reat poetical past.
Yet the magic of the sea and shipping has rarely touched our poetry, and
for its finest expression we must still turn to an art in which as a race
we are less expert, and stand before that picture of Turner's in the
National Gallery. The late Mr. Froude believed in a good time coming when
the sea-captains of Elizabeth are to find their bard and sit enshrined in
'great English national epic as grand as the _Odyssey_' It may be, but as
yet our poets have achieved but a few sea-fights, marine adventures, and
occasional pieces, which wear a spirited but accidental look, and suggest
the excursionist. On me, at any rate, no poem in our language--not even
_The Ancient Mariner_--binds as that picture binds, the--

"Mystic spell,
Which none but sailors know or feel,
And none but they can tell--"

If indeed they _can_ tell. In it Turner seized and rolled together in one
triumphant moment the emotional effect of noble shipping and a sentiment
as ancient and profound as the sea itself--human regret for transitory
human glory. The great warship, glimmering in her Mediterranean
fighting-paint, moving like a queen to execution; the pert and ignoble
tug, itself an emblem of the new order, eager, pushing, ugly, and
impatient of the slow loveliness it supersedes; the sunset hour, closing
man's labour; the fading river-reach--you may call these things obvious,
but all art's greatest effects are obvious when once genius has discovered
them. I should know well enough by this time what is coming when I draw
near that picture, and yet my heart never fails to leap with the old wild
wonder. There are usually one or two men standing before it--I observe
that it affects women less--and I glance at them furtively to see how
_they_ take it. If ever I surprise one with tears in his eyes, I believe
we shall shake hands. And why not? For the moment we are not strangers,
but men subdued by the wonder and sadness of our common destiny: "we feel
that we are greater than we know." We are two Englishmen, in one moment
realising the glories of our blood and state. We are alone together,
gazing upon a new Pacific, 'silent, upon a peak in Darien.'

For--and here lies his subtlety--in the very flush of amazement the
painter flatters you by whispering that for _you_ has his full meaning
been reserved. The _Temeraire_ goes to her doom unattended, twilit,
obscure, with no pause in the dingy bustle of