George, when the present admiral, Sir R. Keats, was lieutenant of her, and for whom both of us equally entertained a sincere regard, my mind took its first decided naval turn, from this familiar intercourse with Nelson."

All that can be stated here, respecting the intercourse between the Prince and Lord Nelson, cannot fail to interest. In a letter to Mrs. Nesbit, Nelson says, "What is it to attend on princes? Let me attend on you, and I am satisfied. Some are born for attendants on great men: I rather think that is not my particular province. His Royal Highness often tells me, he believes I am married, for he never saw a lover so easy, or say so little of the object he has a regard for. When I tell him I certainly am not, he says, 'Then he is sure I must have a great esteem for you, and it is not what is vulgarly called love.'"

The Prince was present at the marriage of his friend, and gave away the bride, who was the widow of a physician at Nevis, her name Frances Nesbit. The marriage took place on the 12th of March, 1787. Respecting his marriage, Nelson wrote to a friend, dated from Tortola, while on the same station, as follows:-"My time since November has been taken up entirely in attending the Prince on a tour round these islands. However, excepting Grenada, this is the last, when I shall repair to English Harbour, and fit the Boreas for a voyage to England. Happy shall I be when that time arrives. No man has had more illness or trouble, on a station, than I have experienced; but let me lay a balance on the other side. I am married to an amiable woman; that far makes amends for everything. Indeed, until I married her I never knew happiness, and I am morally certain she will continue to make me a happy man for the rest of my days, Prince William did me the honour to stand her father upon the occasion, and has shown every act of kindness that the most sincere friendship could bestow. His Royal Highness leaves this country in June, by which time I hope my orders will arrive, or that somebody will be appointed to the command."

About this time, the House of Assembly at Barbadoes presented his Royal Highness with a sword, gold mounted, and valued at three hundred guineas; and at Dominica he received from the representative body, the present of a very valuable chronometer. The utmost respect and civility were shown Prince William by the French authorities, at Guadaloupe and Martinique, and public invitations were sent from both islands, entreating the honour of a visit.

One of the Prince's friends, acquired here, was the late well known Captain Holloway, commanding the Solebay. He was junior to Nelson in rank, though in years his senior. He was a noted character in the navy for roughness and bluntness of manner, and remarkable also for sterling bravery. The veteran frequently took upon him to advise the Prince in his plain way, without circumlocution, or ceremony. The Prince going on board the Solebay, and seeing a Bible lying open in his cabin, remarked to the honest seaman, "Jack, you are always reading the Bible! Are you going to write notes upon it?" -"No, Sir," was the answer, "but the longer I read that book, the greater is my eagerness to return again to the perusal of it; for there I learn all my duty; and among other things, to trust in the Lord, and put no confidence in princes." His Royal Highness laughed at the hit, and more than ever esteemed the man whose heart was without guile. Captain Holloway accompanied his Royal Highness on the tour he was making through the islands. He died suddenly at Wells in Somersetshire, of which place he was a native, on the 26th of June, 1826.

"

A letter from the West Indies, dated February, 1787, states that the Prince had been in Antigua repairing the Pegasus, which he commanded: it says, " All ranks are vying with each other in making grand entertainments for their illustrious visitor. The Prince is quite the officer, never wearing any other dress than his uniform, and his star and garter only when receiving addresses, or on any public occasion. He has not slept a night out of his ship since his arrival in these seas,

until coming into English harbour, where the ship's heaving down obliged him to be on shore. His Royal Highness shows the most amiable disposition and condescension on every occasion, sees into the detail of the business of his ship, and delivers his own orders with the most minute attention to the duty and discipline of the frigate. In short, he promises to be what we all hope and wish-the restorer of the ancient glory of the British navy."

