Well, I didn't suppose I had slept an hour, dreaming terribly wild sort of dreams about Violet Hyde and elephants, then that I'd saved her myself, and was stooping to kiss her rosy lips, when a sudden noise on deck startled me,—I shoved myself into my clothes and rushed on the quarterdeck. She had gone aground at her stern in swinging, in the water the Portuguese rascal gave her, canted a little over to starboard, away from the shore; and till morning flood nothing could be done to haul her off. The fog was rolling down with the land-breeze, and the jabber in the woods, again, thickened the confusion; when all at once a dim flash off the shore glimmered in the white fog, and a round-shot whistled just astern, pretty well aimed for her bilge, which would have cost us some work if it had hit. After that, however, there was no more of it, the fellow probably having spent either all his powder or his balls. As for his fort, I heard the chief officer swearing he would knock it about his ears next day—a thing that couldn't have done him much harm, certainly, unless mud were dear.

No sooner had the men gone below, leaving the ordinary anchor-watch, than Mr Finch, to my great surprise, walked up to me, and gave me a strange suspicious look, hinting that he began to have a good guess of what I really was, but if anything new of the kind turned up, said he, he should know better what to say to me. "Mr Finch," said I, starting, "this won't do, sir—you'll either speak your mind before cabin and cuddy, or to-morrow morning, by Jove! you'll go quietly ashore with me, sir—as I think, now you remind me of it, we settled to do, already!" The mate's face whitened, and he eyed me with a glare of malice, as I turned on my heel and began to walk the quarterdeck till he went below.

However, the thought of the thing stuck to me, and I kept walking in the dark to get rid of it: the four or five men of the anchor-watch shuffling lazily about, and all thick save ahead up the river, where the land-breeze blew pretty strong, bringing now and then a faint gleam out of the mist. I was leaning against the fore-chains, listening to the ebb-tide, and thinking; when I saw one of the men creeping in from the bowsprit, which you just saw, where it ran up thick into the dusk, with scarce a glimpse of the jib-boom and flying-jib-boom beyond. The sailor came up touching his hat to me, and said he thought he saw something queer off the boom-end. "Well," said I gruffly, "go and tell your mate, then." I didn't know the fellow's voice, though it had a particular twang in it, and he wasn't in Jacob's watch, I knew. "Why, your honour," he persisted, "I knows pretty well what you air—asking your pardon, sir—but I think you'd make more out of it nor any of the mates!—It's some'at rather skeary, sir!" added he. Accordingly I took hold of the man-ropes and swung myself up the bowsprit, and had my feet on the foot-rope below the jib-boom, when I heard his breath, following behind me. "Never you trouble yourself, my man," said I; "one at a time!" and back he went in board again—for something curious in his way struck me, but I wanted to see what he meant. I had just got near the flying-jib, half-stowed in as it was on the boom, and I fancied, with a creep of my blood in me, I made out a man's head over the sail; but next moment a hand like a vice caught me by the throat, and some one growled out—"Now ye infarnal man-o'-war hound, I have ye—and down you goes for it!" The instant I felt it, my coolness came back; as for grappling, I couldn't, and the ebb current ran below to her bows at a rate fit to carry one out to sea in half an hour. I saw the whole plot in a twinkling, and never moved; instead of that I gave a sort of laugh, and followed the husky twang of the other man to a tee. "He won't come, Harry, my lad!" said I, and my ugly friend let go before he had time to think twice. "He be blowed!" said Harry, scornfully; "an' why won't he, mate?" He had scarce the words out of his mouth, though, ere I took him a twist that doubled him over the spar, and down he slipped, hanging by a clutch of the sail. "I suppose, my fine fellow," said I, "you forgot Fernando Po, and those nigger adventures of yours—eh?"—and I went in without more ado.

I hadn't been ten minutes on deck, however, when I heard both of them swearing something or other to the first mate. A little after Finch came forward to me, with a ship's-lantern, and three or four of the men behind. "Mr Collins, or whatever's your name, sir," said he aloud, "I believe you've been seen just now at the bowsprit-end, making signals or something to the shore! You're in arrest at once, sir, and no more about it!" "What the deuce!" said I, my blood up, and pulling out a pair of pocket-pistols I had had in the boat, "let me see the man to—" At the moment a blow of a handspike from near the mast laid me senseless on the deck, and I knew nothing more.——But I see 'tis too far gone in the night to carry out the yarn, ladies!

BRITISH AGRICULTURE AND FOREIGN COMPETITION.

"I do say it is for the public advantage that I should say to him, (the farmer,) continue your improvements: I cannot undertake to guarantee to you, by legislation, a particular price; but this I will say, that as long as corn is under 51s., you shall not be exposed to the importation of foreign corn." So spoke Sir Robert Peel in February 1842, as the proposer of an excellent law for the improved regulation of the corn trade. The pledge was a distinct one; and the very homeliness of the language saves it from equivocal construction. In the course of the same debate, Sir Robert, with just and prudent caution, expressly abstained from committing himself to the obviously fallacious doctrine of a fixed remunerative price. He held, as we hold, that, according to varying circumstances, that remunerating price must vary. He did not, and could not, forget that, under war prices and war taxes, wheat could not be cultivated with profit in this country, unless the quarter sold for 80s.; neither was he blind to the fact, that we had seen the average price so low in 1835 as 39s. 4d., notwithstanding the operation of a highly protective law. But he also held that, although it was impossible, with all the aids which agricultural experiment and statistical science could bring, to fix an immutable price for the quarter of wheat—as he had previously done in the instance of the ounce of gold—still, from averages taken throughout the country for a series of years, it was possible to frame some general proximate conclusion, which the legislature was bound to keep in mind, whilst considering any laws or alterations of rates that might hereafter affect the interests of the British farmer. So that, when Sir Robert Peel enunciated the following opinions, we maintain that the principle which guided him was strictly correct; and we accept these as embodying the main argument that led to the conclusion, which we have placed above as the commencement and the text of this article. "Now, with reference to the probable remunerating price, I should say that, for the protection of the agricultural interest, as far as I can possibly form a judgment, if the price of wheat in this country, allowing for its natural oscillations, could be limited to some such amount as between 54s. and 58s., I do not believe that it is for the interest of the agriculturist that it should be higher. Take the average of the last ten years, excluding from some portion of the average the extreme prices of the last three years, and 56s. would be found to be the average; and so far as I can form an idea of what would constitute a fair remunerating price, I, for one, should never wish to see it vary more than I have said. I cannot say, on the other hand, that I am able to see any great or permanent advantage to be derived from the diminution of the price of corn beyond the lowest amount I have named, if I look at the subject in connexion with the general position of the country, the existing relations of landlord and tenant, the burdens upon the land, and the habits of the country."

These opinions are quite distinct, and from them we gather that Sir Robert Peel, in 1842, considered that, on an average, 54s. was the lowest price at which the British farmer could raise wheat for the market—so long, at least, as he was liable to the same burdens as formerly, occupied the same position in the country, and paid the same rent to his landlord. Following out these views, Sir Robert Peel introduced his sliding-scale of duties, and the result would seem in a great measure to vindicate his sagacity. Let us take the averages for the six years immediately following:—

s. d.
1842, 573
1843,501
1844,513
1845,5010
1846,548
1847,699
6)33310
5572⁄3