The development in the size of steamships not only affects the quality of safety, but also in various ways the element of comfort at sea. The greater length, for instance, is calculated to neutralise the longitudinal oscillation, the effects of which are so often fatal to the comfort of passengers. Again, the great length affords an advantage in the way of allowing better state-room accommodation; all the rooms, or a larger proportion of them, being next the vessel’s side, and consequently more airy and better lighted. It is not, however, in the increased length so much as in the development of all three dimensions, and especially in the increased ratio of breadth to length, that modern types of steamships are enhanced in the qualities of safety and comfort. Mistaken or imperfect notions as to the ratio most desirable for speed, have kept in perpetuity types of steamers which the fuller light of modern scientific investigation has shown to be undesirable. Great beam is now believed to be not incompatible with great speed, and even apart from questions of speed the advantages accruing from breadth are better appreciated. As an illustration of this movement, one of the more recent of the many transatlantic mail steamships may be instanced. In the _Aurania_, of the Cunard Company, the proportions—although perhaps only in the line along which modern professional ideas tend—are certainly in advance of the general practice with regard to vessels of her great size. The dimensions of the _Servia_, the _Alaska_, and the _City of Rome_—three vessels comparable with the _Aurania_ as constituting the largest merchant vessels afloat—all give a proportion of 10 beams to the length. The _Aurania’s_ dimensions—470 feet by 57 feet by 39 feet—show her to have only about 8¼ beams to length. The success of the older type of vessel having proportions somewhat similar to this “modern instance” has in no material sense been eclipsed by the narrow types which subsequently for so long prevailed. Availing themselves of that freedom which independence of the registration societies yield—their vessels not being “classed”—the Cunard Coy determined to adopt the old-time proportions. The step has been justified, in so far as affected by the matter of speed, the powerful vessel, at her trials on the Clyde, having attained a mean speed of 17¾ knots, or 20½ statute miles, per hour. The stable qualities due to the great breadth of the _Aurania_ has in actual service further confirmed the wisdom of the change. The magnificent vessels presently building on the Clyde for the Cunard Coy., though between 20 and 30 feet longer, are the same breadth as the _Aurania_, _i.e._, 57 feet. This is accounted for by the fact that the breadth of beam fixed for the _Aurania_ was the largest amount permissible, having regard to the breadth of entrance of the largest dock in New York. This _en passant_ is worthy of notice as giving colourable justification to the complaints sometimes made that