The commissioners come on deck now; and
the names of the crew and passengers are called
over. The ship's husband has classified them,
and appointed their berths; so there is nothing
to do but to pass muster: this, however,
is not so easy as it appears; the mate, and
steward, and every official at liberty are actively
employed in diving into the steerage, and
exploring corners, in search of the persons wanted,
whose names are shouted in every variety of key,
until they appear, bewildered and frightened,
under the impression that they have
transgressed some unknown regulation. Then there
is an inspection of decks, and pumps, and boats,
and hose of the fire-engine.

Gradually the luggage gets stowed into the
hold. It is stowed below, with the utmost
indifference. Indeed, there is no pathos nor
patriotism manifested. One must be in some
measure comfortable, to be pathetic; and patriotism
requires a very high degree of contentedness.
If we weep here, it may be from fatigue, hunger,
or exhaustion; but we cannot cherish sentiment.
Even the doctor's little wife is too busy, knocking
up nails and arranging the cabin for her
husband's use, to find any time for tears. She
tells me there will be plenty of time for them
to-night. Miracles are wrought in the last
hour before the sun goes down; for no naked
lights are allowed between decks. The rule is
stringent, but needful; and the doctor tells
me of cases of illness, where the face could
only be seen dimly, by covered lights. Once, he
was called in the night to attend an apparently
dying man, and found him laid straight upon
his berth with a lighted candle, a holy candle,
in each hand, "to light his soul to eternity!"
One movement of the restless sufferer might
have enveloped the ship in flames; and though
it was at the risk of his life to disregard the
religion of the ignorant people about him,
he snatched the dangerous lights away, and
extinguished them amid imprecations.

It is time to go; the twilight is falling; at
the next high tide, in the sunrise, the ship will
sail. In the tug alongside, many of the friends
who have lumbered the ship, are already
collected, and are looking up, from time to time, to
the faces hanging over the gunwale. The vessel
is ship-shape. The many ropes of the tackling
are strung, like a huge harp, for the winds to
play upon; the boats are slung up to their
allotted places, all seaworthy, and ready for
immediate use; the commissioners are satisfied
that the provisions of the Ships Passengers
Act have been complied with; the captain is
going on shore, for the last time, to receive a
certificate to that effect. On the deck of the
Favourite are two sailor lads kissing a weeping
old woman; a brother and sister standing at
the edge of the gangway hand-in-hand; a girl
gazing upward with a sorrowfully-set face,
to catch every glimpse of a seaman busy in
the rigging. The commissioners, the ship's
owner, and the slim captain, step on to the
paddle-box; and the doctor brings his wife
to my side—closely veiled now, but brave to
the last. We emerge from the shadow of the
ship's great black hulk, into the last crimson
gleam of day. Above us, all along the gunwale,
are ranged the dark figures of the emigrants,
crowding in great numbers towards the
forecastle, where the sailors are gathered, and from
whom rises the first note of a cheer, which runs
through the whole line, and is repeated again
and again—rather mournfully, as our feeble echo
reaches them. In a few minutes we see the
ship from the shore: a quiet, solitary, deserted-
looking shape on the water, with no hint of the
life, and sorrow, and hope, and fear, crowded
together in that little space.

                  A LITERARY LIFE.

WITH the modern expansion of journalism,
and the absorption of the writing faculty in the
incessant production of a vast periodical literature,
bearing for the most part on the immediate
necessities or evanescent entertainment
of the hour, we seem to be in some danger of
losing the old scholarly type of authorship, such
as existed in its highest perfection in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and in the
earlier part of the present. We have abundance
of rapid and able penmen—writers full of
information on the topics of the day—illustrious
novelists, and clever observers of current
manners; but the race of literary men, pure and
simple, is fast dying out under the glare of gas,
the roar of steam, and the quick flash of electricity.
The age has to attend to so many practical
questions of urgency and weight, and is
so hurried from one grave crisis to another,
that it has no time to linger on the sward by
the side of the great dusty highway, or to dream
beneath the shadow of immemorial woodlands.
The man who follows literature for its own
sake, apart from any design at once recognisable
by the hurrying crowd, stands a poor chance of
being listened to; and the author of to-day is
perforce obliged to mould his work into some
tangible shape, such as he can at once take into
the market, and offer for sale with the probability
of finding purchasers. Except in the case
of those few geniuses who possess the rare gift
of creative power, the literary man finds
himself speedily lapsing into the journalist. He
may not have begun life as a politician; he may
have had a strong predilection towards the
greener regions of imagination and fancy; he
may love old books and the abiding phantoms
of old days, with a tender and unsatisfied affection;
but the press demands him, and will have
him. "How is it," asked an old journalist one
day, "that so many young poets finally develop
into sub-editors?" The answer is obvious.
Moonbeams are a very innutritious diet, and
the young poet soon learns to appreciate the
advantages that belong to the sub-editor's room.
Accordingly, the mere author sinks out of sight,
and the journalist takes his place.

One of the completest specimens of the almost
extinct literary man, in the most rigorous sense
of the expression, was Leigh Hunt. He passed