ble paintings
of Venice, old and modern, no notice whatever had been taken of
these sails, though they are _exactly_ the most striking features of
the marine scenery around the city, until Turner fastened upon them,
painting one important picture, "The Sun of Venice," entirely in
their illustration.

Yet, in speaking of poets' love of boats, I ought to have limited the
love to _modern_ poets; Dante, in this respect, as in nearly every
other, being far in advance of his age. It is not often that I
congratulate myself upon the days in which I happen to live; but I do so
in this respect, that, compared with every other period of the world,
this nineteenth century (or rather, the period between 1750 and 1850)
may not improperly be called the Age of Boats; while the classic and
chivalric times, in which boats were partly dreaded, partly despised,
may respectively be characterized, with regard to their means of
locomotion, as the Age of Chariots, and the Age of Horses.

For, whatever perfection and costliness there may be in the present
decorations, harnessing, and horsing of any English or Parisian wheel
equipage, I apprehend that we can from none of them form any high ideal
of wheel conveyance; and that unless we had seen an Egyptian king
bending his bow with his horses at the gallop, or a Greek knight leaning
with his poised lance over the shoulder of his charioteer, we have no
right to consider ourselves as thoroughly knowing what the word
"chariot," in its noblest acceptation, means.

So, also, though much chivalry is yet left in us, and we English still
know several things about horses, I believe that if we had seen
Charlemagne and Roland ride out hunting from Aix, or Coeur de Lion trot
into camp on a sunny evening at Ascalon, or a Florentine lady canter
down the Val d'Arno in Dante's time, with her hawk on her wrist, we
should have had some other ideas even about horses than the best we can
have now. But most assuredly, nothing that ever swung at the quay sides
of Carthage, or glowed with crusaders' shields above the bays of Syria,
could give to any contemporary human creature such an idea of the
meaning of the word Boat, as may be now gained by any mortal happy
enough to behold as much as a Newcastle collier beating against the
wind. In the classical period, indeed, there was some importance given
to shipping as the means of locking a battle-field together on the
waves; but in the chivalric peri