CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF SEA BATHING.

The Sea, so ill treated by man, in this pitiless warfare, has been to

him most generously kind. When Earth, which he loves so much, when

that rude Earth wears, weakens, exhausts him, it is that so much

feared, so much abused Sea, which takes him to her bosom, and restores

him to new life.

And, in fact, is it not from her that life primitively sprang? She

contains within her all the elements of life in a quite marvellous

plenitude. Why, then, when we feel ourselves sinking, do we not repair

for restoration to the abounding source of life?

That source has space and kindness enough for all, but is especially

kind to the too civilized children of men, for the sons and daughters

who are suffering for the fathers and mothers, victims of mistaken or

sinning Love, less culpable than the sinning parents, yet a thousand

fold more punished. The Sea, that vast female, delights to restore

them; to their weakness she gives her strength; and restores them

young, beautiful, healthful, from the boundless stores of her wide

expanse and fathomless depths. Venus, who was born of Ocean, is from

Ocean reborn every moment, and not a sick, suffering, peevish, pale,

and melancholy Venus, but the triumphant, Venus full of passion and

certain of fecundity.

How between this great and salutary, but somewhat rude, strength and

our weakness, can there be any connection? What union can there be

between elements so greatly disproportioned? That was a serious and

difficult question; to solve it required an art, an initiation. To

understand that question thoroughly, we must make ourselves acquainted

with the time and occasion when this art first revealed itself.

Between two ages of strength, the strength of the age of the

Renaissance and that of the Revolution, there was a period of

depression both moral and physical. The old world had died, the new

one was not yet born, and the misbegotten children of worn out parents

were weak and unhealthy. On the one hand, the excessive indulgence of

the rich; on the other hand, the awful privations of the poor,

decimated the nations, and most decimated, precisely those nations

which most boasted their civilization. France thrice ruined, from base

to apex, in a single century succumbed beneath the orgies of the

Regency. England triumphed over our ruin, yet had death and

destruction within her own bosom. Her Puritan idea had departed, and

another had not yet come. Weakened by the fierce lusts of Charles II.,

she was still farther degraded by the paltry briberies of Walpole; and

in the debasement of the Public the worst passions of the Individual

came to light. The fine book of _Robinson_ exhibits the horrors of the

terrible Lust of Strong Drink;--a terrible book, that, in which

Medicine calls to its aid all the denunciations of Religion, and

denounces the gloomy suicide of celibatism.

Anxieties, evil habits, effeminate and unwholesome life;--all these

betray themselves in the softened tissues, the meagre forms, the

horrid scrofula. Lovely complexions cover the most vile diseases. Anne

of Austria, renowned for her extreme clearness of complexion, died of

loathsome ulcer; the Princess of Soubise, that dazzlingly fair beauty,

rotted, so to speak, into her grave. In England, the Duke of Newcastle

asked the learned Doctor Russell why it was that the beautiful Lily

and Rose concealed so much of scrofula.

It rarely happens that a worn out race recovers itself; but the

English did so. For some seventy or eighty years it recovered a

wonderful strength of activity. Partly it owed its recovery to its

political and social disturbances,--for there is nothing so conducive

to health as movement; but it must be confessed that the chief cause

of its renovation was its change of habits. It changed in

everything,--education, food, medicine; all were changed, for all felt

that health and strength were necessary to success in anything and

everything.

There needed no great genius for such a Reform; the true theory had

been propounded; all that was necessary was to make the Science an

Art, to _practise_ what hitherto had only been _preached_. The

Moravian, Comenius, writing a century before Rousseau, said: "Return

to Nature; educate according to Nature;" the Saxon Hoffman said:

"Return to Nature; make her your Physician." Hoffman appeared just in

time to combat the evils caused by the orgies of the Regency, evils in

which the remedies were as bad as the disease, the Physician as fatal

as the Quack. Hoffman truly said to his age--"Leave Doctors alone;

live temperately, drink water, and you will need no medicines." That

was a true moral reform. And thus among ourselves, Priessnith in 1830,

after the Bacchanalia of the Restoration imposed upon the luxurious

aristocracy of Europe the coarse food of the peasant, and, in the hard

northern climate, the open air bath, in snow water; that Hell of cold

which, in its reaction, gives such a glow of heat. And the rich and

the delicate submitted to this hard discipline; so great is our human

love of life and fear of death.

And, in fact, why should not water be the safety of man? Berzelius

assures us that four-fifths of our living frames are water; just as

four-fifths of our globe are covered by Oceans, Seas, Lakes, and

Rivers. For our arid Earth the Sea is a constant Hydropathist, curing

it of its otherwise deadly dryness, and nourishing and beautifying its

fruits and flowers. Strange and prodigious magician, that same water!

With so little, making so much; with so little, destroying so

much--destroying so slowly, but so surely!

_Gutta lapidem cavat, non vi, sed stepe cadendo_;

"The plastic globule wears the rugged rock,

By frequent falling, not by sudden shock."

Water is at once the most potent and the most elastic of all forces,

lending her aid to all the metamorphoses of our globe, covering,

penetrating, transforming all around us.

Into what frightful desert, into what gloomy forest, will not man

penetrate in search of the healing springs which boil up from the

bosom of the earth? What a perfectly superstitious belief we have in

those springs which bring to us the hidden and healing virtues! I have

seen fanatics who had no Deity but Carlsbad, that wonderful meeting of

the most contradictory waters. I have seen the worshippers of Bareges,

and I confess that I have myself submitted to the gushing and

sulphureous waters of Acqui in their strange and almost animal

pulsations. The hot baths of earth have no medium in their action;

they are either certain health or certain death. How many sufferers

who might have lingered through weeks, months, or even years, have

been quickly slain by them! Frequently, those potent waters give a

sudden revival, and, together with health, bring back the very

passions which caused disease; passions hot as the waters which

revived them. The very atmosphere above these sulphureous waters is

intoxicating, the _aura_ of the Sybil that maddened her into Prophecy!

An outburst which compels us to speak that which we would most

conceal. And how terribly self-revealing we are in those Babels to

which, under the plea of seeking health, we resort to throw aside the

conventionalities, in too many cases the very decencies of Society.

There, pale, worn sufferers, of both sexes, sit at the gaming table in

eager passion to win gold, and, in reality, winning only an earlier

Death.

Very different is the saving breath of the great Sea; in itself it is

a purifier. That never ceasing interchange of the ocean of air, and

the ocean of water, forbids life ever to languish. Early and late,

those oceans of air and sea are at work. At every instant each passes

through the crucible of death--and at every instant revives. The

whirlwind and the water spout give newer and stronger life to the

vexed ocean.

To live on land is to repose; to live on sea is to combat, and to

combat savingly;--for those who can bear it, a Spartan training in

which many perish, but those who survive are very strong.

In the middle ages there was a perfect horror of the Sea. They

libelled the great Sea, they called that fertile mother "the kingdom

of the prince of the powers of air"--the very name which was given to

Satan. The nobility of the seventeenth century would by no means

consent to have its palaces near the huts of the rude seamen. The

frowning castle, with its ugly and formal garden, was almost always

built, as far as possible from the sea, on some place destitute of sun

and air, but marvellously rich in fog and miasmata. In England it was

just the same. If the manor house was on a hill, the advantage of the

situation was sedulously provided against by a forest of tall trees,

and quite as often, instead of being on the hill, it was in the

pestilent marsh below. At the present day, England, wiser than of old,

builds by the sea side, rejoices in sea baths even in winter, and is

rewarded by strong health. The people of the sea coasts better knew,

even in earlier times, the life-giving power of the sea. Its purifying

power first struck them; they observed its power in curing scrofula of

its disgusting sores, and they well knew the power of its bitterness

in killing the parasite worms which, otherwise, would kill the child.

They ate the Sea weed and the _Halcyonia_, well knowing that the

iodine that they contain contracts and makes firm the flesh. Russell,

who heard and noted these popular recipes, was thus enabled to answer

the question of the Duke of Newcastle, and did so in his excellent

book, published in 1750, on the use of Sea water in cases of glandular

wasting.

There is a great force in his sentence--"The great want is not how to

cure, but how to repair, _to create_."

He proposed a miracle, but a quite possible one; to make new flesh,

new tissues. And he proposed to do that chiefly with the child, who,

though born of polluted parents, might yet be re-made.

It was at the same time that Bakewell, the Leicestershire farmer,

_created_ meat. Up to that time horned cattle were chiefly valued for

their milk, from his day forth they are made to yield a more generous

food. The poor milk diet, in fact, had to be abandoned by men who are

compelled to be so active, so laborious, so untiring. Russell's little

book, in 1750, created Sea bathing; it is not too much to say he

created it, for it really was he who made it in vogue.

This whole grand theory may be summed up in a very few words:

"It is necessary to drink sea-water, to bathe in sea-water, and to eat

sea-weed; clothe your children as lightly as possible, and let them

have plenty of air. The Ocean breeze, and the Ocean water; there you

have the sure cure."

That last advice seems very bold. To have the half naked child exposed

to the open air in a damp and variable climate, is, no doubt,

anticipatively, to lose the weak; but the strong will survive, and

their posterity will be the better brought up. Let us add that

business, and navigation, by earlier relieving the boys from school,

from the sedentary life of the young nobles at Oxford or Cambridge,

make them a new race.

In his ingenious book, guided only by popular tradition, Russell

doubtless was far enough from suspecting how, in a single century, all

science would come to the aid of his theory, and that each would aid

him in making of the Sea a perfect system of Therapeutics.

The most valuable elements of terrestrial life are abundantly in the

sea; and science may well say to us--"Hither! Hither, worn and wearied

nation, swinked laborer, failing woman, young child, fading because

your parents sinned; hither! to the Sea, and the Sea shall cure you!"

The universal base of life, the embryonic mucus, the living animal

jelly in which man continually takes and retakes the marrowy substance

of his being, is so abounding in the sea that we may call it the sea

itself. Of that mucus, both marine animals and marine vegetables are

made. Her generosity puts earth to shame. She is liberal to give, be

ye therefore, willing to receive.

"But," it maybe said, "we are attacked in the very foundation and

support of our being. Our bones bend, bow, and we are weak, and

tottering from their insufficient nurture." Well! The lime which they

need abounds in the sea; so abounds that her madrepores build islands

of it, and are at this moment building whole continents. Her fishes

carry it hither and thither in such vast quantity that, washed upon

every shore, it serves as a manure.

And you, young female, you who, visibly, are wasting into an early

grave, repair to the sea, where every breath you draw shall be a

restorative. That restorative iodine, is in every breath that blows,

in every wave that heaves, in every fish that swims. The Cod alone

have enough to iodise the entire earth.

