27th March, 'THERE has lately been launched at Newport News, Virginia, the largest and handsomest passenger steamer, with the exception of the St, Louis and St. Paul of the American line, yet built in the United States. She is built entirely of steel, has twin screws, with engines indicating seven thousand horse-power, and only one funnel. 'The account before us gives the conventional particulars of her length, breadth, and depth, which convey little or no idea of her appeatance to the ordinary reader, and we are told that she has the usual social halls, ladies' observatory, dining saloons decorated in white and gold, and all the luxuries which go to make up what it is the rule to designate most inappropriately a " floating hotel." She does not seem to be provided with elevators to save the passengers the trouble of walking upstairs from their staterooms to the deck, but this will no doubt come before long, But we do note that she—the feminine pronoun seems sometimes incongruous, bat not in her case, for she is na: aed the Grand Duchess—* will be lighted by electricity and will be fitted out with a complete fire alarm, telephone, and ventilating system." Lighting by electricity is all right, steamers having grown so large that a large number of the staterooms they contain are never reached by the light of day at all; a complete fire alarm system in nodonbt inevitable, though it is not altogether a pleasant thing to think about at night in your berth when you can't sleep; and a complete ventilating system is a necessary evil, meaning that year stateroom is either so stuffy that you get a headache, or you have a blast of cold air coming down on your head which entirely contradicts the old assurance that you can't catch cold at sea. But the most delightful innovation, for which the passengers should be grateful to the designer of the Grand Duchess, from the moment they go to turn somebody else's luggage out of their stateroom to the moment when they tip the last. man who has done nothing for them during the voyage, but whom if they do not gratify they will have a consciousness of meanness for weeks after, is the installation of a complete telephone system, Electric bells and pnenmatic bells are already found on up-to-date steamers, and a great convenience they are if they work, and if the steward who belongs to your room happens to be sulliciently disengaged
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.