is! For on the ocean there is none of the music and beauty of the sea. It is on the shore that the sea breaks into resounding speech and song. There, among the shells and pebbles on the beach, she finds her human voice. But in mid-ocean there is no tide or current of any sort. No ebb and flow is perceptible there. It is an unvaried scene without feature or expression. It has everywhere a tiresome, oblivious aspect. O this great, unimpressionable power! What can I hope to do or see here, when even the hand of the Creator is not visible or present? For is not this the material, "without form and void," which the Divine Sculptor left untouched on the day in that memorable week when he made "the dry land appear"? It may be difficult to see the trees for the wood, but who can see anything for the overwhelming ocean? or can we even see it? We have heard that Cortez stared at the Pacific, but we have wondered how he managed to do it, and agree rather with Charles Lamb, who complained that he had never seen the ocean, but only an insignificant bit of it. The very progress of the ship through its multitudinous waves is impossible to detect and is hard to believe in, and at the journey's end the land comes as a surprise, and I, for my part, should not have been much astonished if we had never reached our destination. For, in this world of motion without change, there are no landmarks or signposts, to say nothing of milestones, and so I could see we were moving round and round in a circle, which but for the compass-the sailor's cross of salvation-we might, I suppose, still be doing. Thoreau found it employment enough to watch the progress of the seasons at Walden, but he would have been idle at sea; for, unlike nature elsewhere, the ocean has no seasons, no spring, no summer, autumn, or winter; no fresh life and growth, no new scents, no birth or death. It has been well called evergreen. Snow even does not cover or affect it; while after rain the ship seemed the only wet place. Nor can time imprint any tale or tidings on its fluctuating surface. The past leaves no traces. History can find no records. Unlike crumbling ruins, wrecks are quickly swallowed up, and all vestiges obliterated. The ocean has no memory. The fields of Marathon and Waterloo outlive Salamis and Trafalgar. All experiences are buried too deep for even the most adventurous and searching diver or wet-as-weed antiquarian. For who has seen the "untrampled floor" of the sea? Who can sound the bottom of the ocean, au fond? Unless, perhaps, the poet, thus:— Methought I saw wrecks; a thousand fearful Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of A thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon; pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept, As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems, That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by. Or, more naturally, thus:The world below the brine, Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves, Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle, openings, and pink turf, Different colors, pale grey and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of light through the water; Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers; Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom; The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes; The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray; Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do. The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us who walk this sphere; The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres. But to return to us poor mortals on its surface. Sea and sky everywhere. Billows and breezes above and below. One wash of blue and grey. It is truly a vain and vague existence, floating in this nebulous world of froth and vapor. Is not death an inundation, as it were, a sort of unpleasant drunkenness, by which the equipoise that sustains life is upset. And, in this vapid sphere of water and air, how ardently one longs for a good handful of dry brown clay! How one's feet itch for the sure touch of soil! How divine earth now seems! On the thinks of her as teeming and sprouting with luxuriant life. A particle of dust even is now a sacred and treasured relic of past terrestrial bliss, and as for a blade of grass or a sprig of green foliage, they would be as manna from heaven to one's famished senses and orphaned soul. Verily, earth is our mother. Amid these aquatic surroundings, hemmed in by the ocean on both sides, I confess I found myself to be a gross, unabashed materialist, and ardently wished to be, as they say, "immersed in matter." And how deeply pathetic it was to watch the antics of her exiled children as, by diligent pacing up and down the deck and stamping on the boards, they vainly endeavored to recall the solid joys of terra firma and the