Is it animal warmth that you lack? The sea affords you the most

perfect, the most equable, the most widely diffused warmth; warmth so

great, in fact, that were it not diffused, it would melt the earth

from Pole to Pole, and make each Pole another Equator.

The rich, warm, red blood, is the triumph of the Sea; by it she has

animated and armed with mightiest strength her giants, so much

mightier than mightiest giants of the earth. She has made that

element, and she can remake you, poor, pale, drooping flower. She

abounds, superabounds, in that rich red blood; in her children it so

abounds that they give it forth to every wind.

And there is the revelation of the whole mystery. All the principles,

pale mortal, that are combined in you, she has in separation. She has

your bone, your blood, your sap and your heat--in one or the other of

her creatures, she has them all.

And she has, also, what you have not, a superabundant strength. Her

breathing gives I know not what of inspiring excitement; of what we

may call physical heroism. With all her violence, the great generating

element inspires us with the same fiery vivacity, the same wild love,

with which she herself palpitates.

CHAPTER II.

CHOICE OF COAST.

Earth is her own doctor; every climate has its own remedy. More and

more will Medicine lie in Emigration. But it must be an Emigration of

foresight, not one of those mad-cap, rapid, and most mischievous

journeys in which the patient rushes from one extreme of climate to

another, but prudently calculated to the obtaining of those vivifying

aids which nature every where holds in store for those who know how to

profit by them. The youth, that is yet to be born, depends upon these

two things--the _Science of Emigration_ and the _Art of

Acclimatization_. Hitherto, man has remained a prisoner like an oyster

on its rock. If he occasionally emigrates to some small distance from

his temperate zone, he, for the most part, goes to die. He will only

become free, really brave, when the science and art of Emigration and

Climatization shall make him free of the whole globe.

Few diseases are cured in the place and under the circumstances which

have given rise to them; they hold to certain habits which the

localities perpetuate and render unconquerable. There is no Reform,

physical or moral, for those who persist in the originating vice.

Medicine, guided by the auxiliary sciences, directs us in the new road

to the desired end. Our emigrations must be made prudently and

gradually. Can we, safely, without preparation, without alteration of

diet and of habits, be suddenly removed from an inland to a maritime

abode? Can we prudently take to the sea-bath until the sea breeze

shall have trained our physical frame? Can we suddenly and without

preparation encounter the severe shock, the horripilation of the

really tremendous shock of the cold water bath in the cold open air?

These questions we are glad to say are more and more being put and

answered by our physicians.

The extreme rapidity of our railroad journeys is very mischievous even

to the strong;--in many cases fatal to the ailing. To pass, as so many

do, from Paris to the Mediterranean in twenty-four hours, passing at

every hour into a different climate, is as perilous a thing as a

nervous person can do. You arrive agitated, giddy. When Madame de

Sevigné took a whole month to travel from Brittany to Provence, she

proceeded by slow and calculated degrees from one climate to another,

and its opposite. She proceeded, by slow degrees, from the maritime

climate of the West into the inland climate of Burgundy. Then,

travelling slowly by the upper Rhone into Dauphiny, she, with the

greater safety and comfort, braved the free winds of Valence and of

Avignon; then, halting awhile, and resting at Aix, in the interior of

Provence, far from the Rhone and from its shores, she made herself

Provençal in lungs.

France has the enviable advantage of being between two seas, and

thence the facility of alternating, as the disease may require,

between the saline tonicity of the Mediterranean and the moister

and--except in case of tempest--the far milder air of the Ocean.

On each of the two coasts there is a graduated scale of stations, more

or less mild, more or less strengthening. It is very interesting to

observe, and very useful to follow, this double scale,--proceeding, as

a general thing, from weaker to stronger.

The climate of the Ocean parting from the strong, rough, ever-heaving

waters of the channel, becomes extremely mild at the South of

Brittany, milder still in the Gironde, and mildest of all in the

land-locked basin of Arcachon.

The air of the Mediterranean, which we may call circular, has its

highest note in the dry, though keen, climate of Provence and Genoa,

becomes more mild as you approach Pisa, milder and less variable in

Sicily, and at Algiers attains a wonderful mildness and regularity.

And on your return be sure of a balmy air at Majorca and the little

ports of the Rousillon, so well sheltered from the harsh north wind.

The Mediterranean commands our admiration by two characteristics; the

beauty of its shores and the brilliant purity of its sky and

atmosphere. Very salt, very bitter is that sea; but what a glorious

blue sky is above it! It gives out by evaporation about thrice as much

water as it receives from all its tributary rivers. It would become

all salt, like that terrible Dead Sea, but for the lower currents, the

under-tow, like that from Gibraltar, for instance, were not constantly

tempering it with the waters of the Ocean.

All that I have seen of its shores are beautiful, though somewhat

stern. Nothing common-place about those shores. The volcanic, the

lurid bale fires of the lower earth, have everywhere made their mark

upon the upper earth; those dark Plutonic rocks are never tiresome

like the marshy sands of other shores. If the famous Orange woods

sometimes seem somewhat monotonous, they compensate you when here and

there, a sheltered spot, you find the true African vegetation, the

Aloe and the Cactus, the hedge of Myrtle and Jessamine, and the wild

and perfumed landes. Above, it is true, bald and frowning mountains

loom, and their long offshoots run even into the very sea.

"It seemed to me," said a traveller, "that I was between two

atmospheres; the air above, and the air below." He describes the

varied world of plants and animals which were reflected by the crystal

mirror of that deep blue sea of Sicily. I was less fortunate off

Genoa, where, gazing into the depths, I saw nothing but a desert. The

dry and sterile rocks, the volcanic framing of the shores, dark as

midnight, or of a still sadder and more ghastly and ghostlike white,

showed me nothing but antique sarcophagi--reversed churches, reminding

one, at times, of the cathedrals of Florence, or the leaning tower of

Pisa. Sometimes, also, I seemed to see "strange monsters of the deep."

Whales? Elephants? I do not know; but of real life not a trace.

Such, however, as that beautiful sea is, it admirably nerves and

hardens the dwellers on its shores, and the sailors on its bosom; it

makes at once the most fiery and the most solid of races. Our giants

of the North, are, perhaps, stronger, but certainly are not more

enduring, and, as certainly, they do not so readily, or so safely

acclimatise, as the seamen of Genoa, of Calabria, or of Greece,

bronzed as they are, not by an accident of the skin, but by the

permeation, the imbibation of the Sun's rays. A friend of mine, a

learned physician, sends his pale patients from Paris or Lyons to take

their Sun-baths in the South, and himself lies nude on the rocks, for

hours together. He has only his head covered; as to all the rest of

his person, he is bronzed as an African.

The really sick will go to Sicily, to Algiers, to Madeira, in search

of health. But the restorative of the pale, worn populations of our

great cities, is best to be found in the more varied and more

strengthening climates of the country which has given to Earth its

most iron humanity, its heroes by sea and by land, and in the council

chamber--that truly iron race of the Columbuses, the Dorias, the

Massenas,--and the Garibaldis.

Our extreme Northern ports, Dunkirk, Boulogne and Dieppe, where the

winds and waters of the Channel meet, are also a great nursery of

renewed life, and restored strength. That great breeze and that great

sea, might recall one from the grave. You may see there perfectly

incredible recoveries. Go there without any real and vital wound, and

you recover on the instant. The whole human machine acts strongly;

digests well, breathes freely. You need not even strive for health

when there, for nature says to you, as Tully said to Atticus, _Jubeo

valere_,--_I command you to be well_. The sturdy vegetation that

flourishes upon the very margin of the sea, seems to rebuke our

weakness. Each of the little ports which pierce our Norman coast, is

swept by the nor' westerly wind, which strengthens and revives us;

but grows less violent, though not less salubrious, at the mouth of

the Seine, beneath the fruitful orchards of Honfleur and Trouville.

The good river, sweeping away to the left, carries with it a softer

and gentler air. Higher up, you meet the strong, the sometimes really

terrible, sea of Granville, Saint-Maloes, and Cancale, about the best

of naval schools for young folks, a school which will make the strong

still stronger.

But if, on the contrary, we have to deal with some weakling, some

young child, born to weakness, or some young mother, made weak by too

frequent parturition, we must select some milder shelter. And such a

warm and always calm shelter, you will find, without going further

South, among the sleepy little isles and peninsulæ of Morbihan. These

isles form a labyrinth more perplexed than that in which the English

king sheltered his fair Rosamond. Entrust your own treasure to that

shelter, and none shall know of her save the Druidic rocks and the

handful of fishermen who inhabit those at once wild and gentle shores.

Does some gentle patient ask us on what people live, in those marine

solitudes? We reply, upon Fish, Fish--still Fish! It is not far from

St. Gildas, where the Bretons assure you that Heloise sought her

Abelard. They contrive to live there as cheaply and as well as

Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday.

Places more civilized and attractive are to be found farther South,

such as Pornice, Royan, Saint George, Arcachon, &c.

I spoke elsewhere of Saint George's, bordered by many a bitter and

precious plant; and Arcachon, too, is as attractive, with its resinous

and wholesomely pleasant odor of its pine woods. But for the worldly

rush from that great and Wealthy Bordeaux, but for that flood of

health seekers, which pours into it at certain seasons, it is at

Arcachon that we would shelter the dearly beloved patient, that dear

and delicate creature for whom we fear the rush and crush of the hard

working day world. That place, as long as we contemplate it only

within the inner basin, offers the contrast of an absolute and very

deep calm with a terribly rough sea close by. Beyond the lighthouse is

the terrible Gascon sea, within the bay a lazy tide, so lazy that you

cannot hear its murmurs, as low, as light, as the quiet tread of

lady's gentle footstep on the sea-weed carpet of that strand.

In an intermediate climate which is neither North nor South, neither

Brittany nor Vendëe, I have visited again and again, and always with

pleasure, the pretty and staid shelter of Ponice, with its frank

seamen and its pretty girls, with their conical hats. It is a pretty

quiet little place, which, protected as it is by the island (rather

the peninsula) of Noirmantiers, receives only a slanting and

exceedingly well behaved sea; that enters silken in its softness. And

in that bay of several leagues, these creeks, with sloping shores,

made, as it would seem, on purpose for baths for women and children,

they are so sheltered and so safe. Those nice sandy beaches, parted by

such sheltering rocks, conceal so much, and yet reveal so much of the

sea life, the plain, blunt, yet ever kindly and courteous life of the

seaman! But if those sheltering rocks do much good, they also do no

little injury. The sheltered creek and safe haven, keeps out the

Tempest;--but, it also keeps out the fishes. By little and little, but

very regularly, the grand rush and the grand murmur of the sea are

kept out, and yet, that half silence has a very great charm. No where

else have I so much welcomed, or so richly enjoyed, that great luxury

of the undisturbed Day-dreaming.

