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HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



of its deep rest, or the wild tumult of its excited wrath. It is 

 awful when its crested waves rise up to make a compact with 

 the black clouds and the howling winds, and the thunder and 

 the thunderbolt, and they sweep on, in the joy of their dread 

 alliance, to do the Almighty's bidding. And it is awful, too, 

 when it stretches its broad level out to meet in quiet union the 

 bended sky, and show in the line of meeting the vast rotundity 

 of the world. . There is majesty in its wide expanse, separating 

 and enclosing the great continents of the earth, occupying two- 

 thirds of the whole surface of the globe, penetrating the land 

 with its bays and secondary seas, and receiving the constantly- 

 pouring tribute of every river, of every shore. There is 

 majesty in its fulness, never diminishing and never increasing. 

 There is majesty in its integrity, — for its whole vast substance is 

 uniform in its local unity, for there is but one ocean, and the 

 inhabitants of any one maritime spot may visit the inhabitants 

 of any other in the wide world. Its depth is sublime: who can 

 sound it? Its strength is sublime: what fabric of man can 

 resist it ? Its voice is sublime, whether in the prolonged 

 song of its ripple or the stern music of its roar, — whether it 

 utters its hollow and melancholy tones within a labyrinth of 

 wave- worn caves, or thunders at the base of some huge promon- 

 tory, or beats against a toiling vessel's sides, lulling the voyager 

 to rest with the strains of its wild monotony, or dies away, with 

 the calm and fading twilight, in gentle murmurs on some 

 sheltered shore. 



" The sea possesses beauty, in richness, of its own; it borrows 

 it from earth, and air, and heaven. The clouds lend it the 

 various dyes of their wardrobe, and throw down upon it the 

 broad masses of their shadows as they go sailing and sweeping 

 by. The rainbow laves in it its many-colored feet. The sun 

 loves to visit it, and the moon and the glittering brotherhood of 

 planets and stars, for they delight themselves in its beauty. 

 The sunbeams return from it in showers of diamonds and 



