shall perceive on this mighty map of the ocean. Flocks of sea-birds are passing and repassing, diving for their food, or for pastime, migrating from shore to shore with unwearied wings, and undeviating instinct, or wheeling and swarming round the rocks, which they make alive and vocal by their numbers, and their clanging cries.

11. How various, how animated, how full of interest is the survey! We might behold such a scene, were we enabled to behold it, at almost any moment of time, on the vast and varied ocean; and it would be a much more diversified and beautiful one; for I have spoken but of a few particulars, and of those but slightly.

12. I have not spoken of the thousand forms in which the sea meets the shore, of the sands and the cliffs, of the arches and grottos, of the cities and the solitudes, which occur in the beautiful irregularity of its outline; nor of the constant tides, nor the boiling whirlpools and eddies, nor the currents and streams, which are dispersed throughout its surface. The variety of the sea, notwithstanding the uniformity of its substance, is ever changing and endless.

LESSON XXXVIII.

THE SAME SUBJECT, CONCLUDED.

GREENWOOD.

1. "THE sea is His, and He made it." And when He made it, He ordained that it should be the element and dwellingplace of multitudes of living beings, and the treasury of many riches. How populous, and wealthy, and bounteous are the depths of the sea! How many are the tribes which find in them abundant sustenance, and furnish abundant sustenance to man. The whale roams through the deep like its lord; but he is forced to surrender his vast bulk to the use of man.

2. The lesser tribes of the finny race have, each, their peculiar habits and haunts, but they are found out by the ingenuity of man and turned to his own purposes. The line

and the hook, and the net, are dropped and spread to delude them, and bring them up from the watery chambers, where they were roving in conscious security. How strange is it that the warm food which comes upon our tables, and substances which furnish our streets and dwellings with cheerful light, should be drawn up from the cold and dark recesses of the sea.

3. We shall behold new wonders and riches when we investigate the sea-shore. We shall find both beauty for the eye and food for the body, in the varieties of shell-fish, which adhere, in myriads, to the rocks, or form their close, dark burrows in the sands. In some parts of the world we shall see those houses of stone, which the little coral insect rears up with patient industry from the bottom of the waters, till they grow into formidable rocks, and broad forests, whose branches never wave, and whose leaves never fall. In other parts we shall see those "pale, glistening pearls," which adorn the crowns of princes, and are woven in the hair of beauty, extorted by the restless grasp of man from the hidden stores of ocean.

4. And, spread round every coast, there are beds of flowers, and thickets of plants, which the dew does not nourish, and which man has not sown, nor cultivated, nor reaped; but which seem to belong to the floods alone, and the denizens of the floods, until they are thrown up by the surges, and we discover that even the dead spoils of the fields of ocean may fertilize and enrich the fields of earth.

5. They have a life, and a nourishment, and an economy of their own, and we know little of them, except that they are there in their briny nurseries, reared up into luxuriance by what would kill, like a mortal poison, the plants of the land.

6. We must not omit to consider the utility of the sea; its utility, I mean, not only as it furnishes a dwelling and suste

a Coral insect; a small animal in a shell resembling stone, and growing in the sea. Although very small of themselves, yet, by uniting with each other, they sometimes form whole islands; and the bed of the Pacific, in some places, is said to be so much raised by them, as to obstruct navigation. Some of the finest specimens of pearls are the Oriental, found near the coast of Ceylon and Japan. The one which Cleopatra dissolved and drank to Antony's health was valued at $375,000.

nance to an infinite variety and number of inhabitants, and an important part of the support of man, but in its more gen eral relations to the whole globe of the world. It cools the air for us in summer, and warms it in winter.

7. It is probable that the very composition of the atmos phere is beneficially affected by combining with the particles which it takes up from the ocean; but however this may be, there is little or no doubt, that were it not for the immense face of waters with which the atmosphere comes in contact, it would be hardly respirable for the dwellers on the earth.

S. Then, again, it affords an easier, and, on the whole, perhaps a safer medium of communication and conveyance be tween nation and nation than can be found, for equal distances, on the land. It is, also, an effectual barrier between nations, preserving, to a great degree, the weak from invasion, and the virtuous from contamination.

