with dignity. Several little circumstances combine to render the
visitor an object of humiliation. In the first place, the steamer
no sooner touches the port, than all the passengers fall into
captivity: being boarded by an overpowering force of Custom-house
officers, and marched into a gloomy dungeon. In the second place,
the road to this dungeon is fenced off with ropes breast-high, and
outside those ropes all the English in the place who have lately
been sea-sick and are now well, assemble in their best clothes to
enjoy the degradation of their dilapidated fellow-creatures. 'Oh,
my gracious! how ill this one has been!' 'Here's a damp one coming
next!' 'HERE'S a pale one!' 'Oh! Ain't he green in the face,
this next one!' Even we ourself (not deficient in natural dignity)
have a lively remembrance of staggering up this detested lane one
September day in a gale of wind, when we were received like an
irresistible comic actor, with a burst of laughter and applause,
occasioned by the extreme imbecility of our legs.

We were coming to the third place. In the third place, the
captives, being shut up in the gloomy dungeon, are strained, two or
three at a time, into an inner cell, to be examined as to
passports; and across the doorway of communication, stands a
military creature making a bar of his arm. Two ideas are generally
present to the British mind during these ceremonies; first, that it
is necessary to make for the cell with violent struggles, as if it
were a life-boat and the dungeon a ship going down; secondly, that
the military creature's arm is a national affront, which the
government at home ought instantly to 'take up.' The British mind
and body becoming heated by these fantasies, delirious answers are
made to inquiries, and extravagant actions performed. Thus,
Johnson persists in giving Johnson as his baptismal name, and