conscientious man). Notwithstanding all which, for the
present, the tongue, the ears and the eyes are permitted to be made
discreet use of, although I believe that the new charter is to have a
clause introduced to the contrary.

The prevalent disease of the time we live in is ophthalmia of intellect,
affecting the higher classes. Monarchs, stone-blind, have tumbled
headlong from their thrones, and princes have been conducted by their
subjects out of their principalities. The aristocracy are purblind, and
cannot distinctly decipher the "signs of the times." The hierarchy
cannot discover why people would have religion at a reduced price: in
fact, they are all blind, and will not perceive that an enormous mass,
in the shape of public opinion, hangs over their heads and threatens to
annihilate them. Forgetting that kings, and princes, and lords,
spiritual or temporal, have all been raised to their various degrees of
exaltation by public opinion alone, they talk of legitimacy, of vested
rights, and Deuteronomy.--Well, if there is to be a general tumble,
thank God, I can't fall far!

We left the Bombay Castle in the Downs, where she remained until joined
by several other India vessels. On the arrival of a large frigate, who
had orders to escort them as far as the Island of St. Helena, they all
weighed, and bore down the Channel before a strong South East gale. The
first ten days of a voyage there is seldom much communication between
those belonging to the ship and the passengers; the former are too much
occupied in making things shipshape, and the latter with the miseries of
sea-sickness. An adverse gale in the Bay of Biscay, with which they had
to contend, did not at all contribute to the recovery of the digestive
powers of the latter; and it was not until a day or two before the
arrival of the convoy at Madeira that the ribbon of a bonnet was to be
seen fluttering in the breeze which swept the decks of the Bombay
Castle.

The first which rose up from the quarter-deck hatchway was one that
encircled the head of Mrs Ferguson, the wife of the presbyterian
divine, who crawled up the ladder, supported on one side by her husband,
and on the other by the assiduous Captain Drawlock.

"Very well done, ma'am, indeed!" said the captain, with an encouraging
smile, as the lady seized hold of the copper stanchions which surrounded
the sky-lights, to support herself, when she had gained the deck.
"You're a capital sailor, and