We pass a magnificent white-clad troop-ship, with a beading of red-coats leisurably looking over the forecastle, and glide under the lee of one of those steam-winged brigands of the deep, a steel-built cruiser, whose towering trim spars, and beautiful lines, excite admiration, but chastened with the reflection of the capabilities for destruction she carries in her enormous propelling power and far-reaching guns. Woe, think we, to the peaceful merchantman who may venture to disregard, or seek to flee from the summons of her eagle eye! And now we are sailing easily amid an assemblage of objects, whose presence makes the heart sink, and the cheek burn as we contemplate the rotting millions they represent,--the fleet of huge discarded hulks, whose now comparatively untrustworthy fighting and defensive capabilities, represent the modern advance in the art of destruction in maritime warfare. Here and there a solitary figure peers over the rusty bulwarks, but with regard to the majority, not a living creature paces their deserted decks. Gay, golden, and bright-coloured figure heads,--nymph, triton, or naval hero,--still decorate their prows, but these to our fancy's eye, resolve themselves into gilded skeletons with eyes of flame, and grasping the lightning darts of destruction in their grisly clutches,--the ghastly phantasmagoria of Death! And then comes the mournful reflection, that the original cost of each of these now comparatively valueless hulls,--being for all other purposes mere useless accretions of old iron and wood,--and designed for the destruction of the human race, would have more than sufficed to have built and endowed a hospital or college, whose beneficent errand should have been for all time (and while our present institutions are also starving for want of funds), and that the aggregation of hulks floating lazily around us, and of their predecessors, would represent an amount of wealth sufficiently large to have dotted the empire all over with such excellent institutions.