can pierce, masts peep, thick as needles in a
case. The ships invade the streets; bowsprits
almost touch the groups of men who chaffer
on the open exchange. Interminable rows
of beer-shops, wine-shops, ships'-chandlers,
seamen's lodging-houses, oyster-sellers, slop-
tailors, and vendors of foreign birds and shells,
wind about the docks. There are Dutch and
English and Spanish and Portuguese inscriptions
on the walls. The passages to some of
the cellars are fantastically paved with oyster
and other shells. All the toys in the toy-shops
are nautical, and cordage and spars and anchors
are in every direction. Man's natural seat
appears to be a herring-barrel. Boys in flannel
caps carve models of boats. You take up
the paper; there is nothing to read in it except,
port arrivals and departures, accidents at sea,
cargoes expected, and cargoes that have been
sold, with telegrams of wind and weather from
all parts. You cannot possibly get out of it at
the table d'hôte; there is nothing but pilot
cloth; upon every peg there is a pea-jacket.
Sou'-westers dangle overhead as you walk the
streets, and call up ugly reminiscences of times
when you have looked at the captain carving a
boiled leg of mutton in a lively sea, and thought
he presented the most ferocious figure human
cruelty has taken, since the days of Cain. Fish
and tar are the perfumes of the place, here and
there broken by a little defective sewerage.
With the help of a tropical sun, these essences
are liberally diffused. You pause to glance into
a jeweller's window, to decide whether you will
buy a couple of pulleys for sleeve-links, or a
figure-head for a pin, and you find yourself the
immediate neighbour of an equally meditative
gentleman who is attentively bearing home a
string of horse mackerel as delicate marks of
his domestic affection. The curiosity shops are
the sweepings of sailors' lockers; and the
Parisians sail down and carry off cocoa-nuts in
the outer shell with the excitement and air of
persons who have made some important
discovery in natural history.

The very place for a Sailors' Show, or maritime
exhibition of all nations! All the materials
are at hand. Samples of the sailors of all
nations are on the spot. Ships of all nations
are in the docks. But this was not the idea of
the authors of an international maritime exhibition.
There must be presidents and vice-presidents,
commissioners and deputy commissioners,
jurors, and supplementary jurors. There must
be a vast plan; an inaugural hymn; a
commemorative ode; an apposite chorus. The flag
and the big drum must be provided for. There
must be groups, and sections, and classes, and
sub-classes, concessions and royalties. Accordingly,
a building is designed in humble imitation
of that which occupied the Champ de
Mars in Paris, last year. There are circles
within circles, a central garden, an international
club, a park spangled with varieties of highly
painted buildings and grottos; of course, a
colossal orchestra and a "fairy-like coup d'Å“il."
The main entrance on the Boulevard Imperial,
is in a line with the façade of the town hall.
You enter by a Napoleon the Third gate. Without,
is the Sailors' Show, in vast docks, at the
mouth of a majestic river, spread in broad acres
of picturesque and manful industry. You pay
your money at Napoleon the Third's gate, and
you are in the Sailors' Show—in a box.

There is a strong muster of models of ships,
and boats, and new nautical inventions; of masts
and sails and all kinds of tackle; of marine
instruments, chronometers, fishing nets and lines,
lifeboats, belts, and coats; ship stores, including
the mustard of M. Bornibus, which (the visitor
is informed) enjoys extraordinary renown in
England as well as in France. You are invited
to buy and still to buy. Verily the sailor has
strange things in his Show. He is vastly fond
of jewellery, and vigorously puffs his false
diamonds. He deals, it would seem, to a
positively extraordinary extent in Lyons silks, and
has taken to the children's linen trade. He
doats on confectionery and ices; and a shop
he has opened in this line at Trouville, is incessantly
besieged by the nobility and the "fashionables."
Moreover, he has a "lazy stomach,"
and the doctor having strongly recommended
him to try the essence of the waters of
Vichy, he has tried it, in the form of a spirit of
peppermint, fabricated with the finest champagne
brandy. He was a rough customer in
the old day; but now his needs include the
most exquisite china, and the daintiest crystal.
Roman and encaustic tiles are needful to him.
Time was, the legend says, when Jack threw a
tooth-brush overboard as a nasty thing. But
now, the most eminent, members of the faculty
puzzle themselves to make him an electrical
tooth-brush, and to sweeten his morning toilette
with an Arabian elixir. Civilisation has marched
of late with such giant strides that no prudent
sailor now goes to sea (as I judge from
his Exhibition), without a sewing machine: to
say nothing of an ample supply of printing
materials and a lithographic press. But we
have touched only on the least wonderful of the
advances Jack has made within this century.
His comprehensive eye includes every
conceivable contingency of a maritime life. Hence,
he will on no account be left to the wild waves,
without having in reserve, a full set of agricultural
implements, a fire escape, a saddle, a
bridle, and a harmonium or two. Jack, refined,
sublimated, by our later civilisation, has taken
to the fine arts, and must have a chef d'Å“uvre
or two in his cabin. Hence his show would be
wretchedly imcomplete without a fine art
annexe. He doats on flowers, and has
become no mean authority on the relative values
of animal and vegetable manures. The carriage
department of the Sailors' Show is, perhaps, its
strongest feature. After a running visit to the
Sailors' Show in a box, the visitor cannot fail
to be startled by the multitude of misconceptions
in regard to maritime habits, and wants,
and customs, which he has Gathered, perhaps
too carelessly, from Sailors' Shows in port, and
upon the open sea. Jack includes a very noble