earlier years. The cause, perhaps, may be, that we have outlived the season of illusion. We are no longer the dupes of our hopes; nor do we suffer them to grow into expectations; consequently we calculate on meeting disappointment in most things. Hence is it that the young traveller enters upon a journey with no other ideas than those of enjoyment; the traveller of a maturer age is less sanguine and more thoughtful : the one is content to observe the effect of most things that come in his way; the other is not so easily satisfied, but would search out their cause.

And now began the bustle of (I was going to write) getting under weigh; but that would not be the right term, and so, perhaps, I may be allowed to say the bustle of beginning to boil us out of the river. We had plenty of hissing, and smoking, and roaring; and at last, like a great sea monster, we set off puffing and blowing down the Thames, for nothing made by the hands of man so much resembles a huge living

creature as a steamer.

It was all new to me; even the river down which we passed seemed to be so; for nineteen

years had elapsed since I had last seen this part of it. The weather cleared up, the sun shone forth, the day was delightful; and I do not recollect that I was ever more gratified than by the varied and animating scene which presented itself on every side of our great estuary, flowing into the very heart of our metropolis, and so full of objects connected with our national characteristics, that a foreigner might form no bad estimate of the English as a people, by only observing what most arrests his eyes in his passage up the Thames.

That vast commercial intercourse which England has extended to the remotest corner of the globe is most strikingly illustrated by the congregation of vessels, as if every nation under the sun had sent one into our great port. The progress made by science in our country is also obvious, by the superiority, at least in appearance (for on this point I could only judge by what met the eye), of our steamers to those of foreign construction. Our generous and humane spirit is likewise most conspicuous, by the large hospital ship, to receive the sick seamen of all

nations, placed at the very entrance of our port; so that the sailor who is a sufferer and a stranger, is cheered by the assurance of an asylum and relief, before he sets foot on our shores. And then, as we continue our course, the majestic domes and buildings of Greenwich Hospital (and how beautiful do they look from the river!) give us on the first glance a feeling so noble, yet so touching, that it is neither easily defined nor described; and we contrast it with that which possessed our bosoms on passing the Tower of London a tower not sufficiently grand or picturesque to raise any chivalrous emotions. To my mind the sight of that old tower (looking like the four rooks of a game of chess put into a square) always brings with it nothing but painful recollections, and disagreeable associations. When I look upon its walls, I think of nothing but imprisonment, tyranny, and murder; and the cutting off heads on the hill which is its neighbour and bears its name.

But how opposite to these are the emotions conveyed by looking on the stately fabric of Greenwich Hospital! The sentiment which de

votes a palace to charity, a charity that is the payment of a debt of gratitude from a nation to the brave who have fought her battles, and brought victory to her shores, is truly noble. At such a sight Nelson, and our sailors, and the glorious days of England, rise before the mind, and cause the breast to swell with the full tide of its proudest feelings. As I passed Greenwich Hospital, and thought upon these things, I also recollected how I was yet little more than a child when I had there seen the body of Nelson lie in state. I recollected the deep sorrow felt by every English heart for his death he was mourned universally as an individual friend; and the joy of victory was nearly quenched in the remembrance of the price at which it had been won. As I remembered these events of other days, I felt what it was to experience a patriotic emotion; I felt, if I may venture on the expression, that to be one of such a people was an honour, a distinction in the scale of nations.

And then on passing Tilbury Fort, what recollections fill the mind! Elizabeth haranguing her troops, and the spirit which spread through

out England, and rendered her as one man in unity of feeling-a unity that, with God's blessing, preserved the liberty of this country, and the protestant church which formed its bulwark, from all the machinations of Rome and Spain; so that not a vessel of their Armada could approach our shores to do us harm.

The whole passage down the Thames is delightful a picture that never tires. The shore, with its pleasing hills and woods and villages, seems like the permanent background to a perpetually moving scene. I thought as I passed Gravesend how many hours of sorrow had marked that small town! For there, how many mothers, wives, sisters, friends, have given and received the last adieus-adieus to their dearest and their best; whom, many of them were destined never to see more; who subsequently perished in foreign lands, in battle, or in the bosom of that ocean to which, as the song says, many of "the love of woman have gone down."

On passing Sheerness my recollections of my early years were again strongly recalled. When