One of the most modern and most elegant boats on the Hudson is the _New York_, launched in 1887, and declared by Mr. Stanton to be one of the finest river steam-boats in the world, well arranged, and beautifully finished and furnished. She is built on fine lines, is 311 feet long, 40 feet broad, and with a tonnage of 1,552, draws only 12¼ feet of water. She can steam at twenty miles an hour, and is placed on one of the New York and Albany lines. Throughout the summer there are both day and night boats for Albany, and the latter especially are of great size, three stories high, and provided with saloons, state-rooms, and, in fact, all the accommodation of a luxurious first-class hotel. The vessels named in this notice include but a few of the splendid boats that ply on the River Hudson, and, in respect of their numbers, speed, and comfort, it may safely be asserted that they cannot be equalled on any other river in the world.
FIG. 69.—_H.M.S. Devastation in Queenstown Harbour._ ]
“Take it all in all, a ship of the line is the most honourable thing that man, as a gregarious animal, has ever produced. By himself, unhelped, he can do better things than ships of the line; he can make poems, and pictures, and other such concentrations of what is best in him. But as a being living in flocks, and hammering out with alternate strokes and mutual agreement, what is necessary for him in those flocks to get or produce, the ship of the line is his first work. Into that he has put as much of his human patience, common sense, forethought, experimental philosophy, self-control, habits of order and obedience, thoroughly wrought hand-work, defiance of brute elements, careless courage, careful patriotism, and calm expectation of the judgment of God, as can well be put into a space of 300 ft. long by 80 ft. broad. And I am thankful to have lived in an age when I could see this thing so done.” So wrote Mr. Ruskin about forty years ago, referring, of course, to the old wooden line-of-battle ships. It may be doubted whether he would have written thus enthusiastically about so unpicturesque an object as the _Glatton_, just as it may be doubted whether the armour-plated steamers will attain the same celebrity in romance and in verse as the old frigates with their “wooden walls.” Certain it is that the patience, forethought, experimental philosophy, thoroughly wrought hand-work, careful patriotism, and other good qualities which Mr. Ruskin saw in the wooden frigates, are not the less displayed in the new ironclads.