Miles made 219. The captain informed us that we were 95 miles from Cape Clear at noon to-day, and that we might expect to see the coast of Ireland about six o'clock. The day has been magnificently beautiful. We have seen many ships in the horizon, indicating that we were leaving the solitudes of the ocean behind us. Immediately after dinner all the passengers assembled upon deck to catch the first glimpse of land. At just a quarter before six o'clock we saw the highlands of the Irish coast looming through the haze before us. No one who has not crossed the ocean can conceive of the joyous excitement of the scene. All the discomfort of ocean life was forgotten in the exhilaration of the hour. As twilight faded away, the outline of the shore became more visible under the rays of a most brilliant moon. Soon the light from Cape Clear beamed brilliantly before us. It is now half-past ten o'clock at night, and the night is clear, serene, and gorgeously beautiful. The dim outline of the Irish coast looks dark and solitary. Upon those gloomy headlands, and in those sombre valleys what scenes of joy and woe have transpired during centuries which have lingered away. We are rapidly sailing up the channel, having still some two hundred and fifty miles to make, before we land in Liverpool. But our ocean life is ended. We have crossed the Atlantic. At seven o'clock to-morrow evening we expect to leave the ship.
Wednesday Night, March 31. Waterloo House, Liverpool, 12 o'clock.
This last day, much to my surprise, has been one of the most cheerless and disagreeable days of our whole voyage. A chilling east wind has swept the cold and foggy ocean. The decks were wet and slippery. Drops of water were falling upon us from the drenched shrouds. Nothing could be seen but the dense mist around us, and the foamy track of our majestic steamer. It was a great annoyance to think that, were the sky clear, we might be almost enchanted by the view of the green hills and the cottages of England. For a few moments, about noon, we caught a glimpse, through the sheet of mist sweeping the ocean, of the coast of Wales, but in a few moments the vail was again drawn over it, and wailing winds and rain and gloom again enveloped us. At about six o'clock in the evening we discerned, through the fog the steeples and the docks of Liverpool. The whole aspect of the scene was too dingy, wet, and sombre for either beauty or sublimity. We were long delayed in our attempts to get into the dock, and finally had to relinquish our endeavor for the night, and to cast anchor in the middle of the river. About half-past seven o'clock a small steamer came on board bringing several custom-house officers. All our trunks were placed in the dining-saloon in a row, and the officers employed three tedious hours in searching our trunks for contraband goods. Faithfully they did their duty. Every thing was examined. Many of our passengers were much annoyed and complained bitterly. I saw however, no disposition whatever, on the part of the custom-house, to cause any needless trouble. So far as I could judge they performed an unpleasant duty faithfully, and with as much courtesy as the nature of the case would allow. There is a very heavy duty imposed upon tobacco and cigars. There is a strong disposition to smuggle both of these articles into the kingdom. If it is understood that writing desks are not to be unlocked, and that packages are not to be opened, and that the mere word of any stranger is to be taken, the law at once sinks into contempt. The long delay was tedious, very tedious; but the fault was ours. Had every man honestly, so arranged his trunk, as to show at once what was dutyable, the work might have been accomplished in one-third of the time. At eleven o'clock by a long step-ladder, we descended the sides of the ship to a little steamer, and were landed in the darkness of the fog upon the wet docks. Taking hacks, nearly all of our passengers soon found themselves in more comfortable quarters at the Waterloo Hotel. It is now midnight. Most of my companions are mirthfully assembled around the supper table. If songs and laughter constitute enjoyment, they are happy. I, in enjoyment more congenial with my feelings, am alone in my comfortable little chamber, in an English Inn, penning these last lines of our ocean life. But I can not close without a tribute of respect and gratitude to our most worthy commander, Capt. Luce. By his social qualities, and his untiring vigilance, he won the esteem of all in the ship. Our shipmates were friendly and courteous, and though of sundry nations, and creeds, and tongues, dwelt together in singular harmony.
Reader, forgive me for the apparent egotism of this journal. I have wished to give the thousands in our country who have never traversed the ocean, an idea of ocean life. I could not do so, but by giving free utterance to the emotions which the varied scenes excited in my own heart. I have only to add, that if you ever wish to cross the Atlantic, you will find in the Arctic one of the noblest of ships, and in Capt. Luce one of the best of commanders.
[DROOPING BUDS.]
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
In Paris, Berlin, Turin, Frankfort, Brussels, and Munich; in Hamburgh, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vienna, Prague, Pesth, Copenhagen, Stuttgart, Grätz, Brünn, Lemberg, and Constantinople, there are hospitals for sick children. There was not one in all England until the other day.
No hospital for sick children! Does the public know what is implied in this? Those little graves two or three feet long, which are so plentiful in our church-yards and our cemeteries—to which, from home, in absence from the pleasures of society, the thoughts of many a young mother sadly wander—does the public know that we dig too many of them? Of this great city of London—which, until a few weeks ago, contained no hospital wherein to treat and study the diseases of children—more than a third of the whole population perishes in infancy and childhood. Twenty-four in a hundred die during the two first years of life; and, during the next eight years, eleven die out of the remaining seventy-six.
Our children perish out of our homes: not because there is in them an inherent dangerous sickness (except in the few cases where they are born of parents who communicate to children heritable maladies), but because there is, in respect of their tender lives, a want of sanitary discipline and a want of medical knowledge. What should we say of a rose-tree in which one bud out of every three dropped to the soil dead? We should not say that this was natural to roses; neither is it natural to men and women that they should see the glaze of death upon so many of the bright eyes that come to laugh and love among them—or that they should kiss so many little lips grown cold and still. The vice is external. We fail to prevent disease; and, in the case of children, to a much more lamentable extent than is well known, we fail to cure it.