voluptuous delights of a long, unbroken walk! For no amount of tramping will draw from the hard, cold, close-shaven, and wellscrubbed boards of a ship's deck a vestige of earth's soft touch and fond, caressing warmth - what the poet means when he says: Within such fluid and aërial envelop dead, barren boards of the deck one ments we can well realize how all nature is indeed one and the same, how ether is perhaps a more rarefied form of matter, permeating even the solid structure of crystals, and matter a more compressed form of ether, or both but forms of energy, since all things then seem very cognate and interchangeable. In a long-continued storm, are not the limit and distinction between sea and air said to become completely annihilated, "the heaven all spray and the ocean all cloud"? But although there may be this natural kinship, there are no feelings of human familiarity or homeliness in the scene, for the sea and sky are most distant and foreign to our physical organism. Man may have been a mere animal at one time of his development, but, as far as I can, by hints and possible inclinations in myself, revive his earliest aboriginal habits and instincts, he was never either fish or fowl, although, of course, scientists tell us there was at one time nothing but water-life in the world, and that land animals are late inventions, and point to the snail wandering over the earth with his sea-shell still on his back, and will also explain to us how the worm crept up a tree and had to grow wings in order to get down again. But all this, if ever, was a long time ago, and I, for my part, found this atmosphere of wind and wave so strange and uncongenial that I doubt very much if my ancestors were at any stage of their gradual evolution able to swim or to fly, though I believe they may once have been able to crawl and climb. It seems, indeed, clear to me that we human beings are essentially land-lubbers, and that we must, like leeches, stick to earth for our very life-blood. Is it not actually true that when life begins to fail our senses swim and our wits vanish into the air? The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, and the futile attempt to do so only reminded me of a tame sparrow I once saw that used to flap its wings and try to douse itself in the polished, glossy surface of a mahogany table. Thus cooped up like hens in the middle of a great pool, the time passes away in slumberous vacuity, much amount of discontented croaking and feeding and roosting, and a certain picking. III. But there were times in this rather squalid life when the soul could emerge and rise to the purest exaltation; rare moments when the true purposes of life become evident and conscious realities, and the soul, touched with emotion, breathes eternal loyalty to its high possibilities; hours, by day, spent in sea-dreaming, and by night in star-gazing; calm days, when all above is a dome of light and the waters around one smooth, resplendent flood; clear nights, when the sea "bares her bosom to the moon," whose bright shadow, soft and evanescent like a golden rainbow, lights and adorns her deep, dark rest; stirring, dashing times, when the width and freedom and wildness of the scene are most exhilarating to the rebellious spirit in one; fickle moods, when the perpetual motion of this fleeting world delight one; lovely, chaste mornings, when the electric purity and freshness of the sea and air enchant one; gorgeous, fiery evenings, when the blaze of the setting sun and the glow of the spreading ocean vie with each other in surpassing magnificence and glory. And how often-drifting between two oceans, one infinite arching overhead, and one fathomless sweeping underneath, the vast space of the sky with its countless stars above, and the unknown depths of the sea with its myriad waves below, alone, in the solemn stillness of "the huge and thoughtful night" and bathed in the eternal mystery of life and death-would I wistfully look up at the deep vault of the veiled heavens and then searchingly peer down into the dark hollow of the hidden waters! Stars silent rest o'er us, It was strange and startling indeed to think of "this fragment of a world hastening to rejoin the great mass of existence," of this little oasis of life and humanity in the wide wilderness of the desert-ocean. For I found the Atlantic very uninhabited, except by fish, and they were mostly beneath one's notice. We seldom sighted a passing ship and only occasionally saw "the backs of plunging dolphins" or the "foam-fountains" of the "sea-shouldering" whale. Birds only were our almost constant attendants. But I must not forget to mention how one beautiful, clear after noon four magnificent icebergs "masthigh, came floating by.". We were very fortunate in meeting them, as some passengers on board had crossed thirty times without ever having seen one. Their