It is never monotonous to me, as some find it; for I think it ever-
changing, ever new. I love it always--under every aspect of its
kaleidoscopic face.
When, bright with mellow sunshine, it reflects the intense blue of the
ocean sky above, with a brisk breeze topping its many-furrowed waves--
that are racing by and leaping over each other like a parcel of
schoolboys at play--and cutting off sheets and sparkling showers of the
prismatic foam that exhibits every tint of the rainbow--azure and
orange, violet, light-green, and pale luminous white,--scatters it
broadcast into the air around; whence it falls into yeasty hollows, a
sort of feathery snow of a fairy texture, just suited for the bridal
veils of the Nereides--only to be churned over again and tossed up anew
by the wanton wind in its frolicsome mirth.
Or, when, in a dead calm, it appears to lie sleeping, heaving its tumid
bosom in occasional long-drawn sighs--that make it rise and sink in
rounded ridges of an oily look and a leadeny tinge, except at the
equator, where they shine at midday like a burnished mirror.
Or, again, when storm-tossed and tempest-weary, it rages and raves with
all its pent-up fury broken loose--goaded to frenzy by the howling
lashes of Aeolus and the roar of the storm-fiend. Then it is grand and
awful in its majesty; and when I see it so it makes me mad with a
triumphant sense of power in overriding it--as it boils beneath the
vessel's keel, longing to overwhelm it and me, yet impotent of evil!
Whether in calm or in storm--at dawn of day, with the rosy flush of the
rising sun blushing the horizon up to the zenith, or at night, with the
twinkling stars shining down into its sombre depths and the recurring
flashes of sheet lightning lighting up its immensity, which seems vaster
as the darkness grows--it is to me always attractive, ever lovable.
In its bright buoyancy it exhilarates me; in its calm, it causes me to
dream; and, in its wild moods, when heaven and sea appear to meet
together in wrestling embrace, I can--if joyous at the time--almost
shout aloud in ecstasy of admiring awe and kindred riot of mind; while,
should I feel sad during the carnival of the elements, I get reflective,
and--
"As I watch the ocean
In pitiless commotion,
Like the thoughts, now surging wildly through my storm-tost breast,
The snow-capt, heaving billows
Seem to me as lace-fring'd pillows
Of the deep Deep's bed of rest!"
Did you ever chance to read Chateaubriand's _Genie du Christianisme_?
It is a queer book for a Frenchman to have written, but abounding in
beautiful description and startling bits of observation. I remember,
one evening on the passage out, when it was very rough, having a
particular sentence of this work especially called to my mind. It was
that in which the author discourses on the Deity, and says,--
"I do not profess to be anything myself; I am only a solitary unit.
But I have often heard learned men disputing about a chief originator,
or prime cause, and I have never been able to comprehend their
arguments; for I have always noticed that it is at the sight of the
stupendous movements of nature that the idea of this unknown supreme
`origin' becomes manifested to the mind of man."
This sentence was the more impressed on my memory, from the fact, that,
on the very same evening, while reading the appointed portion of the
Psalms out of the little Prayer-book which Min had given me--a duty that
I had promised her to perform regularly every day--I came across a
verse, which, in different language, expressed almost the very same
thing. It was the one wherein David exclaims, "They that go down to the
sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters, these men see
the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep!"
Our voyage was uneventful, beyond this one instance of rough weather--
when, throughout the night, as the steamer pitched and heaved, rolling
and labouring, as if her last hour was come, the screw propeller worked
round with a heavy thudding sound, as if some Cyclops were pounding away
under my bunk with a broomstick to rouse me up, my cabin being just over
the screw shaft. It went for awhile "thump:--thump! thump, thump,
thump! Thump:--thump! Thump, thump, thump!" with even regularity; and
then would suddenly break off this movement, whizzing away at a great
rate, as the "send" of the sea lifted the blades out of the water,
buzzing furiously the while like some marine alarum clock running down,
or the mainspring of your watch breaking!
In the morning, however, only the swelling waves--that were rapidly
subsiding--remained to remind us of the gale; and, from that date, we
had fine weather and a good wind "a-beam," until we finally sighted
Sandy Hook lightship at the foot of New York Bay.
