568 .-The King-s Own. 



(e bearing up against the breeze" " filling the forward sails" " setting 

 the ensign," c. &c.* Nor does " Captain M ," like the far-famed 

 " Red Rover," direct his first lieutenant to " haul down the staysails, and 

 steady the ship by the yards !" A boy a month in " blue water" could 

 inform Mr. Cooper that it is not by naked spars a ship is to be " stea- 

 died." The two succeeding chapters powerfully, and we may add, 

 painfully detail the destruction by shipwreck of the French battle-ship 



and the British frigate. The motive of Captain M for resorting to 



an expedient so desperate will doubtless become a subject of professional 

 discussion. 



One more extract and we have done. It is descriptive of an oriental 

 lattue, and it strikes us to be one of the most gorgeous .and picturesque 

 pieces of writing we ever remember to have read. 



" At an early hour, Courtenay and his companions started with. their attendants 

 for the scene of action. Several elephants, as well as horses, had been provided, 

 that the officers might mount them when they arrived, and fire from their backs 

 with more deliberate aim. In less than two hours they reached the spot, which 

 they had surveyed the day before. The game, which had been driven from 

 jungle to jungle for many miles round, was now collected together in one 

 large mass of underwood and low trees, three sides of which were surrounded by 

 the natives, who had been employed in the service, and who had been joined by 

 many hundreds from the town and neighbouring villages. As soon as the party 

 arrived, those who were on horseback dismounted, took their stations upon the 

 howdahs of the elephants, and collected at the corner of that side of the jungle at 

 which the animals were to be driven out. The scene was one of the most ani- 

 mating and novel description. Forty or fifty of the superior classes of natives, 

 mounted upon fiery Arabians, with their long, glittering, boar-spears in their 

 hands, and above one hundred on foot, armed with musquets, surrounded the 

 elephants upon which the officers were stationed. The people, who were waiting 

 round the jungle silent themselves, and busy in checking the noise and impatience 

 of the dogs, held in leashes, whose deep baying was occasionally answered by a low 

 growl from the outskirts of the wood now received the order to advance. Shouts 

 and yells, mixed with the barking of dogs, were raised in deafening clamour on 

 every side. The jungle, which covered a space of fifteen or twenty acres, and 

 which had hitherto appeared but slightly tenanted, answered, as if endued with 

 life, by waving its boughs and rustling its bushes in every direction, although 

 there was nothing to be seen. 



" As they advanced, beating with their long poles, and preserving a straight and 

 compact line, through which nothing could escape, so did the jungle before them 

 increase its motion ; and soon the yells of thousands of men were answered by the 

 roars and cries of thousands of brute animals. It was not, however, until the 

 game had been driven so near to the end of the jungle at which the hunters were 

 stationed, and until they were huddled together so close that it could no longer 

 contain them, that they unwillingly abandoned it. The most timorous, the rabbit 

 and the hare, arid all the smaller tribes, first broke cover, and were allowed to 

 pass unnoticed; but they were soon followed by the whole mass, who, as if by 

 agreement among themselves, had determined at once to decide their fate. 



" Crowded in incongruous heaps, without any distinction of species or of habits, 

 now poured out the various denizens of the woods deer in every variety, locking 

 their horns in their wild confusion ; the fierce wild-boars, bristling in their rage ; 

 the bounding leopards ; the swift antelope, of every species ; the savage panthers ; 

 jackals and foxes, and all the screaming and shrieking infinities of the monkey 

 tribe. Occasionally, amongst the dense mass could be perceived the huge boa- 

 constrictor, rolling in convolutions now looking back with fiery eyes upon his 



* The professional reader well knows that "head sails" ought to have been substituted 

 for "forward sails" and that " setting the ensign" is an expression not more incompre- 

 hensible than " a full-rigged ship." 



