There is nothing more fascinating than this guess-work upon the origin of little human tricks and the observation of the long and great effect of routine.
To this day the Mediterranean shortens sail along the yard of a lateen—why, I have never got any one to explain to me. It would seem the obvious thing to take in a reef from the deck, to put your craft up into the wind, lower your sail somewhat, and then take your reef along the foot of it. Indeed, it would be much easier to take in a reef in this fashion on a lateen sail than it is to take one along the boom in an ordinary fore-and-aft rig. You need no ear-ring, and the thing could be done in a moment. Instead of which the swarthy men prefer to lower away the whole contraption. I do not understand the reason at all. Perhaps there is no reason—or, again, perhaps I am wrong and therefore there is no problem at all.
These are the two delightful ways of meeting all the problems which upset mankind, from that of free will to fascinating discussions on the currency, now so much in vogue.
And a blessing I wish you all.
OFF EXMOUTH
That strange, that ever novel, that magical thing—the aspect of one's own land from the sea—is passing out of the literature of the English. I wonder why? I wondered at it the more last week when I went down the coast of Dorset and Devon in my boat under a brilliant sky with a happy north-east following wind and saw the splendid regiment of cliffs martialled in its vast curve eastward from Strait Point to that faint and doubtful wedge on the horizon which was Portland Bill.
Of landscape from within the land our modern literature has had far more than enough, a surfeit and a gorge of it. The theme came tumbling in with the French Revolution and fairly boiled over. But though our time has all in its favour for catching once again the marvel, the unique emotion, which fills a man when he sees his own land from the sea, for some reason the aspect is forgotten.
For one man that came into England from overseas and saw that sight in old days there are a hundred now. You may say that pretty well all the leisured class, which unhappily is the chief fabricator of verse and prose, has thus seen England. Yet in the verse and prose they fabricate I recollect but very little mention of the thing—and again I wonder why?