232 OFF THE CAPS. 



iEneas, to Ulysses, Xerxes, Themistocles, Lysander, Conon, and Alex- 

 ander, the Roman admirals, the northern sea kings, the Genoese and 

 Venetian traders, the discoverers of the New World, and to the eyes of 

 our modern navigators, it ever presented and presents the self-same 

 countenance. Every thing changes — but the ocean never changes. 

 Every thing is silently fulfilling the grand provision of nature, gradual 

 dissolution and regeneration ; but the ocean is subject neither to disso- 

 lution nor perceptible regeneration. While all is one wide theatre of 

 decay, the ocean flows ever on unchanged, unchangeable, and everlast- 

 ing, and bids successful defiance to that at which every other object of 

 sense is made to tremble. 



Prodigious dominion ! the overburthened mind seeks in vain to com- 

 prehend the greatness of its attributes. What a perception of expanse 

 sweeps over the soul, as we gaze upon its glittering and illimitable 

 bosom. Sea and sky are now the only objects of sight. The one, 

 baffling the industrious researches of imagination ; the other, presenting 

 the most lively image of eternity, with which the perceptive capacity is 

 capable of grappling. Our vision no longer 



" Cabin'd, ciibb'd, confin'd, bound in — " 



with the sight of land, though merely bearing the dim and distant shape 

 of the grey and long drawn line, verging upon, and almost blended with 

 the spirit-like mistiness of the dreamy horizon, flits in freedom over 



"Tlie Sen, the sea, tlie opni sea, 

 The blue, the fresh, the ever free — " 



and catches a portion of the elevation which surrounds it. The breeze, 

 strong, though somewhat unsteady, fills the towering pyramid of white 

 above us, and bears us gaily onward. — Away, — away, — stretching abroad 

 in every direction, as far as the eye can reach ; — sublime in the nearer 

 distance — dubious, yet grand afar, sweep, one after the other, the gigan- 

 tic undulations which vary the mighty surface upon which we so securely 

 float. Green — intensely green — darkening into the most imposing 

 shadows as the waves wheel into dei)th, mounting again into the broad 

 and searching light of the open day, revolve majestically the piles of 

 water around. Look up, and glance along the breadth of distance — 

 breaking into the thousand hues which flash from the core of the dia- 

 mond ; widening into a belt of dazzling gold ; condensing into the most 

 starlike scintillations; starting up spires of arrowy light, now green, 

 now orange, and now the richest crimson, glitters that portion of the 

 ocean beneath the point of the sun's most glorious delineation. Who 

 could paint the glories of such a sunset ? A scene at which the 

 artist would throw down his pencils, and the poet abandon his vo- 

 cabulary in despair. No ! such revelations of the loveliness of nature 

 must be ivitnessed to be fully appreciated. 



And then the sky. — Azure above ; — mist in the east ; — and in the 

 west, an assemblage of the richest lights. Colossal cloud-piles, spires of 

 brilliancy, here shooting up in gorgeous solitude, there grouped like the 

 aiguilles of the Alpine ranges ; and boldly printed upon a back-ground of 

 gold and scarlet. Alas, that the beauties of such a view should be 

 transitory. Whilst we write, the sun sinks down ; the clouds become 



