The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 226: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

See SS se KO ' 7 ry q [S r Py" i “THE STEAM PACKET. 169 CHAPTER XVIII. A FEW WORDS UPON CALAIS.——-MR, BUCKRAM AND MR, SMALE AGAIN, THERE is something exquisitely plea- sant in sitting upon a pier projecting immense expanse of waters stretching almost all around you. Hf you have cares to devour in secret, the gloomy aspect of the element in its hour of coming storm seems to frown in uhison with your own dark fate: and if you have joys on which you would ponder, the face of the sunny deep, as it lies cradled in tranquillity in its mighty bed, appears to wear the smile of fellowship. Hite you little domestic disputes to arrange with your better half, conduct her to the pier—provided you live near one; let her either imbibe the soothing and calming influence of the silent sea, when it is in repose, swathed in blue and purple; or may you both perceive the folly of indulging in your own rude passions, by marking with what useless violence the ocean, in the moments of its fury, lashes on the ‘sounding strand. Many a moral is taught by the mighty deep: and not another section of the vast whole of Nature retains her secrets, and preserves her mysteries so faithfully or so well. The ocean, like the avaricious miser, clings to the treasures which its own mad career- ing has caused the powerless vessel to pour into its depths—those caverns of eternal silence, fearful even as the tomb :—more fatal than war, pestilence, or famine, the ocean swallows up its victims from day to day, nor contents itself with human hecatombs at long intervals of time ; and less stable than even the vacillating mind of the most capri- cious coquette, that same powerful but inconstant ocean suddenly sur- rounds with all its terrors the luckless mariner whom but a few hours before it wooed to its bosom by the melodious sounds of its gentle ripples, the sunny smiles of its countenance, and the balmy breath ‘which waved over its vast expanse! far out into the sea, and surveying the — The pier at Calais is nearly three quarters of a mile long, and, at high water, is the most agreeable lounge afforded by any seaport wiih GComichbooks (E(0)