yard. On either side we see large buildings,
the first of which, on the left hand, entered by
us, is the Mast-House. Here are the masts of
her Majesty's ships and vessels of war, duly
ticketed, several of them with the names of those
to which they belong. They lie there in rows
like fell trees, and not without a gleam of the
poetry of the forest about them still. The
great lower masts of men-of-war are, indeed,
built, as much as the ship itself. But a top-mast,
or a top-gallant-mast, is still a pine, and
retains in its manufactured state something of
the charm of a tree. What will become of the
romance of the tree, when we have—as the
Naval Peer predicts we shall—ships without
masts? From the Mast-House we cross over
to the Rope-House, which is one thousand and
ninety-seven feet long. The whir of machinery
recals the great factories of the north; and our
senses are attacked at once by endless lines of
brown yarn spinning itself thicker and thicker;
men moving about with bundles which mysteriously
begin to turn into yarn too; pools of
bubbling pitch kept hot for the growing rope to
pass through. Miles of rope of all sizes are
made here on the different floors. Emerging,
we see a batch of convicts harnessed together (a
very dreary four-in-hand!), with such stuff as
we have just seen making, and dragging along a
huge piece of timber under the eye of a grim-looking
task-master. "They sends the onruliest
of them here," observes our policeman, "for
they knows they're brought into order." Having
looked at the Nelson—originally a hundred-gun
ship, but never commissioned, and now being
altered so as to be fit for a screw, which brief
biography would do for more vessels than H.M.S.
Nelson, apparently only built to rot—we enter
a building where they are making blocks. This
is a very pretty little operation, one of those
neat affairs where machinery has its playful
rather than its usual savage and triumphant air
on. The pale, intelligent-looking mechanic
takes up a bit of fragrant elm-wood; he makes
the machinery whistle into it, and it is "bored;"
again, and it is "morticed;" again (the circular
saw hissing about it this time), and it is "commered;"
a fourth time, and it is "shaped;" a
last time, and it is "scored." A few minutes
have passed, and the lump of wood is already a
"block;" wanting little but the lignum vitæ
wheel inside, on which the rope turns. The
shavings accumulated by this process are capital
as firewood, and used for that purpose (we were
told) in the royal palaces as elsewhere.

We now approached a building of glass and
iron (one of the many results of the first Crystal
Palace), but dark and sooty-looking—the Blacksmiths'
Shop. This is a comparatively new
affair, the old blacksmiths' shop having been "a
ramshackle place," as the sailors say. Glad to
hail an improvement, and having with pleasure
seen traces of the newer discoveries in
machinery in the departments already visited, we
enter this Crystal Palace of the Cyclops. The
ring of hammers, the glare of forges, the passing
to and fro of swarthy figures, strike all together
upon us as we enter this spacious and convenient
place, and see red-hot iron being manipulated
as readily as ribbons. From three to
four hundred men are at work here, on the
various iron-work used in ship-building and
ships. Lofty and airy as it is, we are glad to
find ourselves in the air again—air flavoured by
the salt of the sea. We stroll along to the Dry
Docks, which have the appearance of huge and
gigantic baths. In these we find different
vessels going through processes of repair, their
green hulls showing the long action of the
water. A clatter of various tools is heard, as
plank replaces plank—sound oak or teak—that
which time and exposure have injured. The
most insidious enemy of a man-of-war is that
dry-rot which silently eats away, often, the
vitality of her timbers, and has something
mysterious about it which makes its terrors
greater.

But more interesting than the Dry Docks are
the Building Slips, which we proceed to visit
next—mighty cradles of the masters of the sea.
Five great vessels are before us, each under its
arched shed, and with its name painted up on
the lofty scaffolding in front of it. A new set
of noises meet us here, and give a fresh impulse
to the sense of activity prevailing which has
been felt by us all along. Not many objects of
human skill and industry are so imposing as a
great man-of-war well advanced in building.
The skeleton stage—when her majestic ribs
recal the megatheria of the primeval world—has
its own grandeur. But, come to the Victoria
—this new three-decker, which is to be
launched in some five or six weeks, which has
clothed its framework with the spoil of ancient
forests, and is now a formed ship—if you would
feel, in full force, the dignity of naval architecture.
She rises above you like an abbey or a
castle. She has that mixture of solidity and
freshness which is impressed on the sensations
by massive timber fresh from the adze and the
saw. Five hundred men are working upon her,
and their din sounds cheerily through the
autumn air—would sound still more cheerily if
we heard it from the harbour. Yet they seem
lost in that great hull, which owes its development
to their labours. Made by man, she
appears greater than man; for, somehow, all that
belongs to the sea—be it a three-decker, be it a
shell—partakes of that vague impressive poetry
which the sea's infinitude creates in the imagination.

The Victoria (let us mount the long sloping
gangway which conducts to her decks) is to
carry one hundred and eleven of the heaviest
guns used in the navy. Observe the roominess,
the height between decks, characteristic of our
latest ship-building, the iron knees (a recent
improvement): all mark an effort to produce a
Queen of the Sea. You indulge in an exclamation,
perhaps, about British oak. But the truth
is, that we have almost used up that noble old
product, just as we are rising up the whale.
We have now to bring our timber from all parts
of the world—oak from Canada, Sardinia, Africa;