Barnes, on occasion of her coming under the British flag, having been
built for the Messrs. Barnes by Donald McKay of Boston. She is a
splendid vessel, and magnificently fitted up, though not with consummate
taste. It would be worth while that ornamental architects and
upholsterers should study this branch of art, since the ship-builders
seem willing to expend a good deal of money on it. In fact, I do not see
that there is anywhere else so much encouragement to the exercise of
ornamental art. I saw nothing to criticise in the solid and useful
details of the ship; the ventilation, in particular, being free and
abundant, so that the hundreds of passengers who will have their berths
between decks, and at a still lower depth, will have good air and enough
of it.

There were four or five hundred persons, principally Liverpool merchants
and their wives, invited to the dejeuner; and the tables were spread
between decks, the berths for passengers not being yet put in. There was
not quite light enough to make the scene cheerful, it being an overcast
day; and, indeed, there was an English plainness in the arrangement of
the festal room, which might have been better exchanged for the flowery
American taste, which I have just been criticising. With flowers, and
the arrangement of flags, we should have made something very pretty of
the space between decks; but there was nothing to hide the fact that in a
few days hence there would be crowded berths and sea-sick steerage
passengers where we were now feasting. The cheer was very good,--cold
fowl and meats; cold pies of foreign manufacture very rich, and of
mysterious composition; and champagne in plenty, with other wines for
those who liked them.

I sat between two ladies, one of them Mrs. ------, a pleasant young
woman, who, I believe, is of American provincial nativity, and whom I