who have filled their fancy with the images of the ships that sailed into Trafalgar Bay, must be as much disappointed as the weak-kneed disciple of Ruskin when looking at a spreading railway line with its boundary of telegraph posts. Still, to those who may be just as artistic in their instincts, yet born to the use of these iron innovations, there is a fascination in the symmetry of perfect subtile lines with the mighty force suggested; and to carry one's imaginations back to the days of mail-covered warriors, there is much the same stiffness in the ship or the steam-engine as there must have been about the iron-clad knight of old.
The Rockhampton resembled a perfect lady, in so much that she did not ostentatiously display her riches, but looked plain, yet well-dressed, from the distance, her black hull, with its delicious, long-reaching lines and delicate curves. A bungler of a draughtsman might reproduce something which would resemble the Temeraire, and granting him the colour sense which the poetic Turner had, he would debauch the most critical into admiration of his failure, but only the most highly-educated of draughtsmen could have caught those graceful sweeps as she parted the waves, and left that creamy furrow behind her. She was a rock for steadiness, a leviathan for size and strength, a perfect prude for decorum, a nymph of Diana for grace, and an Atalanta for speed.
The blue waves, with their snowy crests, lapped round her scarlet water-line, which appeared like the glowing petticoat of a sedate beauty of modern times, while over it the dark hull looked like the clinging black robe which has superseded the flounces and furbelows of past modern fashion. It was a loveli-
