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But enough! Just as you seek for the romance and poetry of the ocean in the old books, so must you look there for the jovial tar, the jigging fellow, with his hat on nine hairs and a nose like a carbuncle; for the resolved and manly passenger, for the unaffected heroine, for the pretty masquerading lass, and for a hundred lovely gilded dreams of a delighted imagination roving wild in mid-ocean. The volume is closed; we now carry our helm amidships; it is no longer the captain but the head engineer that we think of and address ourselves to when, disordered by some inward perturbation, we sing:—

“O, pilot, ’tis a fearful night,

There’s danger on the deep.”

But Philosophia stemma non inspicit; and we must take it that in these days she knows what she is about.

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There is a story told of some English sailors who, passing by the French Ambassador’s house, that was illuminated in celebration of a treaty of peace between France and Great Britain, observed the word “Concord” flaming in the midst of several devices. The men read it “Conquer’d,” and one of them exclaiming, “They conquer us! they be,” etc., they knocked at the door and demanded to know why such a word was put up. The reason was explained, but to no purpose, and the French Ambassador, in order to get rid of these jolly tars, ordered “Concord” to be taken down and replaced by the word “Amity.”