138 GLAUCUS; OR, 



to sight and sense ? Heaven forbid that those should 

 say so, whose wanderings among rock and pool have 

 been mixed up Avith holiest passages of friendship 

 and of love, and the intercommunion of equal minds 

 and sympathetic hearts, and the laugh of children 

 drinking in health from every breeze, and instruction 

 at every step, running ever and anon with proud 

 delight to add their little treasure to their parents' 

 stock, and of happy friendly evenings spent over the 

 microscope and the vase, in examining, arranging, 

 preserving, noting down in the diary the wonders and 

 the labours of the happy, busy day. No ; such short 

 glimpses of the water-world as our present appliances 

 afford us, are full enough of pleasure ; and we will 

 not envy Glaucus ; we will not even be over-anxious 

 for the success of his only modern imitator, the French 

 naturalist who is reported to have just fitted himself 

 with a waterproof dress and breathing apparatus, in 

 order to walk the bottom of the Mediterranean, and 

 see for himself how the world goes on at the fifty- 

 fathom line : we will be content with the wonders of 

 the shore and of the sea-floor, as far as the dredge 



