His father intends him for the church, but instead of being sent to
Oxford, he is taken to Portsmouth, and shipped on board a line of battle
ship, the Superb, as passenger to join one of Nelson's squadron; but
through delay he falls in with the Nelson fleet of Trafalgar, two days
after the deathless victory. He returns to England, and is sent to Dr.
Burney's navigation school. He next sails for the East Indies, and at
Bombay he falls in with an adventurous stranger, whom he is minute in
describing, "to account in part for the extraordinary influence he
gained, on so short an acquaintance," over his mind and imagination.
He became his model. The height of his ambition was to imitate him,
even in his defects. Thenceforth his life of adventure begins. In its
progress, he describes many beautiful scenes in the East with touching
enthusiasm, and some of his pictures of luxuriant nature are admirably
painted.
We pass over these to the heroine, at Port St. Louis:
_An Arabian Beauty_.
"Zela had the blood of a fearless race. She had been bred and
schooled amidst peril always at hand. Not having learnt to affect
what she did not feel, she crossed ravines, wound along precipices,
and waded through streams and rivers, not only without impeding us
by enacting a pantomimic representation of fears, tears, entreaties,
prayers, screaming, and fainting, but she was such a simpleton as not
even to notice them, unless, in the usual sweet, low tone of her voice,
to remark that they were delightful places to sit in, during the sultry
part of the day; or she would stop her pony over a precipice to gather
some curious flowers, drooping from a natural arch; or to pluck the
pendant and waving boughs of the most graceful of Indian tress, the
imperial mimosa, sensitive and sacred as love, shrinking from the
touch of the profane.
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