for sloops, yawls, cutters, ketches, and brigantines, they were simply
the Russian alphabet to him. I sympathise with his regret. It was a
noble day in one's childhood when one had learned the names of
sailing-vessels, and, walking to the point of the harbour beyond the
bathing-boxes, could correct the ignorance of a friend: "That's not a
ship. That's a brig." To the boy from an inland town every vessel that
sails is a ship. He feels he is being shown a new and bewildering
world when he is told that the only ship that has the right to be
called a ship is a vessel with three masts (at least), all of them
square-rigged. When once he has learned his lesson, he finds an
unaccustomed delight in wandering along the dirtiest coal-quay, and
recognising the barques by the fact that only two of their three masts
are square-rigged, and the brigs by the fact that they are
square-rigged throughout--a sort of two-masted ships. Vessels have
suddenly become as real to him in their differences as the different
sorts of common birds. As for his feelings on the day on which he can
tell for certain the upper fore topsail from the upper fore
top-gallant sail, and either of these from the fore skysail, the
crossjack, or the mizzen-royal, they are those of a man who has
mastered a language and discovers himself, to his surprise, talking it
fluently. The world of shipping has become articulate poetry to him
instead of a monotonous abracadabra.

It is as though we can know nothing of a thing until we know its name.
Can we be said to know what a pigeon is unless we know that it is a
pigeon? We may have seen it again and again, with its bottle-shoulders
and shining neck, sitting on the edge of a chimney-pot, and noted it
as a bird with a full bosom and swift wings. But if we are not able to
name it except vaguely as a "bird," we seem to be separated from it by
an immense distance of ignorance. Learn that it is a pigeon however,