OR, GLIMPSES BENEATH THE WATERS. 



unheard. Their ears have not been tutored to 

 understand the word-music of Nature's language, 

 nor to read the brightly-written signs on its mighty 

 page. 



To appreciate Nature, as well as Art, the mind 

 requires a special education, without which the eye 

 and the ear perceive but little of the miracles 

 passing before them. To the eye of the common 

 observer, the farthest field in the landscape is as 

 green as the nearest, in the scene outspread before 

 him; while to the practised glance of the accom- 

 plished artist, every yard of distance lends its new 

 tone of colour to the tints of the herbage, till, 

 through a thousand delicate gradations, the brightest 

 verdure at last mingles with the atmospheric hue, 

 and is eventually lost in the pervading azure. If, 

 then, the ordinary aspects of Nature may not be fully 

 interpreted by the untutored eye, how should her 

 more hidden mysteries be felt or understood, or even 

 guessed at ? And, in fact, they are not, or the 

 visitor to the sea-side, looking over that wide tremu- 

 lous expanse of water that covers so many mysteries, 

 would feel, like the child taken for the first time 

 within the walls of a theatre, an intense anxiety to 

 raise the dark-green curtain which conceals the 

 scene of fairy wonders he is greedily longing to 



3 



