140 THE JOURNEYMAN, 



It represented the battle as if drawing near its close. In 

 the foreground was the Redoubtable, a French ship of 

 the line, on fire. The flames were bursting out furi- 

 ously from window and gun-port, tinging the waves be- 

 low with a red and fiery glare. Some of the crew were 

 seen throwing themselves overboard ; while others, with 

 despair depicted on their countenances, were clinging to 

 the vessel's sides as if uncertain which death to choose. 

 The fourth and last scene was of a calm, but, though it 

 represented the hour of victory, of a gloomy character. 

 In the distance a few of the fugitive vessels were seen 

 giving their broadside and crowding on every sail to 

 expedite their flight. In the foreground all was desola- 

 tion. Dismasted and shattered vessels, huge fragments 

 of rigging to which a few shivering wretches still clung, 

 and a sun again shining through a clearing atmosphere 

 on the madness and the misery of man, made this scene, 

 like the last of a tragedy, by far the saddest.' 



From the panorama, he turns to the theatre. Much 

 of his reading, he says, had been of a description ap- 

 proved by Uncle James, but he had read more plays and 

 novels than would have been sanctioned by that stern 

 moralist. He cannot see that they have done him much 

 harm, and, sure enough, ' no small portion of the pleasure 

 he had experienced in this world had been derived from 

 them.' He will not, however, undertake to defend this 

 species of reading ; he means only to introduce the re- 

 mark that, being largely acquainted with plays and 

 novels, and possessing a fancy naturally strong, he had 

 formed too high an idea of theatrical representation, and, 

 when he saw the theatre, was disappointed. 'When 

 reading,' he says, ' the plays of Shakespeare or of Otway, 

 of Rowe or of Addison, I saw with the mind's eye their 

 heroes not as actors, but as men; and the scenes they 



