172 GLAUCUS ; OR, 
practical maxim, and often, too, a living recognition 
of God, and the providence of God, which will send 
you home, perhaps, a wiser and more genial man, 
And when the trawl is hauled, wait till the fish are 
counted out, and packed away, and then kneel down 
and inspect (in a pair of Mackintosh leggings, and 
your oldest coat) the crawling heap of shells and 
zoophytes which remains behind about the decks, 
and you will find, if a landsman, enough to occupy 
you for a week to come. Nay, even if it be too calm 
for trawling, condescend to go out in a dingy, and 
help to haul some honest fellow’s deep-sea lines and 
lobster-pots, and you will find more and stranger 
things about them than even fish or lobsters: though 
they, to him who has eyes to see, are strange enough. 
I speak from experience ; for it was not so very long 
ago that, in the north of Devon, I found sermons, not 
indeed in stones, but in a creature reputed among the 
most worthless of sea-vermin. I had been lounging 
about all the morning on the little pier, waiting, with 
the rest of the village, for a trawling breeze which 
would not come. Two o’clock was past, and still the 
