EQUALITY ON THE WATER. 19 



give even the turn of his wrist for the safety of his own 

 life and that of his vessel, but made the steamer abso 

 lutely veer from her just course to avoid the odium of 

 very properly destroying an ass who thought it beneath 

 him to care for his own existence. Every revolution 

 of the steamer's wheels, or, in other words, everything I 

 saw, made me begin to suspect that, instead of being 

 ushered into a land of appreciable and beneficial liberty, 

 I was about to see the worst of all slavery, that beneath 

 the feet of a democracy, or where millions of kings were 

 more easily to be found than one legally ruled subject, 

 or' than a generally industrious man. An impossible 

 classification struggling for maintenance, the component 

 parts of the societies, at the present time sought to be 

 amalgamated, as widely unfit to be " cheek and jowl 

 together" as a sweep would be, black from a sooty 

 chimney, to sit by the snowy garments of a girl dressed 

 in all the purity of the wedding robe. 



As we sped on our cautious run up the harbour, hill 

 on hill, but not of any great height, continued to rise 

 upon each other shore on shore, and house on house, 

 all beneath the influence of that clear blue sky, the air 

 of which, in the vicinity of New York, is to me so soft 

 and yet so bracing. Prettily situated merchants' villas, 

 or what appeared to me to be so, or houses to which 

 opulent men of business might conveniently and com 

 fortably retire from the routine affairs of counting- 

 houses, were dotted about above the bay, commanding 

 the prettiest sea views; but there was no "Appledur- 

 combe," or large, well-timbered estate or commanding 

 mansion, with an extensive private acreage around it, 

 such as may be seen in the Isle of Wight, and on all the 

 beautiful spots on the coast of Old England. My first 



