fostering in his bosom an entirely new navy, calculated to bid defiance to
the foe--should he ever come--in the very heart and lungs, the very bowels
and vitals, the very liver and lungs, or, in one emphatic word, the very
pluck of the metropolis. There is not a more striking instance of the
remarkable connexion between little--very little--causes, and
great--undeniably great--effects, than the extraordinary origin, rise,
progress, germ, development, and maturity, of the _above-bridge navy_, the
bringing of which prominently before the public, who may owe to that navy
at some future--we hope so incalculably distant as never to have a chance
of arriving--day, the salvation of their lives, the protection of their
hearths, the inviolability of their street-doors, and the security of their
properties. Sprung from a little knot of (we wish we could say "_jolly
young_," though truth compels us to proclaim) far from jolly, and decidedly
old, "watermen," the _above-bridge navy_, whose shattered and unfrequented
wherries were always "in want of a fare," may now boast of covering the
bosom of the Thames with its fleet of steamers; thus, as it were, bringing
the substantial piers of London Bridge within a stone's throw--if we may be
allowed to pitch it so remarkably strong--of the once remote regions of the
Beach[3], and annihilating, as it were, the distance between sombre
southwark and bloom-breathing Battersea.

[3] Chelsea.

The establishment of this little fleet may well be a proud reflection to
those shareholders who, if they have no dividend in specie, have another
species of dividend in the swelling gratification with which the heart of
every one must be inflated, as, on seeing one of the noble craft dart with
the tide through the arches--supposing, of course, it does not strike
against them--of Westminster Bridge, he is enabled mentally to exclaim,
"There goes some of _my_ capital!" But if the pride of the proprietor--if