Front matter (continued 6)

Who has summoned him? She certainly has not. But, in his great straggling handwriting, her boy has written to his father thus: "My dear Papa, come quickly. Mamma is confined to bed, and the other day she said 'oh if he were here!'" And accordingly he was there, and immediately she felt herself recovering. And he, how happy he is! Happy to see her restored, happy to be necessary to her, and happy to see her looking so beautiful. She is somewhat sun burnt, but how young she looks! What life in her glance, and in her flowing and silky hair!

Is this mere fiction, this so prompt restoration of life, beauty, and tenderness; this delightful incident of finding in a wife, a young mistress, so happy in being rejoined by a husband? Not at all. It is an agreeable sight which right often may be witnessed. If rare among the very rich, it is not so among the laborious families whose labor makes them, during most of their lives, close prisoners. Their forced separations are painful, and their reunion has a charm, a rapture, which they do not even try to conceal.

When we consider the prodigious tension of modern life, for toiling men, (that is to say, for every one but a few idlers) one cannot but be glad to witness those scenes of joy, when a reunited family expand their hearts. Those who have no hearts, call all this vulgar and prosaic. But, the form matters little, where the substance is so surpassingly good. The careworn merchant, who, from three months to three months, has only with utmost difficulty saved the bark in which the destiny of his wife and children is exposed to shipwreck; the administration victim; the employé, worn well nigh to death by the injustice and tyranny of the offices—these suffering captives, are released, for a brief space, from their galling chains, and the tender family, the mother and child, endeavor to make the husband and father forget his cares.

And well able are wife and child to wile the worn man into that sweet temporary oblivion. Their gaiety, their caresses, and the distractions of the sea-side, soothe his wearied soul, and fill his mind with other and happier thoughts. It is their triumph. They hurry off to visit their beach, to contemplate their sea, and to enjoy his admiration, which he, worthy man, just a little exaggerates, because he wishes them to be pleased. Yes! it is their sea; having bathed in it, they have taken possession; and he, the toilworn husband and father, must share with them in their vast possession. The young woman no longer fears that crowd which formerly so much annoyed, and even alarmed, her; now that he is beside her she is not merely safe, but bold, daring; to say the truth, just a little presumptuous. She is quite familiar with the sea; familiar enough to be determined to learn to swim. At first she is supported by her active and bold boy. Supported by him, she swims—but I fear if left to herself her native timidity would return, and she would sink. Yet she is in love with the sea; yea, jealous of the sea. For, in fact, the sea inspires no moderate passions. There is I know not what of electric inspiration, of all-absorbing passion for the Sea, in all who truly know it.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RESTORATION OF HEART AND BROTHERHOOD.

There are three forms of Nature which especially expand and elevate our souls, release her from her heavy clay and earthy limits, and send her, exulting, to sail amidst the wonders and mysteries of the Infinite.

First; there is the variable Ocean of Air with its glorious banquet of light, its vapors, its twilight, and its shifting phantasmagoria of capricious creatures; coming into existence only to depart on the instant.

Second; there is the fixed Ocean of the earth, its undulating and vast waves as we see them from the tops of "earth o'er gazing mountains," the elevations which testify its antique mobility, and the sublimity of its mightier mountains clad in eternal snows.

Third; there is the Ocean of waters, less mobile than air, less fixed than earth, but docile, in its movements, to the celestial bodies.

These three things form the gamut by which the Infinite speaks to our souls. Nevertheless, let us point out some very notable differences. The air-Ocean is so mobile that we can scarcely examine it. It deceives, it decoys, it diverts; it dissipates and breaks up our chain of thought. For an instant, it is an immense hope, the day of an infinity;—anon, it is not so; all flies from before us, and our hearts are grieved, agitated, and filled with doubt. Why have I been permitted to see for a moment that immense flood of light? The memory of that brief gleaming must ever abide with me, and that memory makes all things here on Earth look dark.

The fixed ocean of the mountains is not thus transient or fugitive; on the contrary, it stops us at every step, and imposes upon us the necessity of a very hard, though wholesome, gymnastic. Contemplation here has to be bought at the price of the most violent action. Nevertheless, the opacity of the Earth, like the transparency of the air, frequently deceives and bewilders us. Who can forget that for ten years Ramon, in vain, sought to reach Mount Perdu, though often within sight of it?

