ngers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half earned
by the work in his loom, as if they had been unborn children--thought
of the guineas that were coming slowly through the coming years,
through all his life, which spread far away before him, the end quite
hidden by countless days of weaving.

(_Silas Marner_.)

{163}

JOHN RUSKIN 1819-1900

SHIPS

Down to Elizabeth's time chivalry lasted; and grace 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 armour
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 neighbour'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 {164} vanities into the long low hull, familiar with the
over-flying 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 th