re to the landscapists; but just as in the
botanical engraving the spirit and life of the plant are always lost, so
in the technical ship-painting the life of the ship is always lost,
without, as far as I can see, attaining, even by this sacrifice,
anything like completeness of mechanical delineation. At least, I never
saw the ship drawn yet which gave me the slightest idea of the
entanglement of real rigging.

Respecting this lower kind of ship-painting, it is always matter of
wonder to me that it satisfies sailors. Some years ago I happened
to stand longer than pleased my pensioner guide before Turner's
"Battle of Trafalgar," at Greenwich Hospital; a picture which, at
a moderate estimate, is simply worth all the rest of the
hospital--ground--walls--pictures and models put together. My guide,
supposing me to be detained by indignant wonder at seeing it in so good
a place, assented to my supposed, sentiments by muttering in a low
voice: "Well, sir, it _is_ a shame that that thing should be there. We
ought to 'a 'ad a Uggins; that's sartain." I was not surprised that my
sailor friend should be disgusted at seeing the _Victory_ lifted nearly
right out of the water, and all the sails of the fleet blowing about to
that extent that the crews might as well have tried to reef as many
thunder-clouds. But I was surprised at his perfect repose of respectful
faith in "Uggins," who appeared to me--unfortunate landsman as I was--to
give no more idea of the look of a ship of the line going through the
sea, than might be obtained from seeing one of the correct models at the
top of the hall floated in a fishpond.

Leaving, however, the sailor to his enjoyment, on such grounds as it may
be, of this model drawing, and being prepared to find only a vague and
hasty shadowing forth of shipping in the works of artists proper, we
will glance briefly at the different stages of excellence which such
shadowing forth has reached, and note in their consecutive changes the
feelings with which shipping has been regarded at different periods of
art.

1. _Mediaeval Period._ The vessel is regarded merely as a sort of
sea-carriage, and painted only so far as it is necessary for complete
display of the groups of soldiers or saints on the deck: a great deal of
quaint shipping, richly hung with shields, and gorgeous with banners,
is, however, thus incidently represented in 15th-century manuscripts,
embedded in curly green waves of sea full of long fish;