Great, very great, is the difference between the two elements; the Earth is mute and the Ocean speaks. The Ocean is a voice. It speaks to the distant stars, it answers to their movements in its deep and solemn language. It speaks to the Earth on the shores, replying to the echoes that reply again; by turns wailing, soothing, threatening, its deepest roar is presently succeeded by a sad, pathetic sigh. And it especially addresses itself to Man. As it is the fecund womb in which creation began and still continues, it has creation's living eloquence; it is Life speaking to Life! The millions, the countless myriads, of beings, to which it gives birth, are its words. That milky Sea from which they proceed, that fecund marine jelly, even before it is organized, while yet white and foaming,—speaks. All these mingled together makes the unity, the great and solemn voice of the Ocean.

And, "what are those wild waves saying?" They are telling of Life, of the eternal Metamorphosis; of the great fluid existence, shaming our senseless ambitions of the earth-world.

They are telling of Immortality. An indomitable strength is at the bottom of Nature, how much more so at Nature's summit, the Soul! And it speaks of Partnership, of Union. Let us accept the swift exchange which, in the individual, exists between the diverse elements; let us accept the superior Law which unites the living members of the same body—Humanity; and, still more, let us accept and respect the supreme Law which makes us create and coöperate with the Great Soul, associated as we are—in proportion with our powers,—with the loving Harmony of the world—copartners in the Life of God.

The Sea very distinctly, in that voice that is mistakenly supposed to be a mere confusion of sounds, articulates those grave words. But man does not easily recognize those words, when he first arrives on the shore exhausted by worldly struggles, deafened, distracted, by worldly babble. The sense of the higher life is dulled even among the best of us; the best of us, to a greater or less extent, resist that sense. And who shall teach us to quicken and obey that sense? Nature? Not yet. Softened into tenderness by the family, by the innocence of the child and the tenderness of the wife, man first takes an interest, real and strong, in the things of humanity, in the cares and studies which tend to preserve the family. But woman is earlier and more deeply interested in the Sea, in the Poetry of the Infinite. And thus we see that souls have sexes as well as bodies have. For the man thinks of the seaman more than of the sea's wonders; he thinks of its dangers, of its daily and hourly tragedies, and of the floating destiny of his family. The woman, tender as she is to individuals, takes less interest in classes. Every laborious man, who visits the coast, bestows his principal attention and his principal sympathy upon the hard life of the man of toil, the fisherman and the sailor; upon that hard hard life so laborious and perilous and so little productive of gain.

Such a man, while his wife rises and dresses her sweet child, walks upon the beach in the early morning just as the fishing boats return. The morning is cold, the night has been rainy, and the boats have shipped many a heavy sea. The men, and not only men but very small boys, too, are wet to the skin. And what have they brought back? Not much;—but they have come back, and that is much. For last night, see you, they shipped many a sea and looked at death closely many a time. Ah! When the stranger reflects upon the hard life brought immediately under his purview, surely, however much he may have complained of his own lot, he will now learn to say "My lot is far better than theirs."

In the evening, just when the sun sets, coppery and threatening, into the sinister horizon, these men already have to sail again. And the stranger says to them, "Shall you not have bad weather, think you?" "Sir," they reply, "we must earn our bit of bread," and they and their sturdy boys push off to Sea. And their wives, more than serious, sad, follow them with their eyes; and more than one of those wives whisper an earnest prayer. And the stranger, too, whispers his prayer, and says to himself, "They will have a dirty night; would that they may return in safety."

And thus it is that the Sea opens the heart, and that even the hardest hearts are softened in presence of the great stern mother. In that presence, no matter what we may strive to think, we become humanized, sympathizing, tender. And Heaven knows how much need and how much occasion there are for sympathy there! Every kind of want and struggle is to be found among those brave, honest and intelligent marine populations who are incomparably the best of our country. I have lived a good deal on the coast. Every heroic virtue, which an inland population would praise so highly, is there an every day and very common-place matter. And, still more curious!—there is no pride among these hardy mariners. All our French pride is for the landsmen—the soldiery. But among our marine population the greatest dangers count for nothing; every one braves such every day, and no one ever thinks of boasting of them. I have never met with men who were milder or more modest (I had almost said more timid) than our Gironde pilots who, from Royan and from St. George's gallantly put out, to face all that Cordouan has of peril. There, as at Granville, and every where else on that coast, it is the women alone who have anything to say, or any business to do, on land. The brave pilots, when once on shore, never say a word in the way of command; peaceable as their valiant wives are superbly noisy, the men leave the women full authority to administer the poor income and to rule (occasionally with a pretty hard hand) the youngsters of the household. The husband, in fact, though he reads no Latin, literally and practically translates the Latin poet:

"Happy, when in mine own house I am as nobody."

