HOW WE SAW THE "GREAT EASTERN."

I WONDER whether, after the many vicissitudes through which the Great Ship has passed during the last two months after her battle with the gale at Holyhead, as the great mountainous waves came rushing in from their murderous work in the offing on the barren Anglesea coast, where the most awful tragedy of the year is being played out, and the Breakwater is melting away piecemeal, and there seems to be nothing which human skill can accomplish to save from destruction the foremost work of the age-after the eventful little voyage round the wild Cornish coast-after the quiet rest at her moorings in the calm Southampton Water, where the giant slumbers until the spring: after all this, I wonder whether anybody would like to know how we saw the Great Eastern. Supposing anybody should, I will simply say that at the end of last Long Vacation I found myself on my way to Weymouth, one fine morning at the end of September, and that at Yeovil Station, I, an old Sherbornian, fell in with two present Sherbornians, who were to accompany me, and whose names I would not disclose on any account whatever. We found Weymouth looking if anything a shade more lively, or rather less stagnant than usual; for this was the last day on which the Great Eastern was to be visible, and excursionists were flocking in crowds to the little steamers in the harbour, which were to convey us to the ship, and which were engaged in perpetrating a succession of shrill, spasmodic, porcine squallings, connected, I suppose, in some way or other, with steam, not by any means soothing or pleasant for nervous people.

I don't envy any one who is not struck by the sight which meets his eyes on first rounding the low head which shuts out Portland Roads from the town of Weymouth. First, he has left behind him the most decorous and soporific sea-side town on the southern coast of Great Britain (which is saying a great deal); secondly, he has no sooner turned the aforesaid point than there is the great rugged Island of Portland rising up sheer from the sea

like another and vaster Acropolis, high enough to intercept any stray cloud that may be passing; and holding somewhere in its mysterious recesses that which is to me the most suggestive and terrible object on the face of the earth- -a great convict station. Then far away into the depths of the sea on one hand creeps out the stupendous breakwater; on the other hand, stretching from the island to the mainland, and so miles away into the dim distance, runs in a long brown line, hazy in all weathers, with spray from the thunderous surf, the famous Chesil Beach. But our business is with the Great Ship.

There she lies, then, with such a background as we have described, surrounded by floating things of every size and description, from the man-of-war to the fishing-boat, and dwarfing all alike into insignificance. Larger and larger she becomes as we approach nearer and nearer, till at last the eye ceases to take in the whole at a glance. The great black sides of the ship tower above us like a wall; and after being relieved of sundry halfcrowns by the money-taker, we enter ignobly through a curiously diminutive opening in the ship's side. There is no temptation to remain long on the ground floor of the great storehouse. It is very gloomy and cavernous-and, what is worse, empty and desolate-looking as yet. Our way then lies up that roughlooking and almost perpendicular staircase; and that unfortunately is blocked up continually by an ever-surging tumid sea of descending crinoline. It is a curious study for a contemplative man to note with what readiness, by a thousand ingenious expedientsby compression, by backing and filling, by a curious oblique and, so to speak, vertical movement of the impediment—the ready female wit accommodates itself to the necessities of the somewhat confined space; at the same time, I may, perhaps, be allowed to hint that except in the case of very neat, laced boots-But there is an opening. Manfully we scale the stair, and are landed upon another floor-also very dusky and vast. Then another long staircase; crinoline more preposterous than ever, and we emerge upon deck.

A broad, flat street-broader, if I recollect right, than any street

in Sherborne-stretches out before us for an appreciable fraction of a mile. Along this street are strolling crowds of excursionists of every rank and degree, in all the eccentricities of wateringplace costume. Charming young ladies looking like embodied creations of Mr. Leech's fertile brain-idiotic young gentlemen in attendance, more hopelessly vacuous and imbecile than anything in Punch-many a stout old Paterfamilias with Materfamilias and their train-a sea-captain or two from the war-ships in the harbour come to have a chat with Captain Harrison—clergymen, high and low-broad clergymen in black ties (vain subterfuge, you can detect them in a moment)—and a great crowd of people, not in anywise remarkable. To keep up the fiction of our being on board ship, our street is bounded, like the decks of a real ship, by bulwarks, and has all the usual hutlike erections on deck (only on a Brobdignagian scale) which you may see in an ordinary steady-going steamer. As a further help to the imagination, it has been thought best to set up a line of huge masts along our street, to erect on each side a great semicircular contrivance, somewhere about the size of the ring at Astley's, which we will call a paddle-box; and to vary the monotony of the line of masts with a line of enormous funnels, only we notice that one of their number is wanting—that it is, in fact, lying on the deck, crushed and crumpled like paper into a thousand fantastic shapes; that the deck itself is all littered with shapeless fragments of wood and iron; and that even now the work of restoration is busily going on, and hammers clanging everywhere; and then we recollect that it is only a fortnight ago since brave men came up slowly from the midst of the great engines, with death-speedy and terrible-written on their amazed, uncomplaining faces; and the great ship, making no response to the welcome which awaited her, stole into harbour with the dead men on board.

