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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
compact , neat , well-finished , well-manned , well-ordered , and belly-timber-stored she may be , will give you the true relish . They are all too small , too bladdery-hght , too feathery under their canvass ; they are all too crank ; they leap about , toss , dip , heave , bore , pitch and lurch too loosely and riotously : the
demand which they make on more than half your senses in holding on , and the effort to rivet your drunken feet to the mad deck , will not give you the necessary freedom of bod y and soul ; or , if you do catch a transient glimpse , or a good draught of the loveliness and glory , just as you would exclaim , in your sudden rapture , * how beauti— ' full your distended jaws are of the salt water from that splash of a wave which has reached up to the main catharpen-legs . No , no ! nothing like a good spanking
eight-and-thirty gun frigate , ( she ' s a four-and-forty now-a-days ;) such a fri gate as my old , glorious , darling ship , the A ; peace be to her manes ! if the oysters and crabs have not used up all her ribs and knees , or the coral-worms built pyramids over them . A frigate is the carriage in which , to the completeness of grasp and fulness of enjoyment , your senses may rise and revel amid such beauties .
What beauties ? Those which for the last half-hour my mind ' s eye has been looking on , and my spirit dancing and floating in , as my memory leaped back to a night in early January , 1808 , when the A spread her win ^ s for a flight from the bay of Funchal , rounded the point SW . of Loo rock , and , with a fresh south-eastern freeze , swept over the liquid wrinkled ribs of the Atlantic . On the
starboard hand you saw the twinkling lights from the dwellings which dotted the hill-side like glow-worms on a moss-bank , on a Brobdignag scale ; and the dark mountain , bearing up its lofty crown , seeming to hold communion with the millions of stars which looked out of the deep blue concave , so bright , so clear , so full : legions and legions of lovely spirits were they , gazing down on earth and ocean with their golden and gladdening eyesbri ghter , fairer , deeper , fuller , more lustrous than any we can see here ; and the air was so congenial , so softening yet exhilirating ,
as it swept across the brow ; while the deep-toned anthem of the rolling waves , dissolving among the whispers of the snowy foam , which danced in flaked lines as the ship rode over them , lulled the soul into a dreamy joy : and then there were myriads of phosphorescent sparks that shot , leaped , vanished , rose , glittered , and faded , in the clear dark waters ; the fishes , elves , mermen and
mermaids , fairies of the deep , and all , had illuminated their green sea-groves for a festival . And I , while I sat stooping to look into this bright pageantry , was as quiet , as happy , as blessed as when , in my eignth year , I used to lie on the o ' erfringing greensward on the banks of Kushton ' a pool , ( a small pellucid lake , a niile from my common in Worcestershire , ) nestled in by entirely
Untitled Article
Autobiography of Pel . Verjuice . 21 S
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 213, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/57/
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