It may not be deemed amiss to allude again to the intimacy between the great Nelson and his Royal Highness. The Prince was only in his twenty-second year when Nelson was his senior in the Boreas; and such was the management of that distinguished man and officer, that for three years, during which he was in the West Indies, he never lost a man or officer. Nelson, well acquainted with the fatal character of the climate, rarely suffered his ship to remain at anchor in any harbour more than three or four days. He kept the vessel as much as possible at sea, and the crew employed; if other ships were present, all engaged in manoeuvring and exercising. He was singularly regardful of a dry hold, and a clear ship below; and when obliged to be in harbour, during the season of storms and hurricanes, he kept the men's minds on the alert by all sorts of merry exercises and amusements. He encouraged music or dancing, and got his officers to get up dramatic pieces and perform them, being well aware, from his natural sagacity, of the great effect produced by cheerfulness of mind upon bodily health. No better example for the Prince to copy could have been found in the navy. Nelson was a great reformer of the abuses he discovered existing in the naval service in the West Indies, and a determined uprooter of them. The Prince aided the great hero of England, as Nelson afterwards showed himself, and the consequence was that the slanders upon both of those who had profited by abuses, which they could no longer continue, were dealt out with no sparing hand. The Prince was accused of everything heinous, and Nelson was attacked in the most malicious manner. Those attacks were not con

fined to the West Indies; they were transmitted to England, and made others uneasy there, who, if they had known the truth, need not have been under any apprehension.

In June, Nelson was order to England, and Prince William Henry to Jamaica. It is said that on separating from the directorship of Nelson, the spirits of the Prince were much depressed. His Royal Highness commissioned him as a friend, to contradict at home the false reports which had been diligently circulated about him, sent by those malicious persons who had been annoyed by the honourable and proper steps taken to prevent the service of the navy from further abuse. Nelson pledged himself to meet the wishes of the Prince, and he was not a man that would flinch from his promise. Accordingly he took pains to make known the real facts of the case, and throw a protecting shield over the sufferer by the insidious calumnies of their mutual foes.

The Prince soon after, not reflecting as he should have done, that it was his duty to report himself to the nearest commanding officer, being left without instructions, set sail for Halifax, From this port he was ordered to Quebec, as a censure for his inexperienced conduct. In Quebec his Royal Highness must inevitably have wintered, and knowing the irksomeness of such a position, he set sail for England, although his time of service abroad had not run out by six months. At the most dangerous season in those latitudes he steered, by Newfoundland, home, when the days were short, and perils environed his course of no common kind, from the fogs so prevalent at that season. In December, 1787, he entered Cork Harbour.

The Duke of Rutland, who had been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland when his Royal Highness went abroad, and on whom he seems to have relied as an advocate, at head-quarters was just dead. The Prince, nevertheless, transmitted the tidings of his arrival to the Duke of Buckingham, the successor in the government of Ireland to the Duke of Rutland, who sent them forward to the Admiralty. The arrival of the Prince without orders, and in contravention of those given, when he

went abroad, caused the first Lord of the Admiralty, the late Earl of Chatham (as he was then called, from his lying in bed half the day after playing but part of the preceding night,) to send off the intelligence to Windsor, with a letter from the Prince to his father, in extenuation of his conduct. The King came to town from Windsor the next day, and an order was directly issued, commanding his Royal Highness to repair to Plymouth in the Pegasus immediately.

The Prince in the mean time, had been solacing himself on shore with the hospitalities of his Irish friends. The citizens of Cork shewed him every attention; he dined at the Mansion House, also with the merchants, and attended a city ball, dancing with the daughters of the members of the corporation. He visited the different seats of the nobility in the neighbourhood, and at Lord Waterford's received the Admiralty order which commanded him to repair to Plymouth.

Almost directly afterwards, the Pegasus weighed anchor from the Cove of Cork, and went to sea. They had scarcely weathered the Land's End and Scilly Islands, and got into the Channel, when a violent storm commenced, attended with thunder and lightning. The vessel was much damaged; the sails being torn in slips, and the mainmast shivered by a stroke of lightning. Fortunately, the vessel got into Plymouth, and soon afterwards was snug in Hamoaze, which she had quitted just eighteen months before. It became needful to dock the Pegasus, and a short leisure ensued for the Prince, in which he might have visited his friends, but he was not permitted that pleasure, his ship was kept in commission, and his Royal Highness had of course to superintend the repairs going on in the dockyard, until she was once more ready for sea. That the Prince felt this was a great disappointment after so long an absence, cannot be doubted. The orders he had received were a tacit command that he was not to quit the port of Plymouth. The Prince's intentions had been to set off for the metropolis, but it is possible, the consideration of the breach of duty, he had committed in returning before his time, operated in the way of fear in tempting further, those who were his superior