from them. And thus, while the dungcart and the sloop are always meditating mischief against the coach and the ship, and throwing themselves designedly in their way, the latter consider only their own security, and are not ashamed to break the road, and let the other pass by them.

Monday, July 8. Having past our Sunday without any thing remarkable, unless the catching a great number of whitings in the afternoon may be thought so; we now set sail on Monday at six o'clock, with a little variation of wind; but this was so very little, and the breeze itself so small, that the tide was our best, and, indeed, almost our only friend. This conducted us along the short remainder of the Kentish shore. Here we past that cliff of Dover, which makes so tremendous a figure in Shakespear, and which whoever reads without being giddy, must, according to Mr. Addison's observation, have either a very good head, or a very bad one; but which whoever contracts any such ideas from the sight of, must have, at least, a poetic, if not a Shakespearian genius. In truth, mountains, rivers, heroes, and gods, owe great

part of their existence to the poets; and Greece and Italy do so plentifully abound in the former, because they furnished so glorious a number of the latter; who, while they bestowed immortality on every little hillock and blind stream, left the noblest rivers and mountains in the world to share the same obscurity with the eastern and western poets, in which they are celebrated.

This evening we beat the sea off Sussex, in sight of Dungeness, with much more pleasure than progress; for the weather was almost a perfect calm, and the moon, which was almost at the full, scarce suffered a single cloud to veil her from our sight.

Tuesday, Wednesday, July 9, 10. These two days we had much the same fine weather, and made much the same way; but, in the evening of the latter day, a pretty fresh gale sprung up, at N.N.W. which brought us by the morning in sight of the Isle of Wight.

Thursday, July II. This gale con

tinued till towards noon; when the east end of the island bore but little a-head of us. The captain, being unwilling to come to anchor, declared he would keep

the sea; but the wind got the better of him, so that about three he gave up the victory, and, making a sudden tack, stood in for the shore, passed by Spithead and Portsmouth, and came to an anchor at a place called Ryde on the island; as did a great number of merchant ships, who attended our commodore from the Downs, and watched his motions so narrowly, that they seemed to think themselves unsafe when they did not regulate their motions by his.

A most tragical incident fell out this day at sea. While the ship was under sail, but making, as will appear, no great way, a kitten, one of four of the feline inhabitants of the cabin, fell from the window into the water: an alarm was immediately given to the captain, who was then upon deck, and received it with the utmost concern. He immediately gave orders to the steersman in favour of the poor thing, as he called it; the sails were instantly slackened, and all hands, as the phrase is, employed to recover the poor animal. I was, I own, extremely surprised at all this; less, indeed, at the captain's extreme tenderness, than at his conceiving any possi

bility of success; for, if puss had had nine thousand, instead of nine lives, I concluded they had been all lost. The boatswain, however, had more sanguine hopes; for, having stript himself of his jacket, breeches, and shirt, he leapt boldly into the water, and, to my great astonishment, in a few minutes, returned to the ship, bearing the motionless animal in his mouth. Nor was this, I observed, a matter of such great difficulty as it appeared to my ignorance, and possibly may seem to that of my fresh-water reader the kitten was now exposed to air and sun on the deck, where its life, of which it retained no symptoms, was despaired of by all.

The captain's humanity, if I may so call it, did not so totally destroy his philosophy, as to make him yield himself up to affliction on this melancholy occasion. Having felt his loss like a man, he resolved to shew he could bear it like one; and, having declared, he had rather have lost a cask of rum or brandy, betook himself to threshing at backgammon with the Portuguese friar, in which innocent amusement they passed their leisure hours.

But as I have, perhaps, a little too wantonly endeavoured to raise the tender passions of my readers, in this narrative, I should think myself unpardonable if I concluded it, without giving them the satisfaction of hearing that the kitten at last recovered, to the great joy of the good captain; but to the great disappointment of some of the sailors, who asserted, that the drowning a cat was the very surest way of raising a favourable wind: a supposition of which, though we have heard several plausible accounts, we will not presume to assign the true original reason.

Friday, July 12. This day our ladies went a-shore at Ryde, and drank their afternoon tea at an alehouse there with great satisfaction: here they were regaled with fresh cream, to which they had been strangers since they left the Downs.

Saturday, July 13. The wind seeming likely to continue in the same corner, where it had been almost constantly for two months together, I was persuaded by my wife to go ashore, and stay at Ryde till we sailed. I approved the motion much; for, though I am a great