ons. I am indeed assured, that if any such
affected disregard of the solemn office in which they were engaged, as
I have seen practiced by fine gentlemen and ladies, expressing a kind of
apprehension lest they should be suspected of being really in earnest
in their devotion, had been shown here, they would have contracted the
contempt of the whole audience. To say the truth, from what I observed
in the behavior of the sailors in this voyage, and on comparing it with
what I have formerly seen of them at sea and on shore, I am convinced
that on land there is nothing more idle and dissolute; in their own
element there are no persons near the level of their degree who live in
the constant practice of half so many good qualities.

They are, for much the greater part, perfect masters of their business,
and always extremely alert, and ready in executing it, without any
regard to fatigue or hazard. The soldiers themselves are not better
disciplined nor more obedient to orders than these whilst aboard;
they submit to every difficulty which attends their calling with
cheerfulness, and no less virtues and patience and fortitude are
exercised by them every day of their lives. All these good qualities,
however, they always leave behind them on shipboard; the sailor out of
water is, indeed, as wretched an animal as the fish out of water; for
though the former hath, in common with amphibious animals, the bare
power of existing on the land, yet if he be kept there any time he never
fails to become a nuisance. The ship having had a good deal of motion
since she was last under sail, our women returned to their sickness, and
I to my solitude; having, for twenty-four hours together, scarce opened
my lips to a single person. This circumstance of being shut up within
the circumference of a few yards, with a score of human creatures, with
not one of whom it was possible to converse, was perhaps so rare as
scarce ever to have happened before, nor could it ever happen to one
who disliked it more than myself, or to myself at a season when I wanted
more food for my social disposition, or could converse less wholesomely
and happily with my own thoughts. To this accident, which fortune opened
to me in the Downs, was owing the first serious thought which I ever
entertained of enrolling myself among the voyage-writers; some of the
most amusing pages, if, indeed, there be any which deserve that name,
were possibly the production of the most disagreeabl