the four or five hundred yachts which grace the lake-like waters of the
Clyde, and which carry the ensign of the Royal Clyde Yacht Club. A
volume might be written of the owner, whose place of business in Glasgow
is one of the real wonders of that ancient town. Morrison, the founder
of the Fore Street Warehouse, and the father of the late M.P. for
Plymouth, was accustomed to say that he owed all his success in life to
the realisation of the fact that the great art of mercantile traffic was
to find out sellers rather than buyers; that if you bought cheap and
satisfied yourself with a fair profit, buyers--the best sort of buyers,
those who have money to buy with--would come of themselves. It is on
this principle the owner of the _Elena_ has acted. It is worth something
to see the Sevres china, the fine oil paintings, the spoils of such
palaces as the Louvre or St. Cloud, the rarest ornaments of such
exhibitions as those of Vienna, all gathered together in the Glasgow
Polytechnic, and to seek which the proprietor is always on the look-out,
and to recollect that all this display has been got together by one
individual, who began the world in a much smaller way, and who is still
in the prime of life. A further interest attaches to the gentleman of
whom I write, inasmuch as it was under his roof that the first article of
the _Christian Cabinet_, swallowed up in the _Christian World_, was
written. It may be to this it is due that at once I am at home with him,
and that here on board the _Elena_ we chat of what goes on in London as
if we had known each other all our lives. By my side is his
son-in-law--one of those well-trained, thoughtful divines who have left
Scotland for the South, and who are doing so much to introduce into
England that Presbyterianism the yoke of which our fathers could not
bear, but on which we, their more liberal sons, have learned to look with
a less jealous eye; and no wonder, for to know such a man as the Doctor
is to love him. And now let me say a word as to the _Elena_, which is a
picture to admire, as she floats calmly on the water, or speeds her way
from one scene of Scottish story and romance to another. It is rarely
one sees a yacht more tastefully fitted-up, and we have a ladies'
drawing-room on board not unworthy of Belgravia itself. She is slightly
rakish in build, but not disagreeably so. Her tonnage is 200 tons, and
her crew consists, including the stoker and steward, of some eight