and walking to and fro, a small space having been accorded him by the crowd, in deference to his temporary importance. There were repeated cheerings and salutations interchanged between the shore and the ship, as friends happened to recognise each other.

I particularly noticed one young woman of humble dress, but interesting demeanour. She was leaning forward from among the crowd; her eye hurried over the ship as it neared the shore, to catch some wished-for countenance. She seemed disappointed and agitated; when I heard a faint voice call her name. It was from a poor sailor who had been ill all the voyage, and had excited the sympathy of every one on board. When the weather was fine, his messmates had spread a mattress for him on deck in the shade, but of late his illness had so increased, that he had taken to his hammock, and only breathed a wish that he might see his wife before he died. He had been helped on deck as we came up the river, and was now leaning against the shrouds, with a countenance so wasted, so pale, so ghastly, that it was no wonder even the eye of affection did not recognise him. But at the sound of his voice her eye darted on his features; it read at once a whole volume of sorrow; she clasped her hands, uttered a faint shriek, and stood wringing them in silent agony.

All now was hurry and bustle. The meetings of acquaintances -the greetings of friends-the consultations of men of business. I alone was solitary and idle. I had no friend to meet, no cheering to receive. I stepped upon the land of my forefathers--but felt that I was a stranger in the land.-WASHINGTON IRVING.

1. This word is pronounced in two dif- | ings to correspond. What is its meaning ferent ways, and has two different mean- and how is it pronounced here?

THE CASTAWAY SHIP.

HER mighty sails the breezes swell,
And fast she leaves the lessening land,
And from the shore the last farewell
Is waved by many a snowy hand;
And weeping eyes are on the main
Until its verge she wanders o'er :-
But from that hour of parting pain,
Oh! she was never heard of more!
When, on her wide and trackless path
Of desolation, doomed to flee,
Say, sank she 'mid the blending wrath
Of racking cloud and rolling sea?

Or-where the land but mocks the eye-
Went drifting on a fatal shore?

Vain guesses all! Her destiny

Is dark!-She ne'er was heard of more!

The moon hath twelve times changed her form,
From glowing orb to crescent wan,

'Mid skies of calm and scowls of storm,
Since from her port that ship hath gone:
But ocean keeps its secret well;
And though we know that all is o'er,

No

eye hath seen, no tongue can tell
Her fate-she ne'er was heard of more!
Oh! were her tale of sorrow known,
"Twere something to the broken heart:
The pangs of doubt would then be gone,
And fancy's endless dreams depart !
It may not be there is no ray
By which her doom we may explore;
We only know-she sailed away,

And ne'er was seen nor heard of more!

THERE is mystery in the sea. There is mystery in its depths. It is unfathomed and perhaps unfathomable. Who can tell, who shall know, how near its pits run down to the central core of the world? Who can tell what wells, what fountains are there, to which the fountains of the earth are in comparison but drops? Who shall say whence the ocean derives those inexhaustible supplies of salt, which so impregnate its waters that all the rivers of the earth, pouring into it from the time of the Creation, have not been able to freshen them? What undescribed monsters, what unimaginable shapes, may be roving in the profoundest places of the sea, never seeking, and perhaps from their nature unable to seek the upper waters, and expose themselves to the gaze of man! What glittering riches, what heaps of gold, what stores of gems, there must be scattered in lavish profusion on the ocean's bed! What spoils from all climates, what works of art from all lands, have been engulphed by the insatiable and reck