Their wives, greatly interested about the foreigner, had, nevertheless, let it be boldly as truly said, a royal, a magnificent, a generous, kindly feeling. At St. Georges, they cut up, and scraped up, all their linen to make lint for the wounded at Solferino. At Entretat, three Englishmen being wrecked, and in awful danger, the whole population, men, women and children, rushed to the rescue, and dragged them to land with all the outward and visible signs of a real and a violent sensibility. And they were fed, and clothed, and tended, and relieved, even as though they had been compatriots, and very dear friends. This occurred in April, 1859.

Oh! Those kind French people! And yet, how hard, hitherto, has been their life! In our regime of Classes (so useful, however, in itself, and from which we derive so much of giant strength) the sailor is compelled, at any moment, to leave the merchant service for the war ship, daily and hourly growing more severe, more crushing, in its hard discipline! Forty years ago the sailor sang, as he worked at the capstan bar; now he heaves in silence. (Ial. Arch II. 522). And in the merchant service, the great fisheries are almost worked out. The profits of the Whale Fishery belong, almost entirely, to the outfitter. (Boitard, Diet. art. Cetaceæ, Whales, &c.) The Cod has diminished, the Mackerel grows more and more scarce. A very precious little book (The Story of Rose Duchenin, by herself) gives a most touching picture of this great destitution. Alphonse Karr, that admirable writer, had the good sense to write that book from the dictation of that Fisherman's Wife, without altering a word of hers, or adding a word of his own.

Étretat is not, properly speaking, a port. Situated little, if any, above the level of the Sea, and defended only by the pebbly bar which the sea has washed in, it is but poorly sheltered. And consequently, it is necessary that, according to the old Celtic custom, every vessel that runs in there, must be hauled up to the Quay by the cable and the capstan; the capstan bars being handled by the women, for the lads are all at sea. The labor and the difficulty will be easily understood by all who read this. The lubberly craft, as it is drawn up, hits hard from boulder to boulder, and ascends only by leaps, violent and damaging, and still more threatening than either. And at every leap and every shock, those poor women suffer from the hard blow to their necks and from the bitterly painful emotions of their poor hearts.

When I first witnessed this terrible labor, I was wounded, saddened in mine inmost heart. My first impulse was to bear a hand and lend my aid. But the thing would seem so singular, I thought, that a something, I know not what, of false shame, arrested me. But every day I lent a hand, at least with my wishes and my prayers. I went, and looked. Those young and charming, though anything but pretty, women and girls did not sport the short red petticoat of the coasts, but long robes; and for the most part, they had the refined and delicate aspect of the young lady of the great city. Bending to that hard toil (a filial, and, therefore, a noble toil) they had a certain mingled grace and pride, and, in all that hard toil, not a complaint, not even a sigh, escaped them.

That very small Quay of Boulders, small as it is, yet is too large. I saw there a number of vessels, abandoned, useless. For, see you, the Fishery has become so unproductive! The fish have fled that shore. Entretat languishes, perishes, so near to languishing, and, but for its sea-bathing, perishing, Dieppe, which owes its present existence—such as it is!—to the greater or less number of visitors, who render Dieppe in one season prosperous, and in another as nearly as possible, bankrupt. And this very influx from Paris, worldly Paris, is, after all, morally, at least, a real scourge to that marine population.

Our Norman populations who discovered America, and who, ever since the fourteenth century, have known Africa, are every year becoming less and less in love with the sea, so that, year by year, more and more of them are turning their faces inland. The descendant of the bold fellow who formerly harpooned the Whale, is now a pale cotton-spinner of Montville or of Balbec.

It is for Science, it is for the Law, to put a stop to this fearful decay. The former with its skill, its sound advice will,—if such advice be resolutely acted upon, economise the Sea and revive that Fishery which is the very nursery of Seamen; and in the next place, the Law, less exclusively caring for the interests of the real élite, the real flower and elect of the country, in no wise to be compared to those great masses from which we draw our soldiery, but who, under given circumstances, will be able to cut the Gordian knot of the world.

Such were my reflections, on the little wharf or Quay of Etretat, in the cloudy and rainy summer of 1860, while the capstan bar was heaved at by young females, while the capstan screamed at every turn, and while the whole scene put one in mind of desolation for the present, and worse to come.

And thus is it with our century. Ever since 1730, and so in the present day, labor, fatigue, and slowness have been upon us. Let us all, of no matter what rank, put hand and strength to the capstan bar! But, alas! how many of us prefer picking up pebbles on the wild sea shore!

