port-side bulwark, barren but a moment
ago, bursts into a crop of heads of seamen,
stewards, and engineers. The light begins
to be gained upon, begins to be alongside,
begins to be left astern. More rockets, and,
between us and the land, steams beautifully
the Inman steam-ship, City of Paris, for
New York, outward bound. We observe
with complacency that the wind is dead
against her (it being with us), and that
she rolls and pitches. (The sickest passenger
on board is the most delighted by
this circumstance.) Time rushes by, as we
rush on, and now we see the light in
Queenstown Harbour, and now the lights
of the Mail Tender coming out to us.
What vagaries the Mail Tender performs
on the way, in every point of the compass,
especially in those where she has no business,
and why she performs them, Heaven
only knows! At length she is seen plunging
within a cable's length of our port
broadside, and is being roared at through
our speaking trumpets to do this thing, and
not to do that, and to stand by the other,
as if she were a very demented Tender
indeed. Then, we slackening amidst a
deafening roar of steam, this much-abused
Tender is made fast to us by hawsers, and
the men in readiness carry the bags aboard,
and return for more, bending under their
burdens, and looking just like the pasteboard
figures of the Miller and his Men in
the Theatre of our boyhood, and comporting
themselves almost as unsteadily. All the
while, the unfortunate Tender plunges high
and low, and is roared at. Then the Queenstown
passengers are put on board of her,
with infinite plunging and roaring, and the
Tender gets heaved up on the sea to that
surprising extent, that she looks within an
ace of washing aboard of us, high and dry.
Roared at with contumely to the last, this
wretched Tender is at length let go, with a
final plunge of great ignominy, and falls
spinning into our wake.

The Voice of conscience resumed its dominion,
as the day climbed up the sky, and
kept by all of us passengers into port.
Kept by us as we passed other lighthouses,
and dangerous islands off the coast, where
some of the officers, with whom I stood
my watch, had gone ashore in sailing ships
in fogs (and of which by that token they
seemed to have quite an affectionate remembrance),
and past the Welsh coast, and
past the Cheshire coast, and past everything
and everywhere lying between our
ship and her own special dock in the
Mersey. Off which, at last, at nine of the
clock, on a fair evening early in May, we
stopped, and the Voice ceased. A very
curious sensation, not unlike having my
own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence,
and it was with a no less curious sensation
that I went over the side of the good
Cunard ship Russia (whom Prosperity attend
through all her voyages!), and surveyed
the outer hull of the gracious monster
that the Voice had inhabited. So, perhaps,
shall we all, in the spirit, one day survey
the frame that held the busier Voice, from
which my vagrant fancy derived this similitude.

THE PIGEONS OF VENICE.

OF all the sights of Venice none are more
remarkable in their way than the sunsets and
the pigeons. Stand on the Molo of a winter's
afternoon, with the Doge's Palace on your left
hand, and the church of the Salute (Our Lady
of Health) on your right, and you will see the
Windows of the West thrown open; you will
see sunsets that suggest the Judgment Day and
the destruction of the world by fire. Wait
until the bells ring and the watcher on the
tower has mumbled his Ave Maria, and you
will see a cloud of pigeons flying from all parts
of the city towards the setting sun. It is the
tocsin of the Virgin Mary; " twenty-four
o'clock," as the Romans say. In a little while,
it will be dark, and these pigeons (sacred birds
of Venice) will have sought their nests among
the domes and spires of the cathedral.

How it came to be a point of pride with the
Venetians to defend these birds and to leave
legacies to them, and afterwards, in a bewildered
sort of way, to seek saintships for them
in the local calendar, are matters involved in
mystery. But thus much is known respecting
them.

The pigeons of Venice are the protégés of
the city, as the Lions of St. Mark are its protectors.
They are fed every day at two o'clock.
A dinner bell is rung for them; and they are
not allowed to be interfered with. Any person
found ill-treating a pigeon is arrested. If it be
his first offence, he is fined; if he be an old
offender, he is sent to prison. In the good old
days of the Republic, the guilt of shedding a
pigeon's blood could only be expiated by the
law of Moses taking full effect upon the culprit
in the spirit of "an eye for an eya, and a tooth
for a tooth," much as the same law was brought
to bear on poachers, sheepstealers, and others
in our own country, eighty years ago.

It is believed by the credulous that the
pigeons of Venice are in some way connected
with the prosperity of the city; that they fly
round it three times every day in honour of the
Trinity; and that their being domiciled in the
town is a sign that it will not be swallowed up
by the waves. When it is high water, they
perch on the top of the tower. When the