f life she has to greet,
Come swarming o'er the meditative mind.

True, to the dream of Fancy, Ocean has
His darker hints; but where's the element
That chequers not its usefulness to man
With casual terror? Scathes not earth sometimes
Her children with Tartarean fires, or shakes
Their shrieking cities, and, with one last clang
Or hells for their own ruin, strews them flat
As riddled ashes--silent as the grave.
Walks not Contagion on the Air itself?
I should--old Ocean's Saturnalian days
And roaring nights of revelry and sport
With wreck and human woe--be loth to sing;
For they are few, and all their ills weigh light
Against his sacred usefulness, that bids
Our pensile globe revolve in purer air.
Here Morn and Eve with blushing thanks receive
Their fresh'ning dews, gay fluttering breezes cool
Their wings to fan the brow of fever'd climes,
And here the Spring dips down her emerald urn
For showers to glad the earth.

Old Ocean was
Infinity of ages ere we breathed
Existence--and he will be beautiful
When all the living world that sees him now
Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun.
Quelling from age to age the vital throb
In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate
The pulse that swells in _his_ stupendous breast,
Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound
In thund'ring concert with the quiring winds;
But long as Man to parent Nature owns
Instinctive homage, and in times beyond
The power of thought to reach, bard after bard
Shall sing thy glory, BEATIFIC SEA!

_Metropolitan_.[3]

[3] With such a poem as this, even occasionally, the
_Metropolitan_ must take high ground.

* * * * *

THE LATE MR. ABERNETHY.

Mr. Abernethy, although amiable and good-natured, with strong
feelings, possessed an irritable temper, which made him very petulant
and impatient at times with his patients and medical men who applied
to him for his opinion and advice on cases. When one of the latter
asked him once, whether he did not think that some plan which he
suggested would answer, the only reply he could obtain was, "Ay, ay,
put a little salt on a bird's tail, and you'll be sure to catch him."
When consulted on a case by the ordinary medical attendant, he would
frequently pace the room to and fro with his hands in his breeches'
pockets, and _whistle_ all the time, and not say a word, but to tell
the