, seen alone by their Creator's
eye, and by that angelic host that sing again the first divine hymn of
Palestine.

I do not wonder that sailors are, what we choose to call, more
superstitious than landsmen; with but a plank between them and
death--unfathomable seas around them, whose depths are continual
wonder, from whose unseen treasure-house, the

----"billows roll ashore
The beryl and the golden ore."

Seas and skies with the great attribute of life, motion--their very
ship a personification, as it were a living creature--cut off,
separated as they are for the most part, from cities, and the
mind-lowering ways of cities, which they see recede from them and melt
into utter insignificance, leaving for companionship but the winds and
the waters. Can it be a matter of wonder, if, with warm wishes and
affections in their breasts, their imaginations shape the clouds and
mists into being, messengers between them and the world they have all
but lost? The stars, those "watches of the night," to them are not the
same, changing yet ever significant. Even the waters about them, which
by day are apparently without a living thing beyond the life of their
own motion, in the darkness glittering with animated fire; can we
wonder, then, if their thoughts rise from these myriad, invisible,
lucent worms of the sea, to a faith in the more magnificent beings who
"clothe themselves with light;" and if they believe that such are
present, unseen, commissioned to guard and guide them in ways perilous
and obscure? Seamen, accustomed to observe signs in their great
solitude, unattracted by the innumerable sights and businesses of
other life, are ever open and ready to receive signs and
significations even of omen and vision; whereas he that is engaged in
crowded street and market, heeds no sign, though it were offered, but
that which his little and engrossing interests make for him; he,
indeed, may receive "angels' visits unaware." Omens, dreams, and
visions are to seamen more real, more frequent, as more congenial with
their wants; and some extraordinary cases have even been registered in
ships' logs, not resting on the credibility of one but of a crew, and
such logs, if I mistake not, have been admitted evidence in courts of
judicature. Am I led away by the subject, Eusebius? You will say I am;
yet I could go on--the wonder increases--the common earth is not their
sure grave--

"Nothing of them that doth fade,
But