38 THE BOY. 



wondered and derided as they beheld him launching on 

 the horse-pond a succession of mysterious vessels con- 

 structed from the descriptions of Anson, Cook, and 

 other voyagers. In the Schools and Schoolmasters we 

 hear of one of these, a proa, similar to those used by 

 the Ladrone islanders, but this was no more than a 

 single specimen of his ship-carpentering. ' I used/ he 

 wrote to Baird, ' to keep in exercise the risible facul- 

 ties of all the mimic navigators of the pond, with slim, 

 fish-like boats of bark, like those of the North American 

 Indians, awkward high-pooped galleys, like those I had 

 seen in an old edition of Dryden's Virgil, two-keeled 

 vessels, like the double canoes of Otaheite, and wall- 

 sided half vessels, like the proas of the Ladrone islands. 

 Nor could I/ he proceeds, ' derive, like my com- 

 panions, any pleasure from the merely mechanical opera- 

 tion of plain sailing. I had a story connected with every 

 voyage, and every day had its history of expeditions of 

 discovery, and cases of mutiny and shipwreck. 5 Navi- 

 gation gave place to chemistry, but his experiments were 

 ' woefully unfortunate.' Then he tried painting, but as 

 the art seems to have required boiling of oil, and as 

 he boiled it so effectually that the flame found its way 

 out at the chimney-top, and a ' sublime fire-scene/ 

 threatening to become more sublime than agreeable, 

 was the result, the brush was thrown aside. The found- 

 ing of leaden images was next attempted, but one of the 

 busts being waggishly like a neighbour, and troubles 

 arising in consequence, this also was abandoned. ' My 

 ingenuity gained me such a reprimand that I flung my 

 casts into the fire/ He now took a turn at 'mosaic 

 work/ and this was followed by attempts to fashion 

 watch-seals. 'When I had worn the points of my 

 fingers with cutting and polishing until the blood ap- 



