To be the head-man of any other village, and the captain of
its fishing fleet, might prove no lofty eminence; but to be the leader
of Springhaven was true and arduous greatness. From Selsey Bill to
Orfordness, taking in all the Cinque Ports and all the port of London,
there was not a place that insisted on, and therefore possessed, all
its own rights so firmly as this village did. Not less than seven stout
fishing-smacks--six of them sloops, and the seventh a dandy--formed the
marine power of this place, and behaved as one multiplied by seven. All
the bold fishermen held their line from long-established ancestry, and
stuck to the stock of their grandfathers, and their wisdom and freedom
from prejudice. Strength was condensed into clear law with them--as
sinew boils down into jelly--and character carried out its force as the
stamp of solid impress. What the father had been, the son became, as the
generation squared itself, and the slates for the children to do their
copies were the tombstones of their granddads. Thus brave Etruria grew,
and thus the Rome which was not built in a day became the flower of the
world, and girt in unity of self seven citadels.
There was Roman blood--of the Tenth Legion, perhaps--in the general
vein of Springhaven. There was scarcely a man who pretended to know much
outside of his own business, and there was not a woman unable to
wait (when her breath was quite gone) for sound reason.
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