ea,--you have made no more of it than it
was at first. That rude simplicity of bent plank, that can breast its
way through the death that is in the deep sea, has in it the soul of
shipping. Beyond this, we may have more work, more men, more money; we
cannot have more miracle.

For there is, first, an infinite strangeness in the perfection of the
thing, as work of human hands. I know nothing else that man does, which
is perfect, but that. All his other doings have some sign of weakness,
affectation, or ignorance in them. They are overfinished or
underfinished; they do not quite answer their end, or they show a mean
vanity in answering it too well.

But the boat's bow is naively perfect: complete without an effort. The
man who made it knew not he was making anything beautiful, as he bent
its planks into those mysterious, ever-changing curves. It grows under
his hand into the image of a sea-shell; the seal, as it were, of the
flowing of the great tides and streams of ocean stamped on its delicate
rounding. He leaves it when all is done, without a boast. It is simple
work, but it will keep out water. And every plank thence-forward is a
Fate, and has men's lives wreathed in the knots of it, as the cloth-yard
shaft had their deaths in its plumes.

Then, also, it is wonderful on account of the greatness of the thing
accomplished. No other work of human hands ever gained so much.
Steam-engines and telegraphs indeed help us to fetch, and carry, and
talk; they lift weights for us, and bring messages, with less trouble
than would have been needed otherwise; this saving of trouble, however,
does not constitute a new faculty, it only enhances the powers we
already possess. But in that bow of the boat is the gift of another
world. Without it, what prison wall would be so strong as that "white
and wailing fringe" of sea. What maimed creatures were we all, chained
to our rocks, Andromeda-like, or wandering by the endless shores;
wasting our incommunicable strength, and pining in hopeless watch of
unconquerable waves? The nails that fasten together the planks of the
boat's bow are the rivets of the fellowship of the world. Their iron
does more than draw lightning out of heaven, it leads love round the
earth.

Then also, it is wonderful on account of the greatness of the enemy that
it does battle with. To lift dead weight; to overcome length of languid
space; to multiply or systematize a given force; this we may see done by
the bar,