the roaring breakers, battling their way through foam and surge, now dipping into the dark hollows between every swell, and then rising unharmed upon the snowy crest of the raging billows. A few moments more of determined struggle, and the difficulty is overcome; and now they have hoisted sail and are gone bounding over the dark blue waters, perhaps never to return. Who has not marked, while gazing on the surface of the silent lake when the moon was shining, that long line of trembling light that looks like a pathway to a better world, suddenly broken by the intervention of some object that proves to be a boat, in which human forms are discernible, though distant. yet marked out with a momentary distinctness, which affords imagination a fund of associations, connecting those unknown objects so quickly seen, and then lost for ever, with vague speculations about what they are or have been, from whence they have so suddenly emerged, to what unseen point of illimitable space they may be destined, and what may be the darkness, or the radiance of their future course. Or who has ever witnessed the departure of a gallant vessel under favouring skies, bound on a distant and uncertain

voyage, her sails all trim, her rigging tight, her deck well manned, her cargo secure as human skill and foresight can make it, while she stoops one moment with unabated majesty, to rise more proudly the next, bursting through the ruffled waters, and dashing from her sides the feathery foam; without thinking of a proud and reckless spirit rushing forth on its adventurous career, unconscious of the rocks and shoals, the rude gales and the raging tempests, that await its onward course. Or who, without a thrill of something more than earthly feeling, can gaze over the unruffled surface of the sea when the winds are sleeping, and the waves at rest, except on the near verge of the blue expanse, where a gentle murmur, with regular ebb and flow of soothing and monotonous sound marks the intervals at which a line of sleepy waves rise, and fall, and follow each other, without pause or intermission, far up along the sparkling shore, and then recede into the depths of the smooth and shining waters. The sun is high in the heavens-the air is clear and buoyant-now and then a white cloud sails along the field of azure, its misty form marked out in momentary darkness on the sea below, like the passing shadow of an angel's

wings; while far, far in the distance, and gliding on towards the horizon, are those wandering messengers of the deep that bear tidings from shore to shore, their swelling sails now glancing white in the sunbeams, now darkened by the passing cloud. Musing on such a scene, we forget our own identity-our own earthly, bodily existence; we live in the world of spirits, and are lost in exquisite imaginings, in memories and hopes that belong not to the things of clay; everything we behold is personified and gifted with intelligence; the rugged cliffs possess a terrible majesty, and seem to threaten while they frown upon the slumbering shore; the deep and boundless sea represented at all times as acting or suffering by its own will or power, is now more than ever endued with the thoughts and passions of spiritual existence, and seems to speak to us in its own solemn and most intelligible language of terror in motion, and sublimity in repose: but more than all, the ships that go forth upon its bosom convey to our fancy the idea of being influenced by an instinct of their own; so well ordered are all their movements, so perfect appears the harmony of their construction and design, yet so hidden by the obscurity of dis

tance is the moving principle within, that by their own faith they seem to trust themselves where the foot of man dare not tread, and by their own hope they seem to be lured on to some distant point which the eye of man is unable to discern.

In a widely extended sea view there is unquestionably poetry enough to inspire the happiest lays, but the converse of this picture is easily drawn-and fatal to the poet's song would be the first view of the interior of any one of those gallant and stately ships about which we have been dreaming. The moving principle within, respecting which we have had such refined imaginings, is now embodied in a company of hardy sailors, whose rude laughter, and ruder oaths, are no less discordant to our ear, than offensive to our taste. It is true, that a certain kind of order and discipline prevails amongst them, but the wretched passengers below are lost for a time to all mental sensations, and suffering or sympathising with them, we soon forget the poetry of life.

There is poetry in the gush of sparkling waters that burst forth from the hill side in some lonely and sequestered spot, and flow on in circling eddies amongst the rocks and fern,

and tendrils of wild plants; on, on for everunexhausted, and yet perpetually losing themselves in the bosom of the silent and majestic river, where the hurry and murmur of their course is lost, like the restless passions that agitate the breast of man in the ocean of eternity and there is poetry in the burst of the cataract that comes over the brow of the precipice with a seeming consciousness of its own power to bear down, and to subdue.

It is related of Richard Wilson, that when he first beheld the celebrated falls of Terni, he exclaimed "Well done, water!" Here, indeed, was no poetry-no association. His mind was too full of that mighty object as it first struck upon his senses, to admit at the moment of any relative idea; his exclamation was one of mere animal surprise, such as his dog might have uttered, had he possessed the organs of speech. And yet the same man, when he seized his pencil, and gave up his imagination to the full force of those impressions which, if we may judge by his works, few have felt more intensely, was able to pourtray nature, not merely seen as it is in any given section of the earth's surface, but to group together, and embody in one scene, all that