sum of money as may be necessary in order to provide the seaman with a passage home. "As between the shipowner and the seaman the expense of relieving him and of sending him home is to fall on the shipowner, unless a Court of Summary Jurisdiction in a colony, or the consul in a foreign port, adjudge them to be paid by the seaman, in which case they may be deducted from the wages. "As between the Government and the shipowner the expense of relieving and sending home the seaman is to fall on the ship. "As between the Government and the seaman the expense is to fall on his wages. The wages deposited with the superintendent or consul are to be applied by him, in the first instance, in payment of expenses incurred in relieving or sending home the seaman, and the balance, except in case of desertion, to be paid over to the seaman." The shipowner and shipmaster, like CESAR's wife, should be above suspicion. They will, at all events, be beyond any suspicion of promoting desertion to appropriate forfeited wages, if the Bill becomes law. Another fertile source of disagreement between owners and masters is the question of unseaworthiness of ships. Mr. Plimsoll, the member for the thriving seaport of Derby, introduced a Bill to regulate the shipping trade in this respect. But either owing to the seamanship of his constituents being at fault, or to the Honourable Member's opportunities for visiting the ships in Derby not being sufficiently ample, he failed to make any progress with his Bill, or to enlist any sympathy, and withdrew it in favour of a Bill introduced by Mr. Fortescue, and which, whilst this article is being put into type, will probably be passed through the legislature. We propose, in our next number, to review and consider that Bill and the Chain Cables Bill, which is also at the present moment under consideration. If a ship is seaworthy, the seaman ought not to say she is not, and if she is not seaworthy, the owner ought not to say she is, and to compel seamen to go to sea in her, or accept the alternative of a residence in gaol. The new act will reduce the crimp's chances of fomenting discord; for facts will be able to be brought to light. At present they cannot be brought to light, and the men can be sent to prison; or, to save trouble, the master lets the men go and engages substitutes from the crimp to prevent delay. In future, when the facts can be brought to light, the men can only be sent to prison if they deserve to be, and the ship will be detained if she is unseaworthy. We must not omit to refer to those advertisements which may sometimes be seen in the newspapers, where the advertisers offer their services in obtaining employment for a boy as apprentice or midshipman. Their offer to obtain the employment named is disinterested, since under the Act they are liable to heavy penalties if they receive any remuneration whatever for rendering assistance of the sort. Widows and other persons who want to place their boys out in the sea service should look with grave suspicion on the majority of these advertisements, and should apply at once to the Registrar General of Seamen, 6, Adelaide Place, London Bridge, whose duty is, by the law, to afford facilities for apprenticing boys and sending them to sea, and who will besides, on application, give a list of some persons who have been convicted. The advertisements of quack doctors and of crimps ought both to be put down with a very strong hand, and we are glad to find that the Bill of 1871 prohibits the publication of advertisements by crimps and other unauthorized persons to procure places on board ship. The Board of Trade Memorandum says that this provision "is intended to prevent a practice which has prevailed in London, of issuing false and fraudulent advertisements to procure places on board ship by persons, who having obtained money for so doing, are unable to fulfil their promises." We only wish that advertisements of quack doctors could be made an offence in like manner. There is a provision in the Bill for licensing porters for seamen's luggage; this we are glad to find. If an orderly set of porters amenable to control are licensed to look after seamen's luggage, and if all unlicensed people are to be punished if they act as porters, the "hammock snatcher," the crimp's attendant imp, will have to emigrate. There are several minor points in which the law is considerably improved, but we have not time to notice them now. In concluding our remarks, we wish to say that we do not think that shipping agents, beyond the superintendents of Mercantile Marine offices, ought to be wanted at all, and that until arrangements can be made with foreign countries in the direction we have indicated, there will not be any very noticeable diminution in crimping either here or abroad. We do not look, as many people do, to much assistance in diminishing crimping from any socalled religious movement; we believe, as we have already said, that the law of this world, which as applied to repressing vice is the law of God, will make an impression on the ways and dealings of crimps; we desire to see our Statute law amended, and we leave others to expound that law that needs no amendment. We would however ask them not to confound the operation and effects of two things entirely different, and not to suppose that they can do what they cannot do, and not to expect to do by Statute law that which is impossible. Those engaged in seamen's missions must endeavour to make seamen good, moral, and respectable; all we can hope to do by amended legislation, by penalties and vigorous exertion, is to make the occupation of a crimp unprofitable and our seaports too hot for him. MARINE PAINTINGS. IN the different critiques of the paintings which are annually ex hibited in the spacious galleries at Burlington House, comparatively little notice is taken of what are termed marine paintings. Indeed, it is difficult at the outset to define what constitutes a marine painting. We once saw a work thus described, which consisted of the hold of a fishing smack "peopled" by two or three figures and a quantity of fish, the animate figures admirably painted and the fish realistic enough to make one's mouth water. Herein the merits of the work began and ended. The smack was mounted on what, without much exaggeration, might be described as a bright green feather-pillow