We did this in exactly ten days from the time of our "departure point"
being taken, off the Needles.--Rather a fair run on the whole, when you
consider that we lost fully a day by the storm, compelling us as it did,
not only to slacken speed, but also to reverse our course, in order to
keep the vessel's head to the sea, and prevent her being pooped by some
gigantic following wave--as might have been the case if we had kept on
before it, as the unfortunate _London_ did, a short period before.
My first impressions of "the Empire city," as the proud Manhattanese
fondly style it, were, certainly, not favourable; rather the contrary, I
may say at once, without any "beating about the bush."
You see, I landed on a Sunday. It was likewise wet--a nasty, drizzling,
misty morning, fit to give you the blues with its many disagreeables and
make you bless Mackintosh, while cursing Pleiads. Now, either of these
two conditions--I do not refer to the act of benediction or its reverse,
but to the fact of its being Sunday and wet--would have been sufficient
to detract from the attractive merits of any English town; how much
more, therefore, from those possessed by the great cosmopolitan
metropolis of Transatlantica? This city is in bad weather a hundred-
fold more desolate than London, in an aesthetic sense, and that is
saying a good deal; and, on a Sunday, through the absence of any
Sabbatarian influences and the working of teetotal tastes, it is more
outwardly dull and inwardly vicious than any spot north of Tweed--
Glasgow, for example, where the name of the illustrious Forbes Mackenzie
is venerated!
To commence with, during the early morning we had warped into dock at
Hoboken, the Rotherhithe--and, in some respects, Rosherville--of New
York, being situated on the opposite side of the river; and here, the
_Herzog von Gottingen_ lay, with her bowsprit jammed into a coal shed
and her decks, aforetime so white and clean, all bespattered with dirt,
and encumbered with hawsers and cables. These latter coiling and
uncoiling themselves here, there, and everywhere, like so many writhing
sea-serpents, and, tripping you up suddenly just when you believed you
had discovered a clear space on which you might stand without
imperilling your valuable life.
Besides, the crew were engaged in getting up luggage from the lower hold
by the aid of a donkey engine, which made a great deal of clattering
fuss over doing a minimum amount of work--in which respect it resembled
a good many people of my acquaintance, by the way. It was not pleasant
to have the iron-bound cover of a heavy chest poked into the small of
one's back without leave or licence, and the entire article being
subsequently deposited on one's toes! No, it was not. And, to make
matters worse, the escape steam, puffing off in volumes from the waste
pipe in a hollow roar of relief at being no longer compelled to earn its
living, was condensing an additional shower for our benefit--that was
not more agreeable, in consequence of being warm--as if the drizzling
rain that was falling was not deemed sufficient for wetting purposes!
After settling matters with the Custom House, and crossing the ferry
from Hoboken, myself and all my goods packed in a hackney carriage hung
on very high springs--like the old "glass coaches" that were used in
London during the early part of the century, although, unlike them,
drawn by a pair of remarkably fine horses--my drive through the back
slums of New York to one of the Broadway hotels was not of a nature to
dispel my vapours.
The lower parts of the town, adjacent to the Hudson, are about as
odoriferous and architecturally beautiful as a sixth-rate seaport in
"the old country." While, as for Broadway itself--that much be-praised-
boulevard--Broadway, the "great," the "much pumpkins, I guess"--to see
which, I had been told by enthusiastic Americans, was to behold the very
thirteenth wonder of the world!--Well, the less I say about it, perhaps
the better!
If you are still inquisitive, however, and would kindly imagine what
your feelings would be on beholding Upper Oxford Street on a November
day--with a few draggling flags hung across it, one or two "blocks" of
brown-stone buildings interspersed between its rows of uneven shops, and
a lofty-spired church, like Saint Margaret's, jutting out into the
roadway by the Marble Arch--you will have a general idea of my
impressions when first looking at the magnificent thoroughfare that our
cousins love.
It has evidently secured its reputation, from being the only decent
street in New York--just as Sackville Street in Dublin is "a foine place
entirely," on account of its being the only one of any respectable
length or width in the city on the Liffey--if you will kindly permit the
comparison for a moment?