_Homo sum_, _humani nil a me alienum puto_.
All honour and respect and peace to his memory! But we must go on, although you may say—
“What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom? Another yet?”
Yes; and one very different from our last-mentioned hero. The next figure upon our canvas was also a character in his way. Look at his bluff, resolute, determined countenance. It is Captain Crowe, as brave a sailor and as odd and eccentric a man as ever walked a quarter-deck. Once, in the good ship _Mary_, he fell in with two English sloops of war, somewhere in the middle passage, which Liverpool ships were engaged upon in those times. They took his trim-looking vessel for a French cruiser, and he took them for a couple of the same craft. It was, however, nothing to old Crowe that they were two to one. He was like the stout-hearted ancient, who said that he would count his enemies when he had beaten them. Night was coming on, and they could not distinguish each other’s flags. To it they went, and kept at it hammer and tongs until morning showed them the English colours floating on all their masts. The cruisers had, in the dark, made several efforts to board him, and had been repulsed with terrible loss. The firing of course ceased as soon as the light showed them their mistake, and the senior commander of the man-of-war sent an officer on board, with a sulky civil message, to know if they could do anything for him in the way of helping him to repair damages. “I want nothing,” said the old Turk, with a grim smile, which meant that he had given as much as he had taken in the action; “I want nothing, but a certificate to my owner that I have done my duty.”
And who next? That is Taylor the brewer. And there is another of the same trade, jolly old Ackers, great in malt and hops, greater in politics, and greatest of all in the actual bustle and conflict of an election. And there is his friend with him, old Hesketh, the famous tailor, of Paradise-street. Instead of being the ninth part of a man, Hesketh was nine men all in one, the picture of a true Englishman, the very portrait of John Bull himself, a regular old Tory, for men, out of his trade, more than measures, and with such a good-tempered countenance, that it drew customers, better than a thousand advertisements, to his shop.