Sentence:  There is something in being near the <WSD>sea</WSD>, like the confines of eternity. It is a new element, a pure abstraction. The mind loves to hover on that which is endless, and forever the same. People wonder at a steam-boat, the invention of man, managed by man, that makes its liquid path like an iron railway through the <WSD>sea</WSD>—I wonder at the <WSD>sea</WSD> itself, that vast Leviathan, rolled round the earth, smiling in its sleep, waked into fury, fathomless, boundless, a huge world of water-drops.—Whence is it, whither goes it, is it of eternity, or of nothing? 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  The ocean; the continuous body of salt water covering a majority of the Earth's surface.