the Silence of Sea: And Other Essays

Best known for his writing on Reformation history and distributist economics, Hilaire Belloc was a masterful essayist who drew inspiration from his travels through Europe, America, and the Near East. His adventurous experiences as sailor, mountaineer, and pilgrim give his writings a vivid richness.Belloc's encounters with nature were often the starting point for musings that would take on a philosophical bent. As he writes at the beginning of this volume: "What I most love in the sea is its silence: a sentence that may sound strange till it is closely considered...Because the sea lives (while the land lies inert) we cannot think of it as dumb: nor is it. But it speaks in a veiled fashion as do the oracles of the Gods, whereof it is one, the most universal and the most august of the oracles." In this eclectic collection of short essays, Hilaire Belloc covers a wide variety of topics dear to his heart, from clocks, hats, and statistics, to historical figures like Jane Austen and Walter Scott.