navigable element, but an intimate companion. The length of
passages, the growing sense of solitude, the close dependence upon
the very forces that, friendly to-day, without changing their
nature, by the mere putting forth of their might, become dangerous
to-morrow, make for that sense of fellowship which modern seamen,
good men as they are, cannot hope to know. And, besides, your
modern ship which is a steamship makes her passages on other
principles than yielding to the weather and humouring the sea. She
receives smashing blows, but she advances; it is a slogging fight,
and not a scientific campaign. The machinery, the steel, the fire,
the steam, have stepped in between the man and the sea. A modern
fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a
highway. The modern ship is not the sport of the waves. Let us
say that each of her voyages is a triumphant progress; and yet it
is a question whether it is not a more subtle and more human
triumph to be the sport of the waves and yet survive, achieving
your end.

In his own time a man is always very modern. Whether the seamen of
three hundred years hence will have the faculty of sympathy it is
impossible to say. An incorrigible mankind hardens its heart in
the progress of its own perfectability. How will they feel on
seeing the illustrations to the sea novels of our day, or of our
yesterday? It is impossible to guess. But the seaman of the last
generation, brought into sympathy with the caravels of ancient time
by his sailing-ship, their lineal descendant, cannot look upon
those lumbering forms navigating the naive seas of ancient woodcuts
without a feeling of surprise, of affectionate derision, envy, and
admiration. For those things, whose unmanageableness, even when
represented on paper, makes one gasp with a sort of amused horror,