4 SEASIDE DIVINITY. 



and the happy bride has decked herself in her 

 verdant garniture, and thousands of flowers rich 

 in colour and perfume, and multitudes of living 

 beings born of this union have sprung into joyous 

 existence. Woods, meadows, rivers, hills, valleys, 

 all vie with each other in presenting their vari- 

 ous charms to the delighted wayfarer ; but no 

 scenes can advance stronger claims on his atten- 

 tion at this season than the sea-shore. 



Let us wander along the beach. On one hand 

 is the sea: its surface is rippled by the fresh 

 breeze; the tide is gently encroaching on the 

 sands; the wavelets falling in quick succession, 

 utter their murmurs in a monotone not unmu- 

 sical to a poet's ear. On the other hand, there 

 are rocks whose bases have for thousands of years 

 resisted the storms of winter, and whose summits 

 are crowned with trees, and flowers, and waving 

 ferns, and from a rift in which falls a clear 

 sparkling runnel, that, after wandering through 

 woods and fields, at length leaps over the rock 

 and loses itself in the sea. Then, high overhead, 

 the sky is of that same deep blue which we see 

 reflected in the waters beneath ; and here and 

 there far aloft are clouds of that kind which 

 meteorologists tell us never betoken rain, and 

 which, as the rays of the sun light them up, seem 

 lovely enough to realise the poet's dream, that 



" Some angels in their upward flight 

 Had left their mantles floating in mid air ;" 



and the no less poetical fancy of the philosopher, 



