e than nature. It
is on the sea shore that we find the purest democracy--any man who is
respectable and desirous of enjoying life may fraternize with the whole
population. He who lives in the struggle to acquire or maintain a
position can appreciate this social luxury. The sea exercises a
delightful influence over the character--its perils induce self-reliance
and fearlessness, which are redeemed from conceit by a child-like
simplicity arising naturally from the contemplation of an element
menacing, invincible, and symbolical of eternity. Then, too, the legends
of the sea invest the mind with a sensitive, poetic passion as
delightful as it is unworldly, as reverent as it is credulous. No one
would deride these superstitions who has watched, as I have, the various
phases of the sea--its motions, its intonations--its mists, its foam,
its vapors--its sunlit splendors--its phosphorescent marvels--its
moonlit and starlit mysteries; but would feel, with something of the awe
of the ancients, that the sea is the place of magic, and that only a
film separates between the material and the spirit land.

A. J. S.

READERS: You with ourselves have looked upon a very ugly thing since we
last met in the pages of THE CONTINENTAL. A Briareus-handed,
multiple-formed, Proteus-faced monster, of huge dimensions, wickedly
scheming brain, myriad fanged, and every fang imbued with virulent
copperhead poison, stormed through our streets in the light of day and
in the gloom of night, during many ghastly hours, knowing no law save
its own wicked will, while Treason, Cruelty, House-breaking and
House-burning, Robbery, Assassination, Torture, Hanging, Murder, stalked
on in its wild train of horror. But we know its face now, and it will be
our own fault if anything so foul shall e'er be seen again in our midst.
We must be on the alert to act when called upon--not to suspect the
innocent, but to guard against the guilty.

'Thus do all traitors:
If their purgation did consist in words,
They are as innocent as grace itself.'

'There is no fear of God in a riot.' We must confess ourselves to have
been strangely startled when we found of what nation the rioters were
mainly composed. The race whom we had received with the most generous
hospitality, rescuing them from starvation and oppression at home--men
whom we were hourly teaching to be freemen; women whom we were patiently
and pa