g the child-this would be rare. em all up to an age difficult to y from ten to twelve, on equal ussify them according to ability, he three collegiate ranks described at their career would depend on er, the State should be its father. anot afford to lose our children. em to be schooled in hotch-potch liable to all maladies, we are of fools in the land. Mostly c of Chelsea. No, we are not e fools in allowing our Governpt alter political machinery. We ry matters are like the man who e on the coldest winter morning oker of a different pattern every ORPHANS AND FOUNDLINGS. 203 I do not believe in promiscuous charity. I believe in the nation's beneficence. If the orphans and foundlings of England were in the hands of England, it would not debar any man who had a good heart, and a thousand pounds to spare, from sending it to Her Majesty's Minister of Charity. He would be more likely to send it, from security as to its proper application. Yes, though some of our public men are amusingly impracticable in theory, they do their practical work honestly-and sometimes well. How many years will pass before speculative charities have disappeared ?—before orphans and foundlings become the children and scholars of the State? YACHTING. THE yachtsman, if he can manage to shake off that black spectre of care that Horace talks about, ought to be the happiest of men. Whether to roam or rest, there is nothing like a fast schooner yacht of about two hundred tons. Pedestrianism alone excepted, land travel is often servile and wearisome: once in a railway train, for example, and you are practically transformed into a parcel. Your independence is gone for the time. You are imprisoned in a stuffed box with people whom you certainly would not have chosen as companions. What with the jarring effect of the engine, and the grinding torture of wheel on rail, every nerve and fibre of the body is outraged during a railway journey-the man who gets to the end of it without suffering must be happily pachydermatous. In what charming contrast herewith is yacht-travel! The wooing winds convey you: the keel glides smoothly through the unfurrowed sea. The yachtsman is his own master. He goes where he will, and flits away the moment he is bored. All shores rejoice to welcome his LIFE ON A YACHT. 205 snowy canvas. He can follow the summer, like a migratory bird, and defy the snows and east winds of our latitudes to overtake his fugitive habitation. And then the perfect isolation of a yacht-no tiresome neighbours, no provoking tax-collector, no letters from troublesome enemies and friends who are more troublesome. You are far removed from burglars, organ-grinders, tramps, and the emissaries of social science. The modern yacht is a luxurious floating edifice. The yachtsman's wife and daughters have their dressing-rooms and bath-rooms-even their boudoirs. There is space for harp and piano. No need to sleep on a narrow shelf, as on board a P. and O. steamer. Wide is your spring mattress, and scientifically balanced; and the soft swell of the sea rocks you deliciously to sleep. Then you wake in the morning to the sound of the plashing waves, and go on deck to find your ocean bath ready for you. After a plunge in the briny, what a breakfast a man eats, and how he enjoys his subsequent cigar! If you are in port, your steward, an alert forager, has been at work on your behalf by this time. His boat comes alongside with store of the fruit both of sea and land-lobsters and prawns, the red mullet, and the murena-and in the Mediterranean any quantity of peaches, lemons, pomegranates, grapes of both colours, and purple figs. With supplies of this sort, and a flask or two of the wine of the country, or of some sparkling Rhine wine, a yachtsman ought to be able to breakfast heartily. After that meal there is a long day's enjoyment. The changes of scenery are infinite at sea; and if you are on some old classic track-pursuing. for example, that wonderful wanderer who gave his name to The Odyssey-there is a double delight within your grasp. It must not be concealed that there are some restless spirits who think it abominably slow on shipboard. These are the beings for whom steamship companies find it necessary to provide perpetual luncheon. They eat and drink, and smoke, and shoot sea-mews-and grumble. Such men should stay ashore; for them was invented the "boozing-ken" and the billiard-room. They have no business whatever on the great waters, where travel is silent, where beauty is perpetual, from the rosy show of sunrise to the still progression of the midnight stars. Probably a man's capacity for enjoying life on board a yacht is a fair test of his character. On shore, in a city, with plenty of business to do, you have no time to make the most important of all acquaintance, namely, your own. Never do you get what may be styled, more Hibernico, a tête-à-tête with yourself. From morning to night the mind is occupied with trifles, and those trifles are sufficient to produce the weariness which ends in sound nocturnal sleep. But on board the yacht you are effectually severed from such matters, and can scarcely help discovering something about yourself. Many a man who has been a bore all his life without suspecting it, will find it out when he is at sea, and bores himself intensely. On the other hand, how delicious is the sea to the student! There is no noise. You are beyond the reach of the atrocious nuisances immortalised by the American poet :- |