now a black raven, then a
broom,--to-day St. Andrew's Cross, to-morrow St George's, perhaps the
next a starry cluster. There is no permanent architecture of the main
by which to certify the triumphs of these past invaders. Their ruined
castles are lying "fifty fathom deep,"--Carthaginian galley and Roman
trireme, the argosy of Spain, the "White Ship" of Fitz Stephen, the
"Ville de Paris," down to the latest "non-arrival" whispered at
Lloyd's,--all are gone out of sight into the forgotten silences of the
green underworld. Upon the land we can trace Roman and Celt, Saxon and
Norman, by names and places, by minster, keep, and palace. This one
gave the battlement, that the pinnacle, the other the arch. But the
fluent surface of the sea takes no such permanent impression. Gone are
the quaint stern-galleries, gone the high top-gallant fore-castles,
gone the mighty banks of oars of the olden time. It is only in the
language that we are able to trace the successive nations in their
march along the mountain waves; for to that each has from time to time
given its contribution, and of each it has worn the seeming stamp, till
some Actium or Lepanto or Cape Trafalgar has compelled its reluctant
transfer to another's hands.

Or rather, we may say, the language of the sea comes and makes a part,
as it were, of the speech of many different nations, as the sailor
abides for a season in Naples, Smyrna, Valparaiso, Canton, and New
York,--and from each it borrows, as the sailor does, from this a silk
handkerchief, from that a cap, here a brooch, and there a scrap of
tattooing, but still remains inhabitant of all and citizen of
none,--the language of the seas.

What do we mean by this? It is that curious nomenclature which from
truck to keelson clothes the ship with strange but fitting
phrases,--which has its proverbs, idioms, and forms of expression that
are of the sea, salt, and never of the land, earthy. Wherever tidewater
flows, goes also some portion of this speech. It is "understanded of
the people" among all truly nautical races. It dominates over their own
languages, so that the Fin and Mowree, (Maori,) the Lascar and the
Armorican, meeting on the same deck, find a common tongue whereby to
carry on the ship's work,--the language in which to "hand, reef, and
steer."

Whence did it come? From all nautical peoples. Not from the Hebrew
race. To them the possession of the soil was a fixed idea. The sea
itself had nothing wherewith to