We read that Scipio, stern conqueror of Carthage, and Terence, the lucky refugee from that shipwreck of a world, amused themselves in picking up shells on the sea shore; capital friends in their forgetfulness of the past. They enjoyed the dolce far niente; they were luxurious in their enjoyment of the illusion of being boys once more. But let not that be our wish. We will not, we must not, we dare not, forget our duty; no, with persistent labor, with uncooling ardor, we will put our hands to the capstan bar, and help to warp up this great, but worn and much tried century.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NEW LIFE OF THE NATIONS.

Just as I was finishing this book, in December, 1860, resuscitated Italy, that great and glorious mother of the modern nations, sent me tidings, in the shape of a small book, a mere pamphlet. It was my "New Year's gift for 1861."

And from that Italy how often have we had great and beautiful tidings? In 1300 news from Dante; in 1500 news from Americus Vespucius; in 1600 from Galileo. And what are our present tidings from Florence?

Apparently, but small. But who knows? Perhaps the results will be immense! It is a discourse of but a few pages, a medical pamphlet, and its very title is more likely to repel than to attract. And, yet, in those few pages there is matter which, duly acted upon, may change the whole destiny of our great, but weak, our often wise, but still more often mistaken Humanity.

Opposite to the Title I find two portraits, one a deceased boy, and another dying. The author of the pamphlet is a Doctor, who, very unusual thing! has been so terribly impressed by the fate of his poor unknown and, but for him, uncared for children, that he has been led to write for our instruction, his pain and his regret.

The elder of these children, of a fine and high nature, in the bitterness, as it would seem, of a great destiny cut short, has a bouquet upon his pillow. His mother,—poor, poor, mother! has given it to him this morning, having nothing else to give, and the nurses, seeing the quite religious love with which he cared for the poor gift of that poor mother, have allowed him to keep it.

The second, still younger, in all the tender grace of his four or five years, is evidently dying; his eyes are fast veiling beneath the death film. Each of these poor boys had shown sympathy for the other. When they could no longer speak their sympathy, they looked it in their tender glances, and the good kind Doctor, (blessings on him for the kindly thought!) had them placed opposite to each other, and his engraving shows them to us (touching sight), just as, dying, they exchanged their sympathizing glances!

The whole is truly, and nobly, Italian. In any other country a man would fear to be laughed at in showing himself thus truly tender. Not so in Italy. The Doctor wrote to his Italian public, just as he might soliloquise in the privacy of his own study; and he unreservedly pours out all his feelings with an intensity, with a perfectly feminine sensibility, which will make the worldly man laugh, and the kindly man weep. And it must be confessed that his native language has much to do with his power over our feelings; it is the language of women and children, at once so tender and so striking, beautiful even in its terrible accent of grief and suffering. It is a shower of mingled tears and roses.

And then he suddenly stops himself. and apologizes. He would not have written thus, but for sufficient cause, and that cause is that "Those poor children would not have died if they could have been sent to the sea-side." And, the inference? That at the sea-side we must have Hospitals for children. Now here, if you please, is a really skilful, as well as greatly humane, man. He touches the heart; and the rest necessarily follows. Men listen attentively and are touched; women burst into an agony of tears. They beg, they pray, they insist—and who is to resist them? Without waiting for government action, or government aid, a voluntary society has founded a "Children's Sea-Bathing Hospital" at Viareggio.

All who have been there admire the crescent-like sweep, made by the Mediterranean, when it quits Genoa passes the magnificent road of Spezzia and reaches the Virgilian Olive Groves of Tuscany. About half way from Leghorn a cape, stolen from the Sea, is the site, henceforth the sacred site, of this truly admirable foundation.

Florence, by the way, has preceded all Europe in the way of charitable foundations; she had hospitals before the close of the tenth century, and in the year 1287, when Beatrice inspired and maddened Dante, her father, the cruel persecutor of the greater, far greater Dante, founded the hospital of St. Maria Nuova. Even Luther, though in his travels he saw little to admire in Italy, did admire, and very heartily, its Hospitals and the beautiful Italian women, who, veiled, stood by the bedsides of the sick sinner and the dying pauper.

This new foundation, of which we have spoken, will, we trust, be a model for Europe. We owe that much to children; for upon them it is that fall the worst effects of our murderous toils and our still more murderous excesses in every kind of bad life.

