the duke's life which cannot be entirely passed over in silence, since it must be conceded, that much of his unpopularity may be traced to this source. Neither the court nor the people of England are so ascetic as not to extenuate the indiscretions of royalty; but this charitable estimate of misgivings does not extend to approbation of any culpable dereliction of social and moral duties. The fact of his royal highness having a large family, by a lady now no more, is too well known to be concealed; but the odium attached to his royal highness for his participation in a certain scene of license and poverty, has doubtless been over-rated; but his proportion must be left for the biographer of a future age to settle; and we sincerely hope that, to quote a contemporary, "when the time arrives that the historian shall feel himself at liberty to enter into details, and sift matters to the bottom, his royal highness will come out of the investigation, (not without some blame, for which of us is faultless, but) with a character unsullied even in this respect, and in all other respects irreproachable." Mankind are, more or less, the children of error; but their propensity to exaggerate human frailty deserves to be reprobated for its cruelty and wickedness.

The happy marriage of his royal highness, to which event we have already alluded, has, we trust, been the means of clearing away the prejudices which the duke's former conduct may have engendered.

This period of his royal highness' life has probably arrived, and his appointment to the important office of Lord High Admiral will doubtless accelerate the beneficial effect. The public are perhaps sanguine in their expectations; but from early and subsequent proofs of the duke's devotion and attachment to the service over which he now presides, we have reason to think they will not be disappointed. It has been shown that his royal highness neither wanted zeal nor ability at any stage of his life, and the ardent assurances which have been quoted from one of his most recent declarations, bespeak that he still possesses the vigour of manhood, tempered with experience; and it must be truly gratifying to his royal highness to know that the honour and authority of the office of Lord High Admiral, have been revived, after the sleep of a century, as if to compensate him for past neglect, with their investiture.⁴ In truth, the alacrity with which the duke has already entered into the duties of his office, and the lively sense of justice he has manifested in dispensing its honorary rewards, must be gladly hailed by the service, and the country at large.

His royal highness's present emoluments may be stated as follow:—

The Duke of York is acknowledged by Mr. Peel, in his speech, Feb. 17, 1827, to have had £50,000. a-year.

We subjoin the following characteristic anecdote from the New Sailor's Magazine for December, 1827, sketched with fidelity and in that rich vein of humour by which stories of the service are usually distinguished. It exhibits the character of his royal highness in all the glowing generosity of buoyant youth, and proves him to possess a warm-hearted sympathy for the sufferings of his fellow-creatures—

THE ROYAL REEFER AND BOB CLEWLINES.

It was on one of those December days, when the wind, blowing from the northward, acts almost like a razor on the surface of the skin, and when, accompanied by small sharp rain, a mixture of damp and cold produce a chilling effect upon the frame and spirits, that a ci-devant midshipman, his hands in his pockets, and

crossed London-bridge, which at that time was an asylum to the footsore, the pauper, and the weary of heart. The day had fallen, and every thing looked dull and dreary; the foot-path was encumbered by mud, and porters carrying weights, as well as other busy passengers, were jostling each other to obtain a footing on the dirty pavement: a fellow heavy laden came in contact with the royal reefer⁶ so powerfully, that he took a lee-lurch, and got foul of one of the seats in the arches. "Avast there; luff up, you lubberly rigged son of a gun," cried middy; "couldn't you hail ship before you were aboard of us?" The fellow, however, waddled on; but the middy had to turn about in order to regain his course, when suddenly he beheld a middle-aged figure, perishing with cold, a red night-cap on, an old jacket and trousers, a pair of shoes in rags attached to his legs with a rope's end, no shirt, no stockings, nor any other attire; the face was climate-struck, it had braved the equator and the pole, the battle and the breeze, the scorching heat and the petrifying cold,—it was, as might be expected, thin, and moreover almost lost in a profusion of hair on each cheek, so that it would be difficult for the oldest acquaintance to recognise the features after long absence; nature had made the lips to smile, the eyes to beam in kindness, the fine high forehead to command respect; but time and hardships, disease and disappointment, had quenched the fire of the organ of sight and intelligence, the mirror of the soul,—had prematurely furrowed that front of honest English high spirit and candour, and had taught the lips to fall in dejection and the treasured silence of woe: upon the whole, the figure had something fierce in it, but it was truly manly; the warrior's arms were folded together, and his face, bent towards the ground, was still half up-turned, and seemed to say to rich merchants and venders passing by on