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Roundabout Papers: (From the Cornhill Magazine)
Roundabout Papers - From the Cornhill Magazine Author:William Makepeace Thackeray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: upon two, and bestowed a coronet upon one noble man of letters. Diplomatists take their Bath in it as of right; and it flings out a profusion of glittering stars... more » upon the nobility of the three kingdoms. Cannot Britannia find a ribbon for her sailors ? The Navy, royal or mercantile, is a Sendee. The command of a ship, or the conduct of her, implies danger, honor, science, skill, subordination, good faith. It may be a victory, such as that of the "Sarah Sands;" it may be discovery, such as that of the " Fox ; " it may be heroic disaster, such as that of the " Birkenhead ;" and in such events merchant seamen, as well as royal seamen, take their share. Why is there not, then, an Order of Britannia? One day a young officer of the " Euryalus " may win it ; and, having just read the memoirs of Lord Dundonai.d, I know who ought to have the first Grand Cross. ON SOME LATE GREAT VICTORIES. On the i8th day of April last I went to see a friend in a neighboring Crescent, and on the steps of the next house beheld a group something like that here depicted. A newsboy had stopped in his walk, and was reading aloud the journal which it was his duty to deliver; a pretty orange-girl, with a heap of blazing fruit, rendered more brilliant by one of those great blue papers in which oranges are now artfully wrapped, leant over the railing and listened : and opposite the nympham disccntem there was a. capering and acute-eared young satirist of a crossing- sweeper, who had left his neighboring professional avocation and chance of profit, in order to listen to the tale of the little newsboy. That intelligent reader, with his hand following the line as he read it out to his audience, was saying :—"And—now—Tom —coining up smi'ing—after his fall—dee—delivered a rattling clinker upon the Benicia Bo...« less