OE, GLIMPSES EENEATH THE WATERS. 



there are things well worthy of investigation beyond 

 the region of money-making, and the attractive but 

 narrow circle distinguished by the fascinating cha- 

 racters, £ s. d. 



Those who cannot see Nature, who cannot see 

 more than an unclean thing in the little creeping 

 beetle, are like one gazing at a carved Egyptian 

 record, who perceives, in the hieroglyphic scarabseus, 

 % simply the sculptured figure of a beetle, and no 

 more — they are in a state of " Egyptian darkness" 

 as regards one of the highest and most enchanting 

 fields of human research. But to those who have 

 acquired this rare though easy art, and learned to 

 see Nature, even to a moderate extent (for in that 

 art are an infinite number of degrees and grada- 

 tions), the aspect of the ocean floor must present 

 an appearance as beautiful and strange, and seem- 

 ingly as supernatural, as the wildest imagination 

 could depicture. 



When poets would travel, in their inventive 



flights, to other floating and revolving worlds than 



ours, they describe rosy skies, instead of azure, and 



trees like branching crystals, with jewel-like fruits 



glittering on every stem. They present us with 



pictures, in short, in which all the ordinary aspects 



of our planet are reversed, or metamorphosed, in the 



region of their invention ; but in their most fanciful 



11 



