readily stirs up in our minds thoughts too deep for tears, is the daisy-the favourite of our innocent and happy childhood. Ah! would that now we were as content with simple joys as when that wee, modest, crimsontinted flower was to us a beauty, a prize, and a charm.

"There is a flower, a little flower,

With crimson crest and golden eye;
It welcomes every changing hour,
And weathers every sky.

On waste or woodland, rock or plain,
Its humble buds unheeded rise ;
The rose has but a summer's reign,
The daisy never dies."

We close this chapter with the following apologue:

THE WASTED FLOWERS.

On the velvet banks of a rivulet sat a rosy child. Her lap was filled with flowers, and a garland of rosebuds were twined around her neck. Her face was as radiant as the sunshine that fell upon it, and her voice was as clear as that of the birds that warbled at her side. The little stream went singing on, and with each gush of its music the child lifted a flower in its dimpled hand-with a merry laugh, threw it upon its surface. In her glee she forgot that her treasures were growing less, and with the swift motion of childhood, she flung them upon the sparkling tide, until every bud and blossom had disappeared. Then, seeing her loss, she sprung upon her feet, and burst into tears, calling aloud to the stream"Bring back my flowers!" But the stream danced along regardless of her tears; and as it bore the blossoming

burden away, her words came back in a taunting echo along its reedy margin. And, long after, amid the wailing of the breeze, and the fitful burst of childish grief, was heard the fruitless cry-"Bring back my flowers!" Merry maiden! who art idly wasting the precious moments so bountifully bestowed upon thee, observe in this thoughtless child an emblem of thyself. Each moment is a perfumed flower. Let its fragrance be dispensed in blessings all around thee, and ascend as sweet incense to its benevolent Giver. Else when thou hast carelessly flung them from thee, and seest them receding on the swift waters of Time, thou wilt cry in tones more sorrowful than those of the child- "Bring back my flowers!" And the only answer will be an echo from the shadowy past"Bring back my flowers!"

CHAPTER IV.

The Sea Shore.

F all objects in Nature none strikes the soul with so much wonder and awe as ocean's melancholy waste. Quintus Curtius gives an account of the awe and apprehension of Alexander's soldiers when they saw the ocean near the mouth of the Indus. They were surprised and alarmed when they saw the tide rise as high as thirty feet; they who had only been accustomed to the quiet and tideless waters of the Mediterranean. Florus describes the effect that the sea, and the sun sinking into it, had upon the minds of the soldiers of Decimus Brutus. When the Bedouin Arabs arrive at any of the Syrian ports they never fail to express their rapture and astonishment at beholding the sea for the first time, and with all the eagerness of admiration enquire what that desert of water means. What myriad forms of life, animal and vegetable, it contains! Some floating with the wind, others at the mercy of every wave, some firmly secured to stones and rocks, some rising to the surface from the bottom, others living at the very bottom of the sea, in calm, untroubled waters, unaffected by the storms and tempests which

sweep the surface. "Why," it has been asked, are we never weary of looking at the ocean?" From land scenery, however charming, the eye turns away deliberately and content. The sea, on the other hand, holds the soul in unwonted fascination. The meadows and ferny lanes, even the woodland glades of spring-skirted with the wild blue hyacinth, and sparkling with the crimson lychnis we can quit satisfied; but the beach, though it offer nothing but high water mark of withered wreck, we never turn from without reluctance. As in a glass we see our features reflected, so in the sound and movement of the waves we recognise an image of our earthly life. So is it also in the movements, though silent, of the clouds, as massively dark, or softly brilliant, their swelling mountain forms unite, separate, and unite again, unveiling infinite depths of calm, bright azure; clouds in their endless motion across the sky suggesting the passing away of human life. When sitting upon the edge of a rock rising over the sea we gaze upon its boundless surface, agitated with perpetual motion, and when we listen to the music of its murmur upon the shore, or the deep intonations of its roar, what an impression of immensity does it make upon the mind! Then by the power of association-that paradise of the mind-we recall with pleasure that passage in Seneca, where he says that in the progress of life childhood, youth, manhood, and age follow in succession, as objects pass before our eyes during a voyage.

Addison says that the sixth book of Paradise Lost is like a troubled ocean, exhibiting greatness in confusion, while the seventh affects the imagination like the ocean

in a calm. Young, likens a man in the last moments of his life to a ship driven out to sea; and Milton compares the hallelujahs sung by a multitude of angels to the murmuring of its waves. The ocean has also the power of awakening within the soul the spirit of devotion. The miracles of the firmament are reflected in every wave, in the unceasing restlessness of which we recognize the ever-marching progress of time; and as the waves gradually accumulate at a distance, seeming to collect their strength in their approach to the shore, and fall on the beach in the form of a semicircular cascade, contemplation seems to have the power of lulling the soul in ambrosial slumbers, and transporting it in imagination to that world where there shall be "no more sea."

The phosphorescence of the sea when struck by an oar is produced by the presence of myriads of minute insects, which have the power of emitting light when irritated. The night-shining nereis emits a light of great brilliancy. The nereides attach themselves to the scales of fishes, and thus frequently render them extremely luminous. The Cancer fulgens is enabled to illuminate its whole body, and emits vivid flashes of light. Many of the Medusæ also exhibit powerful phosphorescence, though many of them are so exceedingly minute that several thousands may be comprehended within a teacup of sea water. They float near the surface in countless myriads, and when disturbed give out brilliant scintillations, often leaving a train of light behind them, as we have seen them in the waters of Milford Haven.

"There is something in being near the sea," says Hazlitt, "like the confines of eternity. It is a new