Perhaps no church of the same size can boast so great a number of Monuments as Bath ABBEY--" the lantern of England." So numerous are they as to remind us of the famous epigram :—

"These walls, adorned with monument and bust,

Show how Bath waters serve to lay the dust."

The most familiar Memorial to my recollection, besides the large tombs of Bishop Montague and Lady Jane Waller, wife of the Parliamentary general, is that of Quin, which bears the following inscription, written by Garrick :

"The tongue which set the table in a roar,

And charmed the public ear, is heard no more;
Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit,

Which spake before the tongue, with Shakspeare writ;
Cold is that hand which, living, was stretched forth,
At friendship's call, to succour modest worth.
Here lies JAMES QUIN―deign, reader, to be taught,
Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,
In Nature's happiest mould however cast,

To this complexion thou must come at last."

I have said that I had a great love of books. But I had also a love of travel. I began as a child by making pilgrimages to Bristol. As a great city, and the nearest to Bath, it had excited my youthful curiosity; and the fact that it was the home of Chatterton, that marvellous boy, gave it a tenfold interest. From Bristol it was an easy walk to Clifton, where now stretches the famous Suspension Bridge, which had not then been erected over the great gorge of the Avon,

"By some long past stupendous effort rent
Of lab'ring Nature."

I afterwards became bent on seeing London; and one fine morning set off to walk there. The first day I walked to Marlborough (33 miles); the second, to the neighbourhood of Reading, where I slept on a haymow; and the third morning, seeing one of the stage-coaches which then ran between Bath and the Metropolis standing beside an inn, and perceiving that a kind of box hung behind it which I thought was large enough to hold and conceal me, I crept into it unobserved, and in that way rode into the capital In another

week I had been sent home again by the friends I had gone to visit, and had been received once more into the arms of my mother.

My love of travel and adventure was increased by my interest in Missionary enterprise. I listened with great delight to the narratives of returned missionaries at the annual meetings held in Bath, and looked forward with much gratification to the recurrence of such anniversaries.

In a few years I had grown into a young man. I had an uncle who had been in the Marines, whom I greatly admired for his exploits (as Desdemona did Othello). From him I caught the "scarlet fever," and desiring to see the wonders of our Oriental empire, and having no hope of being able to obtain a commission, I enlisted in the service of the Honourable East India Company. Let not any one blame me for this. Did not Coleridge do the same? Did not Steele enlist? Did not the afterwards illustrious George Buchanan serve as a private soldier in the Scotch army? The roll might be made a long one.*

I was soon on my way to Chatham, and I must own in somewhat uncongenial society. Arrived there, I had scarcely donned my red jacket ere I obtained a short furlough, and returned to Bath to show off my uniform, of which I was exceedingly proud. Soldiers were rare in Bath, and were always looked upon as a kind of illustrious strangers; and I strutted up and down the streets with a happy consciousness of attracting notice. But now, taking a final farewell (as I thought) of my friends, I returned to Chatham. Here I remained a short time, during which I continued, as much as I could, my habit of reading, and amused my fellow-soldiers in our great barrack room during the hours of darkness by reciting them stories culled and strung together from my memory; which were in some instances continued night after night, like the famous tales of Scheherazade. We were soon, however, ordered to India, marched to Gravesend, and embarked in a ship bound for Bengal. And then I might very well have burst into

It may be added that the subsequently famous John Hunter was intending to enlist for a soldier, when his brother William, who had become eminent as an anatomical lecturer, invited him to London to assist him in his dissecting-room. The sequel is well known.

SONG.

To the East! to the East! to the land of my dreams!
The land which e'er basks in the sun's brightest beams!
The land of the mountain, the plain, and the flood;
The land won for England by torrents of blood.

To the East! to the East! spread the sail! spread the sail
To the East! to the East! blow, O prosperous gale!

To the East, whence our fathers and brothers first came,
And which, while men change, remains ever the same;
The land of great princes, who own Britain's sway,-
Of proud kings, who her rule and her mandate obey.
To the East! to the East! spread the sail! spread the sail!
To the East! to the East! blow, O prosperous gale!

To the East, where the ivoried elephant herds,

And the peacock in splendour reigns king among birds;
Where the tiger lies crouching amid the tall grass,

And a thousand strange forms through the wild woods pass.
To the East! to the East! spread the sail! spread the sail!
To the East! to the East! blow, O prosperous gale!

To the East, where the banyan outstretches her arms,
And, dropping her rootlets, a grove round her forms;
The slender palm lifts her plumed head to the skies,
Flowers enwreathing, illuming, the forest, arise.

To the East! to the East! spread the sail! spread the sail!
To the East! to the East! blow, O prosperous gale!

