528 Letter an Affairs in genera!. [MAY, 



"I could have bettor spared a bettor man," from parliament, than Dick 

 Martin, who, I understand, is turned out of the representation of Conne- 

 mara. " I shall have a heavy miss of him," when I wish to be light-hearted 

 over a long debate. It is said that he has gone to France to avoid un- 

 pleasant reminiscences in England. I trust, for the old man's sake, that 

 it is not so but if it be, I think ho would have avoided them more cer- 

 tainly by going with Captain Parry, on his present voyage, to Spitzbergen, 

 Acceptances may be wafted in quest of him to the Seine, or to the Indus, 

 but not to the Pole. Indeed, who would follow a debt through regions of 

 " thick-ribbed ice," where he might chance to take off his toes with his 

 stockings in an evening, or blow off his nose into the fire in a morning ? 

 Such a calamity might happen near the North Pole, since Knivett tells us, 

 that it did happen to himself and some of his friends, when they sailed with 

 Sir T. Cavendish in quest of the South Pole. 



You must have heard of an ancient periodical, entitled the Gentleman's 

 Magazine, though I do not suppose that you, a man of the town, have 

 ever seen it. It is one of the reliques of a former age, for which we. of 

 the country, entertain an indefinite sort of respect, arising out of our par- 

 tiality for " the wisdom of our ancestors." I know not what induced me. 

 to look into the number for the present month ; but, as I am a great natu- 

 ralist, I think it must have been my good destiny, which would not per- 

 mit me to be ignorant of a singular phenomenon, which has recently been 

 witnessed in the Indian seas. A young midshipman, in writing to his 

 worthy grandfather, Sylvanus Urban, on the Burmese War, informs him 

 that the captain of his ship whom I take to be an Irishman, from his 

 ingenious mode of doing business -forwarded his despatches to the 

 government " by his Majesty's ship, Champion, then lying before Ran- 

 goon, where she has been ever since, and is noiv, with her people, half 

 eaten by the mosquitoes.'' I had heard much of the rapacity of the 

 mosquitoes, before I saw this anecdote in illustration of it ; but I had no 

 idea of their tooth being so dreadfully keen and destructive. I knew that 

 the " Dragon of Wantley" was in the habit of taking a parson for his 

 lunch, and a church and congregation for his dinner on a Sunday ; nor 

 was I surprized at the circumstance, because I had been informed that he 

 was a "monster, which, like his great progenitor, " lay floating many a 

 rood," and therefore conjectured that he must have an appetite com- 

 mensurate with his size but, that a mosquito, which in magnitude ex- 

 ceeds not a common gnat, should have swallowed up half a ship's crew, 

 together with half the hull, masts, sails, cordage, and guns, is a miracle, 

 which I could never have credited, had it not come to us from such grave 

 and respectable authority. For the sake of science, as well as of huma- 

 nity, I am glad that one half of the ship and crew has escaped from the 

 dreadful catastrophe, which has overtaken the other. The commander of 

 the Champion, if he has not been literally " sawed into quantities," and 

 " hurt beyond the reach of surgery," by these bloodsuckers of the east, 

 must lay before the Admiralty an account of the direful disaster, which 

 his Majesty's late good ship has unfortunately experienced ; and I am cer- 

 tain, that neither the secretary, nor his sub, when they have once pro- 

 cured it, will allow " sleep to hang upon their lids," till they have pre- 

 pared the particulars of it for publication, in the forthcoming Number of 

 the Quarterly Review, N. S. 



