is 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
fishing-boats. The clear, heavy water-edge of ocean rising and falling
close to their bows, in that unaccountable way which the sea has always
in calm weather, turning the pebbles over and over as if with a rake,
to look for something, and then stopping a moment down at the bottom of
the bank, and coming up again with a little run and clash, throwing a
foot's depth of salt crystal in an instant between you and the round
stone you were going to take in your hand; sighing, all the while, as
if it would infinitely rather be doing something else. And the dark
flanks of the fishing-boats all aslope above, in their shining
quietness, hot in the morning sun, rusty and seamed with square patches
of {165} plank nailed over their rents; just rough enough to let the
little flat-footed fisher-children haul or twist themselves up to the
gunwales, and drop back again along some stray rope; just round enough
to remind us, in their broad and gradual curves, of the sweep of the
green surges they know so well, and of the hours when those old sides
of seared timber, all ashine with the sea, plunge and dip into the deep
green purity of the mounded waves more joyfully than a deer lies down
among the grass of spring, the soft white cloud of foam opening
momentarily at the bows, and fading or flying high into the breeze
where the sea-gulls toss and shriek,--the joy and beauty of it, all the
while, so mingled with the sense of unfathomable danger, and the human
effort and sorrow going on perpetually from age to age, waves rolling
for ever, and winds moaning for ever, and faithful hearts trusting and
sickening for ever, and brave lives dashed away about the rattling
beach like weeds for ever; and still at the helm of every lonely boat,
through starless night and hopeless dawn, His hand, who spread the
fisher's net over the dust of the Sidonian palaces, and gave into the
fisher's hand the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

Next after the fishing-boat--which, as I said, in the architecture of
the sea represents the