“The ocean old,-- Centuries old,-- Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, Paces restless to and fro, Up and down the sands of gold.”
For ages have the weeds of the sea been heedlessly disregarded or despised. The vilest epithet the polished Roman knew was _alga projecta vilior_. Horace, too, wrote _alga inutilis_; and there may yet be many to exclaim with the Scotch professor of the last century, “Pooh, pooh, sir! only a bundle of sea-weeds!” But when the apostle Peter slept at the house of Simon the tanner he dreamt a great dream--a dream memorable to the end of time--a dream that was a waking truth to be set in golden letters, and engraven on the hearts of rich and poor, wise and unwise--“There is nothing common nor unclean.”
The Chinese believe there is one word expressive of all excellence, so exquisite that no one can pronounce it, although it can be written and perceived by the eyes. That word is stamped alike on “the vile sea-weed” and on the lovely flower. I do not claim for both an equal rank,--the cottage may be charming, and not vie with the palace; and “the pride of the village” may want the grace of “the ladye of high degree,”--but I do claim for the neglected vegetation of the seaside an elegance of form, and structure, a suggestiveness of mathematical designs, a poetry of association and typical expression, a simplicity and modest gracefulness, which will entitle it to the best consideration of the designer.
World-wide in distribution, the sea-weeds are accessible to every one; and it is not the rarest that are, for ornamental purposes, the most valuable. The beauty of a manuscript tempted England’s greatest monarch to the acquirement of letters, and the commonest weed may be the incentive to the perusal of one of Nature’s choicest books. Wherever the briny waters wash the coasts, in marshes even where the salt sea penetrates but seldom in the year, on rocks and stones, and piers and piles, winter or summer, from the land of gold to the Canaries, from the soil of the Hottentot and Caffre to the ice-bound country of the Lapp, from the floating meadows of the tropics to the snowy regions of the poles--there grow the crisp sea-weeds--there may be gathered in endless variety the chastest patterns of simplicity. All the associations of the sea are grand and glorious, and the goddess of beauty came from the foam of its waves. In the sublime language of ancient mythology, the Ocean was the first-born of Heaven and Earth, that was wedded to the child of the land and the sky. Are there no gems of classic imagery in the bronzed belt that girdles its giant form? Have the thousand daughters of Atlas and Tethys all taken to groves and cities, and have the Nereides become the attendants of Flora? Are the tears of Calypso and the loves of Amphitrite forgotten? Has the memory of Sappho passed for ever away, and have the green and olive nurslings of the surge no affinity with the crystal phœnix that arose from their ashes in the Phœnicians’ fire?