Publisher's Synopsis
Those who regard familiar objects in art and nature as mere matters of course, anddo not trouble themselves to wander out of the beaten track of everyday thought, may not at first feel the force or admit the truth of this statement. Let such folkendeavour to shake themselves vigorously out of this beaten track of everydaythought. Let them knit their brows and clench their teeth, and gaze steadfastly intothe fire, or up at the sky, and try to realise what is involved in the idea of-a ship.What would the men of old have said, if you had told them that you intended totake yonder large wooden house, launch it upon the sea, and proceed in it out ofsight of land for a few days? "Poor fellow," they would have replied, "you are mad!"Ah! many a wise philosopher has been deemed mad, not only by men of old, but bymen of modern days. This "mad" idea has long since been fulfilled; for what is a shipbut a wooden house made to float upon the sea, and sail with its inmates hither andthither, at the will of the guiding spirit, over a trackless unstable ocean for monthstogether? It is a self-sustaining movable hotel upon the sea. It is an oasis in thedesert of waters, so skilfully contrived as to be capable of advancing against windand tide, and of outliving the wildest storms-the bitterest fury of winds and waves.It is the residence of a community, whose country for the time being is the ocean;or, as in the case of the Great Eastern steamship, it is a town with some thousandsof inhabitants launched upon the deep