CHAPTER III.

THE HOUSE.

Permit an ignoramus who, yet, has paid a pretty high price for what he

_does_ know, to give you some quiet advice upon certain points upon

which books, hitherto, have told you little and Doctors nothing. That

this advice may come the more directly to both head and heart, I will

address them to an imaginary patient. Imaginary? Not so; I have met

such a patient many times.

You meet a young lady seriously ill, or manifestly about to be so, she

is very weak, and her young child is weaker still. The Winter has been

hard upon them, and the Spring still harder. Yet it is only

weakness;--lassitude, the _tedium vitæ_ which Byron truly calls "more

terrible than death itself." And she is sent to the sea-side for the

Summer.

A great expense, that, for a fortune below even mediocrity; painful

moving for the mistress of a family; hard separation, above all, for

husband and wife who truly love each other. They bargain, they would

fain shorten that separation. Would not one month be enough? But the

wise Physician knows better, and says it would _not_; he well knows

that a very short sojourn at the sea side is far more likely to injure

than to benefit. The sudden, the severe shock of the sea bath is

likely enough to injure even the strong; to the feeble it is simply

murderous. You should first breathe the sea air;--acclimatize

yourself. Do this during the month of June, then you shall have July,

August, September, and, in some seasons, even October for your baths,

and the bath and the great, strong, keen winds will harden your frame

against the fast approaching Winter.

Few men are free during the whole Summer; happy the husband who can be

away from the thronged city to pass a couple of the Summer months at

the sea side with his suffering wife. However much he may feel

inclined to sacrifice every secondary interest for her, it is for her

interest that he must remain in the counting house or the factory.

There are strong links in the chain of our daily life which we may

not, which we cannot, break. Therefore, the wife must go alone; and,

for the time, behold them loving, and yet divorced. Shall I give you

my opinion? _Let_ her go alone; better for her than if she went in the

train of some rich luxurious family.

That gregarious travel and gregarious abode have their pleasures, no

doubt; but, also, they have their evils. In such cases we are apt

either to become enemies, or, which is still worse in the case of

woman, to become too friendly. The style of life at a watering place

sometimes, and not seldom produces results which we regret through the

whole remainder of life. In my opinion the smallest inconvenience of

that gregarious watering-place life (smallest but very far from small)

is that the very people who alone would be both morally and physically

benefited by the sea, lose all that benefit by carrying to the solemn

shore the frivolity, the late hours, the false gaiety of the great

town.

Alone we think; in the crowd we gossip and scandalise. The great and

the rich lead the young and suffering female into their own

dissipations, and the consequence is that she has by the sea shore a

really more mischievous excitement than she would have had in Paris,

or London, Saint Petersburgh or New York, and will entirely lose the

end for which, loving husband, you sent her thither. Reflect upon it,

young woman, be courageous, but also be prudent. It is in an innocent

solitude that you may, if you will, enjoy with your child, that you

will most surely find the renewed health and strength that you so much

desire. In that infantine, pure, but noble and poetic life, I again

assure you, it is that you will find restoration. Believe me the

delicate and tender justice which makes you fear expense, while he at

home is toiling so hard, will well repay you. The old Ocean will love

you the better if you love only it, and will lavish upon you its great

treasures of health and youthfulness. Your child will flourish like a

young bay tree and you shall increase in grace and beauty; and you

will return to your far home youthful and dearly beloved.

She resolves, she departs, for a place, the waters of which are well

known by chemical analysis to have the qualities suited to her case.

But there are many local circumstances which cannot be known or even

guessed at from a distance. The Doctor who recommends particular

waters seldom knows the place, though he knows the waters.

For some of the more important watering places Guides have been

published which are not without merit, so far as they point out the

particular diseases for which particular waters are suited. But very

few give details which enable one to choose between a healthy and

unhealthy, a pleasant and an unpleasant, situation. They do not

venture upon such particulars as would enable one to choose between

places as well as between waters, but confine themselves to so general

a eulogy of the latter as to leave us in the dark as to the former.

What is the precise exposition? Look at the map and you perceive that

the coast slopes to the South, but even this tells you nothing; for

it may chance that a peculiar curve of the land may place your house

under a cold or damp influence, from a Northern or Western exposure.

Are there any marshes in the neighborhood? In most cases the answer

must be, yes. But the difference is very great whether the marshes be

salt and renewed, and made salubrious by the sea, or whether they be

stagnant marshes of fresh water which after droughts emit feverish

miasmata.

Is the sea very pure, or mixed? And in what proportion? A great

mystery. For nervous persons, however, for novices just commencing

with salt water bathing, the mildest are the best. A sea, somewhat

mixed, an air less salt and keen, and a less desolate shore, having

some of the charms of the country, are the best recommendations.

A grave point is the choice of a house; and who shall direct you as to

that? No one. You must see for yourself; you must observe all the

particulars on the spot. You will learn little from persons who have

visited or even lived there. They praise or condemn this or that place

not on account of its real merit, but according to the pleasure they

have enjoyed or the friends they have made there. They recommend you

to some of those friends who receive you admirably; at first you are

delighted, but in a short time you discover many inconveniences, and

sometimes the house is even dangerously unhealthy. Yet you do not like

to leave it, lest you should mortify both those who recommended you

and the kind and amiable family who so hospitably received you.

"Well, then," you say, "I will ask no recommendation, but on reaching

the place I will consult an honest and skilful doctor who will be able

to enlighten me." Honest! that is not enough, he must also be very

intrepid to tell you frankly any of the bad qualities of the place,

for he would be a ruined man, he would take leave of the whole place,

would live as solitary as a wolf; and, indeed, would be lucky if some

personal injury were not done to him.

I have a perfect horror of the absurdly flimsy houses which

speculators build in our variable climate. These pasteboard erections

are so many dangerous traps. In the full heats of Summer such bivouacs

are all well enough, but often one has to remain in September and

October amid the high winds and the torrents of rain.

For themselves the landlords build good substantial houses, but for

poor patients they build chalets of wood, ill closed, and not even

moss-covered, like the Swiss chalets. It really is treating us quite

too ill.

In those villas, apparently luxurious, but in reality wretched, no

provision is made for comfort. Drawing-rooms for show,--and commanding

a view of the sea, they have, but no provision is made to gratify

that feeling of home comfort, so dear to the sick, and more especially

so to woman. She feels unsheltered, as though constantly exposed to

half a gale of wind, and constantly passing from one temperature to

another.

On the other hand, the solidly built house of the Fisherman is often

low, damp, and inconveniently arranged in its interior. Often, it has

not even a double ceiling, but mere planks, which admit cold draughts

into the upper rooms, inflicting coughs, rheumatism, and a score of

other diseases.

Whatever may be your choice, Madame, between these two kinds of house,

do you know what I heartily wish for you? Laugh, if you please. What I

wish you to have, even in June, is a good fire-place, with a very

excellent chimney, well closed against the wind. In our beautiful

France, with its cold north-west and its rainy south-west, which

occasionally predominates for nine months, a good fire may be

necessary, even in June. On a damp evening, when your child returns

shivering from his promenade, a fire is necessary, to warm him, before

he goes to bed.

Two things ought to be especially looked after, wherever you lodge,

fire and good water, the latter a thing rarely to be found near the

sea. If it is altogether bad, endeavor, by the use of beer or tea, to

dispense with drinking the plain water, or if you must use it, let it

previously be boiled.

Why cannot I, with a single word, build you just such a villa as I

have in my mind? I do not speak of the show-house, the almost castle,

such as the wealthy build at the sea side, but of the humble house,

fitted for humble fortunes. It is an art which is yet to be created,

and one which no one seems to suspect, that of building a house, at

once small and substantial. The houses which are built for us,

especially at the sea side, are built in direct contradiction with our

needs in so changeable a climate. Those Kiosks, with their flimsy

ornaments, may do well enough for well-sheltered situations, but make

one fancy that the wind must needs blow them into the sea. The Swiss

chalets have immense overhanging roofs, which so well protect from the

snow, but also have the serious defect of excluding the light. The

sun, in our northern seas, should not be excluded, but most cordially

received. As to the imitations of chapels, gothic churches, and the

like toys, we need say nothing about them, they are really beneath

notice, so absurdly ill calculated as they are for comfortable homes.

The first necessity for a sea-side house, is great strength, a solid

thickness of walls, which will obviate that rocking which we always

feel in slight buildings. We want such a solidity of construction as

even in the greatest tempests will give courage to a timid woman, and

enable her to say with a smile of pleasure. "How very comfortable we

are in here, while such a storm rages without!"

The second point is that on the land side, the house should be so

perfectly sheltered that on that side we can sit and forget the sea,

and in the neighborhood of that great movement find the most complete

repose.

To meet those two needs, I prefer the form which affords least hold to

the wind, the crescent form, with the convex front to the sea, so that

every window will in turn receive the Sun.

The concave portion of this half circle would be sheltered by the

horns of the crescent, so as to enclose the pretty flower garden of

the mistress of the house. Stretching from this flower garden, the

progressive sloping of the soil would allow of a kitchen garden of a

certain extent, well sheltered from the wind.

We are told that "Flora shuns the sea;" what she really does shun, is

not the sea, but man's negligence, ignorance, or indolence. At

Eteretat, before a very heavy sea, on the high overlooking beach, and

exposed to heavy winds, there is a farm, with an orchard of superb

trees. What precautions have been taken? A simple hedge-crowned bank,

five feet high, and behind that a row of elms, which shelter all the

rest. Many places Brittany would furnish us with like instances. Who

does not know that Roscoff raises fruit and vegetables in such

profusion as to sell them cheaply, even in Normandy?

But to return to our building. I want it low-pitched; only a ground

floor, and over that the bed-chambers. Our house, therefore, will be

but small; but, on the other hand, it must be very thick, must have

two rows of chambers, an apartment looking out on the sea, and another

on the land.

The ground floor apartment, looking towards the land, would be

somewhat sheltered by the upper story, which would project about five

feet. This would make the interior crescent a sort of gallery for use

in bad weather. The lower rooms would be a dining room;--a small room

for our books (voyages and travels, and natural history) and a

bathroom. I do not mean an actual library or luxurious bath. The

necessary, and the very plain, the convenient, and nothing more.

On very rough days, when the beach is hardly the fit place for

delicate patients, I should wish to see the lady reading or working in

her pretty parterre. She would have some life there, flowers, an

aviary, and a little tank of sea water to receive the little creatures

which the fishermen would be sure to give her. Of course she would

also have an excellent compound microscope.

