Des] AND SYMBOLS. 79 



magnesia, Lut no traces of starch, the essential ingredient in 

 human food. Certain sections of society are blasted by a moral 

 depravity which this " bunt " typifies. Externally, the persons 

 affected appear to be as honourable and respectable as the best 

 of the world. Sometimes, indeed, they appear to be the most 

 Christian of the Christian. But there is no germ of moral 

 goodness in them. Under the mask of social propriety there is 

 moral blackness. The infection of their wickedness rapidly 

 spreads all around them. Yet it is often neither seen nor sus- 

 pected by the ordinary observer. But when the preacher of the 

 gospel goes forth to " gather in his sheaves," the disappointing 

 discovery is made that there is no moral harvest to be rejoiced 

 over, but a disheartening spectacle of moral waste and worthless- 

 ness to be deplored. B. 



Desolation. 



There are epochs in some men's lives when faith, hope, 

 and happiness all vanish, and the human mind, driven into 

 gloom, experiences the awful sense of desolation. This mourn- 

 ful mood of soul has its symbol in the "Desolate Sea." In 

 the angle comprised between Humboldt's current and the warm 

 artery which flows to meet it from the centre of the Pacific, 

 there exists a vast area, a liquid desert of sinister aspect, deso- 

 late and barren, where nothing lives or moves, and which seems 

 stricken with an eternal curse. "The motionless sea," says 

 Felix Julien, " seems here deserted and abandoned. No whale 

 ever furrows its waves ; no halcyon or petrel ever skims its sur- 

 face. All the logs of ships and all the narratives of voyagers 

 agree in representing in the same dreary colours the picture 

 exhibited so efficaciously by this desolate sea. When the 

 mariner has doubled Cape Horn, he is surrounded and pursued 

 for several weeks by clouds of birds very common in the Austral 

 regions. The booby, the petrel, the albatross, the sea swallow 

 escort his vessel, wheel around it, and follow unfatigued in its 

 rapid track. But as soon as we approach the Desolate Sea, all 

 things quit us, disappear, and change. "We no longer descry 

 the halcyon, no longer hear the hoarse voice of the sea-gull. 

 The atmosphere is without sound, the waves of the ocean are 

 dumb, nothing animates the blank horizon. The whole universe 



