quatic fowls were
toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening
waves--'Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!' I exclaimed, as my eyes fell
upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore; he was
upon his legs, but was evidently half smothered with the brine; high
above his head curled a horrible billow, as if to engulf him for ever.
'He must be drowned! he must be drowned!' I almost shrieked, and dropped
the book. I soon snatched it up again, and now my eye lighted on a third
picture: again a shore, but what a sweet and lovely one, and how I wished
to be treading it; there were beautiful shells lying on the smooth white
sand, some were empty like those I had occasionally seen on marble
mantelpieces, but out of others peered the heads and bodies of wondrous
crayfish, a wood of thick green trees skirted the beach and partly shaded
it from the rays of the sun, which shone hot above, while blue waves
slightly crested with foam were gently curling against it; there was a
human figure upon the beach, wild and uncouth, clad in the skins of
animals, with a huge cap on his head, a hatchet at his girdle, and in his
hand a gun; his feet and legs were bare; he stood in an attitude of
horror and surprise; his body was bent far back, and his eyes, which
seemed starting out of his head, were fixed upon a mark on the sand--a
large distinct mark--a human footprint. . . .

Reader, is it necessary to name the book which now stood open in my hand,
and whose very prints, feeble expounders of its wondrous lines, had
produced within me emotions strange and novel? Scarcely--for it was a
book which has exerted over the minds of Englishmen an influence
certainly greater than any other of modern times--which has been in most
people's hands, and with the contents of which even those who cannot read
are to a certain extent acquainted--a book from which the most luxuriant
and fertile of our modern prose writers have drunk inspiration--a book,
moreover, to which, from the hardy deeds which it narrates, and the
spirit of strange and romantic enterprise which it tends to awaken,
England owes many of her astonishing discoveries both by sea and land,
and no inconsiderable part of her naval glory.

Hail to thee, spirit of De Foe! What does not my own poor self owe to
thee? England has better bards than either Greece or Rome, yet I could
spare them easier far than De Foe, 'unabashed De Foe,' as the hunchbacked
rh