For the aviary, I should prefer the free one which I have advised

elsewhere, into which the birds come at night for protection and a

little food. It is closed upon them at night, to protect them from

birds of prey, but opened for them very early in the morning. They

return to this aviary very regularly. I believe, even, that if the

aviary were large enough, and the tree which they most affect were

enclosed, they would freely breed there, and confide their little ones

to your protection.

Delightful, and yet serious life, this, that we have planned for our

fair patient and her sole child. What charming solitude in this short

widowhood. How new the situation. No housekeeping, no business. With

her boy, she is even more alone than she would be without him. But for

him she would be intruded upon by reverie and vain fancies. But her

innocent guardian, her boy, keeps all such fancies away. He occupies

her, causes her to talk, and talks to her of home, and he thus

constantly reminds her of him who, in their far off home, is toiling

for them, and she counts the days to her return.

Flourish, pure and amiable woman. You are now even younger than ever,

you have become a girl again, free, sweetly free, under the

guardianship of your boy.

CHAPTER IV.

FIRST ASPIRATION OF THE SEA.

It is a great and sudden transition to leave Paris in the beautiful

month of June when the great city is resplendent with its magnificent

gardens and its chestnut trees in bloom. June would be delightful on

the coast if one had a single companion and the crowd had not arrived.

But when one is alone on the deserted, with the great sea, we are

touched with a sort of melancholy.

On a first visit to the coast the impression made is not very

favorable. There is aridity, there is wildness, and yet there is a

certain monotony. The novel grandeur of the spectacle makes us feel,

by contrast, how weak and small we are, and that thought thrills the

heart. The delicate chest that so lately was confined in a chamber,

and now finds itself suddenly removed to this vast open chamber of the

universe, with the sun shining so brightly and the sea breeze blowing

so strongly, feels oppressed. The child comes, goes, and the mother

sits down, shivering in the free fresh breeze. The warmth of the home

she has but just left comes to her mind and she saddens. But her boy

frolics gaily and that soon consoles her.

All this will soon pass away Madame. Be resolute; your impressions

will be very different when you become better acquainted with the Sea

and think of its myriads of inhabitants. And that painful constriction

of the lungs will pass away too, when you become accustomed to the

free atmosphere of the sea. You require time to accustom yourself to

it, by and by, not thinking about it, as your boy plays with you in

sheltered nooks, you will breathe freely and your chest will dilate

without pain and without conscious effort. But, just at first, I

advise you not to stay too long at a time on the beach, but rather to

take your walk inland.

The land, your accustomed friend, recalls you. The pine woods rival

the sea in healthful emanations; and theirs have less of harshness.

They penetrate all our being, enter by every pore, modify and purify

the blood, and perfume us with their subtle aroma. In the Landes

behind the pine woods, the herbs and even the coarse grass on which

you tread, yield perfumes not enervating or intoxicating as the

dangerous roses, but agreeably bitter. Seat yourself among them and

you, like them, will be sheltered by this slight slope of land. Might

you not, now that you are thus sheltered, fancy yourself a hundred

leagues from the sea? Drink in the sweet breathings, the pure spirits,

the very soul of these wild flowers--that, in purity, are your very

sisters. Gather them if you will, Madame; they ask for nothing better.

Somewhat rude, perhaps, and yet so beautiful; and in their virginal

perfume they have that singular mystery of calming and strengthening.

Do not fear to hide them in your fair bosom and upon your beating

heart.

Let us not forget that these sheltered landes are, at certain hours,

burning hot. They so absorb and concentrate the rays of the sun. The

weak woman is wilted there. The young girl, full of vigorous life,

feels her pulses boiling and has redoubled power; her brain swims and

she has strange and dangerous day dreams. If you wish to go there let

it be on some moist and rather cloudy day; or, still better, rise at a

very early hour when all is cool, when the wild thyme still keeps

somewhat of its dew, and while the Hare is still abroad.

But let us return to the Ocean. At ebb-tide he manifests, and, in some

sort, presents to you, the rich life that he nourishes. You must

follow, step by step, the retiring waves, though the wet sand will

sink some little beneath your feet. Fear not. The gentle wave will, at

the most, kiss your feet. If you look closely you will perceive that

the sand is not, as you at first thought it, dead, but is here and

there moved by numerous lingerers that the ebb-tide has left behind.

On certain beaches, small fish are thus hidden in the sand. At the

mouth of the rivers the Eel's writhing movement, throws up the sand in

mimic earthquakes. The Crab, too eagerly engaged in feeding, or

fighting, has now to hasten back to the sea, and in his flight he

leaves an odd mosaic, a zigzag line marking his oblique travel, and at

the end of that line you will find him lying in wait for the coming in

of the tide. The Solen (_Manche de Couteau_), that razor-shaped shell

fish, has plunged deep into the sand, but betrays himself to you by

the breathing holes that he has left. The Venus you can just as

certainly trace by the fucus attached to its shell, but floating on

the surface; and the undulations of the soil betray to you the covered

ways of the warlike annelides, and viewing them with the aid of your

microscope you will be charmed with the rainbows of their changing

colors.

But the finest sights are caused at the first low ebb, which always

follows the high Spring tide. At such ebbs, immense and unexplored

spaces are left bare, and we can survey that mysterious bottom of the

sea, on which we have so often speculated and dreamed. There you

discover, in motion, in life, in all the secrecy of their retreats,

astonished populations, which fancied themselves secure, and which

rarely, if ever before, had been looked upon by the sun, and still

more rarely by the eye of man. Be not alarmed, swarming populations of

minute creatures, you are seen only by the inquisitive but

compassionate eye of a woman; it is not the cruel and coarse hand of a

fisherman that invades your retreat. But you ask, what does she want

with you? Nothing but to see you, salute you, show you to her boy, and

leave you in your natural element, and with every kindly wish for your

health and prosperity. At times we need not wander far; at such times

in a cleft of the rock, we may find every minute species, old Ocean

having diverted himself with lodging a whole world of minute creatures

within the space of a few square feet. We sit and we watch, and the

longer and the more closely we watch, the more do we see of life, at

first imperceptible. And so interested are we that we should sit there

for an indefinite time, were we not chased to shore by that imperious

master of the beach, the flood Tide.

But to-morrow, at ebb, she will return to the beach, that school, that

Museum, that inexhaustible amusement for both mother and child. There

the delicate and penetrating sense of woman and the tenderness of her

heart seize and divine all. Maternity tells her all the secrets of

increasing, diminishing, and recreating life. Do you ask why her

instinct so quickly reveals creation to her; why she enters as one so

thoroughly at home, into the great mystery of Nature? It is because

she is Nature herself.

In the depths of the unctuous waters the small algæ, small, but

unctuous and nourishing, and other little plants of delicate and

pretty figures, form a miniature prairie which is browsed by a vast

herd of molluscæ, Limpets, Whelks, and a hundred other species, watch,

wait, feed, there, and to-morrow you will find them there still. But

do you therefore suppose that they are utterly inert? That they have

no confused idea of Love and the Unknown? Of some benevolent thing

which at certain hours returns to refresh and nourish them? Oh yes,

they both think of it and expect it; those widows of the great Ocean

well know that he will return to caress the earth. Anticipatively they

look towards the Ocean, and even those which have a fixed abode, turn

from the rock and open their shells towards the incoming tide. And if

it come in somewhat strongly they are all the more delighted; too

happy to hail that living wave that advances so strongly, as in haste

to caress them.

"See my child" says the young mother, "at our approach the motionless

ones remain, but the quicker have fled. Now see, they take courage

again. The active shrimp, with its fine feelers, rainbowed by the

water, creates a great commotion in that mimic and miniature sea, and

the slow and hesitating sea spider, at once timid and daring, saves

herself by ascending to the warm surface, and the crab advancing and

surveying, suddenly returns into his miniature forest of sea weed.

"But what do I see now? What _is_ that? A large, motionless shell

suddenly takes life, and moves. Oh, but that is not natural, and the

impostor betrays himself by his awkward gait and his many stumbles.

Yes, yes, we detect you now, you most cunning of all cunning crabs,

Sir Bernard the Hermit, who would fain pass yourself off for an

innocent mollusc! Your bad conscience agitates you too much."

On the shore of our ocean, strangers to these movements, the animated

flowers expand their corollæ. Near to the heavy anemone those charming

little annelides appear in the sunlight. From a tortuous tube rises a

disc, an umbrella, white or lilac, sometimes flesh color. Thrown,

itself, a little on one side, it casts off from itself an object which

has nothing comparable to it in the whole vegetable world. Not one of

these is like its sister, and all are admirable for their velvety

delicacy.

See one of them, without umbrella, which throws off a whole cloud of

light cottony threads, scarcely tinted with a silver grey, while five

longer filets are of the richest cherry color. They wave, they

entwine, they untwist, and their silvery heads form beautiful images

in the water. To the coarse senses of man, such a sight as that would

suggest no serious thought; but to the nervous and delicate woman, it

is much. At those colors, by turns flashing and fading, she reflects

on her own young life that now flashes, now fades, and now threatens

to expire. Affecting thought! Again she looks into the pretty

miniature Ocean of a few feet square, and there she better discerns

Nature, the fertile mother, but the stern mother too.

And our fair patient is plunged into an oppressive reverie. Woman

would cease to be woman, that is to say, the charm of the world, if

she had not that touching gift of _Tenderness for everything that

lives_; _pity, and loving tears_.

She has not wept as yet, our fair patient, but she has been so near to

doing so! Her boy perceives it. Being already attentive and quick, he

remains silent; and, silently they return. That was the amiable first

day when she first began to spell with her heart the language of

Nature. And at her very first lesson that language had so stirred the

tenderness of that poor heart! The daylight was dying, the sea bird,

on rapid wing, approached the shore and sought his nest. And as our

patient and her boy entered their already dark garden, the cry of the

night bird was heard. But the aviary was well closed, and the innocent

little refugees within were asleep with heads under wings. Having

herself seen that all was thus safe, she relieved her heart with a

sigh, and embraced her son.

CHAPTER V.

BATHS--RESTORATION OF BEAUTY.

If, as certain French physicians maintain, sea-water baths have only a

mechanical action, infuse no new principle into the blood and _are

merely a simple branch of hydropathy_, it must be confessed that of

all the forms of hydropathy they are the harshest and most hazardous.

Let it once be clearly shown that that sea-water, so rich in life,

bestows no more of vitality than fresh water and we must confess that

it is little less than madness to take sea-baths in the open air and

at all the risk of the wind, the sun, and the thousand possible

accidents.

Whoever has seen a poor creature come out of the water after taking

his first bath, whoever has seen him come out pale and shuddering,

must perceive how dangerous such experiments are to certain

constitutions. Be assured that none of us would submit to so much

suffering if health could be as readily secured without suffering and

without danger, in one's own house, and by common fresh water

hydropathy.