It is impossible not to perceive the visible and terrible deterioration of our Western races. The causes of it are numerous and very various. The chief of them all is the immensity and the constant and rapid increase of our hours of labor. For the most part, it is compulsory; compelled by trade regulations and trade necessities. But even where no such compulsion exists, there the same ardor of long hours and hard toil exists. I know not what demoniac fire exists in our modern temperament. Compared to ourselves, all former centuries have been positively idle. Our results, no doubt, are immense. From our prolific brain and iron hand, proceeds such a marvellous flood of art, science, inventions, productions, and ideas, that we are actually glutting the markets, not only of the present, but also of the future. But at what cost are we doing all this? At the price of an awful expenditure of strength, and of nervous energy; we are enervating ourselves, our works are prodigious, and our children are miserable. We condemn them to disease, suffering, and premature death even before they are born. Our spendthrift waste of energy entails feebleness and early death upon them! And let it be remembered that this immense amount of production is the work of only a comparatively small number. America does little of it, Asia next to nothing, and even in Europe all, or nearly all, is done by a few millions in the extreme West. The others laugh to see the really working peoples thus wear themselves out. Poor Barbarians! Do you fancy, then, that this Russian or that Backwoodsman, can replace, at need, a mechanic of London or an optician of Paris? No; we have become such by the education and the practice of long centuries. A whole and a very long tradition is in us. What would become of you if we should die? None of you are ready to succeed us.

But this same murderous toil, this absolutely suicidal production, if we be willing to accept it for ourselves, it is our duty not to accept it for our children; we have no right thus to add murder to suicide. And, yet, that is what we really are doing. They are born already, with our fatigue, our cerebral exhaustion. With a perfectly frightful precocity, they know, they can, they will, and they do. But how long? The grave opens for them so early!

The human infant, like the young plant, needs rest, air, and a sweet liberty. Do we give our children any of these? No; our very virtues, as well as our vices, deny them all. Everything seems to combine to kill them early. Do we love them? No doubt; and yet our worst malice could not do more than we do to kill them early or to cause them to live miserably, pitifully, sufferingly, effeminate. Such a society as ours, so overworked, so over excited, so constantly agitated, is, (whether society will confess it or not) a real, and a murderous war upon our children.

Especially there are times and seasons in the course of the child's growth when his life quite literally hangs upon a thread. Life, at those times, seems to borrow human voice, and to ask,—"Can I possibly last?" At those critical times, see you, the contact of so many, the close, sedentary, and imprisoned life of cities, is just simply Death to those delicate and fading creatures. Or, even worse than Death, it is the commencement of a long career of suffering and helplessness far worse than Death itself. In this latter case you leave a poor creature who, now sick, now well, drags on a wretched existence, a misery to himself and a burthen upon public charity.

All this must be cut short. We must have foresight combined with humanity. We must snatch the child from these murderous surroundings; we must take him from man and give him to the grand nursing of the fecund Nature—of the Sea. And, then, the child will live and become Man. Your very foundlings, if you thus treat them may some day become your Nelsons and your Napiers, and your community, instead of having to support an habitual patient of your hospitals, will have the bold seaman or the strong laborer.

And, for the matter of that, why need we depend upon the State to do this great thing? Florence hath taught us that the royal heart is fully equal to any other royalty; woman in her mercy, is a royalty; she commands, entreats, and man obeys. Woman! Have mercy upon the children!

If I were a young and lovely woman, I well know what I should say, and what I should do. I should have all around me my magnificence and my luxury, and when on some fine day, my lover in his love should be eager, passionate, ready to give great gifts, I would say to him:—

"Please offer me none of your Cachemires, designed in England and woven in India; for Diamonds I really care nothing; Berthollet who knows so well how to imitate Nature can make Diamonds, if he so please. But if you really wish to make me a present which I shall love, and for which I shall love you, be so good as to get me a nice well sheltered, yet beautifully sunny home, in which I can lodge some three score, or so, of poor children. They will want no fine furniture; not much of any kind. Once established in that sunny, quiet, and kindly home, they will be well fed, and well cared for; and, my word for it, not a woman will go to the sea-side for her own health who will not give her mite towards the support of those poor children. If Beatrice of Florence could influence her father to found such a home, such a saving refuge, cannot we women of France do as much? Is it that we are less beautiful, or are you less truly in Love?"

"If the Sea, as you every morning tell me, has beautified and improved me so much; surely, your best gift would be my keepsake for the beach. And if you really love me, you will share with me in this work, this great work of bringing to the bosom of the great Ocean-mother a whole family of these perishing children. Let her take our pledges of a durable tenderness and purest love! Let her bear witness that, in the presence of the Infinite, we were, in very truth, united in one holy thought!"

One woman has thus commenced and another will continue, the common mother, France. No Institution more useful, no money better expended. And, in fact, not much needs to be expended. The chief thing necessary will be to transfer some of our charitable institutions from the interior. For many of those institutions expend their funds in mere waste; in fact, some of them might be quite truly termed Pauper Manufactories.