9. In many other respects it is, no doubt, useful, to the great whole, though in how many we are not qualified to judge. What we do see is abundant testimony of the wisdom and goodness of Him who in the beginning "gathered the waters together unto one place."

10. There is mystery in the sea. There is mystery in its depths. It is unfathomed, and, perhaps, unfathomable. Who can tell, who shall know, how near its pits run down to the central core of the world? Who can tell what wells, what fountains are there, to which the fountains of the earth are, in comparison, but drops? Who shall say whence the ocean derives those inexhaustible supplies of salt, which so impregnates its waters, that all the rivers of the earth, pouring into it from the time of the creation, have not been able to freshen them?

b

11. What undescribed monsters, what unimaginable shapes,

a The great depth of the ocean is unknown; but it is thought to be equal to the highest mountains on the surface of the earth. The greatest depth ever sounded was 7200 feet. b Some suppose that there are primitive banks of salt at the bottom of the ocean; others that its waters are a primitive fluid, the other parts having been depos ited; but no satisfactory explanation has yet been given.

may be roving in the profoundest places of the sea, never seeking, and perhaps from their nature unable to seek, the upper waters, and expose themselves to the gaze of man! What glittering riches, what heaps of gold, what stores of gems, there must be scattered in lavish profusion on the ocean's lowest bed! What spoils from all climates, what works of art from all lands, have been engulfed by the insa tiable and reckless waves! Who shall go down to examine and reclaim this uncounted and idle wealth? Who bears the keys of the deep?

12. And, oh! yet more affecting to the heart, and mysterious to the mind, what companies of human beings are locked up in that wide, weltering, unsearchable grave of the sea! Where are the bodies of those lost ones, over whom the melancholy waves alone have been chanting requiem? What shrouds were wrapped round the limbs of beauty, and of manhood, and of placid infancy, when they were laid on the dark floor of that secret tomb?

13. Where are the bones, the relics of the brave and the fearful, the good and the bad, the parent, the child, the wife, the husband, the brother, the sister, and lover, which have been tossed and scattered and buried by the washing, wasting, wandering sea? The journeying winds may sigh, as year after year they pass over their beds. The solitary rain-cloud may weep in darkness over the mingled remains which lie strewed in that unwonted cemetery.

14. But who shall tell the bereaved to what spot their affections may cling? And where shall human tears be shed throughout that solemn sepulcher? It is mystery all. When shall it be resolved? Who shall find it out? Who but He to whom the wildest waves listen reverently, and to whom all nature bows; He who shall one day speak, and be heard in ocean's profoundest caves; to whom the deep, even the lowest deep, shall give up all its dead, when the sun shall sicken, and the earth and the isles shall languish, and the heavens be rolled together like a scroll, and there shall be "no more sea."

LESSON XXXIX.

WIER'S CAVE IN VIRGINIA.

[The reader may note the cases of inflection where there is contrast in the following piece. See Rule 4, page 30.]

1. THIS cave derives its name from Barnet Wier, who discovered it in the year 1804. It is situated near Madison's Cave, so celebrated, though the latter can not be compared with the former.

2. There were three of us beside our guide, with lighted torches, and our loins girded, now ready to descend into the cave. We took our torches in our left hands, and entered. The mouth was so small that we could descend only by creeping, one after another. A descent of almost twenty yards brought us into the first room.

3. The cave was exceedingly cold, dark, and silent, like the chambers of death. In this manner we proceeded; now descending thirty or forty feet, now ascending as high, now creeping on our hands and knees, and now walking in large rooms, the habitations of solitude. The mountain seemed to be composed almost wholly of limestone, and by this means the cave is lined throughout with the most beautiful incrustations and stalactites of carbonated lime, which are formed by the continual dripping of the water through the roof.

4. These stalactites are of various and elegant shapes and colors, often bearing a striking resemblance to animated nature. At one place, we saw over our heads what appeared to be a waterfall, of the most beautiful kind. Nor could the imagination be easily persuaded that it was not a reality; you could see the water boiling and dashing down, see its white spray and foam, but it was all solid limestone.

5. Thus we passed onward in this world of solitude; now stopping to admire the beauties of a single stalactite; now

a Sta-lac'tite; mineral carbonate of lime in the form of icicles, hanging from the roofs and sides of caves.