And, as though the impression of a first sea-bath were not

sufficiently strong, it is aggravated for a nervous woman by the

presence of the crowd of bathers. For her it is a cruel exhibition to

make before a critical crowd, before rivals, delighted to see her

ugly, for once; before silly and heartless men, who, with telescope in

hand, watch the sad hazards of the toilette of the poor humiliated

woman.

To brave all this the patient must have faith, great, surpassing

faith, in the Sea. She must believe that no other remedy will meet her

case, and must determine that, at whatever risks, she will be

permeated by the virtues of the sea water. "And why not be thus

_permeated_?" ask the German physicians. "If at first entering the

water you contract and close up your pores, reaction brings almost

immediately a warmth that reopens them, dilates the skin and renders

it very capable of _absorbing_ the life of the sea."

The two operations, the closing and the reopening of the pores, the

first chill and the succeeding glow, almost always take place in five

or six minutes. To stay in longer than the latter space of time, is

almost always injurious.

Moreover, we should not venture upon this violent emotion of the cold

bath without a preliminary course of warm bathing, to facilitate

absorption. Our skin which is entirely composed of the little mouths

which we call pores, and which, in its way, both absorbs and digests,

as the stomach does, wants time to get accustomed to such strong

nourishment as the _mucus_ of the sea, that salted milk with which the

sea makes and remakes such myriads of creatures. By a graduated course

of baths, hot, warm, lukewarm, and almost cold, the skin acquires this

habit, and, so to speak, this appetite; and "increase of appetite

grows by what it feeds on."

For the hard ceremony of the first cold sea-water baths, at least, the

odious gaze of a mob of people is to be avoided. Let them be taken in

private and with no one present but a perfectly reliable person who,

at need, will help the nervous patient, and rub her with hot cloths

and revive her with warm drinks containing a few drops of the potent

elixir.

"But," it may be said, "the presence of other bathers lessens the

danger; we are far different from Virginia, who, in an extreme danger,

preferred drowning herself to taking a bath." A great mistake; we are

more nervous now than ever we were. And the impression of which I

speak is at once so vivid and so revolting--I mean for nervous

people--that it is quite capable of killing, by aneurism or apoplexy.

I love the people, but I hate a mob; especially a noisy mob of fast

livers who come to sadden the great Sea with their noise, their

fashions, and their absurdities. What! Is not the land large enough?

Must such people come to the Sea to martyrize the sick and to

vulgarize the majesty of the Sea, that wild and true grandeur?

I once had the ill luck to run from Havre to Honfleur in a craft

loaded with such fools. Even in that short trip they found time to

grow weary of quiet, and to get up a ball. One of them--probably a

dancing master--had his Kit with him and played all sorts of dances in

the presence of that great Ocean. Happily one could not hear much of

that small music; scarcely now and then could a shrill note or two

rise above the solemn, the truly solemn bass of the Sea's roar. I can

easily imagine the sadness of the lady who, in July, suffers under the

invasion of a mob of these fops, fools, and gossips. All liberty is

then at an end. Even in the most retired spot the drowsy ear of night

is vexed by the boisterous echoes from saloon, and dancing room,

coffee-room and Casino. In the day the host of yellow gloves and

varnished boots crowds the shore. One lady is observed alone, with her

boy. Why is that? Impertinents wish to know, they approach, and,

gathering sea shells for the child, endeavor to force their

conversation on the mother. The lady is embarrassed, bored to death,

and has to confine herself to her lodging or venture out only in

early morning, while the empty pated revellers are still sleeping off

the effects of the last night's follies. Then, from her seclusion flow

a thousand ill natured comments. She becomes alarmed, for some of

these idlers have influence and may, possibly, injure her husband.

Nowhere more than at the sea side, are we inquisitive, and the poor

woman becomes agitated and sleepless during the long hot nights of

July and August, and if, towards morning, she at length sleeps, she is

not much more tranquil. The baths, far from cooling, add the saline

irritation to the fierce heat of the dog days. From her youth she

derives, not strength, but fever; and, weak and highly nervous, she is

all the more disturbed by that interior storm.

Interior, but yet not hidden. The Sea, the pitiless Sea, brings to the

skin the proofs of that excitement which the sufferer would fain keep

hidden. She betrays it by red blotches, slight efflorescences. All

these petty annoyances, which still more afflict the children, and

which in them the mother looks upon as signs of returning health, the

mothers feel as humiliations when seen on their own faces. They fear

that they will therefore be less loved. So little do they know of the

heart of man. They know not that the sharpest spur of love is not

beauty, but suffering.

"Oh! If he should find me ugly!" is the poor woman's morning thought,

as she looks in her glass. She at once fears and desires the coming of

her husband. And yet she feels so lonely, and fears, she knows not

what, amidst that noisy crowd. She dares not go out, she becomes

feverish, and at length is confined to her bed. In little more than

twenty-four hours, the beloved one is by her side.

Who has summoned him? She certainly has not. But, in his great

straggling handwriting, her boy has written to his father thus: "My

dear Papa, come quickly. Mamma is confined to bed, and the other day

she said 'oh if he were here!'" And accordingly he was there, and

immediately she felt herself recovering. And he, how happy he is!

Happy to see her restored, happy to be necessary to her, and happy to

see her looking so beautiful. She is somewhat sun burnt, but how young

she looks! What life in her glance, and in her flowing and silky hair!

Is this mere fiction, this so prompt restoration of life, beauty, and

tenderness; this delightful incident of finding in a wife, a young

mistress, so happy in being rejoined by a husband? Not at all. It is

an agreeable sight which right often may be witnessed. If rare among

the very rich, it is not so among the laborious families whose labor

makes them, during most of their lives, close prisoners. Their forced

separations are painful, and their reunion has a charm, a rapture,

which they do not even try to conceal.

When we consider the prodigious tension of modern life, for toiling

men, (that is to say, for every one but a few idlers) one cannot but

be glad to witness those scenes of joy, when a reunited family expand

their hearts. Those who have no hearts, call all this vulgar and

prosaic. But, the form matters little, where the substance is so

surpassingly good. The careworn merchant, who, from three months to

three months, has only with utmost difficulty saved the bark in which

the destiny of his wife and children is exposed to shipwreck; the

administration victim; the employé, worn well nigh to death by the

injustice and tyranny of the offices--these suffering captives, are

released, for a brief space, from their galling chains, and the tender

family, the mother and child, endeavor to make the husband and father

forget his cares.

And well able are wife and child to wile the worn man into that sweet

temporary oblivion. Their gaiety, their caresses, and the distractions

of the sea-side, soothe his wearied soul, and fill his mind with other

and happier thoughts. It is their triumph. They hurry off to visit

_their_ beach, to contemplate _their_ sea, and to enjoy his

admiration, which he, worthy man, just a little exaggerates, because

he wishes them to be pleased. Yes! it is _their_ sea; having bathed

in it, they have taken possession; and he, the toilworn husband and

father, must share with them in their vast possession. The young woman

no longer fears that crowd which formerly so much annoyed, and even

alarmed, her; now that he is beside her she is not merely safe, but

bold, daring; to say the truth, just a little presumptuous. She is

quite familiar with the sea; familiar enough to be determined to learn

to swim. At first she is supported by her active and bold boy.

Supported by him, she swims--but I fear if left to herself her native

timidity would return, and she would sink. Yet she is in love with the

sea; yea, jealous of the sea. For, in fact, the sea inspires no

moderate passions. There is I know not what of electric inspiration,

of all-absorbing passion for the Sea, in all who truly know it.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RESTORATION OF HEART AND BROTHERHOOD.

There are three forms of Nature which especially expand and elevate

our souls, release her from her heavy clay and earthy limits, and send

her, exulting, to sail amidst the wonders and mysteries of the

Infinite.

First; there is the variable Ocean of Air with its glorious banquet of

light, its vapors, its twilight, and its shifting phantasmagoria of

capricious creatures; coming into existence only to depart on the

instant.

Second; there is the fixed Ocean of the earth, its undulating and vast

waves as we see them from the tops of "earth o'er gazing mountains,"

the elevations which testify its antique mobility, and the sublimity

of its mightier mountains clad in eternal snows.

Third; there is the Ocean of waters, less mobile than air, less fixed

than earth, but docile, in its movements, to the celestial bodies.

These three things form the gamut by which the Infinite speaks to our

souls. Nevertheless, let us point out some very notable differences.

The air-Ocean is so mobile that we can scarcely examine it. It

deceives, it decoys, it diverts; it dissipates and breaks up our chain

of thought. For an instant, it is an immense hope, the day of an

infinity;--anon, it is not so; all flies from before us, and our

hearts are grieved, agitated, and filled with doubt. Why have I been

permitted to see for a moment that immense flood of light? The memory

of that brief gleaming must ever abide with me, and that memory makes

all things here on Earth look dark.

The fixed ocean of the mountains is not thus transient or fugitive; on

the contrary, it stops us at every step, and imposes upon us the

necessity of a very hard, though wholesome, gymnastic. Contemplation

here has to be bought at the price of the most violent action.

Nevertheless, the opacity of the Earth, like the transparency of the

air, frequently deceives and bewilders us. Who can forget that for ten

years Ramon, in vain, sought to reach Mount Perdu, though often within

sight of it?

Great, very great, is the difference between the two elements; the

Earth is mute and the Ocean speaks. The Ocean is a voice. It speaks to

the distant stars, it answers to their movements in its deep and

solemn language. It speaks to the Earth on the shores, replying to the

echoes that reply again; by turns wailing, soothing, threatening, its

deepest roar is presently succeeded by a sad, pathetic sigh. And it

especially addresses itself to Man. As it is the fecund womb in which

creation began and still continues, it has creation's living

eloquence; it is Life speaking to Life! The millions, the countless

myriads, of beings, to which it gives birth, are its words. That milky

Sea from which they proceed, that fecund marine jelly, even before it

is organized, while yet white and foaming,--speaks. All these mingled

together makes the unity, the great and solemn voice of the Ocean.

And, "what are those wild waves saying?" They are telling of _Life_,

of the eternal Metamorphosis; of the great fluid existence, shaming

our senseless ambitions of the earth-world.

They are telling of _Immortality_. An indomitable strength is at the

bottom of Nature, how much more so at Nature's summit, the Soul! And

it speaks of Partnership, of Union. Let us accept the swift exchange

which, in the individual, exists between the diverse elements; let us

accept the superior Law which unites the living members of the same

body--Humanity; and, still more, let us accept and respect the supreme

Law which makes us create and coöperate with the Great Soul,

associated as we are--in proportion with our powers,--with the loving

Harmony of the world--copartners in the Life of God.