Now, however, the excursionists are enjoying themselves merrily enough. Let us follow their lead and descend to the cabin. A handsome, roomy staircase conducts us to the dining saloon-a fine room enough, though rather disappointing on the

score of size. Thence it is an easy transition to the sleeping rooms, which open out into the saloon by little curtained alcoves. The berths are so numerous, so provokingly alike, and are reached by such curious angular little passages, that, like the immortal Mr. Pickwick at Ipswich, a man with an undeveloped bump of locality would soon be driven to his wit's end. All the fittings of the sleeping-rooms are exceedingly rich and elegant. But we notice that there seems to be no exception even here to the grand primal law of Nature, which compels every man, who wants to go to bed when at sea, to tread first upon an unoffending fellowpassenger's nose. Thence we proceed to see as much as we can of the grand saloon. It is not open to the public, but through the glass doors we can see the workmen busily employed in retouching the half-obliterated arabesque of the walls, and everywhere a profusion of costly furniture lying about in careless disorder. But we can see that it is a gorgeous chamber, combining in itself a suspicion of the House of Lords, the best touch in life of the Italian Court at Sydenham, and a very strong dash of the Alhambra. Why it should be so intensely and offensively magnificent it would be hard to say. Surely Mrs. General Zephaniah F. Bung, going back to Slickville, U. S., or young Robinson going out to the "Diggins," would be just as happy with a smaller amount of splendour.

Then we go on deck to find a drizzling rain falling, Portland scowling through the mist, and every nook and corner, including the dismantled funnel, crowded with cheerful faces. The afternoon is getting on and dinners raging all over the ship; on the deck impromptu refections of bread and cheese; in the saloon, and generally everywhere under shelter, the genteeler sandwiches and sherry; in various side-rooms, opening on to the lower deck, social meetings on a large scale and of a more jovial character for the employés. The captain, if we may judge from the agonized visage of a steward's boy, who has to his cost partaken surreptitiously of the unknown delicacy, has dined (inter alia) upon curry. We, too, feel the imperious demands of hunger. We walk forward to the bows of the ship, and look down over the bulwarks,

as from a church tower, to the sea, which lies so far beneath us as to inspire a feeling of almost contemptuous security. Then we take one last glance along the noble vista of the broad deck, and descend by the way we came to the little steamer, which, though invisible from the deck, is lying, as we are told, alongside. Soon we are sufficiently far from the great ship to lose the sense of vastness, in the extreme beauty of her form. Presently the pall of cloud lifts, the rain ceases, and the grim heights of Portland loom magnificently out of the haze; a little longer, and we have lost sight of the great ship-which, whether it be destined to succeed or fail, will always be associated in the minds of three Sherbornians with a very enjoyable day.

MY FRIENDS AND THEIR PHYSIOGNOMIES.

I LIKE originality, and to prove it I will begin with the new and original remark, "What a wonderful thing Photography is!" Anybody may now have all his friends about him, very fairly represented too, for an average sum of half-a-crown. The village lad who enlists for a soldier may even leave his mother and his sweetheart a copy of his own sweet face for sixpence, if he cannot reach a higher price. And you need not now be at the trouble, when thinking of your friends, of laboriously conjuring up in your imagination a few features, or, perhaps, an expression, at the cost of a great mental effort. before you-not always with their pleasantest look, it is true; for the portrait will generally give something either of a stern or a comical expression to the mouth, especially if it be only the sitter's first or second attempt; from the difficulty, either of composing his features to the requisite fixity, or of getting over the absurdity of sitting to have his ugly face printed for him. And this half-comical look of the mouth, I notice, you oftenest see in the photographs of people, who occupy the debatable ground between handsome and plain, and therefore of course think

You may have the very men