We have tried several Mediterranean steamers, and our report of all is much the same--bad is the best! A sea passage any where, to be comfortable, depends _solely_ on the smoothness of the water; if this be rough, what care you for mahogany, rosewood, and plate-glass? Whether the cabin where you are to be sick, and to hear others groan, has its Scotts, its Byrons, and its Moores, under a convex mirror; its rows of curtained births, and horse-hair sofas, and its long line of polished, well articulated tables? Whether the smell of empyreumatised grease be wafted to the nostrils by a _Maudsley_ or a _Bell_? Whether the captain have his _ears bored_, or be an Englishman? Your brass nails and varnished _buffets_ are very well _in dock_, when the vessel has _stank_ off her last voyage, and lies clean washed, like that other _syren_ of the opposite coast, who coaxed Ulysses and his men, some years ago--not, indeed, to _come on board_, but the contrary. But when her deck is all soot and nastiness, when she has quartered her vermin on her passengers, and goes gurgling along, as if _she had an Empyema under her pleura costalis_; when she _pitches into_ the waves, as if to _punish_ them, and tramples on their crests, as if to crush them under her keel, why all the brass you want is "AES TRIPLEX;" and there is no _varnish_ in the world that will enable _you_ to put _a good face on it_. A few heaves more, such as those of our present imagining, and brandy and water, bottled porter, and _bottled philosophy_, are uncorked in vain!