130 THE SEA. 



vanishing horizon on three sides, with no land to 

 break the continuity but the narrow strip beneath our 

 feet, that fades to a blue line behind, an awful sense 

 of its grandeur steals over the mind. But still more 

 is this impression heightened to him who, in the 

 midst of the Atlantic, climbs to the main-topmast 

 cross-trees of some goodly ship at daybreak, and 

 watches the bursting of the sun from out of the 

 sparkling waves. A sense of majestic loneliness in 

 the vast unbroken waste is felt: the deck is so far 

 below that it is reduced to a small area, and its 

 sounds scarcely reach so high ; the horizon is im- 

 mensely expanded ; perhaps the winds are hushed, 

 and the boundless waste is sleeping in glittering still- 

 ness ; not a speck interrupts the glorious circle : a 

 solemn awe pervades the devout gazer's mind, as he 

 recalls the words, " This great and wide sea !" 



I have sometimes pleased my fancy, as I have stood 

 on the beach of one of our south-western bays, with 

 the thought, that, if we could send forth a little bird, 

 with the power of unflagging flight, straight out to 

 seaward, strictly forbidding the pinion to be closed 

 until land was beneath her, we might welcome her 

 again to England, without her course of twenty-five 

 thousand miles having deviated sensibly from her 

 original departure. Eight away would she stretch, 

 on something like a S.JW. course, keeping between 

 the meridians of 10 and 30 W., across the line on 

 20, away through the South Atlantic, crossing the 

 horrid pole, and then up, up, through the Pacific, 



