There is a charm in youth, that no other period of life possesses; infancy, with its helpless beauty, scarcely seizing upon the imagination and senses with an equal force.

Both the young persons in question, possessed this advantage in a high degree; and had there been no other peculiarity, the sight might readily have proved pleasing to one of Bluewater's benevolence and truth of feeling.

The boy was turned of sixteen; an age in England when youth does not yet put on the appearance of manhood; and he retained all the evidences of a gay, generous boyhood, rendered a little _piquant_, by the dash of archness, roguery, and fun, that a man-of-war is tolerably certain to impart to a lad of spirit.

Nevertheless, his countenance retained an expression of ingenuousness and of sensitive feeling, that was singularly striking in one of his sex, and which, in spite of her beauty of feature, hair, and complexion, formed the strongest attraction in the loveliness of Mildred; that expression, which had so much struck and charmed Bluewater--haunted him, we might add--since the previous day, by appearing so familiar, even while so extraordinary, and for which he had been unable to recollect a counterpart.

As she now sat, face to face with Lord Geoffrey, to his great surprise, the rear-admiral found much of the same character of this very expression in the handsome boy, as in the lovely girl.