Master Rockafellar's Voyage. By W. Clark Russell. (Methuen and Co.)—Thomas
Rockafellar is seized with a longing to go to sea, and persuades his father and mother to let him take a voyage. Accordingly, he is entered as a "midshipman" on board a merchant-ship, at a cost of seventy guineas, a sum for which he gets very little by way of equivalent, goes on his voyage, and naturally longs, before it is well begun, to be at home again. Perhaps this is the moral which Mr. Clark Russell wishes to enforce ; anyhow, the miseries of sea-life are described with a very vigorous and graphic pen. Along with this we have those wonderful descriptions of the scenery of the ocean—the "sea- scapes," as they may be called—in which Mr. Clark Russell stands, we think, unrivalled. Here is one of his little touches : " The sky was very full of large rich trembling stars, yet they seemed to diffuse no light, saving one planet in the South under which there lay in the black breast of the deep a little icy gleam of wake, or reflection ; otherwise the ocean stretched as black as thunder to its horizon." There are some well-described incidents of sea-travel, but not a shipwreck, since, for a change, the Lady Violet' is permitted to return safe and sound to England. An exciting story of a derelict ship, under the title of " La Mulette," is interpolated with the tale, and with good effect.
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