tion of the lofty feeling of the man in whom he
confided ever presented itself in sufficient season to prevent the
apprehension from gaining any undue ascendency. Notwithstanding the
delicacy of his situation, that characteristic interest in his profession,
which is rarely dormant in the bosom of a thorough-bred seaman, was
strongly stimulated as he approached the vessel of the Rover. The perfect
symmetry of her spars the graceful heavings and settings of the whole
fabric is it rode, like a marine bird, on the long, regular swells of the
trades, and the graceful inclinations of the tapering masts, as they waved
across the blue canopy, which was interlaced by all the tracery of her
complicated tackle, was not lost on an eye that knew no less how to prize
the order of the whole than to admire the beauty of the object itself.
There is a high and exquisite taste, which the seaman attains in the study
of a machine that all have united to commend, which may be likened to the
sensibilities that the artist acquires by close and long contemplation of
the noblest monuments of antiquity. It teaches him to detect those
imperfections which would escape any less instructed eye; and it heightens
the pleasure with which a ship at sea is gazed at, by enabling the mind to
keep even pace with the enjoyment of the senses. It is this powerful (and
to a landsman incomprehensible) charm that forms the secret tie which
binds the mariner so closely to his vessel, and which often leads him to
prize her qualities as one would esteem the virtues of a friend, and
almost to be equally enamoured of the fair proportions of his ship and of
those of his mistress. Other men may have their different inanimate
subjects of admiration; but none of their feelings so thoroughly enter
into the composition of the being as the affection which the mariner
comes, in time, to feel for his vessel. It is his home, his theme of
constant and frequently of painful interest, his tabernacle and often his
source of pride and exultation. As she gratifies or disappoints his
high-wrought expectations in her speed or in the fight, mid shoals and
hurricanes, a character for good or luckless qualities is earned, which
are as often in reality due to the skill or ignorance of those who guide
her, as to any inherent properties of the fabric. Still does the ship
itself, in the eyes of the seaman, bear away the laurel of success, or
suffer the ignominy of defeat and misfortune; and, when