114 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



that do business in great waters, these see the works of 

 Jehovah and his wonders in the deep." 



Uniform and monotonous as the wide ocean often ap- 

 pears, it has its changes, and is now mournful, now cheery 

 and bright. Only when the wind is lulled and a calm 

 has soothed the angry waves, can the ocean be seen in 

 its quiet majesty. But the aspect is apt to be dreary 

 and lonely ; whether we see the dark waves of the sea 

 draw lazily in and out of rocky riffs, or watch wearily 

 "the sea's perpetual swing, the melancholy wash of end- 

 less waves." Away from the land there is nothing so full 

 of awe and horror as a perfectly calm sea : man is spell- 

 bound, a magic charm seems to chain him to the glassy 

 and transparent waters; he cannot move from the fatal 

 spot, and death, slow, fearful, certain death, stares him in 

 the face. He trembles as his despairing gaze meets the 

 upturned, leaden eye of the shark, patiently waiting for 

 him, or as he hears, far below, the sigh of some grim 

 monster, slowly shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine. 

 Fancy knows but one picture more dreadful yet than tem- 

 pest, shipwreck, or the burning of a vessel out at sea : 

 it is a ship on the great ocean in a calm, with no hope 

 for a breeze. Wild and waste is the view. On the same 

 sunshine, on the same waves the poor mariners gaze day 

 by day with languid eye, even until the heart is sick and 

 the body perishes. 



At other times it is the gladsome ocean, full of proud 

 ships, of merry waves, and ceaseless motion, that greet the 

 eye. Then the wild, shoreless sea, on which the waves 

 have rolled for thousands of years in unbroken might, 



