22 THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 



with all the energy of life ; and when perhaps nobler beings may 

 have taken the place of man, its waves will still sparkle in the 

 glittering sunbeam, or thunder against the coast of some land 

 now still reposing in its depths. 



How numberless are the blessings we owe to the ocean, the 

 father and sustainer of all organic life ! He it is that feasts the 

 stream, that fills the lake, that bubbles in the spring, that 

 foams in the cataract, or rushes along in the mountain torrent. 

 Should his eternal fountains be dried up, then the blooming 

 surface of the earth would be converted into a naked waste. 

 To him we owe the magnificence of our forests, the verdure of 

 our meadows, the beauty of our fields. It is his waters we enjoy 

 in the luscious fruits of our orchards, or quaff in the juice of the 

 exhilarating grape. They circulate in the veins of numberless 

 animals, of the bee which offers us the sweet tribute of its honey, 

 of the bird that charms us with its melodious song, of the domes- 

 tic quadruped on whose flesh we feed, and whose services are 

 indispensable to our welfare. Nay, our own blood is originally 

 drawn from the wells of the ocean, and is constantly refreshed 

 and replenished from their exhaustless sources. 



Far from separating from each other the nations of the earth 

 (as the ancients, still inexperienced in navigation, supposed), the 

 sea is the great highway of the human race, and unites all its 

 various tribes into one common family by the' beneficial bonds of 

 commerce. Countless fleets are constantly furrowing its bosom, 

 to enrich, by perpetual exchanges, all the countries of the globe 

 with the products of every zone, to convey the fruits of the 

 tropical world to the children of the chilly north, or to trans- 

 port the manufactures of colder climes to the inhabitants of the 

 equatorial regions. With the growth of commerce, civilisation 

 also spreads athwart the wide causeway of the ocean from shore 

 to shore; it first dawned on the borders of the sea, and its chief 

 seats are still to be found along its confines. 



The same power of attraction which governs the course of 

 the stars, and compels the planets to wander in eternal ellipses 

 round the sun, is also the Supreme Arbiter of the tides. How 

 wonderful this regular undeviating alternation of ebb and flood, 

 this immutable constancy in the midst of eternal change ! but 

 our wonder increases when we learn that the cause of the grand 

 phenomenon, which never fails to interest the observer, how- 



