The Harbours of England | Page 8

Of werk, than any faire creation Of
swiche a parfit wise God and stable, Why han ye wrought this werk
unresonable?'"
The desire to have the rocks out of her way is indeed severely punished
in the sequel of the tale; but it is not the less characteristic of the age,
and well worth meditating upon, in comparison with the feelings of an
unsophisticated modern French or English girl among the black rocks
of Dieppe or Ramsgate.
On the other hand, much might be said about that peculiar love of
green fields and birds in the Middle Ages; and of all with which it is
connected, purity and health in manners and heart, as opposed to the
too frequent condition of the modern mind--
"As for the birds in the thicket, Thrush or ousel in leafy niche, Linnet or
finch--she was far too rich To care for a morning concert to which She
was welcome, without a ticket."[M]
[M] Thomas Hood.
But this would lead us far afield, and the main fact I have to point out
to the reader is the transition of human grace and strength from the
exercises of the land to those of the sea in the course of the last three
centuries.
Down to Elizabeth's time chivalry lasted; and grace of dress and mien,
and all else that was connected with chivalry. Then came the ages
which, when they have taken their due place in the depths of the past,
will be, by a wise and clear-sighted futurity, perhaps well
comprehended under a common name, as the ages of Starch; periods of
general stiffening and bluish-whitening, with a prevailing

washerwoman's taste in everything; involving a change of steel armor
into cambric; of natural hair into peruke; of natural walking into that
which will disarrange no wristbands; of plain language into quips and
embroideries; and of human life in general, from a green race-course,
where to be defeated was at worst only to fall behind and recover
breath, into a slippery pole, to be climbed with toil and contortion, and
in clinging to which, each man's foot is on his neighbor's head.
But, meanwhile, the marine deities were incorruptible. It was not
possible to starch the sea; and precisely as the stiffness fastened upon
men, it vanished from ships. What had once been a mere raft, with rows
of formal benches, pushed along by laborious flap of oars, and with
infinite fluttering of flags and swelling of poops above, gradually began
to lean more heavily into the deep water, to sustain a gloomy weight of
guns, to draw back its spider-like feebleness of limb, and open its
bosom to the wind, and finally darkened down from all its painted
vanities into the long, low hull, familiar with the overflying foam; that
has no other pride but in its daily duty and victory; while, through all
these changes, it gained continually in grace, strength, audacity, and
beauty, until at last it has reached such a pitch of all these, that there is
not, except the very loveliest creatures of the living world, anything in
nature so absolutely notable, bewitching, and, according to its means
and measure, heart-occupying, as a well-handled ship under sail in a
stormy day. Any ship, from lowest to proudest, has due place in that
architecture of the sea; beautiful, not so much in this or that piece of it,
as in the unity of all, from cottage to cathedral, into their great buoyant
dynasty. Yet, among them, the fisher-boat, corresponding to the cottage
on the land (only far more sublime than a cottage ever can be), is on the
whole the thing most venerable. I doubt if ever academic grove were
half so fit for profitable meditation as the little strip of shingle between
two black, steep, overhanging sides of stranded fishing-boats. The clear,
heavy water-edge of ocean rising and falling close to their bows, in that
unaccountable way which the sea has always in calm weather, turning
the pebbles over and over as if with a rake, to look for something, and
then stopping a moment down at the bottom of the bank, and coming
up again with a little run and clash, throwing a foot's depth of salt
crystal in an instant between you and the round stone you were going to

take in your hand; sighing, all the while, as if it would infinitely rather
be doing something else. And the dark flanks of the fishing-boats all
aslope above, in their shining quietness, hot in the morning sun, rusty
and seamed with square patches of plank nailed over their rents; just
rough enough to let the little flat-footed fisher-children haul or twist
themselves up to the gunwales, and drop back again along some stray
rope; just round enough to remind us, in