The Sea very distinctly, in that voice that is mistakenly supposed to

be a mere confusion of sounds, articulates those grave words. But man

does not easily recognize those words, when he first arrives on the

shore exhausted by worldly struggles, deafened, distracted, by worldly

babble. The sense of the higher life is dulled even among the best of

us; the best of us, to a greater or less extent, resist that sense.

And who shall teach us to quicken and obey that sense? Nature? Not

yet. Softened into tenderness by the family, by the innocence of the

child and the tenderness of the wife, man first takes an interest,

real and strong, in the things of humanity, in the cares and studies

which tend to preserve the family. But woman is earlier and more

deeply interested in the Sea, in the Poetry of the Infinite. And thus

we see that souls have sexes as well as bodies have. For the man

thinks of the seaman more than of the sea's wonders; he thinks of its

dangers, of its daily and hourly tragedies, and of the floating

destiny of his family. The woman, tender as she is to individuals,

takes less interest in classes. Every laborious man, who visits the

coast, bestows his principal attention and his principal sympathy upon

the hard life of the man of toil, the fisherman and the sailor; upon

that hard hard life so laborious and perilous and so little productive

of gain.

Such a man, while his wife rises and dresses her sweet child, walks

upon the beach in the early morning just as the fishing boats return.

The morning is cold, the night has been rainy, and the boats have

shipped many a heavy sea. The men, and not only men but very small

boys, too, are wet to the skin. And what have they brought back? Not

much;--but they _have_ come back, and that is much. For last night,

see you, they shipped many a sea and looked at death closely many a

time. Ah! When the stranger reflects upon the hard life brought

immediately under his purview, surely, however much he may have

complained of his own lot, he will now learn to say "My lot is far

better than theirs."

In the evening, just when the sun sets, coppery and threatening, into

the sinister horizon, these men already have to sail again. And the

stranger says to them, "Shall you not have bad weather, think you?"

"Sir," they reply, "we must earn our bit of bread," and they and their

sturdy boys push off to Sea. And their wives, more than serious, sad,

follow them with their eyes; and more than one of those wives whisper

an earnest prayer. And the stranger, too, whispers his prayer, and

says to himself, "They will have a dirty night; would that they may

return in safety."

And thus it is that the Sea opens the heart, and that even the hardest

hearts are softened in presence of the great stern mother. In that

presence, no matter what we may strive to think, we become humanized,

sympathizing, tender. And Heaven knows how much need and how much

occasion there are for sympathy there! Every kind of want and struggle

is to be found among those brave, honest and intelligent marine

populations who are incomparably the best of our country. I have lived

a good deal on the coast. Every heroic virtue, which an inland

population would praise so highly, is there an every day and very

common-place matter. And, still more curious!--there is no pride among

these hardy mariners. All our French pride is for the landsmen--the

soldiery. But among our marine population the greatest dangers count

for nothing; every one braves such every day, and no one ever thinks

of boasting of them. I have never met with men who were milder or more

modest (I had almost said more timid) than our Gironde pilots who,

from Royan and from St. George's gallantly put out, to face all that

Cordouan has of peril. There, as at Granville, and every where else on

that coast, it is the women alone who have anything to say, or any

business to do, on land. The brave pilots, when once on shore, never

say a word in the way of command; peaceable as their valiant wives are

superbly noisy, the men leave the women full authority to administer

the poor income and to rule (occasionally with a pretty hard hand)

the youngsters of the household. The husband, in fact, though he reads

no Latin, literally and practically translates the Latin poet:

"Happy, when in mine own house I am as nobody."

Their wives, greatly interested about the foreigner, had,

nevertheless, let it be boldly as truly said, a royal, a magnificent,

a generous, kindly feeling. At St. Georges, they cut up, and scraped

up, all their linen to make lint for the wounded at Solferino. At

Entretat, three Englishmen being wrecked, and in awful danger, the

whole population, men, women and children, rushed to the rescue, and

dragged them to land with all the outward and visible signs of a real

and a violent sensibility. And they were fed, and clothed, and tended,

and relieved, even as though they had been compatriots, and very dear

friends. This occurred in April, 1859.

Oh! Those kind French people! And yet, how hard, hitherto, has been

their life! In our _regime_ of Classes (so useful, however, in itself,

and from which we derive so much of giant strength) the sailor is

compelled, at any moment, to leave the merchant service for the war

ship, daily and hourly growing more severe, more crushing, in its hard

discipline! Forty years ago the sailor sang, as he worked at the

capstan bar; _now_ he heaves in silence. (Ial. Arch II. 522). And in

the merchant service, the great fisheries are almost worked out. The

profits of the Whale Fishery belong, almost entirely, to the

outfitter. (Boitard, Diet. art. Cetaceæ, Whales, &c.) The Cod has

diminished, the Mackerel grows more and more scarce. A very precious

little book (_The Story of Rose Duchenin_, by herself) gives a most

touching picture of this great destitution. Alphonse Karr, that

admirable writer, had the good sense to write that book from the

dictation of that Fisherman's Wife, without altering a word of hers,

or adding a word of his own.

Étretat is not, properly speaking, a port. Situated little, if any,

above the level of the Sea, and defended only by the pebbly bar which

the sea has washed in, it is but poorly sheltered. And consequently,

it is necessary that, according to the old Celtic custom, every vessel

that runs in there, must be hauled up to the Quay by the cable and the

capstan; the capstan bars being handled by the women, for the lads are

all at sea. The labor and the difficulty will be easily understood by

all who read this. The lubberly craft, as it is drawn up, hits hard

from boulder to boulder, and ascends only by leaps, violent and

damaging, and still more threatening than either. And at every leap

and every shock, those poor women suffer from the hard blow to their

necks and from the bitterly painful emotions of their poor hearts.

When I first witnessed this terrible labor, I was wounded, saddened in

mine inmost heart. My first impulse was to bear a hand and lend my

aid. But the thing would seem so singular, I thought, that a

something, I know not what, of false shame, arrested me. But every day

I lent a hand, at least with my wishes and my prayers. I went, and

looked. Those young and charming, though anything but pretty, women

and girls did not sport the short red petticoat of the coasts, but

long robes; and for the most part, they had the refined and delicate

aspect of the young lady of the great city. Bending to that hard toil

(a filial, and, therefore, a noble toil) they had a certain mingled

grace and pride, and, in all that hard toil, not a complaint, not even

a sigh, escaped them.

That very small Quay of Boulders, small as it is, yet is too large. I

saw there a number of vessels, abandoned, useless. For, see you, the

Fishery has become so unproductive! The fish have fled that shore.

Entretat languishes, perishes, so near to languishing, and, but for

its sea-bathing, perishing, Dieppe, which owes its present

existence--such as it is!--to the greater or less number of visitors,

who render Dieppe in one season prosperous, and in another as nearly

as possible, bankrupt. And this very influx from Paris, worldly Paris,

is, after all, morally, at least, a real scourge to that marine

population.

Our Norman populations who discovered America, and who, ever since the

fourteenth century, have known Africa, are every year becoming less

and less in love with the sea, so that, year by year, more and more of

them are turning their faces inland. The descendant of the bold fellow

who formerly harpooned the Whale, is now a pale cotton-spinner of

Montville or of Balbec.

It is for Science, it is for the Law, to put a stop to this fearful

decay. The former with its skill, its sound advice will,--if such

advice be resolutely acted upon, _economise the Sea and_ revive that

Fishery which is the very nursery of Seamen; and in the next place,

the Law, less exclusively caring for the interests of the real

_élite_, the real flower and elect of the country, in no wise to be

compared to those great masses from which we draw our soldiery, but

who, under given circumstances, will be able to cut the Gordian knot

of the world.

Such were my reflections, on the little wharf or Quay of Etretat, in

the cloudy and rainy summer of 1860, while the capstan bar was heaved

at by young females, while the capstan screamed at every turn, and

while the whole scene put one in mind of _desolation for the present,

and worse to come_.

And thus is it with our century. Ever since 1730, and so in the

present day, labor, fatigue, and slowness have been upon us. Let us

all, of no matter what rank, put hand and strength to the capstan bar!

But, alas! how many of us prefer _picking up pebbles on the wild_ sea

shore!

We read that Scipio, stern conqueror of Carthage, and Terence, the

lucky refugee from that shipwreck of a world, amused themselves in

picking up shells on the sea shore; capital friends in their

forgetfulness of the past. They enjoyed the _dolce far niente_; they

were luxurious in their enjoyment of the illusion of being _boys once

more_. But let not that be _our_ wish. We will not, we must not, we

dare not, forget _our_ duty; no, with persistent labor, with uncooling

ardor, we will put our hands to the capstan bar, and help to _warp up_

this great, but worn and much tried century.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NEW LIFE OF THE NATIONS.

Just as I was finishing this book, in December, 1860, resuscitated

Italy, that great and glorious mother of the modern nations, sent me

tidings, in the shape of a small book, a mere pamphlet. It was my "New

Year's gift for 1861."

And from that Italy how often have we had great and beautiful tidings?

In 1300 news from Dante; in 1500 news from Americus Vespucius; in 1600

from Galileo. And what are our present tidings from Florence?

Apparently, but small. But who knows? Perhaps the results will be

immense! It is a discourse of but a few pages, a medical pamphlet, and

its very title is more likely to repel than to attract. And, yet, in

those few pages there is matter which, duly acted upon, may change the

whole destiny of our great, but weak, our often wise, but still more

often mistaken Humanity.

Opposite to the Title I find two portraits, one a deceased boy, and

another dying. The author of the pamphlet is a Doctor, who, very

unusual thing! has been so terribly impressed by the fate of his poor

unknown and, but for him, uncared for children, that he has been led

to write for our instruction, his pain and his regret.

The elder of these children, of a fine and high nature, in the

bitterness, as it would seem, of a great destiny cut short, has a

bouquet upon his pillow. His mother,--poor, poor, mother! has given it

to him this morning, having nothing else to give, and the nurses,

seeing the quite religious love with which he cared for the poor gift

of that poor mother, have allowed him to keep it.

The second, still younger, in all the tender grace of his four or five

years, is evidently dying; his eyes are fast veiling beneath the death

film. Each of these poor boys had shown sympathy for the other. When

they could no longer speak their sympathy, they _looked_ it in their

tender glances, and the good kind Doctor, (blessings on him for the

kindly thought!) had them placed opposite to each other, and his

engraving shows them to us (touching sight), just as, dying, they

exchanged their sympathizing glances!

The whole is truly, and nobly, Italian. In any other country a man

would fear to be laughed at in showing himself thus truly tender. Not

so in Italy. The Doctor wrote to his Italian public, just as he might

soliloquise in the privacy of his own study; and he unreservedly pours

out all his feelings with an intensity, with a perfectly feminine

sensibility, which will make the worldly man laugh, and the kindly man

weep. And it must be confessed that his native language has much to do

with his power over our feelings; it is the language of women and

children, at once so tender and so striking, beautiful even in its

terrible accent of grief and suffering. It is a shower of mingled

tears and roses.

