Company's) good ship Bentinck, from Southampton
dock, with no more ado than I stepped
out of the railway carriage; now that I behold
the spacious luxuriousness of the saloon, the
domestic snugness of the sleeping berths
which open into it, the lavish appointments
of the steward's pantry; now that I
observe the cow which is to deliver the
daily milk, and the hencoops crowded with
victims for the spit; now that I inspect the
kitchen apparatus (in what I ought nautically
to call a "galley"), and observe the scientific
galley-slaves, in snow-white uniforms, who
manufacture dinners that emperors might
long for; now that I see, hoisted in and stowed
away, innumerable hampers of champagne
and soda-water; now that I am introduced
to the Captain, whose dress and demeanour,
are those of a well-bred country gentleman
doing the honours of a distinguished mansion;
now that I reflect on all this, I quite understand
the composed calmness, the trusting
unpreparedness, of the outward-bound. Why
need travelling disturb the lightest of their
every-day habits? Why should the soldier's
wife suspend the knitting begun in her
boudoir, merely because the easy chair, in
which she sits is moving swiftly upon
smooth iron rails; or because the sofa on
which she reclines is gliding through the
British Channel or the Indian Ocean? Do
I exaggerate when I say that the Isleworth
enterprise required more personal provision?
Perhaps the visitor knew that he would have
to sleep in a damp villa; and perhaps he
took care to stuff his valise with sheets
which he could depend upon. Perhaps the
maiden sister whose guest he is, not approving
of spirits, and not wearing Wellington
boots, constrained him to bring his
own brandy and his own bootjack. We, on
board the Bentinck, need to bring nothing;
we find every conceivable requirement that
life in its highest state of pampered affluence
can desire in every grade of want between
the extremes of a spare topmast and a
cribbage-peg—from a best-bower to a toothpick.

The passengers, therefore, who have already
come on board, are curiously unexcited. They
have nothing to think of as to their voyage.
Sentiment, indeed, be it ever so overflowing,
cannot be conveniently exchanged in words;
for the noise of the escaping steam would
drown the loudest efforts of the human voice.
Nothing of the pathos of a parting can I by
the minutest scrutiny discover. The Scotch
cadet— his panniers still laden— quaffs the
soda and brandy with one of Her Majesty's
midshipmen, (a messmate of mine, who has
come from Portsmouth to see his friend off),
with as few of the tokens of a parting glass
as if he were leisurely crossing his native
waters from the Granton Hotel to Burntisland.
He discourses on the prospects
of the London Opera season with as much
earnestness as if he had no other prospect
than that of reclining in a Haymarket stall
a fortnight hence, instead of being jolted
on the back of a camel. The lady's maid,
who is fitting up the little house in which
her mistress and two children are going to
live for the next fortnight, does her office as
methodically as if she were still in Bryanstone
Square. The lieutenant's clever wife seems
to have emptied her own and her husband's
portmanteaux (which came down by last
night's train), and filled the chests of drawers
by magic; and see (the door of her berth is
open), she is putting studs into the lieutenant's
shirt, that it may be ready for him to
dress for dinner. Nobody seems to do anything
different here to what they do at home.
Nobody is agitated; nobody is in a hurry; and,
wonderful to add! nobody has left anything
behind. The calm completeness of the whole
ship, low and aloft, has even dried the tears
of the sorrower: the cold east wind, too, has
tightened her curls.

One of the ship's officers delivers a
short report to the captain:— " High water,
sir."

That is the signal for sailing. As I am
here merely out of curiosity; being on my
way to my own ship in Portsmouth dock
(the Copperas, to which I was appointed, the
day before yesterday, naval instructor) and
have no wish to end my adventure at the
mouth of the Nile, I step from the ship upon
the wharf, to see the Bentinck get out of
dock— an operation which, after scanning the
breadth of the vessel, and measuring with
rny eye the narrow mouth of the harbour,
I mentally pronounce to be within a hair's
breadth of impossible; the Southampton dock
being shaped like a Bohemian decanter,
with its neck in the wrong place. When,
in walking round its edge, I behold the
Bentinck, with engines of five hundred and
twenty horse power, and capacity for nearly
two thousand tons; when I also notice the
Euxine, the Madras, and three of the Royal
West India Mail Packet Company's steamers,
all of vast dimensions, lying in the dock, I
regard them with the lively curiosity of
little boys looking at model mail-coaches
inside ounce phials, and wonder (like
Peter Pindar's monarch in reference to the
apples in the dumplings) how they got
there; or, once there, how they are to be
got out. Having reached the neck of the
broad bottle, I watch the Bentinck sway
round; and, obedient to her sluggish paddles,
present her handsome bows straight at the
narrow outlet. I feel that the problem will be
immediately solved. There is great activity
in the bows of the ship, and the Captain
stands on one of the paddle-boxes, his surtout
and eyeglass blown wildly about by the
wind. The pilot dances frantically from the
bridge to the other paddle-box; now directing
the helmsman, now shouting hoarse orders to
the engineer. Beside me and other idlers, the
P. and O. S. N. C.'s admiral, or superintendent