Seas and skies with the great attribute of life, motion--their very ship a personification, as it were a living creature--cut off, separated as they are for the most part, from cities, and the mind-lowering ways of cities, which they see recede from them and melt into utter insignificance, leaving for companionship but the winds and the waters. Can it be a matter of wonder, if, with warm wishes and affections in their breasts, their imaginations shape the clouds and mists into being, messengers between them and the world they have all but lost? The stars, those "watches of the night," to them are not the same, changing yet ever significant. Even the waters about them, which by day are apparently without a living thing beyond the life of their own motion, in the darkness glittering with animated fire; can we wonder, then, if their thoughts rise from these myriad, invisible, lucent worms of the sea, to a faith in the more magnificent beings who "clothe themselves with light;" and if they believe that such are present, unseen, commissioned to guard and guide them in ways perilous and obscure? Seamen, accustomed to observe signs in their great solitude, unattracted by the innumerable sights and businesses of other life, are ever open and ready to receive signs and significations even of omen and vision; whereas he that is engaged in crowded street and market, heeds no sign, though it were offered, but that which his little and engrossing interests make for him; he, indeed, may receive "angels' visits unaware." Omens, dreams, and visions are to seamen more real, more frequent, as more congenial with their wants; and some extraordinary cases have even been registered in ships' logs, not resting on the credibility of one but of a crew, and such logs, if I mistake not, have been admitted evidence in courts of judicature. Am I led away by the subject, Eusebius? You will say I am; yet I could go on--the wonder increases--the common earth is not their sure grave-- "Nothing of them that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange." But I must not pursue this, lest, in your wit, you find reason to compare me to that great philosopher, who gravely asserted that he had discovered how to make a mermaid, but abstained from using the receipt; and I am quite sure you are not likely to resemble the learned Dr Farmer, who folded down the page for future experiment.[37]