XCVI. THE OCEAN. P. H. GOSSE. WHO ever gazed upon the broad sea without emotion? Whether seen in stern majesty, hoary with the tempest, rolling its giant waves upon the rocks, and dashing with resistless fury some gallant bark on an iron-bound coast; or sleeping beneath the silver moon, its broad bosom broken but by a gentle ripple, just enough to reflect a long line of light, a path of gold upon a pavement of sapphire; who has looked upon the sea without feeling that it has power "To stir the soul with thoughts profound"? Perhaps there is no earthly object, not even the cloud-cleaving mountains of an alpine country, so sublime as the sea in its severe and marked simplicity. Standing on some promontory, whence the eye roams far out upon the unbounded ocean, the soul expands, and we conceive a nobler idea of the majesty of that God who holdeth "the waters in the hollow of his hand." But it is only when on a long voyage, climbing day after day to the giddy elevation of the mast-head, one still discerns nothing in the wide circumference but the same boundless waste of waters, that the mind grasps any thing approaching an adequate idea of the grandeur of the ocean. There is a certain indefiniteness and mystery connected with it in various aspects that gives it a character widely different from that of the land. At times, in peculiar states of the atmosphere, the boundary of the horizon becomes undistinguishable, and the surface, perfectly calm, reflects the pure light of heaven in every part, and we seem alone in infinite space, with nothing around that appears tangible and real, save the ship beneath our feet. At other times, particularly in the clear waters of the tropical seas, we look downward unmeasured fathoms beneath the vessel's keel, but still find no boundary; the sight is lost in one uniform, transparent blueness. Mailed and glittering creatures of strange forms suddenly appear, play a moment in our sight, and with the velocity of thought have vanished in the boundless depths. The very birds that we see in the wide waste are mysterious; we wonder whence they come, whither they go, how they sleep, homeless and shelterless as they seem to be. The breeze, so fickle in its visitings, rises and dies away; "but thou knowest not whence it cometh and whither it goeth:" the night wind, moaning by, soothes the watchful helmsman with gentle sounds that remind him of the voices of beloved ones far away; or the tempest, shrieking and groaning among the cordage, turns him pale with the idea of agony and death. But God is there; lonely though the mariner feel, and isolated in his separation from home and friends, God is with him, often unrecognized and forgotten, but surrounding him with mercy, protecting him and guiding him, and willing to cheer him by the visitations of his grace and the assurance of his love. "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy right hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me." The ocean is never perfectly at rest; even between the tropics, in what are called the calm latitudes, where the impatient seaman for weeks together looks wistfully but vainly for the welcome breeze, and when he realizes the scene so graphically described in the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” * "Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; Upon a painted ocean,”. even here the smooth and glittering surface is not at rest; for long, gentle undulations, which cause the taper mast to describe lines and angles upon the sky, are sufficiently perceptible to tantalize the mariner with the thought that the breeze which mocks his desires is blowing freshly and gallantly elsewhere. *This is the name of a poem by Coleridge. The ocean is the highway of commerce. God seems wisely and graciously to have ordained that man should not be independent, but under perpetual obligation to his fellow-man, and that distant countries should ever maintain a mutually beneficial dependence on each other. He might with ease have made every land produce every necessary and comfort of life in ample supply for its own population; in which case, considering the fallen nature of man, it is probable the only intercourse between foreign nations would have been that of mutual aggression and bloodshed. But he has ordered otherwise; and the result has been, generally, that happy intercourse of benefits which constitutes commerce. It is lamentably true that the evil passions of men have often perverted the facilities of communication for purposes of destruction; yet the sober verdict of mankind has for the most part been, that the substantial blessings of friendly commerce are preferable to the glare of martial glory. But the transport of goods of considerable bulk and weight, or of such as are of a very perishable nature, would be so difficult by land, as very materially to increase their cost; while land communication between countries many thousand miles apart, would be attended with difficulties so great as to be practically insurmountable. Add to this the natural barriers presented by lofty mountain ranges and impassable rivers, as well as the dangers arising from ferocious animals and from hostile nations, and we shall see that, with the existing power and skill of man, commerce in such a condition would be almost unknown, and man would be little removed from a state of barbarism. The ocean, however, spreading itself over three fourths of the globe, and penetrating with innumerable windings into the land, so as to bring, with the aid of the great rivers, the facilities of navigation comparatively near to every country, affords a means of transport unrivalled for safety, speed, and convenience. [Allan Cunningham was born at Blackwood, in Scotland, December 7, 1784, and died October 4, 1842. He wrote much in prose and verse. His songs and ballads are his best productions, and many of them have great excellence.] A WET sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast, And fills the white and rustling sail, "O for a soft and gentle wind!" But give to me the roaring breeze, There's tempest in yon hornéd moon, And lightning in yon cloud; The lightning flashing free, XCVIII.-THE APPROACH OF DAY. E. EVERETT. [From an oration delivered at Albany, on the 28th of August, 1856, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Dudley Astronomical Observatory.] THE great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, and to furnish a refined pleasure. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim precedence of astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system—the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us in twenty millions of years; of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a football; of starry hosts, suns like our own, numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces, with a velocity compared with which the cannon ball is a wayworn, heavy-paced traveller. Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present, even to the unaided sight, scenes of glory which words are too feeble to describe. I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston, and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Every thing around was wrapped in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by *The movements of the heavenly bodies are very nearly but not quite uniform. There are slight variations, which must be taken into account to secure accurate results. Some of these variations stretch over very long periods, even whole centuries. Secular equations are the corrections required by variations of this kind. Secular is derived from seculum, a Latin word, meaning an age or century. |