'But, with all, she was a noble vessel; and the captain was a noble sailor. If he was a little reckless, the "Liverpool System" is rather to blame than he. He had risen, I believe, from before the mast, and was a man of a certain rough amiability, of seafaring energy, and dogged determination. A slight anecdote fits in here as an illustration. Once he was commanding a ship which had sprung a leak, and a number of the sailors, for some reason or other, refused to work. Captain Taylor ordered all the refractory men in irons, and then, fitting up a windmill, pumped out the vessel without any manual assistance whatever. 'The "Royal Charter" was a magnificent specimen of shipbuilding. She was some thirty feet longer than the "Great Britain;" could, without her "auxiliary screw," sail eighteen knots an hour; and was, in matters of internal appointment, more like a West-end hotel than a ship which had to brave the seas and storms of Cape Horn. Her principal saloon was one hundred feet long, was fitted up with stained glass, rich hangings, velvet couches, candelabra, bookcases, piano, and all the other elegancies which have of late been made so much of in the reporters' descriptions of the "Great Eastern." There were about forty cabins at the sides of the saloons, beside some twenty or thirty first-class berths on the deck immediately under. The "intermediate" and "steerage" accommodation was very large--capable, I should say, of receiving from four hundred and fifty to five hundred passengers--while in the forecastle and "cock-pit" there were, when I came from Australia, about one hundred men, consisting of officers, pursers, midshipmen, crew, etc., etc. Along the main-deck there was a row of shops--a wine-store, a grocery-store, a meat-store, and a bakery, together with two or three kitchens. (I may add here that the ship carried a score of stewards and cooks.) In the centre of the vessel a large space was devoted to the engine and engineers' apartments, and just on one side were the cow and sheep pens. Altogether a noble craft--_so_ noble that I never looked at it without thinking, "Great God! will this vessel ever be swallowed by the waters!"