hope of being admitted into the In- has gathered from narratives of wanfirmary there for sea bathing. His dering seaman; what he has gained disease was a scrofula, which ap- from true voyages, and what he chepeared to have eaten all over him. rishes as credulously from romance He expressed great hopes of a cure; and poetry ; crowding their images, and when we asked him, whether he and exacting strange tributes from had any friends where he was going, expectation. He thinks of the great he replied, “he had no friends." deep, and of those who go down unto, These pleasant, and some mourn- it; of its thousand isles, and the vast ful passages, with the first sight of continents it washes; of its receiving the sea, co-operating with youth, and the mighty Plata, or Orellana, into a sense of holydays, and out-of-door its bosom, without disturbance, or adventure, to me that had been pent sense of augmentation; of Biscay up in populous cities for many swells, and the mariner months before,-have left upon my For many a day, and many a dreadful night, mind the fragrance as of summer days Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape ; gone by, bequeathing nothing but of fatal rocks, and the.“ still-vexed their remembrance for cold and win- Bermoothes ; ” of great whirlpools, tery hours to chew upon. and the water-spout; of sunken Will it be thought a digression (it ships, and sumless treasures swalmay spare some unwelcome com- lowed up in the unrestoring depths; parisons), if I endeavour to account of fishes, and quaint monsters, to for the dissatisfaction which I have which all that is terrible on earth heard so many persons confess to have. Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, felt (as I did myself feel in part on compared with the creatures in the sea's this occasion), at the sight of the sea entral ; for the first time? I think the reason usually given--referring to the nandez; of pearls, and shells ; of of naked savages, and Juan Ferincapacity of actual objects for sa coral beds, and of enchanted isles; tisfying our preconceptions of them of mermaids' grots.-scarcely goes deep enough into the I do not assert that in sober earquestion. Let the same person see a lion, an elephant, a mountain, for nest he expects to be shown all these the first time in his life, and he shall wonders at once, but he is under the perhaps feel himself a little morti, tyranny of a mighty faculty, which haunts him with confused hints and fied. The things do not fill up that shadows of all these ; and when the space, which the idea of them seemed to take up in his mind. But they actual object opens first upon him, have still a correspondency to his seen (in tame weather too most likely) first notion, and in time grow up to from our unromantic coasts-a speck, it, so as to produce a very similar a slip of sea-water, as it shews to impression ; enlarging themselves (if unsatisfying and even diminutive en him—what can it prove but a very I may say so) upon familiarity. But tertainment ? Or if he has come to the sea remains a disappointment.Is it not, that in the latter we had much more than the river widening? it from the mouth of a river, was it expected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but, I am afraid, by the law and, even out of sight of land, what of imagination unavoidably) not a had he but a flat watery horizon definite object, as those wild beasts, the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his fa about him, nothing comparable to or that mountain compassable by the miliar object, seen daily without eye, but all the sea at once, THE COM dread or amazement? Who, in siMENSURATE ANTAGONIST EARTH!-I do not say we tell our milar circumstances, has not been selves so much, but the craving of tempted to exclaim with Charoba, in the mind is to be satisfied with no poem of Gebir, thing less. I will suppose the case Is this the mighty ocean ?-is this all ? of a young person of fifteen (as I then I love town, or country; but this was) knowing nothing of the sea, but detestable Cinque Port is neither. I from description. He comes to it for hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting the first time—all that he has been out their starved foliage from bereading of it all his life, and that the tween the horrid fissures of dusty i' most enthusiastic part of life,—all he nutritious rocks; which the amat OF THE calls "verdure to the edge of the sea." I require woods, and they show me stunted coppices. I cry out for the water-brooks, and pant for fresh streams, and inland murmurs. I cannot stand all day on the naked beech watching the capricious hues of the sea, shifting like the colours of a dying mullet. I am tired of looking out at the windows of this islandprison. I would fain retire into the interior of my cage. While I gaze upon the sea, I want to be on it, over it, across it. It binds me in with chains, as of iron. My thoughts are abroad. I should not so feel in Staffordshire. There is no home for me here. There is no sense of home at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive resort, an heterogeneous assemblage of sea-mews and stock-brokers, Amphitrites of the town, and misses that coquet with the Ocean. If it were what it was in its primitive shape, and what it ought to have remained, a fair honest fishing-town, and no more, it were something-with a few straggling