283 
THE WHITE WHALE 
long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, tbis one is very 
happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his 
blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian 
poncho slipped over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by 
reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled 
to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and 
tides. What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shud- 
dering, icy seas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? 
True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean 
waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, 
whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves 
under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before 
an inn fire ; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. 
Freeze his blood and he dies. How wonderful is it then — except after 
explanation — that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as 
indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found 
at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, 
when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months after- 
wards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly 
is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has 
been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer 
than that of a Borneo negro in summer. 
It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong in- 
dividual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue 
of interior spaciousness. Oh, man ! admire and model thyself after the 
whale ! Ho thou, too, remain warm among ice. Ho thou, too, live 
in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy 
blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like 
the great whale, retain, O man ! in all seasons a temperature of thine 
own. 
But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things ! Of erec- 
tions, how few are domed like St. Peter’s ! of creatures, how few vast 
as the whale ! 
