MARCH. 63 



People who have always lived in the interior of the 

 countrj', can have but little conception of the pleasure 

 of a seaside ramble, which is, during this month, when 

 the sharp west winds prevail more than from any other 

 quarter, particularly pleasant. Among the lakes and 

 rivers, and hills and valleys of an interior landscape, 

 though there may be found an endless variety of pas- 

 toral beauty, yet there is nothing that will compare with 

 the sublimity and extent of a water prospect on the 

 banks of the sea. Neither can such a view be fully 

 appreciated by those who have beheld it only from the 

 harbor of a large city, where so many of the works of 

 art cover and conceal its native magnificence, and with- 

 draw the mind from those solemn but cheerful contem- 

 plations that would otherwise be awakened by the 

 scene. We must go forth upon the solitary shores, at 

 a distance from the town, and walk upon the high bluffs 

 that project far enough into the sea to afford sight of a 

 complete hemisphere of waters, to obtain a just idea 

 of a sea prospect. When we look from the deck of a 

 sailing ship, where nothing on all sides is to be seen ex- 

 cept the ocean, bounded by the circle that seems to. 

 divide the dark blue of the waters from the more ethe- 

 real azure of the skies, — while contemplating such a 

 scene, our emotions, though sublime and solemn, are 

 not agreeable. But when this blue expanse of waters 

 divides the prospect equally with the landscape, that is 

 spread out in a luxuriant variety of woodland, plain, 

 and mountain, as viewed from an elevated promontory, 

 the emotions excited by the sublimity of the scene, on 

 the one hand, are softened into tranquil pleasure by the 

 beauty and loveliness of the opposite prospect. 



There is no month which is so apt an emblem as 

 March, with its constant and unexpected changes of 



