of dress and mien,
and all else that was connected with chivalry. Then came the ages which,
when they have taken their due place in the depths of the past, will be,
by a wise and clear-sighted futurity, perhaps well comprehended under a
common name, as the ages of Starch; periods of general stiffening and
bluish-whitening, with a prevailing washerwoman's taste in everything;
involving a change of steel armor into cambric; of natural hair into
peruke; of natural walking into that which will disarrange no
wristbands; of plain language into quips and embroideries; and of human
life in general, from a green race-course, where to be defeated was at
worst only to fall behind and recover breath, into a slippery pole, to
be climbed with toil and contortion, and in clinging to which, each
man's foot is on his neighbor's head.

But, meanwhile, the marine deities were incorruptible. It was not
possible to starch the sea; and precisely as the stiffness fastened upon
men, it vanished from ships. What had once been a mere raft, with rows
of formal benches, pushed along by laborious flap of oars, and with
infinite fluttering of flags and swelling of poops above, gradually
began to lean more heavily into the deep water, to sustain a gloomy
weight of guns, to draw back its spider-like feebleness of limb, and
open its bosom to the wind, and finally darkened down from all its
painted vanities into the long, low hull, familiar with the overflying
foam; that has no other pride but in its daily duty and victory; while,
through all these changes, it gained continually in grace, strength,
audacity, and beauty, until at last it has reached such a pitch of all
these, that there is not, except the very loveliest creatures of the
living world, anything in nature so absolutely notable, bewitching, and,
according to its means and measure, heart-occupying, as a well-handled
ship under sail in a stormy day. Any ship, from lowest to proudest, has
due place in that architecture of the sea; beautiful, not so much in
this or that piece of it, as in the unity of all, from cottage to
cathedral, into their great buoyant dynasty. Yet, among them, the
fisher-boat, corresponding to the cottage on the land (only far more
sublime than a cottage ever can be), is on the whole the thing most
venerable. I doubt if ever academic grove were half so fit for
profitable meditation as the little strip of shingle between two black,
steep, overhanging sides of stranded fishi