walking: whereas paddles are as the heavy,
plunging, stumbling walk of an awkward woman
whose feet are catching in her dress at every
step. She looks a vast citadel. Her officers
boast that she is next in size to the Great Ship
of all. She has all the modern ingenuities.
She is steered—not in the old vulgar way
—a hapless mariner in a gale, staggering
and clinging for the bare life to his wheel,
washed, drenched, beaten—but on the most
luxurious principles. The steerer has an apartment
to himself and his wheel, where he can
be quite comfortable and luxurious. He has
not to peer out at the end of the ship, but is
indifferent about the direction of her head,
and gets his information below by mysterious
signals. That head of hers he may be directing
on to a rock; that is not his business. Nor
does he convey his impressions to his
rudder by the laborious agony of chains; but
works by an elegant little series of cog-wheels
and levers, which play smoothly, and which
"a child could work." There is a donkey-
engine, with a funnel as large as that of a
common paddle-steamer, and this faithful
servant I find to be as useful as the persecuted
animal who serves the costermonger.
It warms the ship through and through with
hot-air pipes; it sets the sails, gets out the
luggage, heaves up the anchor, does any little job
that is wanting. I find there are three decks:
those below, splendid airy places, eight or nine
feet high, vast expanses which would do to drill
volunteers or play football in, and which will
give accommodation to some thousand or,
at a press, twelve hundred emigrants. No
more horrors of the middle passage now! We
may fancy the genteel passengers on this
esplanade, and they will not have need to know that
there are twelve hundred plebeians most
comfortably bestowed below.

So much for "this" picture; now for "that."

Within half an hour's journey was the port of
Dublin, crowded with many steamers and
vessels. This shape of human life is not
unentertaining. The bustle and incident attending
on loading and unloading has a dramatic
air. The entertainment of seeing a vessel
going off never cloys, for the simple reason
that the spectacle of human nature never
cloys. Here, I see, nearly every day, the
embarkation of the pigs—the farce, the
pantomime of the entertainment, side-splitting,
as is said of a diverting clown. To see those
creatures herding together near the gangway,
their ears hanging, their snouts to the
ground, their strange eyes glancing warily at the
men. They have organisation, surely, as the men
know: who, with bated breath and figures
narrowly stooped, and now watching this side and
now that, with arms spread out, clearly anticipate
danger from the little band. And they are
right; for here, with a yell of agony, the sally is
made, in concert and at all points. The main
body is driven back, but half a dozen stragglers
escape between the legs of their persecutors,
oversetting them. The distraction of these is
infinitely amusing, they not knowing whether
to pursue or to stay with the main body. So, too,
when the stragglers are at last captured, and are
brought back, frightfully yelling as though they
felt the knife already in their necks. Though,
indeed, it is no wonder that they thus exclaim, for
their progress must be painful, seeing that two
men drag at a fore-leg, and a second at the two
hind-legs. This is the farce or comedy; but
the true tragedy is in the embarkation of the
hapless beasts who take over good beef for
Liverpool and Manchester dinner-tables. They
go on board with tortures. We see the scared
herds standing about in hundreds, some weary
of their long day's shaking on railways.
Unhappy beasts! they are disinclined to further
voyaging. Savages about them make a cordon,
and drive them towards a slanting gangway,
made for their special inconvenience. I have
seen thousands of the unhappy brutes put on
board at Dublin, and the amount of torture so
inflicted daily would, if appraised in some way,
or made into a sum-total, be appalling.

At the top of the sloping gangway which
leads down to the vessel's deck, their sufferings
may be said to begin, though previously there
has been some beating and torturing to get
them in a convenient and handy group. When
all is ready, and the executioners are at their
post, the work begins; shouts, yells, rattles
of sticks on ribs, set in, under which pressure
some of the foremost are got to the
entrance of the gangway. Seeing the unexpected
descent, they turn their heads and try to
retreat. Then the fury of their tormentors rises.
They are driven afresh to the entrance. Their
faces, turned away, are beaten, the sticks
rattling on their foreheads until the unhappy
brutes toss them in perfect agony, and have
to turn then to the gangway for escape.
One fellow has a tail in his grasp, and,
screwing it cleverly and slowly round with
exquisite and protracted agony, forces the animal
forward. He is well seconded by a coadjutor,
who gives a series of sharp "prods" with
a stick in that well-known tender corner
of the flank where the hind-quarter begins,
and where there is a soft place. A third drives
his elbow dexterously into another soft place
just over the shoulder. Under this inducement
the maddened beast plunges forward wildly,
staggers down the stage, and would rush
frantically into the ship but for a fourth ruffian
waiting for him at the bottom, who, dexterously
slipping a halter round his horns and twisting
the end round a bolt, brings him up "cleverly,"
nearly dislocating the neck. I have seen the
wild eyes of the poor brute nearly roll from his
head, as he endured this agony. The whole has
the air of a personal encounter; the men, like
savages, engaging a whole herd. Where there
is what is considered a peculiarly obstinate
brute, the whole force is concentrated on
him. A dozen combine to exercise every
device of cruelty. There is excitement about
it; and when victory comes, which it always
does, there is positive exultation. When we