Dr. Johnson, whose personal weight seems to have had something to do with that carried by his opinion, considered going to sea a species of insanity.(30) “No man,” said he, “will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail: for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.” The great lexicographer knew Fleet Street better than he did the fleet, and his opinion, as expressed above, was hardly even decently patriotic or sensible. Had all men thought as he professed to do—probably for the pleasure of saying something ponderously brilliant for the moment—we should have had no naval or commercial superiority to-day—in short, no England. The dangers of the sea are serious enough, but need not be exaggerated. One writer(31) indeed, in serio-comic vein, makes his sailors sing in a gale— “When you and I, Bill, on the deck Are comfortably lying, My eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots About their heads are flying!” leading us to infer that the dangers of town-life are greater than those of the sea in a moderate gale. We might remind the reader that Mark Twain has conclusively shown, from statistics, that more people die in bed comfortably at home than are killed by all the railroad, steamship, or other accidents in the world, the inference being that going to bed is a dangerous habit! But the fact is, that wherever there is danger there will be brave men found to face it—even when it takes the desperate form just indicated! So that there is nothing surprising in the fact that in all times there have been men ready to go to sea.