vantage; the beauty which they spread out to our vision in their woods and waters; their crags and slopes, their clouds and atmospheric hues, were a splendid gift; the sublimity which they pour into our deepest souls from their majestic aspects; the poetry which breathes from their streams, and dells, and airy heights, were a proud heritage to imaginative minds; but what are all these when the thought comes, that without mountains, the spirit of man must have bowed to the brutal and the base, and probably have sunk to the monotonous level of the unvaried plain. When I turn my eyes upon the map of the world, and behold how wonderfully the countries, where our faith was nurtured, where our liberties were generated, where our philosophy and literature, the fountains of our intellectual grace and beauty, sprang up, were as distinctly walled out by God's hand, with mountain ramparts from the eruptions and interruptions of barbarism, as if at the especial prayer of the early fathers of man's destinies, I am lost in an exulting admiration. Look at the bold barriers of Palestine! see how the infant liberties of Greece, were sheltered from the vast tribes of the uncivilized north by the heights of Hamus and Rhodope! behold how the Alps describe their magnificent crescent, inclining their opposite extremities to the Adriatic and Tyrrhine Seas, locking up Italy from the Gallic and Teutonic hordes, till the power and spirit of Rome had reached their maturity, and she had opened the wide forest of Europe to the light, spread far her laws and language, and planted the seeds of many mighty nations! Thanks to God for mountains! Their colossal firmness seems almost to break the current of time itself; the Geologist in them searches for traces of the earlier world, and it is there too that man, resisting the revolutions of lower regions, retains through innumerable years his habits and his rights. While a multitude of changes has remoulded the people of Europe, while languages and laws and dynasties, and creeds, have passed over it like shadows over the landscape, the children of the Celt and the Goth, who fled to the mountains a thousand years ago, are found there now, and show us in face and figure, in language and garb, what their fathers were; show us a fine contrast with the modern tribes dwelling below and around them; and show us, moreover, how adverse is the spirit of the mountain to mutability, and that there the fiery heart of Freedom is found forever. LESSON XIV. The Ocean.-DRUMMOND. PERHAPS no scene, or situation, is so intensely gratifying to the naturalist as the shore of the ocean. The productions of the latter element are innumerable, and the majesty of the mighty waters lends an interest unknown to an inland landscape. The loneliness too of the sea-shore is much cheered by the constant changes arising from the ebb and flow of the tide, and the undulations of the water's surface, sometimes rolling like mountains, and again scarcely murmuring on the beach. As you gather there Each flower of the rock and each gem of the billow, you may feel with the poet, that there are joys in solitude, and that there are pleasures to be found in the investigation of nature of the most powerful and pleasing influence. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods; There is a rapture on the lonely shore; There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar. But nothing can be more beautiful than a view of the bottom of the ocean, during a calm, even round our own shores, but particularly in tropical climates, especially when it consists alternately of beds of sand and masses of rock. The water is frequently so clear and undisturbed, that, at great depths, the minutest objects are visible; groves of coral are seen expanding their variously-colored clumps, some rigid and immovable, and others waving gracefully their flexile branches. Shells of every form and hue glide slowly along the stones, or cling to the coral boughs like fruit; crabs and other marine animals pursue their preys in the crannies of the rocks, and sea-plants spread their limber leaves in gay and gaudy irregularity, while the most beautiful fishes are on every side sporting around. The floor is of sand, like the mountain-drift, And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow; From coral rocks the sea-plants lift Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow; The water is calm and still below, For the winds and waves are absent there; There, with its waving blade of green, The sea-flag streams through the silent water, And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter; There with a light and easy motion The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea, And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean Are bending like corn on the upland lea; Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, Where the myriad voices of ocean roar, The purple mullet and gold-fish rove, Through the bending twigs of the coral-grove. PERCIVAL. VOICE of the mighty deep, Whose pinions will not light Thy mystic sounds I hear, Peal of unwonted things; Of wonders far and near The hollow music rings, Its notes borne wild around the world, Oh no, I cannot sleep, Thou vast and glorious sea! While thou dost thus the vigil keep Of thy great majesty, I think God's image near me is, In all its awful mysteries. Thou art a spirit, Ocean, thou! Thine arm that shakes me here, Of North, and South, and central sphere, From flaming Equinox to frigid Pole, Engulfing mountains at a sweep Or murmuring sweet round Scian isles, 'Tis midnight!-earth and air Are hush'd in lair and restThy energy from thy long birth Hath never needed rest: Thou dost not tire-thou feel'st not toil Thou art not formed, like me, of soil. Why dost thou thunder so? What in thy depths profound, Age thou hast never known Thou shalt be young and free, Till God command thee give thine own, And all is dumb save thee; And haply when the sun is blood, Unchanged shall be thy mighty flood. LESSON XVI. Salmon River.-BRAINARD. 'Tis a sweet stream; and so, 't is true, are all, That undisturbed, save by the harmless brawl Of mimic rapid or slight waterfall, Pursue their way By mossy bank, and darkly waving wood, But yet there's something in its humble rank, There's much in its wild history, that teems Havoc has been upon its peaceful plain, And blood has dropped there, like the drops of rain, Filled from the reeds that grew on yonder hill, Here, say old men, the Indian Magi made Here Philip came, and Miantonimo, And asked about their fortunes long ago, As Saul to Endor, that her witch might show Old Samuel. And here the black fox roved, that howled and shook His thick tail to the hunters, by the brook Where they pursued their game, and him mistook For earthly fox; |