SO 4 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



He who, awakened to the inward exercise of thought, delights 

 to build up an inner world in his own spirit, fills the wide 

 horizon of the open sea with the sublime image of the infinite ; 

 his eye dwells especially on the distant sea line where air and 

 water join, and where stars arise and set in ever renewed 

 alternation : in such contemplations there mingles as with 

 all human joy, a breath of sadness and of longing. 



A peculiar predilection for the sea, and a grateful recol- 

 lection of the impressions which, when viewed within the 

 tropics, either in the calm of peaceful nights or in moments 

 of tumultuous agitation, it has left upon my mind, have alone 

 induced me to allude to the individual enjoyment afforded 

 by its contemplation, before I proceed to other and more 

 general considerations. Contact with the ocean has un- 

 questionably exercised a beneficial influence on the culti- 

 vation of the intellect and formation of the character of many 

 nations, on the multiplication of those bonds which should 

 unite the whole human race, on the first knowledge of the 

 true form of the earth, and on the pursuit of astronomy 

 and of all the mathematical and physical sciences. This 

 beneficial influence, enjoyed by the dwellers on the Medi- 

 terranean and on the shores of South- We stern Asia, was 

 long limited to them ; but since the sixteenth century it 

 has spread far and wide, extending to nations living even 

 in the interior of continents. Since Columbus was " sent to 

 unbar the gates of ocean" (as the unknown voice said to 

 him in a dream on his sick-bed near the River Belem), ( 374 ) 

 man has boldly adventured into intellectual as well as geo- 

 graphical regions before unknown to him. 



"We proceed to the second covering of our planet, its 

 exterior and universally diffused envelope, the aerial ocean, 



