Wandering on the beach where the melancholy and accusing sea casts up proofs of disaster or crime, a broken oar, unshipped tiller, keel or keelson, spiked plank, torn sail or splintered spar, caboose from the deck or mattress cleansed by the salt waves of plague, ship-fever or small-pox, I found one day, an article more rare, a coarse bag strongly sewed at the top. I lifted it; it was not heavy. I felt of it; it seemed soft at the side. I shook it; a metallic ring came out to my ear. I laid it down on the sand, and surveyed it carefully, doubting if I would examine it any more. I fancied in it carpenters' tools or some singular treasure in peril of man or nature thrown or wrenched from some reluctant hand, and I lifted it again. I took my knife from my pocket, and with trembling nerves began to cut at the twine that bound it at the mouth; but found it difficult to sunder the many twists and turnings of the painstaking, complicated knot. I pressed my fingers a little harder at the spot where it had clinked before; they met firm, sharp corners, as of bricks. Then a fear came over me alone there in the blowing wind and rising tide, as the gust seemed like a ghost invisibly to figure the passions so gigantic and fitful of the human mind; for I said, some living creature has been fastened in, like victims solidly mortared into convent-walls, to be smothered in the deep which has refused its burden, and borne it weary leagues back toward the door whence it came. I shut my blade and dropped the weight, that dismally increased in my hold, again among the pebbles. Let who will, I asseverated, discover the secret; here my investigation stops. Even curiosity is in suspense. Yet what swelling interest

in the small package still! The whole sky overhung it; the whole ocean had vomited it on the land. Some one knows, God knows its meaning if I dread to know. I leave it in its mystery on the shore, will not carry it home. Shortly after searched for by my roadbuilders, it had disappeared unaccountably as it came. But I felt it reaching by unseen cords tougher than the needle had drawn through its web to what sail afar, to what secluded haunt or house on a distant coast, to what past act and future reckoning? It was meant to go to the bottom; but the world of waters rose retributive to fling it on the strand. Had it sunk it would not have been from God's eye or man's answer. Nothing can be covered. The universe is glass. Whispers in the ear shall reverberate in galleries; steps in closets and chambers resound over continents. What you are you shall appear; what you do you will be judged by; what you said you have not heard the last of. Absolve thee to thyself, wouldst thou have God absolve thee.

ΜΑ

II.

THE SEER.

AN is an animal, yet not beast, but covert angel, showing his difference from the simple creature in every act of his life. The brute sweats, the human being perspires, has even in a passive process some profundity, intelligence and will. Fish and fowl have eyes; yet rather look than see. They do not properly behold us, but observe enough to fear and flee. We are ghosts to them, but not they to us. They as well as we can gaze and stare, but not discern as we can without sight. The sage speaks with shut mouth more than fools with their loquacity; and the seer notes with closed eye. The eagle and vulture are keen and far-sighted, yet have not vision. What matters whether the hutch, kennel, coop or stable be set in a hollow or on a hill; the inhabitant shows no sign of being therefore better or worse off, cannot appreciate the picture, has no eye for beauty or love of nature. But how we dispute as to the comparative advantages of our several city, rural, sea-side situations, and select with care and compass the site where to build; be our taste for some picturesque nook, for land and water, a cosy frame to fetch distant views, as in a stereoscope

under our eye, or a hill-top that shall show flood and field, sunrise and sunset, the rising and retiring storm in every cloud and scud, and the immense horizonline jagged with billows and woods. I have been treating of that seeking which makes inquest of the universe; and of this the eye is organ and type. There is no such traveller. Save in sleep, it keeps perpetual watch. I have noticed when I sat still in my boat, gull and curlew would fly or light near me without terror, and not seem to know there was a man, though wild duck or pigeon are supposed able to recognize a gun. Yet it is motion, especially swiftness and noise, by which their alarm is excited or attention drawn. But how little, albeit silent, escapes the human eye, which discriminates forms that the animal confounds. How slowly the horse learns there is no danger in the train and no mischief brewing in the stir of the thicket at the road-side, or hostile intent in the rustle and sudden darting of wings. The human eye is on an endless journey; yet how pleased at many an inn to stop! Dwellers on the shore confess that by an unbroken view of the open sea, however sublime and refreshing at first, they are after awhile wearied and oppressed. The incalculable laughter, as the Greek poet called it, of the waves, becomes a monotony and melancholy at last. The eye rests with delight on the island or coastline, and in the everlasting circle of the main is like the dove over the deluge that found no rest for the sole of her foot. What an ark to it is every rock! Every stable object gives to our sight the sort of comfort we have in sitting down when our feet are tired. Our eye lights on every sail that animates and diversifies the

deep. Had the sea not been so bridged with boats, it would revolt us, and we should refuse to contemplate it, or only regard it as a hostile power, and, like John in Patmos, long for a world where there would be no more of it. But there go the ships, which humanize the waste and make it winsome, as caravans do the desert and emigrant-wagons the prairie. I suppose the oasis in Sahara has scarce more value to slake the thirst than to satisfy the eye saluted so long with nothing but the whirling sand, through whose ocean the camel is the ship.

The seer is he who discovers and asks us to consider what is fixed and abiding on the restless ocean of life, the landmarks of the way, what features do not shift and stars do not set. What the spiritual realityseeker has glimpses of the seer surveys; and though the sight fail him, to have used it once is enough. If Canaan appear to Moses from Mount Nebo, or the Pacific to the Spaniard "from a peak in Darien," or the Mediterranean to the traveller on Mont Blanc, or the Atlantic to one on Mount Washington, or the outlying American shore to Columbus or the Scandinavian sailor, it is in the range of sight, and when circumstances favor will appear again; and one certain view of God and Heaven countervails weary years of ignorance and doubt. The astronomer is not so sure that the planet or comet whose orbit has been determined will swim punctually back as the thinker is that his subjects will recur, beyond the compass of the brazen tube or too subtle for the crossing hairs on the transparent lens. The test of the seer is to take his initiative not from other advice, or man's opinion, but