293 THE SEA AND MARITIME ADVENTURE. [SEC. IV THE SAILOR'S GRAVE. THERE is, in the lone, lone sea, That oft in triumph bore him, With the wild waves dashing o'er him. The sea and him in death They did not dare to sever; It was his home when he had breath, Sleep on-sleep on, thou mighty dead! No vulgar foot treads here, No hand profane shall move thee, And though no stone may tell Thy name, thy worth, thy glory, ANONYMOUS. MANKIND have ever been prone to expatiate in the praise of human nature. The dignity of man is a subject that has always been the favourite theme of humanity; they have declaimed with that ostentation which usually accompanies such as are sure of having a partial audience; they have obtained victories, because there were none to oppose. Yet, from all I have ever read or seen, men appear more apt to err by having too high, than by having too despicable an opinion of their nature; and by attempting to exalt their original place in the creation, depress their real value in society. The most ignorant nations have always been found to think most highly of themselves. The Deity has ever been thought peculiarly concerned in their glory and preservation; to have fought their battles, and inspired their teachers; their wizards are said to be familiar with heaven; and every hero has a guard of angels as well as men to attend him. When the Portuguese first came among the wretched inhabitants of the coast of Africa, these savage nations readily allowed the strangers more skill in navigation and war; yet still considered them at best but as useful servants, brought to their coast by their guardian serpent, to supply them with luxuries they could have lived without. Though they could grant the Portuguese more riches, they could never allow them to have such a king as their Tottimondelem, who wore a bracelet of shells about his neck, and whose legs were covered with ivory. In this manner examine a savage in the history of his country and predecessors, you ever find his warriors able to conquer armies, and his sages acquainted with more than possible knowledge: human nature is to him an unknown country; he thinks it capable of great things, because he is ignorant of its boundaries; whatever can be conceived to be done, he allows to be possible, and whatever is possible, he conjectures must have been done. He never measures the actions and powers of others by what himself is able to perform, nor makes a proper estimate of the greatness of his fellows by bringing it to the standard of his own incapacity. He is satisfied to be one of a country where mighty things have been, and imagines the fancied power of others reflects a lustre on himself. Thus by degrees he loses the idea of his own insignificance in a confused notion of the extraordinary powers of humanity, and is willing to grant extraordinary gifts to every pretender, because unacquainted with their claims. This is the reason why demi-gods and heroes have ever been erected in times or countries of ignorance and barbarity; they addressed a people who had high opinions of human nature, because they were ignorant how far it could extend; they addressed a people who were willing to allow that men should be gods, because they were yet imperfectly acquainted with God and with man. These impostors knew that all men are naturally fond of seeing something very great made from the little materials of humanity; that ignorant nations are not more proud of building a tower to reach heaven, or a pyramid to last for ages, than of raising up a demi-god of their own country and creation. The same pride that erects a colossus or pyramid, instals a god or a hero: but though the adoring savage can raise his colossus to the clouds, he can exalt the hero not one inch above the standard of humanity: incapable, therefore, of exalting the idol, he debases himself, and falls prostrate before him. When man has thus acquired an erroneous idea of the dignity of his species, he and the gods become perfectly intimate; men are but angels, angels are but men; nay, but servants that stand in waiting to execute human commands. The Persians, for instance, thus address their prophet Hali :-" I salute thee, glorious Creator, of whom the sun is but the shadow. Masterpiece of the Lord of human creatures, Great Star of Justice and Religion. The sea is not rich and liberal, but by the gifts of thy munificent hands. The angel treasurer of heaven reaps his harvest in the fertile gardens of the purity of thy nature. The primum mobile would never dart the ball of the sun through the trunk of heaven, were it not to serve the morning, out of the extreme love she has for thee. The angel Gabriel, messenger of truth, every day kisses the groundsel of thy gate. Were there a place more exalted than the most high throne of God, I would affirm it to be thy Gabriel, with all his art and place, O master of the faithful! knowledge, is but a mere scholar to thee," Thus, my friend, men think proper to treat angels: but if indeed there be such an order of things, with what a degree of satirical contempt must they listen to the songs of little mortals thus flattering each other! thus to see creatures, wiser indeed than the monkey, and more active than the oyster, claiming to themselves a mastery of heaven! minims, the tenants of an atom, thus arrogating a partnership in the creation of universal nature! Surely heaven is kind that launches no thunder at those guilty heads; but it is kind, and regards their follies with pity, nor will destroy creatures that it loved into being. But whatever success this practice of making demi-gods might have been attended with in barbarous nations, I do not know that any man became a god in a country where the inhabitants were refined. Such countries generally have too close an inspection into human weakness, to think it invested with celestial power. They sometimes indeed admit the gods of strangers, or of their ancestors, who had their existence in times of obscurity; their weakness being forgotten, while nothing but their power and their miracles were remembered. The Chinese, for instance, never had a god of their own country; the idols which the vulgar worship at this day were brought from the barbarous nations around them. The Roman emperors, who pretended to divinity, were generally taught by a poniard that they were mortal; and Alexander, though he passed among barbarous countries for a real god, could never persuade his polite countrymen into a similitude of thinking. -GOLDSMITH. THE peerage is in England the first of dignities, the highest of rewards; and you will naturally suppose that Watt was created a peer. So far was this from being the case, that it was never even thought of! Were we to speak the truth, we should say, so much the worse for the peerage. Such a neglect, however, in a nation so justly proud of its illustrious men, could not but greatly astonish me. When I inquired into the cause of this neglect, what think you was the response? Those dignities of which you speak, I was told, are reserved for naval and military officers, for influential members of the House of Commons, and for members of the aristocracy. "It is not the custom," it was said, and I quote the very phrase, "to grant these honours to scientific and literary men, to artists or engineers!" I well knew it was not the custom in the reign of Queen Anne, because Newton was never a peer of England. But after a century and a half of progress in science and philosophy; when all of us, within the short span of life, have seen monarchs banished, forsaken, proscribed, and replaced upon their thrones by mere soldiers of fortune, who have hewn out their renown by their swords, surely I might be permitted to hope that the time had passed when it would be attempted to divide men into exclusive classes; that, at all events, it would not be declared openly, and in the style of the inflexible code of the Pharaohs, whatever may be your services, your virtues, or your acquirements, not one of you shall ever rise above the level of your caste; in a word, that such a senseless custom (since custom it is) should no longer be permitted to disfigure the institutions of a great people. Let us hope better things of the future. The time will come when the science of destruction shall decline before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, and dispenses comfort throughout immense masses of our population, shall occupy, in general esteem, the place which reason and sound sense have even now assigned to it. Watt will then appear before the grand jury of the population of the two hemispheres. They will see him, assisted by his steamengine, penetrating in a few weeks into the bowels of the earth, to depths which, before his time, could only have been reached after an age of the most difficult labour; he will there clear out spacious galleries, and free them, in a few minutes, from the vast volumes of water which daily overflow them; and thus will he procure from the virgin earth those inexhaustible mineral riches which nature has there deposited. Uniting delicacy to power, Watt will be seen twisting, with the same success, the huge folds of the colossal cable, by means of which the stately vessel rides secure amid raging seas, and the microscopic filaments of those laces and airy gauzes upon which fashion ever so much depends in the preparation of their light but fascinating adornments. A few strokes of the same machine will drain vast marshes, and give them up to husbandry; and districts already fertile, will by it be freed from the periodic influence of those deadly miasmata produced by the scorching heat of the summer |