.