The Romans had the good sense never to grudge expense for anything that concerned the public health. Just look at their splendid aqueducts, just consider their public baths where quite gratuitously, or, at the utmost, at the charge of a half cent, the meanest could bathe, and you will at once understand their public spirit, their really large and grand patriotism. Fresh water baths, salt water baths, everything was provided for that lazy and non-producing plebeianism! Perhaps, in fact, in the politico-economical sense, the Patricians of Rome did too much for that, at once indolent and seditious Plebs. And shall we, WE, WE hesitate to do far less to save our own race, that one creative and laborious race that creates all that is really progressive on our globe?

I speak not here merely, or even principally, of the children; but of all. Every town, at this very instant, has a town within a town, a town of horrible sufferers; of the poor, and the afflicted; they are going to be Paupers not only now, but for the whole remainder of their lives. Again, and again, and again they will come; cured to-day, and returning to-morrow worse and more helpless than ever. They must be enormously expensive; and who pays the cost? Why their hardier fellow workmen who, in the ultimate result, pay all our expenses! And the laborer dies young, and leaves his young ones a burthen on the public purse.

Prevention is better than cure. You can do far more for the man who is in danger of being sick than for him who is already worn out. Ten days or a fortnight of rest and good living at the sea-side, will restore him to you, a good, sound, solid laborer. His carriage, and the cheap shelter, for so few days! by that recuperating sea-side, I tell you again, will restore him to you, a good sound, honest, and independent laborer. And the man will be saved, and his young family; and such a man as, if you once lose him, you cannot easily replace. No! You cannot replace him, for, as I have already said, every really working man is the slow product, of a long tradition of thought and of labor, and he himself is a work of art; of that so much misunderstood human art in which Humanity itself becomes a creative Power.

Who shall give me to see that crowd of inventive people, that creating and manufacturing people, who in the world's service are hourly wearing themselves out; who, I ask, will give me to see that People, that true People, enabled to repair their shattered frames at the magnificent sea-side? Let this ability be provided for them, and all classes and conditions will equally share the benefit. And let it not be forgotten that all classes and conditions owe thus much to the worn toilers, for by their toil, their excessive toil, all classes are benefited. It is by their very blood, by their very marrow, that all classes receive their enjoyments, their elegance, and their enlightenment. Let society, then, give to them the repose, the saline air, the restoring waters of the great restoring Sea. In doing thus much, society will benefit itself; while doing the simplest justice to its worn toilers.

Have pity upon yourselves, all ye poor men of the West. Consult upon, and act for, the common weal. Earth entreats you to live and offers you that which is her best, the SEA, to repair your own strength and thus secure your children against your weakness. Earth would be ruined if you persist in ruining yourselves, for you are her Genius, her inventive and working Soul. She lives by your life, and if you die she also will die. In the name, then, of Humanity and of Nature, too, Nations! Attention! Mercy for yourselves; Earth supplies you with the means of laboring and living; THE SEA offers you the still better means of living WELL.

NOTES.

"That vast animal the Earth, which for heart has a magnet, has at its surface a doubtful being, electric and phosphorescent, more sensitive, and infinitely more prolific, than the Earth itself.

"That being which we call the Sea,—is it a parasite of the vast animal which we call the Earth? No. It has not a distinct and hostile personality. It vivifies and fecundates the Earth with its vapors; it even appears to be the Earth itself in that which it has of the most productive; in other words, its principal organ of fecundity."

German Dreams! But are they, in feet, entirely Dreams? More than one great mind, without going quite so far, seem to admit for both Earth and Sea a kind of obscure personality. Ritter and Lyell say: "The Earth labors herself; can she be impotent to organise herself? How are we to imagine that the creative power which we observe in every being on the globe can be denied to the globe itself?" But how does the globe act? How at the present time does it obtain accretion? From the Sea and its living denizens.

The full solution of these great questions would require a more profound study of Physiology than we as yet have made. Nevertheless, during the last twenty years every thing tends this way: 1. We have studied the irregular and exterior phase of the movements of the Sea, we have inquired into the Law of Storms. 2. We have studied the movements proper to the Sea, its currents, the play of its arteries and veins, of which the first propel the salt water from the Equator to the Poles, while the second return it, freshened, to the Equator: 3. The third and more difficult question on which modern chemistry will throw light, is that as to the real nature of the marine mucus, of that unctuous gelatine which is every where found in Sea water, and which appears to be a living liquid.

It is quite recently that the sounding of Brooke, and more especially the soundings for the submarine telegraph from Europe to America, have begun to reveal the secrets of the bottom of the Sea. Are its lowest depths peopled? Formerly, that was denied, but Forbes and James Ross found life throughout them.

