Again, if jewels be of any real value, what is the value (among such) of a collar of faultless pearls? what is there among minerals, so pure, so exquisitely beautiful, whether we regard their tint or their form? These are the spontaneous production of a humble shell-fish; some say, an offering from the creature when he has been wounded. If so, men may here learn a lesson in kind, and return good for evil to those who persecute them.
Again, the ocean is our defence: long may it prove so!
“Britannia needs no bulwark,
No towers along the steep,
Her march is o’er the mountain wave,
Her home is on the deep.”
No doubt, since man is a creature who lives upon the dry land, the land is on the whole the most valuable; but what would the land be without the sea? Nay, to go no further, how could we exist in summer and autumn, if deprived of the sea-breezes? For myself, though naturally fond of field-sports, and delighting in botanical and entomological pursuits, I know of no treat equal to that of a seaside ramble in the month, say, of September or October.
Now let us consider how very little mischief the ocean does us. Much fewer people die of what are called “casualties” by sea, than of those by land. The truth is, we always hear of such as are lost at sea, because of the loss of the ship, which involves a question of insurance-money; but of deaths inland, especially in far countries, and if belonging to strange peoples or savage tribes, we perchance scarce hear at all. YEH, the Chinese Commissioner, killed, it was said, 70,000 persons in the course of his brief career, for political reasons. How long would it take for 70,000 persons to perish by storms or accidents at sea, in the usual course of things, in one small part of the globe?
A wreck, it must be allowed, is a terrible thing; but so is a house on fire, or a flood up the country.