Saunterings | Page 6

years of
sea-life, and every ocean and port on the habitable globe where they
have been. There comes a day when you are quite ready for land, and
the scream of the "gull" is a welcome sound.
Even the sailors lose the vivacity of the first of the voyage. The first
two or three days we had their quaint and half-doleful singing in chorus
as they pulled at the ropes: now they are satisfied with short ha-ho's,
and uncadenced grunts. It used to be that the leader sang, in
ever-varying lines of nonsense, and the chorus struck in with fine effect,
like this:
"I wish I was in Liverpool town. Handy-pan, handy O!
O captain! where 'd you ship your crew Handy-pan, handy O!
Oh! pull away, my bully crew, Handy-pan, handy O!"
There are verses enough of this sort to reach across the Atlantic; and
they are not the worst thing about it either, or the most tedious. One
learns to respect this ocean, but not to love it; and he leaves it with
mingled feelings about Columbus.
And now, having crossed it,--a fact that cannot be concealed,--let us not
be under the misapprehension that we are set to any task other than that

of sauntering where it pleases us.

PARIS AND LONDON
SURFACE CONTRASTS OF PARIS AND LONDON
I wonder if it is the Channel? Almost everything is laid to the Channel:
it has no friends. The sailors call it the nastiest bit of water in the world.
All travelers anathematize it. I have now crossed it three times in
different places, by long routes and short ones, and have always found
it as comfortable as any sailing anywhere, sailing being one of the most
tedious and disagreeable inventions of a fallen race. But such is not the
usual experience: most people would make great sacrifices to avoid the
hour and three quarters in one of those loathsome little Channel
boats,--they always call them loathsome, though I did n't see but they
are as good as any boats. I have never found any boat that hasn't a
detestable habit of bobbing round. The Channel is hated: and no one
who has much to do with it is surprised at the projects for bridging it
and for boring a hole under it; though I have scarcely ever met an
Englishman who wants either done,--he does not desire any more facile
communication with the French than now exists. The traditional hatred
may not be so strong as it was, but it is hard to say on which side is the
most ignorance and contempt of the other.
It must be the Channel: that is enough to produce a physical
disagreement even between the two coasts; and there cannot be a
greater contrast in the cultivated world than between the two lands
lying so close to each other; and the contrast of their capitals is even
more decided,--I was about to say rival capitals, but they have not
enough in common to make them rivals. I have lately been over to
London for a week, going by the Dieppe and New Haven route at night,
and returning by another; and the contrasts I speak of were impressed
upon me anew. Everything here in and about Paris was in the green and
bloom of spring, and seemed to me very lovely; but my first glance at
an English landscape made it all seem pale and flat. We went up from
New Haven to London in the morning, and feasted our eyes all the way.
The French foliage is thin, spindling, sparse; the grass is thin and light
in color--in contrast. The English trees are massive, solid in substance
and color; the grass is thick, and green as emerald; the turf is like the
heaviest Wilton carpet. The whole effect is that of vegetable luxuriance

and solidity, as it were a tropical luxuriance, condensed and hardened
by northern influences. If my eyes remember well, the French
landscapes are more like our own, in spring tone, at least; but the
English are a revelation to us strangers of what green really is, and
what grass and trees can be. I had been told that we did well to see
England before going to the Continent, for it would seem small and
only pretty afterwards. Well, leaving out Switzerland, I have seen
nothing in that beauty which satisfies the eye and wins the heart to
compare with England in spring. When we annex it to our sprawling
country which lies out-doors in so many climates, it will make a
charming little retreat for us in May and June, a sort of garden of
delight, whence we shall draw our May butter and our June roses. It
will only be necessary to put it under glass to