To a hale hearty man, a perfect picture of health in an oaken frame, such abortions seem sufficiently unaccountable. A great hulking fellow, revelling as De Quincey used emphatically to say, “in rude BOVINE health,”--a voracious human animal, camel-stomached and iron-built, who could all but devour and digest himself like a Kilkenny cat,--can neither sympathise with nor understand those frequent failures and down-breakings which happen to beings not so fortunately gifted with indelicate constitutions. Such a half-horse half-alligator monster cannot judge, like a _Puny_ Judge, of a case of feebleness. The broad-chested cannot allow for the narrow-breasted; the robust for the no-bust. Nevertheless, even the stalwart may sometimes fall egregiously short of their own designs--as witness a case in point. Amongst my fellow passengers, on a late sea-voyage, there was one who attracted my especial attention. A glance at his face, another at his figure, a third at his costume, and a fourth at his paraphernalia, sufficed to detect his country: by his light hair, nubbly features, heavy frame, odd-coloured dressing-gown, and the national meerschaum and gaudy tobacco-bag, he was undeniably a German. But, besides the everlasting pipe, he was provided with a sketching apparatus, an ample note book, a gun, and a telescope; the whole being placed ready for immediate use. He had predetermined, no doubt, to record his German sentiments on first making acquaintance with the German Ocean; to sketch the picturesque craft he might encounter on its surface; to shoot his first sea-gull; and to catch a first glimpse of the shores of Albion, beyond the reach of the naked eye. But alas! all these intentions fell--if one may correctly say so with only sky and water--to the ground. He ate nothing--drank nothing--smoked nothing--drew nothing--wrote nothing--shot nothing--spied nothing--nay, he merely stared, but replied nothing to my friendly inquiry (I am ill at the German tongue and its pronunciation) “Wie befinden _sea sick_?”