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Poor Lord Edgecumbe is still alive, and may be so for some days; the physicians, who no longer ago than Friday se'nnight persisted that he had no dropsy, in order to prevent his having Ward, on Monday last proposed that Ward should be called in, and at length they owned they thought the mortification begun.

The weather was desperate wildest summer ever known. The south-west gales brought the Atlantic rollers into the Sound. Drake lay inside, perhaps behind the island which bears his name. Howard rode out the gales under Mount Edgecumbe, the days going by and the provisions wasting. The rations were cut down to make the stores last longer. Owing to the many changes the crews had been hastily raised.

On the second day of May, admiral Byng arrived at Gibraltar, where he found captain Edgecumbe, with the Princess Louisa ship of war, and a sloop, who informed him that the French armament, commanded by M. de la Galissonniere, consisting of thirteen ships of the line, with a great number of transports, having on board a body of fifteen thousand land-forces, had sailed from Toulon on the tenth day of April, and made a descent on the island of Minorca, from whence he, captain Edgecumbe, had been obliged to retire on their approach.

Edgecumbe, and reinforced by a detachment from the garrison, set sail from Gibraltar on the eighth day of May, and was joined off Majorca by his majesty's ship the Phoenix, under the command of captain Hervey, who confirmed the intelligence he had already received, touching the strength and destination of the French squadron.

On Monday morning we pulled in the Dolphin's boat across to Mount Edgecumbe, having a good view of the south side of Plymouth and the green slopes of the Hoe, which extend down to the water's edge on the west of the citadel. From Mount Edgecumbe the noble owner of the estate takes his title. It is indeed a beautiful spot, the hill-side facing the water covered with trees, and walks cut amid them.

Stukely, who was the master spirit, took the tiller, quite as a matter of course, while Dick was perfectly content to tend the jib and main sheets; and away they went down the Hamoaze, with the water buzzing and foaming from the boat's lee bow and swirling giddily in her wake as she sped swiftly along under the impulse of a fresh westerly breeze, the full strength of which was however not yet felt, the lugger being under the lee of Mount Edgecumbe, beautiful then as it is to-day.

This bay I called Edgecumbe Bay, but without staying, to look into it, we continued our course to the westward, for the farthest land we could see in that direction, which bore W. by N. 1/2 N. and appeared very high. At noon, we were about three leagues from the shore, by observation in latitude 19° 47' S., and Cape Gloucester bore S. 63 E. distant seven leagues and a half.

They considered themselves free to act as they pleased; and this freedom became notorious by the life-long dissipation of March, and by the free living of Edgecumbe, who died at forty-five after a life misspent at the gaming-table. That he possessed a bright mind and ingenious wit is proved by his verses and by the estimate of his friends.

Byng should have been joined by commodore Edgecumbe; a junction upon which no dependence ought to have been laid; that this squadron contained no troops but such as belonged to the four regiments in garrison, except one battalion to serve in the fleet as marines, unless we include the order for another to be embarked at Gibraltar; which order was neither obeyed nor understood: that, considering the danger to which Minorca was exposed, and the forwardness of the enemy's preparations at Toulon, admiral Osborne, with thirteen ships of the line and one frigate, who returned on the sixteenth of February, after having convoyed a fleet of merchant ships, might have been detached to Minorca, without hazarding the coast of Great Britain; for at that time, exclusive of this squadron, there were eight ships of the line and thirty-two frigates ready manned, and thirty-two ships of the line and five frigates almost equipped; that admiral Hawke was sent with fourteen ships of the line and one frigate to cruise in the bay of Biscay, after repeated intelligence had been received that the French fleet had sailed for the West Indies, and the eleven ships remaining at Brest and Rochefort were in want of hands and cannon, so that they could never serve to cover any embarkation or descent, consequently Mr.

Lofty mountains clothed to their very peaks with dense and gloomy forests form the background of the picture. At the entrance of the bay rises Mount Edgecumbe, an extinct volcano 2800 feet above the sea-level.