ENGLISHMEN ON THE SEA. 199 



Londoner in a turnip-field, and the chances arc that he will 

 not know it from a field of mangold-wurzel. Place him, un- 

 familiar -vvith pigskin, on a " fresh " horse, and he will not 

 make a majestic figure. But take this same youth, and fling 

 him into a boat, how readily he learns to feather an oar ! 

 Nay, even when he is sea-sick — as unhappily even the Briton 

 will sometimes be — he goes through it with a certain care- 

 less grace, a manly haughtiness, or at the lowest a certain 

 " official reserve," not observable in the foreigner.* What 

 can be a more abject picture than a Frenchman sufl'ering 

 from sea-sickness — unless it be a German under the same 

 hideous circumstances ? Before getting out of harbour he 

 was radiant, arrogant, self-centred ; only half an hour has 

 passed, and he is green, cadaverous, dank, prostrate, the 

 manhood seemingly spungcd out of him. N.B. — In this 

 respect I am a Frenchman. 



At the sight of the sea the Ten Thousand shouted. At that 

 sight I too should have shouted, had not the glorious vision 

 come upon me through the windows of a railway carriage ; 

 where my fellow-travellers, not comprehending such ecstasy, 

 might have seized me as an escaped lunatic. But if my 

 lungs were quiescent, my heart shouted tumultuously. There 

 gleamed once more the laughing lines of light, there heaved 

 and broke upon the sands the many-sounding waves ; and at 

 the sight arose the thought, obvious enough, yet carrying a 

 sort of surprise, that even thus had the sea been glancing, 



* " Had a furious gale off Flamborough Head ; saw many a dandy's dignity 

 prostrated by sea-sickness ; was sick myself, but managed to keep it secret." — 

 Hatdon's Journal (Life, iii. 62). 



