the tropics to catch the soft responding, and most
assuredly, to my expectant imagination, melodious vibration of the air
which would succeed.

At last there was a reply. "Oh! _tol, lol_!" And that in anything but
a melodious voice. "Oh! tol, lol!" What a bathos! The beautiful
Maria, whom in my imagination I had clothed with all the attributes of
sentiment and delicacy, whom I had conjured up as a beau ideal of
perfection, replies in a hoarse voice with, "Oh! tol, lol!" Down she
went, like the English funds in a panic--down she went to the zero of a
Doll Tearsheet, and down I went again into the cabin. Surely this is a
world of disappointment.

Perhaps I was wrong--she might have been very beautiful, with the voice
of a peacock; she might also have the plumage--but no, that is
impossible--she must, from her sex, have been a peahen. At all events,
if not very beautiful, she was very sick. I left the beautiful Maria
screeching over the gunnel. If the young gentleman were to repeat the
same question now, thought I, the beautiful Maria will hardly answer,
"_Oh! tol, lol_!"

It was very cold on deck, blowing fresh from the East. I never heard
any one give a satisfactory reason why a west wind should be warm, and
an east wind cold in latitude 50 degrees N. It is not so in the tropics
when the east wind follows the rarefaction occasioned by the sun. Yet,
does not Byron say:--

"'Tis the land of the east, 'tis the clime of the sun."

Certainly our east winds are not at all poetical.

"Very cold, sir," said I, addressing a round-faced gentleman in a white
great coat, who rested his chin and his two hands upon a thick cane.
"You are fortunate in not being sea-sick."

"I beg your pardon, I am not fortunate. I am worse than sea-sick, for I
want to be sea-sick and I can't. I do believe that everything is
changed now-a-days, since that confounded Reform Bill!"

Politics again, thought I; what the devil has sea-sickness to do with
the Reform Bill? Mercy on me, when shall I be at peace? "There
certainly has been some change," observed I.

"Change, sir! yes, everything changed. England of 1835 is no more like
merry England of olden time, than I am like Louis the Fourteenth--
ruined, sir--every class suffering, sir--badly ruled, sir."

"Things are much cheaper."

"Much cheaper! Yes, sir; but what's the good of things being cheap when
nobody has any money to purchase with? They might just as well be dear