—but nobody loses temper—though the dull
dead heat that radiates from round the boiler
might irritate an angel. I see a vision of
the engineer, as he puts up his head for an
instant above that engine-room ladder with
the dirty steps. A long-suffering, grimy, oily
man—canvas-aproned, paper-capped, perspiring,
the victim of two distinct heats the
fire-heat and the sun-heat—man's heat and
heaven's heat. Why will people run all at
once to the gangway that only passes one? It
is the struggle of life in petto. How content-
edly everybody resigns himself or herself to
the skipper—though who knows what is the
pressure per pound on the square inch this
instant? Bah! the chances are all against it,
you say; I come this way every day;—so the
practical man goes forward and takes up a
snug position by the bow. Is it not, think
you, that the feeling of security springs from
the common-place look things have to everyday
eyes? Can anything horrible happen
when we have that most business-like knot
of prim bagmen chatting near us? Can terror
have a place in the thoughts near the fat, dew-
lapped chin of that heavy-breathing old
woman? Ah! that old face—looking madly
for help from the water—would be as
poetical as a face of Francia's!

But, indeed, I call our view from London
Bridge a highly romantic one. The Bee,
there, has just passed under the arch of
Blackfriars, and—though she only charges
fourpence for taking you ever so far—
she carries hundreds of stories of human
interest inside of her. A novel might be
made of the life of the last passenger who
went on board her—the brown-looking man
who has been in the Chilian service—who
carried away in his schooner the negro gentleman
who had been hospitable to him, and
sold him in the West Indies to pay his
expenses home. If little Rasper could only get
hold of one of his particular batch of cigars!

Two boats, larger than our wooden-winged
friends the Bee and Ant, are lying on the
other side of the bridge, where the brigantine
is discharging the cargo in white sacks, each
sack most particularly ticked off by the
Custom House men as it passes. One is
going to Yarmouth; the other I have
alluded to before as the Herne. The Herne
is just off to the more homely watering-places
—" Cockney " watering-places you may say;
but our friend THE SEA being still there, not
uninteresting to a hot man with eyes in his
head, and a heart about him. Charles Lamb
complains that you can never see the sea—
the great sea of your thought and reading—
but only an insignificant fraction of it from
the deck of a Margate hoy. Thoughtful,
humorous, ever-pleasant Charles! How he
saw into things by means of having a heart
to feel them carrying his intellectual light
(as a policeman does his bull's eye) just over
that region! Yet, that said fraction may be
seen as well from the Margate hoy as from a
king's state barge, and we will not be simious
and " snigger " at the passengers for Margate
and 'Erne Bay, whom the proper official is
bawling for.

The official may possibly think me in the
way, for I lean against the bar and look at
everybody, and don't add a farthing to the
company's revenue. But I have a duty to
perform. As Emerson says—

"Blame me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand,
Comes back loaded with a thought,"—

I continue to observe the passengers.

There is a youth, whose sole luggage is a
brown paper parcel, containing, I suppose,
his necessary toilette for to-morrow, and
perhaps an Elzevir, though I am afraid not.
And now come whizzing past me two
ringletty girls, following a most important-looking
old gentleman, who is preceded by a nursery
maid, who is preceded by a man with a truck,
full of luggage. The eldest carries a book
for light reading (which, by the way, is not
my novel, as I see at a glance, but a book
by a gentleman, whom I well know to be an
"over-rated man,"), and both look very happy.
But why does the next passenger carry crape
on a white hat? Odious custom! It looks as
if he wished to advertise that he is " consoled."
Already the cabins are filled, and faces are
peering through the windows of them. Peer
away cheerfully while you can, for I fear you
will do everything but bless that throbbing
engine with its dull, dead, monotonous sound,
and the odour of grease, before the voyage
be done!

I respect the man who carries the huge
pineapple, with the end just peeping from a
paper bag. I respect him further for carrying
some ice in a mysterious straw- worked bag,
also. Pineapple and ice will be welcome to
the lady who is pacing on the sands this afternoon,
away on the south coast. The West
Indies and the lakes of Canada are ransacked
for luxury (you will observe that I had been
looking covetously at the pine), and the whole
world is turned into a cheap "ordinary."

The 'Erne goes at last, and still fresh boats
keep buzzing round the arches of the bridge.
Seaward, the river is thick with masts, and the
white sails flap, and seem shaking the heat
out of them. The bridge, and the houses, and
the ships lie like a bright lighted picture
round about me; as, turning away from the
pier, I enter a narrow street of lofty houses,
and merge into the many.

On the 20th of September will be published, price 5s. 6.,
neatly bound in Cloth,
THE FIFTH VOLUME
OF
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
Containing the numbers issued during the half-year ending
on Saturday, September 11th, 1852.