dazzling lustre in the bright sunshine, glowingly reflected in the watery mirror around, was superb. As the ship passed close by them one after the other in procession, they seemed to me like great ocean swans that had strayed from their northern nests and were now aimlessly swimming about this shoreless pond in search of rest, some with their stately necks reared high above the luminous water in crystal glory. some with their heads gracefully buried, in Arctic repose, in the fluffy, snow-white plumage of their softly folded wings. And as the sun's rays fell on them and the sea breezes blew around them, they sparkled all over in shimmering sprays of silvery radiance, their feathers of frost and foam were gently ruffled, and the sheen of the encircling blue broke against their emerald-hued sides into rippling waves of motion and light-one star-quivering, sun-flashing, sea-glittering scene of glacial splendor. Or, again, as we got farther from them, I fancied them to be the loveliest of sea-lilies, cruelly torn from their white bed in the north and wafted down the world's great Gulf Stream, and, as they listlessly floated towards warmer climes, little by little fading and melting away into its absorbing depths, pure water-blossoms, dissolving pearls of snow. These ocean phantoms looked peaceful and innocent that it was diffi cult to regard them as one of the greatest dangers of the voyage, which in foggy weather they are, though there is, I believe, some slight chance of seeing them in time owing to their brilliant whiteness and towering size. Apart, however, from the mere danger, I am glad that we met them in full daylight and escaped a collision, since in such a catastrophe, though doubtless the unholy part of my nature would have been inclined to curse this "harmless albatross," all my poetic and spiritual sympathies would have been on the side of so fair and fascinating an opponent. For, in spite of the ship's orthodox gender, I imagined her to be a mighty, screw-driving, smoke belching, blacksmithy Vulcan-I had but lately been over her hot interior, inspecting the furnaces and many gigantic instruments of force that propel her-with club-footed blades forging his iron way and will in a brutal attempt to assault the cool, fresh, morning purity of a spotless goddess, born of the sea. Certainly, as these icebergs, aurora-like, tremulous, and delicate, calmly glided along, our noise and motion, as, leviathan-like, with smoking nostrils and burning eyeballs, we ploughed and splashed by, seemed rude, indecent, and unpardonable. We did not catch sight of another danger, "derelicts." I regret this, as I should have much liked to have seen a great naked-ribbed vessel, adrift and unmanned and deserted by every living creature—its skeleton hulk still lying unburied on this fluid field of seafaring and storm-fighting. But we did have a view of, in my opinion, the greatest "derelict" of all between this and America. For I shall not soon forget how, as the first morning broke after leaving Liverpool, we found ourselves anchored in the beauti ful harbor of Queenstown, with its picturesquely situated cathedral on the brow of the sloping declivity on which the little town is built. This lovely glimpse of my native land was especially dear and touching to me, since, meeting her thus out at sea, it seemed as though she had come out a part of the way on purpose to see me off and bid me a "God-speed" on my journey: and well might we have said when, with the hearty good wishes of the natives, we started on our voyage across the ocean, of the Old World we were leaving behind and of the New World we were hurrying to, it seemed to me like the faint thin outline of an old moon, pale, and indistinct, yet clearly visible; and so it remained in my eyes, even after, continuing our globular course, we had come round on the first crescent of the rich new moon. MARTIN MORRIS. From Blackwood's Magazine. THE PASSION PLAY AT SELZACH. I was leaning on the stout wooden rail that forms the bulwark of the kind of gravelled quarter-deck terrace on which stands the Weissenstein Kurhaus-the old hostel that was built by the commune of Soleure in the year of the battle of Waterloo, and was wondering at the marvellous view of the plain that stretched into a purple dis was tance at my feet. From this height of four thousand two hundred and fifty feet above sea-level the air chill, for the sun had just set. But if the cold had been arctic, one could not have taken one's eyes away from that seemingly unsubstantial rosy cloud that lay high up in heaven above the evening mists; for that cloud was in reality nothing but the snow-clad company of giant watchers for the dawn that stretch from Sentis in the far south-east to Mont Blanc in the extreme south-west. As one gazed upon the rosy moveless cloud, one was able to recognize in its ridged and wavy outline