for the thickest of the beams to be
honeycombed; but that result will be arrived at in
the end; much of every ship will be
destroyed, unless speedily raised and dried. The
worm works only under water. The estimate
of the precise amount in money value of the
damage effected by the carpenter-masons
upon the ships, the property of the Czar, will
be an interesting subject of inquiry.

THE HOSPITAL STUDENT.

As the population of the whole earth has
been guessed for some thousands of years
never to have varied very much from the gross
aggregate of eight hundred millions; and as all
the countless generations have had the same
feelings, and hopes, and fears, with an amazingly
contracted circle within which those
emotions must range, I am petrified with
astonishment, not at the number of plagiarisms,
coincidences, resemblances, or whatever
you may call them, which occur in conversation
and literature, but at the possibility of any
human being ever managing to say, think,
invent, combine, or illustrate anything which
a billion or two of other human beings
have not said, thought, invented, combined,
and illustrated before. As to me, whenever
anything strikes me as a complete novelty,
whether in my own observations or not, I
always add to the enunciation thereof, the
saving clause, "as two hundred and fifty
thousand people must have said, though I
don't remember their names." I call up
grave Egyptians and long-headed Babylonians;
all the sages of Greece and philosophers
without number or denomination
among unknown kindreds and tongues, who
have passed away and left no mark, all at intervals
of a few centuries who have made the
exact remark I have had the pleasure of making
to my attentive family while discussing my
matutinal toast. It is, therefore, with no absurd
idea of having hit upon a truth undiscovered
by Calmucks, Hindoos, Tartars, and Carthaginians,
when I call the reader's attention to
the fact, that many of the most prosaic men
have at one time or other of their lives been
placed in the most agitating circumstances.
It doesn't need to be called Fitz Ormondale,
and shine through three volumes of a novel,
to have seen the most extraordinary sights.

John Smith has seen them—though John
now wears spectacles and a flaxen wig, and
dispenses groceries in a country town. At
one of the Duke's great battles a message
required to be sent to the second in command.
All the aides-de-camp were killed or wounded,
or away on separate missions. The interval
between the divisions was swept with shot
and shell, and yet the order must be
conveyed, or the fate of the combat might change.
There was a man dressed in the garb of a
commercial traveller, mounted on a good, stout
roadster, who had come out to collect certain
monies due to his employers from the officers
in the Peninsular army, and had apparently
thought the sight of a bloody battle would
be an agreeable diversion in the midst of his
labours. The Duke rode up to him and asked
him to go with the message. The man agreed;
but, being devoted to business habits, he said,
"You must give me an authority in writing or
the general won't believe what I say."
Wellington wrote the order; and—at a good, steady
trot, as if he had been anxious to get into the
city before the clock struck ten—the
extempore aide-de-camp, rising in his stirrups and
holding out both his elbows in the manner of
Fulham and Muswell Hill, looking neither to
the left nor right, crossed the fatal space, over
which flew an iron shower which sent the mud
flying in all directions; arrived at his destination;
and, in a minute or two, saw the
result of his communication in a sudden rush
forward of the whole line, dreadful shouts,
and waving of fiery swords. Presently he
heard, by the shouts and hurrahs, that a
great victory had been achieved by the
British arms! This prosaic, steady fourteen
stone man, who took everything as a matter
of course, was witness to the meeting of two
hostile armies, and greatly contributed to the
glorious consummation.

Now, this, which must have occurred to
millions of our predecessors in the art of war,
at Arbela, and Zama, and Cannæ, and all over
India and China, is no unapt illustration of the
juxta-position which occurred in my individual
instance of a very common-place gentleman,
as I humbly confess I am, and a very uncommon
event. Startling, or even incredible
would, perhaps, have been a better word. I
am not anxious about correctness of expression.
I am not a literary man, and all I desire
is to give a clear statement of an incident
of which I was an eye-witness, and which,
however scepticism may swear, I give you my
word is literally and exactly true.

Thirty years ago, I was sent to finish my
education by a year or two's residence in
Germany. My father being in the Baltic trade,
consigned me to the care of one of his
correspondents at Memel: and by him (who
was the kindest friend I ever had in the
world) I was soon introduced to all the society
of that active and intelligent little town. My
ultimate destination in life was still undetermined.
My father wished me to succeed him
in his business; and, for that reason, had
resolved that I should be able to carry on the
house's correspondence in the German
language. My uncle, who was a flourishing
surgeon in Lancashire, was earnest for my
adopting his profession, and offered many
inducements for my exchanging the three-
legged stool for the natty gig and sharp
lancet. My mother and sisters favoured
the medical scheme. It was so much more
genteel than wood-yards and saw-pits; and
they had visions of M. D. after my name,
and, sometimes, even of three small letters
before it, as if I were already physician to