OF ALL COUNTRIES 469 



integral, but a most vital portion of a nation's strength ; 

 and no pains can be too great for the purpose of ascertaining 

 their customs and for developing their capabilities to the 

 utmost possible degree. No doubt it may not be easy to 

 obtain detailed information as to their customs in the earliest 

 ages, for the very simplicity of their habits and retirement 

 of their lives tends inevitably to create obscurity, though 

 when we descend to modern days the copiousness of the 

 treatment grows indeed apace. Fully to illustrate so vast 

 and intricate a theme would require a lifetime of research 

 and a volume or rather a bookshelf of no inconsiderable 

 dimensions. Yet even the brief and unpretending sketches 

 here presented can scarcely fail to catch some interest 

 from the scenes in which they are laid, and the incidents 

 by which they are diversified ; and may serve at least to 

 indicate new fields or rather oceans for investigation to the 

 student of historical philosophy, no less than new tracks of 

 sympathy for the general public. Whether we stand by 

 the Indian, as, in the glare of his midnight torch, he spears 

 the leaping salmon in the reddened waters, or follow our 

 own hardy fishermen to their wild and dangerous haunts in 

 the northern sea ; whether we note the similarity of thunny 

 catching in the heroic days of Greece with the mode pur- 

 sued even now in parts of Southern Europe ; whether we 

 learn from the Chinese the endless subtleties of device born 

 of long observation and yet longer patience, or look back 

 upon the efforts of a mediaeval monk as they develope 

 slowly through the centuries into a vast system of European 

 pisciculture ; whether we descend with the learned Italian 

 into the tomb, or inhale the breezes of ocean as we pursue 

 the flying whale ; through whatever age and whatever land 

 we stray, the same mingled sense of natural and moral 

 beauty greets us on everv hand. To the fishes with their 