To the East, where gold streams,* and where diamonds blaze,
And the Orient ruby its beauty displays,

Where a thousand gems hide in the rock and the field,
And pearls, precious pearls, in the depths lie concealed!
To the East! to the East! spread the sail! spread the sail!
To the East! to the East! blow, O prosperous gale!

To the East! glorious land! famed in annals of old,

And still to be famed as times future unfold!

Land that tyrants have thought to seize, rob, and oppress,

But which Heaven gives to ENGLAND to rule, guard, and bless! †
To the East! to the East! spread the sail! spread the sail!
To the East! to the East! blow, O prosperous gale!

"Gold is found in the beds of most rivers (while it impregnates vast tracts of land) in India. There can be no doubt that, when the riches of India begin to be appreciated in England, the precious metal will flow in abundance from the Eastern to the Western hemisphere."-R. Montgomery Martin.

† By the census of 1891 the population of our Indian empire was shown to be 285,000,000, being an increase of fully 30,000,000 since the census of 1881. "One hundred years ago the population of India was estimated to

We sailed from the Downs with a fair wind, and were soon in the famous Bay of Biscay. But then the wind grew boisterous, and increased to a tempest, accompanied by such pitching and tossing, such reeling and rolling, as made many very sorry they had left the land, caused every head to spin, and stirred every stomach to rebellion.

The storm, however, was of short duration, and we pursued our way. Ere long we passed into the broad Atlantic. And now we had a four-months' voyage before us, a dreary time to many, and more particularly to some of the younger men.*

have been 150,000,000, and to have remained at 150,000,000 for years, and even for centuries, kept at one dead level by War, Pestilence, and Famine. It has increased by 100,000,000 in the course of the last eighty years. There is no fact like that in the whole story of multiplying of people." And the native Christians are now the most rapidly increasing of all classes.

The feelings of some of such young men were well expressed on another occasion by a youthful marine on board a man-of-war, whose lines are so appropriate, though, perhaps, a little faulty, that I shall venture here to introduce them:

THE MARINE'S LAMENT.

WRITTEN ON BOARD H.M.S. "ROYAL ADELAIDE."

OH, could I wander thro' the woods to-day
Where violet and primrose hidden bloom,
And see the dewdrop trembling on the spray,
Far from this haunt of gloom!

Daily I've watched the hedges and the trees
Grow greener, and the hawthorn blossoming,
And sometimes through the port a little breeze
Doth whisper, it is Spring.

Then my mind pictures quiet spots of green,
Where cuckoo-flowers and bluebells nod their heads,
And feathery-tipped ferns bend down to screen

From Sol the violet beds.

And in the morning, when the blackbird sings,
The flowers awakening with his melody,
The zephyrs bear it on their unseen wings
Across the sea to me.

My heart rejoices for a moment, then

Grows sad again, as if to sorrow wed;
For days return I wish forgotten, when

Youth had not vanished.

I asked and obtained permission to deliver some lectures to my fellow-soldiers; and held forth on the lower deck amid a crowd that surrounded me, on subjects which I do not now remember. My lectures, though doubtless of a quite elementary character, were written out, and occupied very enjoyably some time in preparation.

The evenings on board ship are often cheered by song. Our country is deeply indebted to her Naval song-writers. Dibdin, with his "Poor Jack," "Tom Bowling," and some twelve hundred others, did more to maintain our Navy, inspirit our sailors, and preserve order and discipline in our old wars, than all beside. Campbell, with his "Mariners of England," and "Battle of the Baltic," has made many a daring seaman. "The Sea! The Sea!" of Barry Cornwall; the "Black-eyed Susan" of Gay, the "Brave Old Temeraire" of Duff, and "The Heart that can feel for Another" of Upton, are familiar to all; and these Songs are sung on every British ship that traverses or roams the ocean, while "Jack" spins his "yarn," and the landsman tells his "story."

As we passed through the mighty Atlantic, we beheld the beautiful, wild, vine-clad hills of Madeira; and sailed on till-having crossed the Line, and participated in the "ceremonies" customary among mariners on the occasionwe approached the Cape of Good Hope, whose Guardian Spirit Camoëns so well describes addressing the Portuguese discoverers four hundred years ago :

"In me the Spirit of the Cape behold,

That rock by you the Cape of Tempests named,

Now breezes steal through open lattices

Into those rooms so dear to memory,

Laden with breath of buds and hum of bees,
Fresh gather'd on the lea;

Or cuckoos' song, or scent of lilac sweet,
Or apple blossoms from some orchard near ;
Or with the notes the little birds repeat

When ev'ning doth appear.

And down the hatchway sunbeams swiftly steal,
Like new-born thoughts across the poet's mind
Yet even their presence makes me more to feel
The freedom I resign'd,

To be I scarce know what, to lead a life
Of wretchedness (and sigh for liberty);

That I may fitted be for the armed strife

That some day is to be. T. WOODLEY, Private R.M.