3 G

HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

personal enmity existing between the sovereigns of the different countries, or somefrivolous and punctilious dispute ridiculously roused and speedily suppressed. Thewars, dreadful as they were, which deluged Sweden, and Russia, and Poland, withblood, were not the wars of the people, but the efforts of one prince at the head ofan uncivilized nation, boldly standing forth to prevent his country being over-runby a troublesome and restless neighbour, who, confiding in the superior skill of hissoldiers or his seamen, particularly the former, held no authority for the commence-ment of hostilities so high as his own inclination. Influenced by moderate appe-tites, it would have been wonderful if the temperance of the public mind hadbeen debauched by speculative enquiry, or a diirst of knowlege and experiment inan art, the extravagant extension of which the people considered immaterial to theirhappiness. It was natural for them to study the principles and copy the practiceof any country whose approximate situation afforded an easy opportunity of dili-gently observing them; and from this natural connection, as it may fairly be styled,arose that affinity which has long subsisted between the systems of marine archi-tecture, particularly when confined to the commercial class, and which has distin-guished the vessels of the countries just mentioned, added to those of Holland,from those of perhaps every otlicr quarter of the world.

To struggle against the rigid decrees of nature appears one of the hardest tasksimposed on the human race. Yet, as if that task were sent by Providence as a specialscourge on the vices of mankind, the contest is more frequent than bad men will al-low, or good men can wish. Some countries appear wonderfully gifted withthe production of many of those articles and materials w hich are of the firstnecessity to the creation of a marine, but at the same time the want of otherspositively oppose the acquisition of more than a limited rank. Were the ports of theBaltic as accessible to ships of enlarged burthen and great draught of water; werethcoak of those northern countries as durable as that which is produced in somewhatmilder latitudes, or were the soil as productive of it, however inferior its quality, asit is of the fir; the competition would in all likelihood be vain and frivolous. Thestates of southern Europe would be compelled, for their own safety, to cementthemselves w'ith each other in close confederacy, or the seat of maritime empirewould become, perhrps, irrevocably transferred into the more northern regions. But,in the dispensation of the bounties of nature, there appears an equity and equalitywhich opposes pre-eminent rule, and seems to prescribe to the tyrant the utmostlimits whither he shall extend his power. In reviewing the characters of the severalpotentates who governed the countries alluded to at the early part of the eighteenth

century,