'Man a cooking
animal?' my dear Doctor Johnson--pooh! man is a smoking animal.
There is his ergon, his 'differential energy,' as the Aristotelians
say--his true distinction from the ourang-outang. Ponder it well.
The men were leaning on the trawl capstan, while our old landlord,
with half-a-dozen pipes within a foot of his face, droned out some
long sea-yarn about Ostend, and muds, and snow-storms, and revenue-
cruisers going down stern foremost, kegs of brandy and French
prisons, which I shall not repeat; for indeed the public has been
surfeited with sea-stories of late, from many sufficiently dull ones
up to the genial wisdom of 'Peter Simple,' and the gorgeous word-
painting of 'Tom Cringle's Log.' And now the subject is stale--the
old war and the wonders thereof have died away into the past, like
the men who fought in it; and Trafalgar and the Bellerophon are
replaced by Manchester and 'Mary Barton.' We have solved the old
sea-going problems pretty well--thanks to wise English-hearted
Captain Marryat, now gone to his rest, just when his work was done;
and we must turn round and face a few land-going problems not quite
so easy of solution.
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