THE SANDS AT EBB. 3G5 



weeks so utterly dark that he could hardly distinguish 

 day and night in it, but whose eye became so accustomed 

 to the gloom, that he could at length see the smallest 

 insect creeping along the floor. But there is in reality 



only one source from whence comfort may be drawn, 



the mercy of that God who does not afflict willingly, 



and whose goodness is equal to His power 



' I spent two hours very agreeably a few nights ago 

 on the wide tract of sand, that in large spring tides 

 stretches beneath the town. The stream was one of the 

 largest I ever saw : I could walk dry-shod over tracts of 

 beach, which in ordinary ebbs are covered by well-nigh 

 five feet of water. The evening was cold and stormy, 

 and yet half the children of the town were frolicking 

 over the sands, some gathering periwinkles or catching 

 razor fish, and not a few philosophizing, like myself, on 

 a class of vegetables and animals so unlike the pro- 

 ductions of either kingdom we were accustomed to meet 

 with on land. There is no study so universally a favourite 

 as the study of natural history, and at no age are people 

 of the common order such minute observers as in their 

 childhood. One half the degree of attention bestowed 

 by the boy on the wonders that surround him, would 

 render the man a philosopher. Among the juvenile 

 philosophers of the ebb, I saw a little deaf boy watch- 

 ing with much apparent interest a contest between a 

 large luckie and a young razor fish. The lucJcie had 

 inserted its proboscis into the shell of the latter, and 

 was pulling out the poor tenant, who seemed incapable 

 of any other mode of resistance than the very inefficient 

 one of rendering itself difficult to be swallowed. I saw 

 another little thing of about six years, turning over with 

 a stick that strange-looking animal which we term the 

 sea-snail (naturalists have another name for it), and 



