pervading expression of impertinent inanity—
so much so, that I could find it in my heart,
almost, to strike them. Among other departments
of the Fine Arts as applied to practical
uses, figure-heads stand specially in need of
reformation; and some day or other, when
Sir Edwin Landseer has taken that zoological
abomination, the Royal Arms, in hand; when
Mr. Grant or Mr. Thorburn have turned
their attention towards the pictorial amelioration
of the Marquisses of Granby and Heroes
of Waterloo in the possession of the Licensed
Victuallers; the Government will, perhaps,
commission Mr. Bailey or Mr. Lough to apply
the long neglected principles of ornamental
statuary to the works of our nautical
sculptors; and, rivalling that great benefactor
who first reformed our tailors' bills, reform
our figure-heads.

But to the Z. W. Caucus. Her accommodation.
Well; I grant the copper bottom
and copper fastenings, the experienced
surgeon and the unrivalled cabins, but the
steerage, the commonalty's cabins—humph!
I look on the deck of the big ship, and I
see it alive with fevered, dusty, uncomfortable
emigration at sixteen pounds a head:—
a desert of heads, and tossing, struggling
legs and arms with an oasis of poop, where
the cabin passengers smile blandly from
beneath their tegmine fagi, and peer with
spy-glasses and lorgnettes at the crowded
fore-deck, as they would at a curious
show. Why don't the steerage folk go down
below instead of cumbering the decks, is a
question you will very naturally ask, and
which has been asked, too, several times
within the last ten minutes by the captain
and his mates, with sundry energetic
references connected with comparative anatomy,
and the invocation of strange deities. Why
don't they go below? Well, poor creatures!
do you know what the below is they have to
go to, and to live in, for four months? Erebus
multiplied by Nox, divided by Limbo, multiplied
again by a chaos of trunks, and
casks, and narrow berths, and bruised elbows
—of pots, pans, kettles, and children's heads,
that seem to fulfil the office of the hempen
fenders on board steamboats, and to be used
to moderate the first sharp collision between
two hard surfaces—a chaos of slipping, stumbling,
swearing, groaning, overcrowding, and
—no, not fighting. Let us be just to the poor
people. There is more law, and justice, and
kindly forbearance, and respect for age and
feebleness in the steerage of an emigrant
ship, than in the Great Hall of Pleas all
the year round, with the great door wide
open and all the judges ranged. Men find
their level, here, in these darksome wooden
dungeons; but man's level, gentlemen, is not
necessarily brutality, and violence, and
selfishness. I have seen kindness with never a
shirt, and self-denial in rags; and down in
noisome, sweltering steerages there is, I will
make bold to aver, many a Dorcas ministering
barefoot, and many a good Samaritan who
has but what he stands upright in.

Smile away, gentlemen passengers on the
poop. You have but to smile, for your
passages are paid, and your prospects on arrival
in the colony are bright. Smile away, for you
will have fresh meat during a great portion of
the passage, and preserved provisions during
the remainder. For you are those crates of
ducks and geese, those festoons of vegetables,
those hundredweights of beef, and veal, and
mutton packed in ice. Smile away, for you
have cosy, airy little state-rooms, with cheerful
holes in the wall for beds, an elegant saloon,
an obsequious steward, books, flutes, accordions,
cards, dice, and book-learning. You can,
if you have a mind, write your memoirs or a
novel, during the voyage, compose an opera,
study navigation, or learn the key-bugle. If
you must be sea-sick, you can retire to your
state-rooms and be ill there comfortably and
elegantly. But, down in the steerage, how
are the poor folk to wile away the weary
time? Fancy the honest creatures during
the first three days after the Z. W. Caucus
has sailed. Everybody ill, everybody groaning,
all the women whimpering, all the
children crying. Everything unpacked, but
nothing "comeatable." Heavy trunks, chests
of drawers and washhand-stands, breaking
away, and becoming bulls of upholstery in
ship-board china-shops. Knives and forks
and plates running wild, and drinking-horns
going clean out of their mind. "That 'll be
it, sir," says a sailor, who has been "out
foreign," to me; " but bless you, when they
have been well shaken up for two or three
days, they'll settle down comfortably enough."
Ah! when they have "settled down," and
are bearing straight away across the great
ocean, what dreary days and nights they
will pass! How bitterly grandfather will
regret that he is "no scollard," and that he
didn't "take to his larning kindly;" and how
little boy Ned, who has thriven at school,
reading from a torn and yellow copy of the
Weekly Blunderer (more prized there than
the newest, dampest, third edition of the
Times on London breakfast tables), reading
to a delighted gaping audience of greybeards
and matrons, babes and sucklings, will become
for that and many succeeding days a wonder
and a prodigy! Then, on fine Sunday evenings,
they will lean quietly over the bulwarks,
and watch the rapid course of the good ship;
or, shading their eyes from the sun's rays,
look wistfully ahead and speculate where
land may be, far, far away beyond the waste
of blue. There will be gay fellows aboard
who will sing songs and crack jokes; there
will be storytellers as indefatigable as that
prince of barbers who had the seven brothers;
but, I am afraid also that there will be many
score passengers in that narrow steerage who
will be insufferably bored and wearied by the
voyage: who will count the time from breakfast
to dinner, and so to supper, and so to