"The conchiglia savours of Rome, and the little chain annexed bespeaks the Rialto; while the moustaches are anything but indigènes, and the tout ensemble the world: the man is travelled, at least."

Eve's eyes sparkled with humour as she said this; while the new passenger, who had been addressed as Mr. Dodge, and an old acquaintance also, by the captain, came so near them as to admit of no further comments. A short conversation between the two soon let the listeners into the secret that the traveller had come from America in the spring, whither, after having made the tour of Europe, he was about to return in the autumn.

"Seen enough, ha!" added the captain, with a friendly nod of the head, when the other had finished a brief summary of his proceedings in the eastern hemisphere. "All eyes, and no leisure or inclination for more ?"

"I've seen as much as I warn to see," returned the traveller, with an emphasis on, and a pronunciation of, the word we have Italicised, that cannot be committed to paper,

but which were eloquence itself on the subject of self-satisfaction and self-knowledge.

"Well, that is the main point. When a man has got all he wants of a thing, any addition is like over-ballast. Whenever I can get fifteen knots out of the ship, I make it a point to be satisfied, especially under closereefed topsails an don a taut bow-line."

The traveller and the master nodded their heads at each other like men who understood more than they expressed; when the former, after inquiring with marked interest if his room-mate, Sir George Templemore, had arrived, went below. An intercourse of three days had established something like an acquaintance between the latter and the passenger she had brought from the River, and turning his red quizzical face towards the ladies, he observed with inimitable gravity,

"There is nothing like understanding when one has enough, even if it be of knowledge. I never yet met with the navigator who found two 'noons' in the same day, that he was not in danger of shipwreck. Now, I dare

VOL. I.

C

say Mr. Dodge there, who has just gone below, has, as he says, seen all he warnts to see, and it is quite likely he knows more already than he can cleverly get along with.Let the people be getting the booms on the yards, Mr. Leach; we shall be warnting to spread our wings before the end of the passage."

As Captain Truck, though he often swore, never laughed, his mate gave the necessary order with a gravity equal to that with which it had been delivered to him; and even the sailors went aloft to execute it with greater alacrity for an indulgence of humour that was peculiar to their trade, and which, as few understood so well, none enjoyed so much as themselves. As the homeward-bound crew was the same as the outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape divers commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit,

however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being occupied in disposing of the Dresden pipe, the Venetian chain, and the Roman conchiglia in his state-room, and in "instituting an acquaintance," as he expressed it, with his room-mate, Sir George Templemore.

"We must surely have something better than this," observed Mr. Effingham, "for I observed that two of the state-rooms in the main cabin are taken singly."

In order that the general reader may understand this, it may be well to explain that the packet-ships have usually two berths in each state-room, but they who can afford to pay an extra charge are permitted to occupy the little apartment singly. It is scarcely necessary to add, that persons of gentlemanly feelings, when circumstances will at all permit, prefer economising in other things in order to live by themselves for the month usually consumed in the passage, since in nothing is refinement more plainly exhibited than in the reserve of personal habits.

"There is no lack of vulgar fools stirring with full pockets," rejoined John Effingham; "the two rooms you mention may have been taken by some yearling' travellers, who are a little better than the semi-annual savant who has just passed us."

"It is at least something, Cousin Jack, to have the wishes of a gentleman."

"It is something, Eve, though it end in wishes, or even in caricature."

"What are the names?" pleasantly asked Mademoiselle Viefville; "the names may be a clue to the characters."

"The papers pinned to the bed-curtains bear the antithetical titles of Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt; though it is quite probable the first is wanting of a letter by accident, and the last is merely a synonyme of the old nom d guerre Cash."

"Do persons, then, actually travel with borrowed names, in our days?" asked Eve, with a little of the curiosity of the common mother whose name she bore.

"That do they, and with borrowed money