Essays of Travel | Page 5

empires are domesticated to the service of man.
This is the closet picture, and is found, on trial, to consist mostly of
embellishments. The more I saw of my fellow-passengers, the less I
was tempted to the lyric note. Comparatively few of the men were
below thirty; many were married, and encumbered with families; not a
few were already up in years; and this itself was out of tune with my
imaginations, for the ideal emigrant should certainly be young. Again, I
thought he should offer to the eye some bold type of humanity, with
bluff or hawk-like features, and the stamp of an eager and pushing
disposition. Now those around me were for the most part quiet, orderly,
obedient citizens, family men broken by adversity, elderly youths who
had failed to place themselves in life, and people who had seen better
days. Mildness was the prevailing character; mild mirth and mild
endurance. In a word, I was not taking part in an impetuous and
conquering sally, such as swept over Mexico or Siberia, but found
myself, like Marmion, 'in the lost battle, borne down by the flying.'
Labouring mankind had in the last years, and throughout Great Britain,
sustained a prolonged and crushing series of defeats. I had heard
vaguely of these reverses; of whole streets of houses standing deserted
by the Tyne, the cellar-doors broken and removed for firewood; of
homeless men loitering at the street-corners of Glasgow with their
chests beside them; of closed factories, useless strikes, and starving
girls. But I had never taken them home to me or represented these
distresses livingly to my imagination.
A turn of the market may be a calamity as disastrous as the French
retreat from Moscow; but it hardly lends itself to lively treatment, and
makes a trifling figure in the morning papers. We may struggle as we
please, we are not born economists. The individual is more affecting

than the mass. It is by the scenic accidents, and the appeal to the carnal
eye, that for the most part we grasp the significance of tragedies. Thus
it was only now, when I found myself involved in the rout, that I began
to appreciate how sharp had been the battle. We were a company of the
rejected; the drunken, the incompetent, the weak, the prodigal, all who
had been unable to prevail against circumstances in the one land, were
now fleeing pitifully to another; and though one or two might still
succeed, all had already failed. We were a shipful of failures, the
broken men of England. Yet it must not be supposed that these people
exhibited depression. The scene, on the contrary, was cheerful. Not a
tear was shed on board the vessel. All were full of hope for the future,
and showed an inclination to innocent gaiety. Some were heard to sing,
and all began to scrape acquaintance with small jests and ready
laughter.
The children found each other out like dogs, and ran about the decks
scraping acquaintance after their fashion also. 'What do you call your
mither?' I heard one ask. 'Mawmaw,' was the reply, indicating, I fancy,
a shade of difference in the social scale. When people pass each other
on the high seas of life at so early an age, the contact is but slight, and
the relation more like what we may imagine to be the friendship of flies
than that of men; it is so quickly joined, so easily dissolved, so open in
its communications and so devoid of deeper human qualities. The
children, I observed, were all in a band, and as thick as thieves at a fair,
while their elders were still ceremoniously manoeuvring on the
outskirts of acquaintance. The sea, the ship, and the seamen were soon
as familiar as home to these half-conscious little ones. It was odd to
hear them, throughout the voyage, employ shore words to designate
portions of the vessel. 'Go 'way doon to yon dyke,' I heard one say,
probably meaning the bulwark. I often had my heart in my mouth,
watching them climb into the shrouds or on the rails, while the ship
went swinging through the waves; and I admired and envied the
courage of their mothers, who sat by in the sun and looked on with
composure at these perilous feats. 'He'll maybe be a sailor,' I heard one
remark; 'now's the time to learn.' I had been on the point of running
forward to interfere, but stood back at that, reproved. Very few in the
more delicate classes have the nerve to look upon the peril of one dear
to them; but the life of poorer folk, where necessity is so much more

immediate and imperious, braces even a mother to this extreme of
endurance. And perhaps, after all, it is