NAUTICAL METAPHOR.
AMONG the class or professional literati of the day, those of the sea-service are certainly the most original, at least in the matter of metaphor. This point might easily be illustrated by selections from the innumerable nautical novels which have issued from the press of late years : but the description of the launch of the Albion at Plymouth on Tuesday last, from the pen of an eminent writer of this school, which appeared in the Standard, will serve our purpose for the present. At the outset we are told that the Albion was "wedded with the ocean " ; and the story is wound up with an ac- count of what happened "after the ceremony of christening had been performed." Moreover, we learn that upon "the band striking up 'God save Albion's Queen,' the work of splitting out the blocks from under her keel commenced." The Albion is said to be "a specimen-ship of one plan of naval architecture " ; from which it may be inferred that it is not a specimen of two plans : and the "Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty" are said to be "themselves distinguished critiques of the art." The dockyard- bells, of course, "sent forth their merry peals, and
On ship, on tower, on fort, and tree, The Highland banners float ; ' "
though what Highland banners did in the West when they ought to have been attending their Sovereign in the North, it is hard to conjecture. Finally, " the figure-bead of the Albion is a remark- ably fine bust of Britannia " ; for which bust the goddess conde- scended to sit to the sculptor.
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