HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

2.9

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

Account of the Improvements made in Marine Architecture among the differentEuropean Powers during the first Fourteen Years of the Eighteenth Century .—The immediate Causes which gave Birth to them, and produced the extraordinaryAugmentation of Vessels in Regard to their Tonnage as zccll as Foice .—The Dimensions and Force of the Venetian and Genoese Ships of War; of thosebelonging to Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, Russia, Denmark, and Swe-den.—Description of the Vessels employed for Mercantile Purposes by those Coun-tries — the Prevalence of Fashion pointed out, and the different Principles ofShip-building practised by the Artificers of the Southern, from those of theNorthern States—the Reasons which first produced that Distinction, and havestill continued to preserve it.—Remarks on the Marine of Sxaedcn, Russia, andDenmark. — The original rude State of the Russian Marine, and the Foundationof its sudden Improvement.—Mild Character of Frederick the Fourth, King ofDenmark.—Similarity between the Danish and Dutch Ships.

I MPROVEMENT in every branch of science practised or pursued amongwhat are called civilized nations, generally spreads with rapidity, fertilizingand adorning those more distant countries through which the stream takes itscourse, in a far superior degree to what it does that parent clime under which itlirst burst forth to human sight. A generous, or rather, perhaps, an envious spirit ofemulation, promotes the gradual exertions of the human mind, which, naturallyrestless and ambitious, cannot rest in quiet, till it exultinglyand arrogantly exclaims,it has reached the utmost limits of mortal perfection, and is therefore satisfied.

A still superior and more compulsive cause operated to the advancement, bothof the art of navigating vessels, and the method of constructing them. This wasthe supposed actual existence of a necessity demanding that emulation, whichthe apparent advantages it held forth to luxury and to ambition impressed sostrongly on the human mind, that it soon becoming credited, M as considered as areality. It was deemed a political heresy to deny it: all states, all go\ernments,monarchical as well as republican, agreed in this one point; and while the hardyopposcr of it would, under Louis the tyrant, have been condemned to a solitaryseclusion from all the rest of the world, within the walls of the Bastile, the onlyYcl. III. E ' ' existing