“This royal throne of Kings, this scepter’d Isle,
This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demy Paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands.”
To the artist, also, the sea furnishes an almost never-ending source of amusement; it is a constant moving picture capable of a thousand modifications, and of being treated on canvass in various ways; it admits too of the grandest effects of light and shadow, and in the hands of such a master as Vanderveldt of producing wonderful effect. But it is in the storm alone that the grand effects I am speaking of are to be found.
“When huge uproar lords it wide”
It wants at such times no adventitious aids to set it off. The calm on the contrary without some assistance, as rocks, fortifications or figures, will hardly be able to support itself. It is true you may place a vessel in the fore-ground, but a ship at anchor lying with her whole broadside to the eye, however noble it may be to contemplate or pleasing by the goodness of the painting, will always be a formal object. If you wish to make it picturesque you must compose your fore-ground of some projecting rock, or pier-head, a boat or two lying on the shore, and a few appropriate figures; remove the ship in the fore-ground to the second distance, with others in the last distance to mark the horizon, and with these materials, if well managed, a very pleasing picture may be formed.
But a storm at sea has in itself sufficient grandeur to support it; the vessel labouring with the sea, having all its formal lines broken by the disposition of its sails, and which being, as is often the case, strongly illuminated by the sun bursting through the gloom, with the whitening surges breaking upon the shoals or dashing against the sides of the vessel, doubly augmenting the blackness of the sea and sky, form a contrast so noble as to render all other aids superfluous.
Sea fowls as having a peculiar character of their own, and also as tending to mark that of a sea-coast view more strongly, have always been considered, and with the greatest propriety, as objects highly picturesque and amusing whether in natural or in artificial landscape. Mr. Gilpin has treated of them at large in his Forest Scenery, with that accuracy and elegance peculiar to himself; nor has another great master done them less justice.
“The cormorant on high
Wheels from the deep and screams along the land;
Loud shrieks the soaring hern; and with wild wing
The circling sea fowl cleave the flaky clouds.”
THOMPSON.
Most strangers pay a visit to the light-house, which stands on an eminence about three quarters of a mile to the eastward of the town, and commands an extensive sea-view, the inland prospect is confined by a range of hills forming an amphitheatre around it. The tower built of brick is only three moderate stories high, crowned with a lantern lighted by fifteen patent lamps, each placed in a large copper reflector three feet in diameter and finely plated on the inside; these placed round an upright axis are kept in continual motion by jack-work, wound up every five hours and a half, by which means a set of five reflectors are presented to the eye in a full blaze of light every minute, the axis being three minutes in performing its rotation.
The house was formerly lighted up with coals, which was not only an uncertain light, but also a fixed one and was frequently mistaken; it was therefore thought necessary to have it upon a principle differing from any other upon this part of the coast to prevent such mistakes, the consequences of which might prove so very fatal. The lamps all the year are lighted up at sun-set and extinguished at sun-rise; during the longest nights in winter, the consumption of the best oil each night is three gallons.