And then he suddenly stops himself. and apologizes. He would not have

written thus, but for sufficient cause, and that cause is that "Those

poor children would not have died if they could have been sent to the

sea-side." And, the inference? That at the sea-side we must have

Hospitals for children. Now here, if you please, is a really skilful,

as well as greatly humane, man. He touches the heart; and the rest

necessarily follows. Men listen attentively and are touched; women

burst into an agony of tears. They beg, they pray, they insist--and

who is to resist them? Without waiting for government action, or

government aid, a voluntary society has founded a "_Children's

Sea-Bathing Hospital_" at Viareggio.

All who have been there admire the crescent-like sweep, made by the

Mediterranean, when it quits Genoa passes the magnificent road of

Spezzia and reaches the Virgilian Olive Groves of Tuscany. About half

way from Leghorn a cape, stolen from the Sea, is the site, henceforth

the sacred site, of this truly admirable foundation.

Florence, by the way, has preceded all Europe in the way of charitable

foundations; she had hospitals before the close of the tenth century,

and in the year 1287, when Beatrice inspired and maddened Dante, her

father, the cruel persecutor of the greater, far greater Dante,

founded the hospital of _St. Maria Nuova_. Even Luther, though in his

travels he saw little to admire in Italy, _did_ admire, and very

heartily, its Hospitals and the beautiful Italian women, who, veiled,

stood by the bedsides of the sick sinner and the dying pauper.

This new foundation, of which we have spoken, will, we trust, be a

model for Europe. We owe that much to children; for upon them it is

that fall the worst effects of our murderous toils and our still more

murderous excesses in every kind of bad life.

It is impossible not to perceive the visible and terrible

deterioration of our Western races. The causes of it are numerous and

very various. The chief of them all is the immensity and the constant

and rapid increase of our hours of labor. For the most part, it is

compulsory; compelled by trade regulations and trade necessities. But

even where no such compulsion exists, there the same ardor of long

hours and hard toil exists. I know not what demoniac fire exists in

our modern temperament. Compared to ourselves, all former centuries

have been positively idle. Our results, no doubt, are immense. From

our prolific brain and iron hand, proceeds such a marvellous flood of

art, science, inventions, productions, and ideas, that we are actually

glutting the markets, not only of the present, but also of the future.

But at what cost are we doing all this? At the price of an awful

expenditure of strength, and of nervous energy; we are enervating

ourselves, our works are prodigious, and _our children_ are miserable.

We condemn them to disease, suffering, and premature death even before

they are born. _Our spendthrift waste of energy entails feebleness and

early death upon them!_ And let it be remembered that this immense

amount of production is the work of only a comparatively small number.

America does little of it, Asia next to nothing, and even in Europe

all, or nearly all, is done by a few millions in the extreme West. The

others laugh to see the really working peoples thus wear themselves

out. Poor Barbarians! Do you fancy, then, that this Russian or that

Backwoodsman, can replace, at need, a mechanic of London or an

optician of Paris? No; we have become such by the education and the

practice of long centuries. A whole and a very long tradition is in

us. What would become of you if we should die? None of you are ready

to succeed us.

But this same murderous toil, this absolutely suicidal production, if

we be willing to accept it for ourselves, it is our duty _not_ to

accept it for our children; we have no right thus to _add murder to

suicide_. And, yet, that is what we really are doing. They are born

already, with our fatigue, our cerebral exhaustion. With a perfectly

frightful precocity, they _know_, they _can_, they _will_, and they

_do_. But how long? The grave opens for them _so_ early!

The human infant, like the young plant, needs rest, air, and a sweet

liberty. Do we give our children any of these? No; our very virtues,

as well as our vices, deny them all. Everything seems to combine to

kill them early. Do we love them? No doubt; and yet our worst malice

could not do more than we do to kill them early or to cause them to

live miserably, pitifully, sufferingly, effeminate. Such a society as

ours, so overworked, so over excited, so constantly agitated, is,

(whether society will confess it or not) a real, and a murderous war

upon our children.

Especially there are times and seasons in the course of the child's

growth when his life quite literally hangs upon a thread. Life, at

those times, seems to borrow human voice, and to ask,--"Can I possibly

last?" At those critical times, see you, the contact of so many, the

close, sedentary, and imprisoned life of cities, is just simply Death

to those delicate and fading creatures. Or, even worse than Death, it

is the commencement of a long career of suffering and helplessness far

worse than Death itself. In this latter case you leave a poor creature

who, now sick, now well, drags on a wretched existence, a misery to

himself and a burthen upon public charity.

All this must be cut short. We must have foresight combined with

humanity. We must snatch the child from these murderous surroundings;

we must take him from man and give him to the grand nursing of the

fecund Nature--of the Sea. And, then, the child will live and become

Man. Your very foundlings, if you thus treat them may some day become

your Nelsons and your Napiers, and your community, instead of having

to support an habitual patient of your hospitals, will have the bold

seaman or the strong laborer.

And, for the matter of that, why need we depend upon the State to do

this great thing? Florence hath taught us that the royal heart is

fully equal to any other royalty; woman in her mercy, _is_ a royalty;

she commands, entreats, and man obeys. Woman! Have mercy upon the

children!

If I were a young and lovely woman, I well know what _I_ should say,

and what _I_ should do. I should have all around me my magnificence

and my luxury, and when on some fine day, my lover in his love should

be eager, passionate, ready to give great gifts, I would say to him:--

"Please offer me none of your Cachemires, designed in England and

woven in India; for Diamonds I really care nothing; Berthollet who

knows so well how to imitate Nature can make Diamonds, if he so

please. But if you really wish to make me a present which I shall

love, and for which I shall love you, be so good as to get me a nice

well sheltered, yet beautifully sunny home, in which I can lodge some

three score, or so, of poor children. They will want no fine

furniture; not much of any kind. Once established in that sunny,

quiet, and kindly home, they will be well fed, and well cared for;

and, my word for it, not a woman will go to the sea-side for her own

health who will not give her mite towards the support of those poor

children. If Beatrice of Florence could influence her father to found

such a home, such a saving refuge, cannot we women of France do as

much? Is it that we are less beautiful, or are you less truly in

Love?"

"If the Sea, as you every morning tell me, has beautified and improved

me so much; surely, your best gift would be my keepsake for the beach.

And if you really love me, you will share with me in this work, this

great work of bringing to the bosom of the great Ocean-mother a whole

family of these perishing children. Let her take our pledges of a

durable tenderness and purest love! Let her bear witness that, in the

presence of the Infinite, we _were_, in very truth, united in one holy

thought!"

One woman has thus commenced and another will continue, the common

mother, France. No Institution more useful, no money better expended.

And, in fact, not much needs to be expended. The chief thing necessary

will be to transfer some of our charitable institutions from the

interior. For many of those institutions expend their funds in mere

waste; in fact, some of them might be quite truly termed Pauper

Manufactories.

The Romans had the good sense never to grudge expense for anything

that concerned the public health. Just look at their splendid

aqueducts, just consider their public baths where quite gratuitously,

or, at the utmost, at the charge of a half cent, the meanest could

bathe, and you will at once understand their public spirit, their

really large and grand patriotism. Fresh water baths, salt water

baths, everything was provided for that lazy and non-producing

plebeianism! Perhaps, in fact, in the politico-economical sense, the

Patricians of Rome did too much for that, at once indolent and

seditious _Plebs_. And shall we, WE, WE hesitate to do far less to

save our own race, that one creative and laborious race that creates

all that is really progressive on our globe?

I speak not here merely, or even principally, of the children; but of

all. Every town, at this very instant, has a town within a town, a

town of horrible sufferers; of the poor, and the afflicted; they are

going to be Paupers not only now, but for the whole remainder of their

lives. Again, and again, and again they will come; cured to-day, and

returning to-morrow worse and more helpless than ever. They must be

enormously expensive; and who pays the cost? Why their hardier fellow

workmen who, in the ultimate result, pay all our expenses! And the

laborer dies young, and leaves his young ones a burthen on the public

purse.

_Prevention is better than cure._ You can do far more for the man who

is in danger of being sick than for him who is already worn out. Ten

days or a fortnight of rest and good living at the sea-side, will

restore him to you, a good, sound, solid laborer. His carriage, and

the cheap shelter, for so few days! by that recuperating sea-side, I

tell you again, will restore him to you, a good sound, honest, and

independent laborer. And the man will be saved, and his young family;

and such a man as, if you once lose him, you cannot easily replace.

No! You cannot replace him, for, as I have already said, every really

working man is the slow product, of a long tradition of thought and of

labor, and he himself is a work of art; of that so much misunderstood

human art in which _Humanity itself becomes a creative Power_.

Who shall give me to see that crowd of inventive people, that creating

and manufacturing people, who in the world's service are hourly

wearing themselves out; who, I ask, will give me to see that People,

that true People, enabled to repair their shattered frames at the

magnificent sea-side? Let this ability be provided for them, and all

classes and conditions will equally share the benefit. And let it not

be forgotten that all classes and conditions _owe_ thus much to the

worn toilers, for by their toil, their excessive toil, all classes are

benefited. It is by their very blood, by their very marrow, that all

classes receive their enjoyments, their elegance, and their

enlightenment. Let society, then, give to them the repose, the saline

air, the restoring waters of the great restoring Sea. In doing thus

much, society will benefit itself; while doing the simplest justice to

its worn toilers.

Have pity upon yourselves, all ye poor men of the West. Consult upon,

and act for, the common weal. Earth entreats you to live and offers

you that which is her best, the SEA, to repair your own strength and

thus secure your children against your weakness. Earth would be ruined

if you persist in ruining yourselves, for you are her Genius, her

inventive and working Soul. She lives by your life, and if you die

she also will die. In the name, then, of Humanity and of Nature, too,

Nations! Attention! Mercy for yourselves; Earth supplies you with the

means of laboring and living; THE SEA offers you the still better

means of living WELL.

NOTES.

"That vast animal the Earth, which for heart has a magnet, has at its

surface a doubtful being, electric and phosphorescent, more sensitive,

and infinitely more prolific, than the Earth itself.

"That being which we call the Sea,--is it a parasite of the vast

animal which we call the Earth? No. It has not a distinct and hostile

personality. It vivifies and fecundates the Earth with its vapors; it

even appears to be the Earth itself in that which it has of the most

productive; in other words, its principal organ of fecundity."

