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the visible wonders of Nature: establishing the repose of a poor family on a tribunal of turf in a shady part of his garden, and then reflecting on the decisions he should pronounce relative to great interests on the supreme seat of justice."

No pleasures are so pure, and none so worthy the capacities of the human mind, as those derived from the study of Nature. And though nothing is entirely within our limited comprehension, yet, as things seen afford presumptive evidence in regard to things unseen, what more noble employment than to trace in the beauties, harmonies, and sublimities of the material universe those proofs of power, wisdom, and goodness which lead to the acknowledgment and adoration of the Supreme Architect!

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BEAUTIES, HARMONIES,

AND

SUBLIMITIES OF NATURE.

THE OCEAN.

Or all the objects in Nature, none strikes the soul with so much wonder, awe, delight, and solemnity, as the OCEAN.

There is a beautiful passage in Goëthe's ballad of the Fisherman, where he describes the pleasure which is derived from gazing on the sea: a passage which reminds us of that scene in Asia, where a plaintive harmony is heard in the air, arising from the waves of the ocean, beating beneath an atmosphere of unwonted purity. Quintus Curtius gives an account of the awe and apprehension of Alexander's soldiers when they first beheld the sea, near the mouth of the Indus; and of their astonishment and alarm at observing the tide rising to the height of thirty feet: they, who had been accustomed only to the tranquil waters of the Mediterranean. When the Bedouin Arabs arrive at any of the Syrian ports, they never fail to express their rapture and amazement at beholding the sea for the first time; and, with all the eagerness of admiration, they inquire what that" desert of water" means.

This vast collection of globules and fountain of vapour occupies more than three parts of the globe; is the source of circulation and growth to all organized bodies, and the general reservoir of vegetable, animal, and mineral decompositions; while the myr

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