less waves! Who shall go down to examine and reclaim this uncounted and idle wealth? Who bears the keys of the deep? And, oh! yet more affecting to the heart and mysterious to the mind, what companies of human beings are locked up in that wide, watery, unsearchable grave of the sea! Where are the bodies of those lost ones, over whom the melancholy waves alone have been chanting requiem? What shrouds were wrapped round the limbs of beauty, and of manhood, and of placid infancy, when they were laid on the dark floor of that secret tomb? Where are the bones, the relics of the brave and the fearful, the good and the bad, the parent, the child, the wife, the husband, the brother and sister, and lover, which have been tossed, and scattered, and buried by the washing, wasting, wandering sea? The journeying winds may sigh, as hereafter they pass over their beds. The solitary rain-clouds may weep in darkness over the mingled remains which lie strewed in that unwonted cemetery. But who shall tell the bereaved to what spot their affections may cling? And where shall human tears be shed throughout the solemn sepulchre? It is mystery all! When shall it be solved? Who shall find it out? Who, but He to whom the wildest waves listen reverently, and to whom all nature bows; He who shall one day speak, and be heard in the ocean's profoundest caves; to whom the deep, even the lowest deep, shall give up all its dead, when the sun shall sicken, and the earth and the isles shall languish, and the heavens be rolled together like a scroll, and there shall be "no more sea!"-GRAce Greenwood.

DELICIA MARIS.

ONCE, when I was a little child,

I sate beneath a tree,

Beside a little running stream,

And a mariner sate with me,

And thus he spake : "For seventy years

I sailed upon the sea.

Thou thinkest that the earth is fair,

And full of strange delight;

Yon little brook that murmurs by
Is wond'rous in thy sight;
Thou callest yon poor butterfly
A very marvellous thing,
And listenest in fond amaze
If but a lark doth sing.

Thou speak'st as if God only made

Valley, and hill, and tree;

Yet I blame thee not, thou simple child,
Wise men have spoke like thee.

But far and free are the ocean fields;
On land you're trammelled round,
On the right and on the left likewise
Doth lie forbidden ground:

But the ocean fields are free to all
Where'er they list to go,

With the heavens above, and round about,
And the deep, deep sea below.

It gladdeneth much my very soul
The smallest ship to see,

For I know where'er a sail is spread
God speaketh audibly.

Up to the North, the Polar North,
With the whalers did I go,
'Mid the mountains of eternal ice,
To the land of thawless snow.
The great ice-mountains walled us in,
The strength of man was vain,

But at once the Eternal showed his power,
The rocks were rent in twain.
The sea was parted for Israel,
The great Red Sea, of yore;
And Moses and the Hebrew race,
In joy, went dryshod o'er.
A miracle as great was wrought
For us in the Polar main,

The rocks were rent from peak to base,
And our course was free again.

Yet amid those seas so wild and stern,
Where man hath left no trace,

The sense of God came down to us
As in a holy place.

Great kings have piled up pyramids,
Have built them temples grand,
But the sublimest temple far
Is in yon northern land:
Its pillars are of the adamant,
By a thousand winters hewed,
Its priests are the awful Silence
And the ancient Solitude.

And then we sailed to the Tropic Seas,
That are like crystal clear;
Thou little child, 'tis marvellous
Of them alone to hear;

For down, down in those ocean depths
Many thousand fathoms low,

I have seen, like woods of mighty oaks,
The trees of coral grow;

The red, the green, and the beautiful,
Pale-branched like the chrysolite,
Which amid the sun-lit waters spread
Their flowers intensely bright:
Some they were like the lily of June,
Or the rose of Fairy-land,
As if some poet's wondrous dream
Inspired a sculptor's hand.

And then the million creatures bright
That sporting went and came:
Heaven knows! but I think in Paradise
It must have been the same;

When 'neath the trees where angels walke
The land was free to all,

When the lion gambolled with the kid,
The great ones with the small.

No wastes of burning sand are there,
There is not heat nor cold,

And there doth spring the diamond mine,
There flow the veins of gold.

Oft with the divers of the East,

Who in these depths have been,
Have I conversed of marvels strange,
And treasures they have seen.

They say, each one, not halls of kings
With the ocean caves can vie,
With the untrod caves of the carbuncle,
Where the great sea-treasures lie.
And well I wot it must be so ;

Man parteth evermore,

The miser-treasures of the earth

The sea has all its store.

I have crossed the Line full fifteen times,

And down in the Southern Sea

Have seen the whales, like bounding lambs, Leap up; the strong, the free,

R