Previous to those splendid discoveries, which were made less than twenty years ago, the book of the Sea could not be written. The first attempt at writing it was made by M. Hartwig. For my own part, I was still far from the idea of writing it when, in 1845, in preparing my book of "The People," I commenced, in Normandy, my study of the population of the Coasts. In the fifteen subsequent years, this vast and difficult subject has been continually growing upon me, and has followed me from shore to shore.

The first book of this Volume—A glance at the Seas, is, as the title indicates, merely a preliminary promenade. All the important matters therein are discussed in the following three books. I except two, however, Tides and Beacons. Here my principal guide has been M. Chazallon's important Annual, already numbering twenty volumes, the first having appeared in 1839. If the Civic Crown was bestowed upon the man who saved one human life, how many such crowns has not M. Chazallon deserved! Anterior to his labors, the errors, as to the tides, were enormous. By immense labor he has corrected the observations for nearly five hundred ports from the Adour to the Elbe. His Annual gives the most exact information upon the Beacons. Similarly valuable is the clear and agreeably written exposition in the Souvenirs of M. de Quatrefages on the Lighthouse system of Fresnel and Arago. The admirable system of revolving lighthouses, in which the lights flash and disappear, at short and regular intervals, is due to Lemoine, Mayor of Calais.

For the various names of the Sea refer to Ad. Pictet-Origines Indo-Europeennes. On the water, consult the Introduction to Deville's Annual of the Waters of France; Aime's Annale's de Chimie II., V., XII., XIII., and XV. Morren, the same, I, and Acad de Bruxelles, XIV., &c. On the saltness of the Sea Chapman quoted by Tricaut Ann. de Hydrographie XIII., 1857, and Thomassy's Bulletin de la Société Geographique, 4 June, 1860.

I did not thoroughly comprehend the Shore of Saint Michel en Greve and the questions concerning it, until I read in the Revue des Deux Mondes the two very fine articles of M. Baude, full alike of facts and ideas. I speak elsewhere of his excellent views on the Fisheries.

In speaking (Chap. III.) of Brittany, I must acknowledge my obligation to the book of Cambry which formerly gave me my first ideas upon that subject. It should be read in the edition which Émile Souvestre enriched, and we may say doubled, with his excellent notes and notices which thenceforth made us thoroughly acquainted with the Derniers Bretons. In several admirable little tales of graphic and striking truthfulness, Souvestre has given the best existing pictures of our western coasts, especially of Finisterre and the neighboring shores of the Loire. I should be glad to quote something from a writer so agreeable, and a friend so sincerely lamented, but the limits of this little book prevent me from quoting any literary matter.

The remarkable observation made by Elie de Beaumont, quoted by me in Chapter 4 of Book I., stands at the head of his article—which, in itself, is a great book—Terrains in the Dictionary of M. d'Orbigny.

What I have said about St. George's, in Chapter 7, is much better said in Pelletan's books on Royan and in his Pasteur du Desert. That Pastor, as is generally known, was the grandfather of Pelletan, the reverend minister Jarousseau, so admirably heroic in saving his enemies. His small house, still standing, is a veritable Temple of Humanity.

Notes to Book 2. Chapter I, Fecundity. On the Herring, see Vol. I of De Reste's translation of an anonymous Dutch work; Noël de la Moriniere in his excellent works printed and unpublished; Valenciences' Poissons, &c.

Chapter II. Milky Sea. Bory de Saint Vincent, Diet. Classique, Articles Mer et Matieres; Zimmerman, the World before Man, a beautiful and popular work which is in every one's hands. I am indebted also to the work of M. Bronn, crowned by the Academy of the Sciences. On the universal innocuousness of the vegetation of the Sea, consult Pouchet's Botanique a work of the highest order. For the plants which become animals; see Vaucher's Conferves, 1803; Decaisne and Thuret Annales de Sc. Nat., 1845; Volumes III., XIV. and XVI., and Comptes de l'Acad., 1853, Vol. XXXVI.; also, articles of Montagne Dict d'Orb. On the Volcanoes, see part 4, of Humboldt's Cosmos, and Ritter, translated by Elisee Reclus, Revue Germ., 30th November, 1859.

Chapter III. The Atom. In the text I have quoted the great masters, Ehrenberg, Dujardin, Pouchet, Heterogenie. In the end spontaneous generation will conquer.

