Geneva, framed and fabricked already to our hands. Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us, there be who envy and oppose, if it come not first in at their casements. What a collusion is this, when as we are exhorted by the wise men to use diligence, "to seek for wisdom as for hidden treasures," early and late, that another order shall enjoin us to know nothing but by statute! When a man hath been laboring the hardest labor in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons, as it were a battle ranged, scattered and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint of argument; for his opponents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though it be valor enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of Truth. For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs. no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings, to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power; give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps. AULD ROBIN GRAY. ANNE BARNARD. Lady Anne Barnard, daughter of the Earl of Balcarres, was born in 1750. Robin Gray chanced to be the name of a shepherd at Balcarres. While she was writing this ballad, a little sister looked in on her. "What more shall I do," Anne asked, "to trouble a poor girl? I've sent her Jamie to sea, broken her father's arm, made her mother ill, and given her an old man for a lover. There's room in the four lines for one sorrow more. What shall it be?" "Steal the cow, sister Anne." Accordingly the cow was stolen. The second part, it is said, was written to please her mother, who often asked "how that unlucky business of Jeanie and Jamie ended." "How truth soon or late comes to open day- The first days were dowie while time slipt light! awa', But saddest and sairest to Jeanie o' a' right, Wi' tears in her e'e while her heart was sae light. But nae guile had she, and her sorrow away, "Is Jamie come here yet?"-and Jamie they The wife o' her Jamie, the tear couldna stay; saw "I've injured you sair, lad, so leave you my a'; A bonnie wee bairn-the auld folks by the fire Oh, now she has a' that her heart can desire. POETRY AND MYSTERY OF THE SEA. T DR. GREENWOOD. THE sea is his, and He made it," cries the Psalmist of Israel, in one of those bursts of enthusiasm in which he so often expresses the whole of a vast subject by a few simple words. Whose else, indeed, could it be, and by whom else could it have been made? Who else can heave its tides and appoint its bounds? Who else can urge its mighty waves to madness with the breath and wings of the tempest, and then speak to it again in a master's accents and bid it be still? Who else could have peopled it with its countless inhabitants, and caused it to bring forth its various productions, and filled it from its deepest bed to its expanded surface, filled it from its centre to its remotest shores, filled it to the brim with beauty and mystery and power? Majestic Ocean! Glorious Sea! No created being rules thee or made thee. 176 POETRY AND MYSTERY OF THE SEA. What is there more sublime than the trackless, desert, all-surrounding, unfathomable sea? What is there more peacefully sublime than the calm, gently-heaving, silent sea? What is there more terribly sublime than the angry, dashing, foaming sea? Power-resistless, overwhelming poweris its attribute and its expression, whether in the careless, conscious grandeur 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 twothirds 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 POETRY AND MYSTERY OF THE SEA. 177 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 promontory, or beats against a toiling vessel's sides, lulling the voyager to rest with the strains of its wild monotony, or dies away, in 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 glances of fire; the moonbeams find in it a pathway of silver, where they dance to and fro, with the breezes and the waves, through the livelong night. It has a light, too, of its own,—a soft and sparkling light, rivaling the stars; and often does the ship which cuts its surface leave streaming behind a Milky Way of dim and uncertain lustre, like that which is shining dimly above. It harmonizes in its forms and sounds both with the night and the day. It cheerfully reflects the light, and it unites solemnly with the darkness. It imparts sweetness to the music of men, and grandeur to the thunder of heaven. What landscape is so beautiful as one upon the borders of the sea? The spirit of its loveliness is from the waters where it dwells and rests, singing its spells and scattering its charms on all the coasts. What rocks and cliffs are so glorious as those which are washed by the chafing sea? What groves and fields and dwellings are so enchanting as those which stand by the reflecting sea? 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 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 never able 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 in |