mountain-peaks long familiar at nearer view, but from the distance how changed! The threepeaked Wetterhorn, the sharp-toothed Finsteraarhorn, the Schreckhorn, the The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, Blumlis mass, the glorious Altels, the Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, And long shall I remember also, as with lingering regret we slowly receded, gazing back through the whole of that afternoon at the dim, distant tinge of the land's edge, and how, as I thought long-ridged Wild-Strubel, and the domed Mont Blanc glowed and flushed and faded, and flushed again. Then the grey night seemed to weave a veil between us and the distant peaks, and our eyes travelled back over that limitless plain of towns and towers, and forests and fields, with here a snowy wreath of vapor, there a glinting and a glimmer in the grey expanse, to tell us of some rivers rolling through the midst, back to the wonderful silver serpent coiling from the far west to the far east at our feet, on by the purple town of old Soleure, that now began to twinkle into stars. There is nothing more beautiful, at the closing of the day, from this high mountain seat, than the way in which, as twilight steals upon the mighty plain, the lamps of the distant towus and villages, "like fireflies tangled in a silver braid," suddenly jewel the twilight. As I looked far down the woody precipices upon the Oberdorf and Langendorf villages, my eyes caught a long, white, ghostly-looking road, straight as an arrow, that glimmered in parallel with the main course of the river Aare, on past a forest dark as death, to a little cluster of these newcome fireflies. "What are those village lights?" I said. "Those are the lamps at Selzach; they will be hung there to-night, because tomorrow is to be the third performance of the second year's enacting of the village Passion Play," said a voice beside me. "It will be worth going down to see; for though it looks far, one can walk it in an hour and a half, and you will not be disappointed. The day begins with a special service in the village church at eight o'clock, but the performance does not commence till eleven. As a friend of the chief promoter, Herr Schäfli, I have promised to be present; will you bear me company? I can telephone for a ticket early in the morning, and for a place at the luncheon-table in the La Croix Hotel opposite. The new play-house seats twelve hundred people, but it may be crowded, and since an interval of one hour and a half is allowed for rest and luncheon we shall start for our six miles' walk early. You had better not be above such simple fare as the village inn can give you." I assented, and on the morrow at 8.30 dropped down through the long incline of beech woods to Nesselboden; saw the white cliffs-whence Weissenstein takes its name-shine out among its fir-trees overhead; down through meadows golden with yellow gentian; by roadside banks filled with the flax-leaved harebell or many-flowered campanula, and delicious with wild strawberry; on through woods purple with columbine; by a stream that chattered at our side; down the hot gorge to the white shining road beneath that led us to the village of Oberdorf-Oberdorf, with its giant barns, its vine-trellises, its fragrant walnut-trees. Close by the church, whose black tower-lantern may be seen afar, and whose churchyard cross of limestone gleams whitely in the sunshine, we turned westward and began a delightful walk over the richest plain of corn and fruit it has been my lot to see since the days when I passed through just such corn-patches and flowers in the valley of the Nile. It seemed as if no inch of that vast patchwork of husbandry had been left uncared for. There were no marks of separate ownership, no fence to keep us from the cherry-bowers or the corn-land plots; the light green oats waved here; beside them shone the yellowing barley; there, clover was sweet for the lark that hung above it; here a patch of flax or purple vetch was in flower for the bird that hides its nest in its close undergrowth. All was peace, prosperity and friendship. Children with hands full of wild chicory or blue corn-flowers and scarlet poppies passed us, tending their goats and keeping them to the open road. Ever at our right-hand side rose up the great Jura wall of beech and fir to heaven; ever on our left the coiling Aare glittered towards Solothurn. Truly, if ever there was to be seen a "well-watered garden of the Lord," it is here, in this canton of that old rivertown the Romans knew so well. We dived into a forest of pines that here and there let the sunlight splinter through with dazzling surprise, and gaining more cornfields and potatopatches, made our way to the little village of Lommiswyl, with its white chapel and square belfry pinnacle standing unfenced among its pleasant fields-Lommiswyl, with its bees and |