Right in the midst of one of Napoleon's
battles, or one of Canning's speeches, poor Nolan would find a great
hole, because on the back of the page of that paper there had been an
advertisement of a packet for New York, or a scrap from the President's
message. I say this was the first time I ever heard of this plan, which
afterwards I had enough, and more than enough, to do with. I remember
it, because poor Phillips, who was of the party, as soon as the allusion
to reading was made, told a story of something which happened at the
Cape of Good Hope on Nolan's first voyage; and it is the only thing I
ever knew of that voyage. They had touched at the Cape, and had done the
civil thing with the English Admiral and the fleet, and then, leaving
for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot of
English books from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed in these,
was quite a windfall. Among them, as the Devil would order, was the "Lay
of the Last Minstrel," which they had all of them heard of, but which
most of them had never seen. I think it could not have been published
long. Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of anything national
in that, though Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out the "Tempest" from
Shakspeare before he let Nolan have it, because he, said "the Bermudas
ought to be ours, and, by Jove, should be one day.
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