our consternation, we found ourselves on board
a notorious old tub, we believe the very worst
steamer that sails from the port of London.
We do not mention it, for obvious reasons, but
everybody who knows anything of Ostend
steamers knows it. Nothing can be more
excellent, sea-worthy, and commodious than
the same company's steamers to Antwerp, in
one of which we had recently made a delightful
passage out. Nothing can be conceived
more wretched than this one, in which we
found ourselves about to sail at midnight.
It was built, we believe, some time about the
days of Noah, and for the faculty rather of
diving than sailing, every wave of any
pretension regularly sweeping over its forecastle,
and its motion being at about the rate of four
knots an hour!

Imagine our astonishment at finding this
old wash-tub the only vessel on this day
awaiting the thronging visitors to the Great
Exhibition! There was cabin accommodation
in it for forty passengers, and there were on
board one hundred and thirty! The amazement
of these one hundred and thirty
foreigners, chiefly Germans, who had come to
the sea with the idea that they were to be
conveyed over by the greatest maritime
nation in the world, and therefore with
corresponding ideas of the vessel and its comforts,
it would be impossible to describe. They
remonstrated, but it was clear that remonstrance
was useless. Seeing the agent of the
company on board, I—for I may now use the
singular number, my companion, a lady,
having found a berth for herself—expressed
my astonishment that no better preparations
were made for the expected influx of foreigners
on this great occasion; declaring that it was
at once an insult to the passengers, and a
disgrace to our country. The agent assured
me that a new vessel would be substituted for
this in a few days, which I hope is the fact;
but for the present night the prospect for all
on board was dismal enough. The forty
lucky fellows had secured their berths; the
ninety unlucky ones had the choice of the
cabin floor, the tables, the seats, and the deck.
To make the matter worse, the wind rose
simultaneously with the vessel's quitting the
port, and blew strongly direct in our teeth.
The old tub began to tumble about with a
short chopping motion well known to crossers
of that part of the Channel, and the crowded
company, three-fourths of whom had probably
never seen the sea before, and had all the
German horror of the See-Krankheit, began
to look awfully pale out of their dark forests
of beards and whiskers.

My few observations to the agent had
procured me a berth; a clear proof that
the company was well aware that the less
public observation was drawn to their
accommodations for foreign visitors of the
Exhibition, the better; but as this must
have been done at the expense of some
unfortunate victim, I did not take possession
of it till I saw that no one else would. At
length, tired with some days of hard travelling,
I threw myself down in it in my clothes, and
slept till five o'clock. On awaking, the scene
was indescribable. The whole of the cabin,
berths, seats, floor, tables, and under tables,
was one dense chaos of rueful wretches—
almost every one of them in the agonies of
sea-sickness. The picture would have been
worth something to a painter, from the
strange aspect of the huge-bearded and
moustachoed faces amid the chaos of carpet-bags,
boots, and boxes; but being no painter, I made
a precipitate retreat upon deck. The old tub
was wallowing along, half buried a-head in
the waves, and the sailors, drenched to the
skin, very composedly assured me that one
day they should all go down together. On
the deck were crowds of people who had
endured the stormy night-air rather than the
atmosphere below. Some sat bowed down,
their heads hidden in the huge hoods of their
cloaks like penitentiary hermits; others, with
sharp peaked hoods, stalking about very much
like so many Robinson Crusoes coming home
from their desolate inlands. Here one man,
with an enormous yellow beard, and head of
hair of the same colour, raised himself from
his arms, on which he had lain on the cabin
roof, like some old lion out of his lair; and
others lay stretched about, or still and livid
as so many corpses. One old man in a great
white night-cap, and loose dirty great-coat,
sat motionless on one of the benches for
hours, and to my surprise, on looking at his
lower extremities, I perceived that he had
violet stockings on. The shabby-looking old
man was no other than the Catholic
Archbishop of T——-; and his brother, a
distinguished Belgian nobleman, soon after made
his appearance.

It seemed to me that I had never seen so
wretched, and even vulgar, a set of people
flung together on any occasion. The effects
of one breezy night in that old boat of
Mathuselah's, had been, in combination with
strangely wild beards and queerly cut cloaks,
to almost unhumanise my unlucky fellow-travellers;
but as the morning advanced, and
we came into still water, a rapid metamorphosis
took place. Breakfast came and completed
it; and, one after another, that uncouth
and grizzly company most wonderfully
brightened, and burnished themselves up into
a most respectable, well-looking, and gentlemanly
assembly. One pretty woman after
another, too, emerged into daylight, and it was
soon evident that we were in the midst of a
very superior and intelligent class of people.

As we drew near the English coast, but
long before it was visible, an intense interest
began to display itself throughout the throng
of foreigners. Few had before approached the
renowned island, and the idea of London
seemed to hang in their imaginations like
some great world of wonder which was about
to reveal itself before them. Long, however,