with other green feather-pillows beyond. The picture, artistically speaking, was marine in the sense that a marine store merits such appellation. As well term a Royal Marine a sailor. Such works are of the shore, shorey, and so great is their abundance one ceases to wonder at the anomalous, but not uncommon, expression, "the foreground of a sea landscape." If you want to see marine paintings, says one, go to the Painted Hall at Greenwich. True, there are some paintings there we could stand at for hours, in admiration of their manipulation; but even among these great pictures, a sailor finds much incongruity and ignorance displayed. Look at that Lord Nelson's Victory of Trafalgar, by Turner. Nelson would hardly have recognized his own ship mounted as she is on a platform-which we believe was necessitated from the original sketch of the picture being taken from the old craft as she now lies in Portsmouth harbour with no lower deck guns, or provisions in, and, by no possibility could the grouping in the foreground of the picture ever have been accomplished on salt water. As for the sails, they are far more like dimity than canvas. Then note the picture next to it, The Victory of the Nile. The blowing up of the L'Orient grandly realized, but the incongruity of representing a vessel under sail passing close alongside her without being in the least degree affected by the explosion, is, to say the least, remarkable. The reflected light of the burning mass is admirably depicted, but how the ship under sail is to clear the boats and spars almost under the forefoot perplexes us. Then turn to those wonderful pictures by De Loutherbourg. We dwell delightedly on that group of boats, admire the spirit he has thrown into the drawing of those men engaged in a hand to hand fight; but what will become of the poor fellows? the two ships are bearing down upon them "with a full flowing sheet," driving the billows before them. The scene as it is here depicted could not possibly have occurred. The Destruction of the Spanish Armada, by the same painter, is fine in effect, but the ships are badly drawn. If we go back to older painters we have as great incongruities as in the more modern. One example will suffice: Sir E. Hughes engaging a French Squadron, 1782. This is fairly painted, ships well drawn, sails in pretty good proportion and shape, and the masts in similar accord with truth; but we have the wind blowing one way for one squadron, and another way for the other. The right hand line of ships are close-hauled on the starboard tack, while the left hand line-lying nearer in the wind's eye-have their yards braced in and all the sails full. The painting of Sir Samuel Hood's action is artistically meritorious, and not much out in naval knowledge, although a firstlieutenant would not be satisfied with those mast heads, or the way in which the rigging is put over them. Chambers's picture of the Bombardment of Algiers is also a good painting, showing carefully studied parts of a ship, and, if we except a kind of grandiose mode of treatment, the painter's license has not been greatly abused. It may be thought that we are rather hard upon the painters. We admit that it would be unreasonable to expect "shore men " to be up to all the details of ships and their doings. At the same time we cannot agree in the popular notion that if an artist produces certain effects, and thereby makes a telling picture, it is all that is to be desired. Landseer would not paint an animal without studying its characteristics, and by the same rule a marine painter has no right to give us a picture of a ship without carefully studying the model, its rig, and proportions. What we maintain is that where there is water of the sea or river, represented on canvas, and that water is associated with ship, brig, ketch, hoy, or vessel, the two should be in strict realistic keeping; and although it be a painter's license to make the one subservient to the other, the proprieties should not be outraged with impossible vessels, or water incapable of keeping them afloat. We do not go to the length of the proverbial boatswain whose criticism was so severe that he would condemn a picture as worthless if the seizing of the lower rigging had one turn more or less than what was proper; but we decidedly object to topsails that would never hoist, or if hoisted could never come down,—to ropes that lead from anywhere to nowhere with no purpose,—to hulls which if the lines were continued below the water would at once prove that such a ship could never float, or if she did it would be bottom uppermost. Our visit to the Royal Academy Exhibition of this year was not altogether unsatisfactory. We certainly found a good deal which offended our nautical ideas, but that was compensated for in other respects. A few remarks on some of the principal sea paintings exhibited, may perhaps be interesting to some of our readers. We were especially delighted with one by Mr. R. P. Beechey, whose name is no doubt familiar to many of our readers. The subject title of his picture is a verse from Campbell's spirited and well-known song "The only flag that freedom rears, Her emblem o'er the seas, Is the flag that braved a thousand years As is here depicted. None but a sailor could have painted such a ship, and none but an artist such water. If correct portraiture be a merit, Mr. Beechey's picture has it. This is veritably the stern of the old Britannia. There she is in all her glory, as we ourselves have seen her in the good old times when ships were "things of beauty" and life. Alas! that they should be now only known on canvas. The pitch of the leviathan of that day gives a grand idea of the old ship, while the light on the rising wave relieves the heaviness of the mass it bears. As far as we can judge there is much very worthy of praise in this picture, and very little to find fault with. For the sake of Marine art, we hope Mr. Beechey will give us many more sea pictures. A picture by Mr. J. C. Sketchy we cannot say we were so well pleased with. His subject is A gallant rescue: naval incident of the French war, and although little fault may be found with his colouring, yet his treatment of the subject is not satisfactory. It is very evident that he knew little about nautical matters, and the story of the incident is not quite clear. How the seven hundred |