cottage, more especially the pastoral or
agricultural cottage, watchful over some pathless domain of moorland or
arable, as the fishing-boat swims humbly in the midst of the broad
green fields and hills of ocean, out of which it has to win such fruit
as they can give, and to compass with net or drag such flocks as it may
find,--next to this ocean-cottage ranks in interest, it seems to me,
the small, over-wrought, {166} under-crewed, ill-caulked merchant brig
or schooner; the kind of ship which first shows its couple of thin
masts over the low fields or marshes as we near any third-rate seaport;
and which is sure somewhere to stud the great space of glittering
water, seen from any sea-cliff, with its four or five square-set sails.
Of the larger and more polite tribes of merchant vessels, three-masted,
and passenger-carrying, I have nothing to say, feeling in general
little sympathy with people who want to go anywhere; nor caring much
about anything, which in the essence of it expresses a desire to get to
other sides of the world; but only for homely and stay-at-home ships,
that live their life and die their death about English rocks. Neither
have I any interest in the higher branches of commerce, such as traffic
with spice islands, and porterage of painted tea-chests or carved
ivory; for all this seems to me to fall under the head of commerce of
the drawing-room; costly, but not venerable. I respect in the merchant
service only those ships that carry coals, herrings, salt, timber,
iron, and such other commodities, and that have disagreeable odour, and
unwashed decks. But there are few things more impressive to me than
one of these ships lying up against some lonely quay in a black
sea-fog, with the furrow traced under its tawny keel far in the harbour
slime. The noble misery that there is in it, the might of its rent and
strained unseemliness, its wave-worn melancholy, resting there for a
little while in the comfortless ebb, unpitied, and claiming no pity;
still less honoured, least of all conscious of any claim to honour;
casting and craning by due balance whatever is in its hold up to the
pier, in quiet truth of time; spinning of wheel, and {167} slackening
of rope, and swinging of spade, in as accurate cadence as a waltz
music; one or two of its crew, perhaps, away forward, and a hungry boy
and yelping dog eagerly interested in something from which a blue dull
smoke rises out of pot or pan; but dark-browed and sile