But there is another quarrel involved in which the young gentleman
of culture comes into violent collision with the young lady of
the cauliflowers. The first essential of the merely bookish view
of the sea is that it is boundless, and gives a sentiment of infinity.
Now it is quite certain, I think, that the cauliflower simile
was partly created by exactly the opposite impression, the
impression of boundary and of barrier. The girl thought of
it as a field of vegetables, even as a yard of vegetables.
The girl was right. The ocean only suggests infinity when you
cannot see it; a sea mist may seem endless, but not a sea.
So far from being vague and vanishing, the sea is the one
hard straight line in Nature. It is the one plain limit;
the only thing that God has made that really looks like a wall.
Compared to the sea, not only sun and cloud are chaotic and doubtful,
but solid mountains and standing forests may be said to melt
and fade and flee in the presence of that lonely iron line.
The old naval phrase, that the seas are England's bulwarks,
is not a frigid and artificial metaphor; it came into the head
of some genuine sea-dog, when he was genuinely looking at
the sea. For the edge of the sea is like the edge of a sword;
it is sharp, military, and decisive; it really looks like a bolt
or bar, and not like a mere expansion. It hangs in heaven, grey,
or green, or blue, changing in colour, but changeless in form,
behind all the slippery contours of the land and all the savage
softness of the forests, like the scales of God held even.
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