fishermen's huts scattered about, artless as its cliffs, and with their materials filched from them, it were something. I could abide to dwell with Mescheck; to assort with fisher-swains, and smugglers. There are, or I dream there are, many of this latter occupation here. Their faces become the place. I like a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs nothing but the revenue,- an abstraction I never greatly cared about. I could go out with them in their mackarel boats, or about their less ostensible business, with some satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor victims to monotony, who from day to day pace along the beech, in endless progress and recurrence, to watch their illicit countrymen-townsfolk or brethren perchance-whistling to the sheathing and unsheathing of their cutlasses (their only solace), who under the mild name of preventive service, keep up a legitimated civil warfare, in the deplorable absence of a foreign one, to show their detestation of run hollands, and zeal for old England. But it is the visitants from town, that come here to say they have been here, with no more relish of the sea than a pond perch, or a dace might be supposed to have, that are my aversion. I feel like a foolish dace in these regions, and have as little toleration for myself here, as for them. What can they want here? if they had a true relish of the ocean, why have they brought all this land luggage with them? or why pitch their civilized tents in the desart? What mean these scanty book-rooms marine libraries, as they entitle them-if the sea were, as they would have us believe, a book "to read strange matter in?" what are their foolish concert-rooms, if they come, as they would fain be thought to do, to listen to the music of the waves? All is false and hollow pretension. They come, because it is the fashion, and to spoil the nature of the place. They are mostly, as I have said, stock-brokers; but I have watched the better sort of them -now and then, an honest citizen (of the old stamp), in the simplicity of his heart, shall bring down his wife and daughters, to taste the sea breezes. I always know the date of their arrival. It is easy to see it in their countenance. A day or two they go wandering on the shingles, picking up cockle-shells, and thinking them great things; but, in a poor week, imagination slackens; they begin to discover that cockles produce no pearls, and then-O then!-if I could interpret for the pretty creatures (I know they have not the courage to confess it themselves) how gladly would they exchange their sea-side rambles for a Sunday walk on the green-sward of their accustomed Twickenham meadows! I would ask of one of these seacharmed emigrants, who think they truly love the sea, with its wild usages, what would their feelings be, if some of the unsophisticated aborigines of this place, encouraged by their courteous questionings here, should venture, on the faith of such assured sympathy between them, to return the visit, and come up to seeLondon. I must imagine them with their fishing-tackle on their back, as we carry our town necessaries. What a sensation would it cause in Lothbury? What vehement laughter would it not excite among The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard-street. I am sure that no town-bred, or in land-born subjects, can feel their true and natural nourishment at these sea-places. Nature, where she does not mean us for mariners and vagabonds, bids us stay at home. The salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. I am not half so good-natured as by the milder waters of my natural river. I would exchange these seagulls for swans, and scud a swallow for ever about the banks of Thamesis. ELIA. STANZAS. And the imperial votaress passed on I BLAME not her, because my soul I charge her not with cruel pride, Too happy she or to deride I blame her not-she cannot know No fault hath she-that I desire And I was born to grieve. And though she hath a thousand wiles, As fast as light a thousand smiles Come pouring from her face, Those winsome wiles-those sunny looks Her heart securely deems Cold as the flashing of the brooks In the cold moon-light beams. Her sweet affections, free as wind, No secret hollow hath her mind Her being's law is gentle bliss, And gay delight her beauty. Then let her walk in mirthful pride, By her light spirit fortified In panoply of gladness. The joy she gives shall still be hers, Such debt the earthly heart incurs That pants for the divine. But better 'tis to love I ween, Than die, and never to have seen HARTLEY COLERIDGE. THE ELGIN GALLERY. 1. That soaring youth may list her voice alone, 2. Chasing the boar with barbarous address, 3. Thy love-fill'd heart to vanity betray: 4. Before whose smiles ev'n Science learn'd to bow! 5. Ages of glory; till their native clime The Parthenon. + Visconti conjectures, from the statues lately adorning the Parthenon being so exquisitely finished on all sides, that they were exposed to public view, previous to their being placed in their destined situation. 6. rang the echoes of fair Sappho's lyre! But pause to attend the soft, aërial strain, 7. Their names are read upon the sculptured page, 8. Raised to redress a much-loved nation's wrong 9. live, like an unwasting flame, 10. 11. : •“ Sage of Athens.”—The Athenians buried their dead with the faces turned toward the west. |