Chapters IV., V., VI., &c. Throughout this book, in ascending from inferior to superior life, I have taken for my guiding thread in the great labyrinth, the hypothesis of Metamorphosis but without serious intention of constructing a chain of beings. The idea of ascending Metamorphosis is natural to the mind, and is, in some sort, irresistibly imposed upon us. Cuvier himself, at the close of his Introduction to his Poissons, confesses that if that theory has no Historical value it has a logical value. On the Sponge, see Paul Gervais Dict. d'Orb. V. 375; Grant in Chenn, 307, &c. On Polypes, Corals, and Madrepores (Chapters 4 and 5) besides Forster, Peron and Dawin consult Quoy and Gaimard; Lamouroux, Polypes Flexibles; Milne Edwards, Polypes and Ascidies of the Channel, &c. On the Calcaire, see the two Geologies of Lyell.

Chapter VI. Medusæ, Polypes, &c. See Ehrenberg, Lession, Dujardin, &c. Forbes shows by vegetable analogies that these animal metamorphoses are very simple phenomena. Annals of Nat. History, December, 1844. See also his excellent dissertations, Medusæ, in quarto, 1849.

Chapter VII. The Oursin or Sea Hedgehog. See the curious dissertations in which M. Cailland has described his discoveries.

Chapter VIII. Shells, Pearl, and Mother of Pearl. The capital work on these is Blainville's Malacology. See, also, on the Pearl Mabius of Hamburgh, Revue Germ., July 31, 1858. I have profitably consulted on this subject our celebrated Jeweller, M. Froment Meurice.

Chapter IX. The Poulpe. Cuvier, Blainville, Dujardin Ann. des Sciences Nat., first series, Vol. V. p. 214, and second series Vols. 3, 16, and 17; Robin and Secord, Locomotion of Cephalapodes, Revue de Zoology, 1849, p. 333.

Chapter X. Crustaceæ. Besides the classical and important work of Milne Edwards, I have consulted d'Orbigny and various travelers. See, also, the fine Atlas of Dumont d'Urville.

Chapter XI. Fish. The Introduction of Cuvier, Valenciennes' article Fish, in d'Orbigny's Dictionary. This last article is a complete book, learned and excellent. On the anatomy of Fish see the celebrated dissertation of Geoffroy. For what I have said on the nests made by spawning Fish I am indebted to Messrs. Caste and Gerbe.

Chapters XII and XIII. Whales, Amphibii and Syrens. Here, Lacepede is at once instructive and eloquent. Nothing can be better than Boitard's articles in d'Orbigny's Dictionary.

Notes to Book 3. Conquest of the Sea. This book sprang naturally out of my perusal of travels and voyages from the first History of Dieppe, by Vitel Estancelin, down to the recent discoveries. Especially consult Kerquelon, John Ross, Parry, Weddell, Dumont, d'Urville, James Ross, and Kane; Biot in the Journal des Savants and the luminous and precious abridgement of those works, by M. Langele in the Revue des deux Mondes. On the Fishery, besides the great works of Duhamel, see Tiphaine, "Economie History of the Western Seas de France, 1760."

Notes to Book 4. Restoration by the Sea. As long ago as 1725, Maraigli seems to have suspected the presence of iodine. In 1730, an anonymous work, Comes Domesticus, recommended Sea Bathing.

The Bibliography of the Sea would be endless. There are many excellent books. Among them I may mention "the Mediterranean Sea," by W. H. Smith, 1854, the Manuals and Guide books of Guadet, Roccas, Cochet, Ernst, &c.

On the degeneracy of Races, see Morel, 1857: Magnus Huss, "Alcoholismus," 1852, &c.

I owe my acquaintance with the pamphlet of Doctor Barellay (Ospizi Marini) to my illustrious friend Montanelli, and to the delightful articles of M. Dall' Ongaro.

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Transcriber's Note

Some presumed typose were corrected. Although most words were left as per the printed version, some standardization was made (ex., Arcachon for Archachon, Archacon and Arrachon). Based on some research, the following list of changes were made.

Page(s) Change

26 Grindenwald => Grindelwald

28, 173 Livingston => Livingstone

34 Sheveningen => Scheveningen

32 Eloretat => Étretat and Fecamp => Fécamp

98 Biarrity => Biarritz

99 Hèaux => Héaux and Epees de Treguier => Épées de Tréguier

133 Ponchet => Pouchet

149, 151 Geoffray => Geoffroy

158 Added missing quotes at end of top and begining of next paragraph

165 Medea => Medusa

171 Vetelles => Velelles

222 everything that comes in their path--animals, ("path--" added)

236 Cataceæ => Cetaceæ

402 appearing => appeared

404404 Chapter IX. Fish. => Chapter XI. Fish.

ad2 LA VINIA => LAVINIA

The cover image was compiled by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.