HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



1G9 



THE TE AWL. 



By MAJOR HOLLAND. 



My soul is full of longing 



For the Secret of the Sea, 



And the heart of the great ocean 



Sends a thrilling pulse through me." 



EADER, do these 

 words of Longfellow 

 come home to you ? 

 does any responsive 

 chord in your own 

 heart vibrate in sympathy with 

 the spirit of the poet who has 

 drawn a flood of inspiration 

 from Nature's fountain, and 

 penned many a deep lesson for 

 us ? Another great spirit, one 

 ^ that has lately left us, a strong 

 and resolute yet tender and 

 >4h. sensitive soul, that wore in this 

 life the outward mask of a 

 hard - lined deeply - furrowed 

 face, told us, with all the ex- 

 quisite delicacy of its gentle 

 pathos, how the wild waves 

 ever talked to little Paul Dombey, whispering to 

 the wondering heart of the fast-failing child, of that 

 unknown and unfathomable ocean upon whose 

 eternal bosom his tiny skiff was to be launched so 

 early. Reader, do the deep mysterious tones of the 

 grand utterances of the great deep ever speak to 

 You? Open wide the ears of your understanding 

 and\listen reverently when you are all alone with 

 the mighty Sea, and mayhap you will one day catch 

 an inkling of the divine secret it is ever striving to 

 reveal. 



Of all the 31,465,480 true Britons reckoned up 

 in the census of April, 1871, how many individual 

 units have ever passed even one entire clay and 

 night of twenty-four hours under the open sky 

 alone with Nature? It is not a very marvellous 

 feat to perform, yet it is a very uncommon one. 

 We are indebted to the humorous pencil of Leach 

 for a sketch of a languid gentleman who, pining for 

 No. 80. 



a new sensation, is trying the effect of riding up 

 and down the Strand, seated on the roof of an 

 omnibus and picking out periwinkles with a pin. 

 Should you ever feel as though you had exhausted 

 all the resources of the civilized portions of the 

 globe, do not seek for distraction in boiled cockles 

 or in pickled whelks, but take a railway rug and a 

 stout stick, a pipe, and a moderate provision of meat 

 and drink, and get away to the top of a hill, with 

 woods and streams, and smiling fields dotted with 

 farmsteads and villages spread before your feet, and 

 there rest in solitude and wait on Nature, and listen 

 and watch for all that she will do and say in earth, 

 air, and sky, and for all that her offspring will do 

 above, below, and around you while this teeming 

 planet turns once around its axis. Then seek a 

 similar communion with the Sea; study it from 

 even-fall to broad daylight from the top of some 

 lone unfrequented cliff; or better still, commit your- 

 self to the heaving bosom of the great waters, and 

 unless your soul be blind and deaf, you shall learn 

 things never dreamt of before in your philosophy. 

 Words cannot convey it, " The Secret of the Sea " 

 must be sought after by each one for himself. 



But let us first pass a night together ; off the 

 coast, in one of the toiling striving solitary smacks 

 that fight single combats with the billows and 

 wrestle with the winds, and struggle on in cold aud 

 rain, and gloom and fog, all through the lonesome 

 hours of the dark night, to win from the gravel-beds 

 and shingle-banks, from sandy spits and parks of 

 sea-grass, and from the mud and ooze deep down 

 beneath the keel, the brown soles whose savoury 

 filets will smoke on our breakfast - tables in the 

 morning, and the crimson lobsters and the glossy 

 pink prawns for the cool salads of these hot dog- 

 days, and a score or two of other welcome luxuries, 

 dearly won for us by hard horny hands and honest 



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