readed all
water, whether of springs or of rivers or of the sea, in the idea that
it was a dragon's pasture. There is no myth more universal than that
of the beast that rises up out of the water and demands as tribute the
fairest woman of the earth. Perseus rescued Andromeda from such a
monster as this, and it is as the slayer of a water beast that St.
George lives in legend, however history may seek to degrade him into a
dishonest meat contractor. Not that it was always a maiden who was
sacrificed. Probably in the beginning the sea-beast made no
distinction of sex among its victims. In many of the legends, we find
it claiming men and women indifferently. In the story of Jonah, it
demands a male victim, and in many countries to-day there are men who
will not rescue anyone from drowning on the ground that if you
disappoint the sea of one victim it will sooner or later have you,
whether you are male or female, for your pains. These men regard the
sea as some men regard God--a beneficent being, if you get on the
right side of it. They see it as the home of one who is half-divinity
and half-monster, and who, when once his passion for sacrifice has
been satisfied, will look on you with a shining face. Hence all these
gifts to it of handsome youths and well-born children. Hence the
marriage to it of soothing maidens. In the latter case, no doubt,
there is also the idea of a magical marriage, which will promote the
fertility of water and land. Matthew Arnold's _Forsaken Merman_, if
you let the anthropologists get hold of it, will be shown to be but
the exquisite echo of some forgotten marriage of the sea.

These superstitions may reasonably enough be considered as for the
most part dramatisations of a sense of the sea's insecurity. We have
ceased to believe in dragons and mermaids, chiefly because
civilisation has built up for us a false sense of security, and you
can arrange in any of Cook's branch offices to spend your week-end
silent upon a peak in Darien, commanding the best views of the
Pacific. We have, as it were, advertised the sea till it seems as
innocuous as a patent medicine. We no more expect to be injured by it
than to be poisoned at our meals. We have lost both our fears and our
wonders, and as we glide through the miraculous places of Ocean we no
longer listen for the song of the Sirens, but sit down comfortably to
read the latest issue of the Continental edition of the _Daily Mail_.
It is a question whether w