autiful; so he called to me to
take a stroll with him on a cliff, not far from the house, which
commands a magnificent prospect of the sea. I snatched up my cap in a
moment, delighted at the proposition, and ran along at his side, as I
always have to do, to keep up with his long, fast strides.

Even brother's melancholy countenance grew animated as he gazed on the
scene before us. A bright sheet of water separated the peak on which we
were standing from another rocky ledge, connected with the main land by
a narrow strip, called Marblehead Neck, that looked like a wall
inclosing the quiet bay. Behind us lay the town, with its strange, wild
confusion of roofs and spires, and to the south we could descry Nahant
and Boston, with Cape Cod stretching out beyond them, along the
horizon. My eyes, however, did not rest on the land, but turned to the
broad ocean, which lay beyond the light-house, that stood up like a
spectre in the moonlight, and I thought I could spy here and there a
sail among the many which I had seen that afternoon scattered over the
waves.

Clarendon sat down on one of the rocks, and his love of the beautiful
overcame, at that moment, his dislike to praising any thing in which he
has no personal interest. "This is magnificent," he said, and commenced
repeating with enthusiasm Byron's address to the ocean,--

"Roll on, thou dark blue ocean! roll," &c.

At the sound of his fine, manly voice, a boy about my age started up
from a rock near him, and listened to the lines with the most profound
attention. When they were concluded, he remarked with a modest yet
independent air,--"That certainly is very fine, Sir; but we have poets
of our own that can match it."

Clarendon at first frowned at what he deemed the height of
impertinence; but as he looked on the boy's broad, open forehead, and
frank, sweet mouth, in which the white teeth glittered as he spoke, his
haughty manner vanished, and he replied quite civilly,--"So you know
something about poetry, my little lad."

"To be sure, Sir," replied David Cobb, for such I afterwards found to be
his name. "How could a boy be two years at the Boston High School and
not know something about it? But I knew Drake's Address to the Flag, and
Pierpont's Pilgrim Fathers, and Percival's New England, when I was not
more than ten years old."

"Percival's New England!" said Clarendon, quite contemptuously. "Pray,
what could a poet say about such a puny subject as this Yanke