above.

It harmonizes in its forms and sounds both with the night and the day. It cheerfully reflects the light, and it unites solemnly with the darkness. It imparts sweetness to the music of men, and grandeur to the thunder of heaven. What landscape is so beautiful as one upon the borders of the sea? The spirit of its loveliness is from the waters where it dwells and rests, singing its spells and scattering its charms on all the coasts. What rocks and cliffs are so glorious as those which are washed by the chafing sea? What groves and fields and dwellings are so enchanting as those which stand by the reflecting sea?

If we could see the great ocean as it can be seen by no mortal eye, beholding at one view what we are now obliged to visit in detail and spot by spot,-if we could, from a flight far higher than the eagle's, view the immense surface of the deep all spread out beneath us like a universal chart-what an infinite variety such a scene would display! Here a storm would be raging, the thunder bursting, the waters boiling, and rain and foam and fire all mingling together; and here, next to this scene of magnificent confusion, we should see the bright blue waves glittering in the sun and clapping their hands for very gladness. Here we should see a cluster of green islands set like jewels in the bosom of the sea; and there we should see broad shoals and gray rocks, fretting the billows and threatening the mariner. Here we discern a ship propelled by the steady wind of the tropics, and inhaling the almost visible odors which diffuse themselves around the Spice Islands of the east; there we should behold a vessel piercing the cold barrier of the north, struggling among hills and fields of ice, and contending with Winter in his own everlasting dominion. Nor are the ships of man the only travelers we shall perceive upon this mighty map of the ocean. Flocks of sea-birds are passing and re-passing, diving for their food or for pastime, migrating from shore to shore with unwearied wing and undeviating instinct, or wheeling and swarming around the rocks which they make alive and vocal by their numbers and their clanging cries.

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 relentless grasp of man from the hidden stores of ocean. 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. 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 vegetation of the land.

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 but drops? Who shall say whence the ocean derives those inexhaustible supplies of salt which so impregnate 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? What undescribed monsters, what unimaginable shapes, may be roving in the profoundest places of the sea, never seeking— and perhaps, from their nature, never able 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 in the ocean's lowest bed! What spoils from all climates, what works of art from all lands, have been engulfed by the insatiable and reckless waves! Who shall go down to examine and reclaim this uncounted and idle wealth? Who bears the keys of the deep?

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? Where are the bones, the relics of the brave and the timid, the good and the bad, the parent, the child, the wife, the husband, the brother, the sister, the 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. But who shall tell the bereaved to what spot their affections may cling? And where shall human tears be shed throughout that solemn sepulchre? 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 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.

CHARLES DICKENS.

HARLES DICKENS was born at Landport, a suburb of Portsmouth, England, February 7, 1812, and he died at his home, known as Gadshill House, near Rochester, Kent, June 9, 1870. His father, John Dickens, was a clerk in the navy pay-office.

Young Dickens received part of his education at Chatham, whither his parents had moved in 1816. His principal studies, however, were "Robinson Crusoe," "Don Quixote," "Gill Blas," and other novels. In 1822 his father became bankrupt and was sent to prison for debt. Charles' family then removed to London, where the boy was put to work in a blacking factory. His father, now relieved by a small legacy, became a reporter for the "Morning Chronicle." After attending school for two years, the boy was placed in an attorney's office. Subsequently, he learned short-hand and became Parliamentary reporter for "The True Sun." Four years later, he was joined to the staff of the "Morning Chronicle."

At the age of nine, Dickens commenced his literary work by writing a tragedy, entitled Misnar, the Sultan of India. In 1834, appeared his first published sketch, Mrs. Joseph Porter Over the Way. A series of sketches followed in the "Old Monthly Magazine," over the signature of "Boz." For want of pay these sketches were discontinued, and afterward resumed in the "Chronicle" where they attracted much public attention.