The clipper-ships, although certainly the finest class of vessels afloat, are very uneasy in a sea. Mr Steers, the builder of the far-famed yacht _America_, is very sanguine that he will produce a faster vessel than has yet ploughed the seas, and Captain Mackinnon is inclined to believe that he will. His new clipper-vessels will be as easy in motion as superior in sailing. The great merit of Mr Steers, as the builder of the _America_, is in his having invented a perfectly original model, as new in America as in Europe. He informed our author that the idea, so successfully carried out in the _America's_ model, struck him when a boy of eight years old. He was looking on at the moulding of a vessel by his father (an Englishman), when suddenly it occurred to him that a great improvement might be made in the construction; and the _modus operandi_ speedily took possession of his mind. Mr Steers thinks that a shallow vessel, with a sliding keel, can be built to outsail any vessel even on his improved model. This is likely to be tested next summer in England, as a sloop, the _Silvia_, built by Steers on this construction, is preparing to try her speed at Cowes next season. The author carefully noted this craft when on the stocks alongside the _America_,[1] and he believes, 'that no vessel in England has the ghost of a chance against her.' The English ship-builders have a great deal to learn from Brother Jonathan, not only in the fashion of build, but likewise in the 'fitting and rigging.' An American London liner is sailed with half the number of men required by an English ship of the same size, and yet the work is got through as well and as expeditiously. The various mechanical contrivances to save labour might be beneficially copied by English ships. A merchant-vessel, on the clipper principle, can be turned out by a Baltimore builder for from L.10 to L.12 a ton, complete in all her fittings. This is much cheaper than in England, which appears unaccountable, considering the rate of wages; but so much more work is done by the workmen for their wages, that labour is as cheap, if not cheaper, there than here. 'Cotton-duck' sails are almost exclusively used by American vessels under 300 tons, which for such vessels, as well as for yachts, is much better and cheaper than canvas. Another circumstance which struck the author at Baltimore--and which is equally striking to hear of to those who are accustomed to the sight of the Thames barges ascending and descending the river, in all their ugliness and filth, with the flow and ebb of each tide--was, that the vessels intended for the lowest and most degrading offices, such as carrying manure, oysters, and wood, were of 'elegant and symmetrical proportions!'