German Dreams! But are they, in feet, entirely Dreams? More than one

great mind, without going quite so far, seem to admit for both Earth

and Sea a kind of obscure personality. Ritter and Lyell say: "The

Earth labors herself; can she be impotent to organise herself? How are

we to imagine that the creative power which we observe in every being

on the globe can be denied to the globe itself?" But how does the

globe act? How at the present time does it obtain accretion? From the

Sea and its living denizens.

The full solution of these great questions would require a more

profound study of Physiology than we as yet have made. Nevertheless,

during the last twenty years every thing tends this way: 1. We have

studied the irregular and exterior phase of the movements of the Sea,

we have inquired into the _Law of Storms_. 2. We have studied the

movements proper to the Sea, its _currents_, the play of its arteries

and veins, of which the first propel the salt water from the Equator

to the Poles, while the second return it, freshened, to the Equator:

3. The third and more difficult question on which modern chemistry

will throw light, is that as to the real nature of the marine _mucus_,

of that unctuous gelatine which is every where found in Sea water, and

which appears to be a living liquid.

It is quite recently that the sounding of Brooke, and more especially

the soundings for the submarine telegraph from Europe to America, have

begun to reveal the secrets of the bottom of the Sea. Are its lowest

depths peopled? Formerly, that was denied, but Forbes and James Ross

found life throughout them.

Previous to those splendid discoveries, which were made less than

twenty years ago, the book of the Sea could not be written. The first

attempt at writing it was made by M. Hartwig. For my own part, I was

still far from the idea of writing it when, in 1845, in preparing my

book of "The People," I commenced, in Normandy, my study of the

population of the Coasts. In the fifteen subsequent years, this vast

and difficult subject has been continually growing upon me, and has

followed me from shore to shore.

The first book of this Volume--_A glance at the Seas_, is, as the

title indicates, merely a preliminary promenade. All the important

matters therein are discussed in the following three books. I except

two, however, _Tides_ and _Beacons_. Here my principal guide has been

M. Chazallon's important _Annual_, already numbering twenty volumes,

the first having appeared in 1839. If the Civic Crown was bestowed

upon the man who saved one human life, how many such crowns has not M.

Chazallon deserved! Anterior to his labors, the errors, as to the

tides, were enormous. By immense labor he has corrected the

observations for nearly five hundred ports from the Adour to the Elbe.

His _Annual_ gives the most exact information upon the Beacons.

Similarly valuable is the clear and agreeably written exposition in

the _Souvenirs_ of M. de Quatrefages on the Lighthouse system of

Fresnel and Arago. The admirable system of revolving lighthouses, in

which the lights flash and disappear, at short and regular intervals,

is due to Lemoine, Mayor of Calais.

For the various names of the Sea refer to Ad. Pictet-_Origines

Indo-Europeennes_. On the water, consult the Introduction to Deville's

_Annual of the Waters of France_; Aime's _Annale's de Chimie_ II., V.,

XII., XIII., and XV. Morren, the same, I, and Acad de Bruxelles, XIV.,

&c. On the saltness of the Sea Chapman quoted by Tricaut _Ann. de

Hydrographie_ XIII., 1857, and Thomassy's _Bulletin de la Société

Geographique_, 4 June, 1860.

I did not thoroughly comprehend the Shore of _Saint Michel en Greve_

and the questions concerning it, until I read in the _Revue des Deux

Mondes_ the two very fine articles of M. Baude, full alike of facts

and ideas. I speak elsewhere of his excellent views on the Fisheries.

In speaking (Chap. III.) of Brittany, I must acknowledge my obligation

to the book of Cambry which formerly gave me my first ideas upon that

subject. It should be read in the edition which Émile Souvestre

enriched, and we may say doubled, with his excellent notes and notices

which thenceforth made us thoroughly acquainted with the _Derniers

Bretons_. In several admirable little tales of graphic and striking

truthfulness, Souvestre has given the best existing pictures of our

western coasts, especially of Finisterre and the neighboring shores of

the Loire. I should be glad to quote something from a writer so

agreeable, and a friend so sincerely lamented, but the limits of this

little book prevent me from quoting any literary matter.

The remarkable observation made by Elie de Beaumont, quoted by me in

Chapter 4 of Book I., stands at the head of his article--which, in

itself, is a great book--_Terrains_ in the Dictionary of M. d'Orbigny.

What I have said about St. George's, in Chapter 7, is much better said

in Pelletan's books on _Royan_ and in his _Pasteur du Desert_. That

Pastor, as is generally known, was the grandfather of Pelletan, the

reverend minister Jarousseau, so admirably heroic in saving his

enemies. His small house, still standing, is a veritable Temple of

Humanity.

Notes to Book 2. Chapter I, _Fecundity_. On the Herring, see Vol. I of

De Reste's translation of an anonymous Dutch work; Noël de la

Moriniere in his excellent works printed and unpublished;

Valenciences' _Poissons_, &c.

Chapter II. _Milky Sea._ Bory de Saint Vincent, _Diet. Classique_,

Articles _Mer et Matieres_; Zimmerman, the _World before Man_, a

beautiful and popular work which is in every one's hands. I am

indebted also to the work of M. Bronn, crowned by the _Academy of the

Sciences_. On the universal innocuousness of the vegetation of the

Sea, consult Pouchet's _Botanique_ a work of the highest order. For

the plants which become animals; see Vaucher's Conferves, 1803;

Decaisne and Thuret _Annales de Sc. Nat._, 1845; Volumes III., XIV.

and XVI., and _Comptes de l'Acad._, 1853, Vol. XXXVI.; also, articles

of Montagne Dict d'Orb. On the Volcanoes, see part 4, of Humboldt's

Cosmos, and Ritter, translated by Elisee Reclus, _Revue Germ._, 30th

November, 1859.

Chapter III. _The Atom._ In the text I have quoted the great masters,

Ehrenberg, Dujardin, Pouchet, Heterogenie. In the end spontaneous

generation will conquer.

Chapters IV., V., VI., &c. Throughout this book, in ascending from

inferior to superior life, I have taken for my guiding thread in the

great labyrinth, the hypothesis of Metamorphosis but without serious

intention of constructing a _chain of beings_. The idea of ascending

Metamorphosis is natural to the mind, and is, in some sort,

irresistibly imposed upon us. Cuvier himself, at the close of his

Introduction to his _Poissons_, confesses that if that theory has no

Historical value it _has a logical value_. On the _Sponge_, see Paul

Gervais Dict. d'Orb. V. 375; Grant in Chenn, 307, &c. On Polypes,

Corals, and Madrepores (Chapters 4 and 5) besides Forster, Peron and

Dawin consult Quoy and Gaimard; Lamouroux, _Polypes Flexibles_; Milne

Edwards, Polypes and Ascidies of the Channel, &c. On the Calcaire, see

the two Geologies of Lyell.

Chapter VI. _Medusæ, Polypes, &c._ See Ehrenberg, Lession, Dujardin,

&c. Forbes shows by vegetable analogies that these animal

metamorphoses are very simple phenomena. Annals of Nat. History,

December, 1844. See also his excellent dissertations, _Medusæ_, in

quarto, 1849.

Chapter VII. _The Oursin or Sea Hedgehog._ See the curious

dissertations in which M. Cailland has described his discoveries.

Chapter VIII. _Shells, Pearl, and Mother of Pearl._ The capital work

on these is Blainville's _Malacology_. See, also, on the Pearl Mabius

of Hamburgh, _Revue Germ._, July 31, 1858. I have profitably consulted

on this subject our celebrated Jeweller, M. Froment Meurice.

Chapter IX. _The Poulpe._ Cuvier, Blainville, Dujardin Ann. des

Sciences Nat., first series, Vol. V. p. 214, and second series Vols.

3, 16, and 17; Robin and Secord, Locomotion of Cephalapodes, Revue de

Zoology, 1849, p. 333.

Chapter X. _Crustaceæ._ Besides the classical and important work of

Milne Edwards, I have consulted d'Orbigny and various travelers. See,

also, the fine Atlas of Dumont d'Urville.

Chapter XI. _Fish._ The Introduction of Cuvier, Valenciennes' article

Fish, in d'Orbigny's Dictionary. This last article is a complete book,

learned and excellent. On the anatomy of Fish see the celebrated

dissertation of Geoffroy. For what I have said on the nests made by

spawning Fish I am indebted to Messrs. Caste and Gerbe.

Chapters XII and XIII. _Whales, Amphibii and Syrens._ Here, Lacepede

is at once instructive and eloquent. Nothing can be better than

Boitard's articles in d'Orbigny's Dictionary.

Notes to Book 3. _Conquest of the Sea._ This book sprang naturally out

of my perusal of travels and voyages from the first History of Dieppe,

by Vitel Estancelin, down to the recent discoveries. Especially

consult Kerquelon, John Ross, Parry, Weddell, Dumont, d'Urville, James

Ross, and Kane; Biot in the _Journal des Savants_ and the luminous and

precious abridgement of those works, by M. Langele in the _Revue des

deux Mondes_. On the Fishery, besides the great works of Duhamel, see

Tiphaine, "Economie History of the Western Seas de France, 1760."

Notes to Book 4. _Restoration by the Sea._ As long ago as 1725,

Maraigli seems to have suspected the presence of iodine. In 1730, an

anonymous work, _Comes Domesticus_, recommended Sea Bathing.

The Bibliography of the Sea would be endless. There are many excellent

books. Among them I may mention "the Mediterranean Sea," by W. H.

Smith, 1854, the Manuals and Guide books of Guadet, Roccas, Cochet,

Ernst, &c.

On the degeneracy of Races, see Morel, 1857: Magnus Huss,

"_Alcoholismus_," 1852, &c.

I owe my acquaintance with the pamphlet of Doctor Barellay (_Ospizi

Marini_) to my illustrious friend Montanelli, and to the delightful

articles of M. Dall' Ongaro.

* * * * *

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Transcriber's Note

Some presumed typose were corrected. Although most words were left as

per the printed version, some standardization was made (ex., Arcachon

for Archachon, Archacon and Arrachon). Based on some research, the

following list of changes were made.

Page(s) Change

======== ===========

26 Grindenwald => Grindelwald

28, 173 Livingston => Livingstone

34 Sheveningen => Scheveningen

32 Eloretat => Étretat and Fecamp => Fécamp

98 Biarrity => Biarritz

99 Hèaux => Héaux and Epees de Treguier => Épées de Tréguier

133 Ponchet => Pouchet

149, 152 Geoffray => Geoffroy

158 Added missing quotes at end of top and begining

of next paragraph

165 Medea => Medusa

171 Vetelles => Velelles

222 everything that comes in their path--animals, ("path--" added)

236 Cataceæ => Cetaceæ

402 appearing => appeared

404 Chapter IX. _Fish._ => Chapter XI. _Fish._

ad2 LA VINIA => LAVINIA