rom far
Pour through the waves a softer ray,
While diamonds, in a bower of spar,
At eve shall shed a brighter day."

Others, however, with fancies equally vigorous, but less ornate
or refined, give us different sketches of the doings in Neptune's
dominions. They picture the bottom of ocean as un uninviting spot,
replete with objects calculated to chill the blood and sadden the
heart of man; inhabited by beings of a character rather repulsive than
prepossessing, as salt-water satyrs, krakens, polypuses, and marine
monsters of frightful aspects and hideous habits; glimpses of which
are occasionally seen by favored inhabitants of these upper regions,
sometimes in the shape of monstrous sea-serpents, with flowing manes
and goggle eyes, lashing with their tails the astonished waters of
Massachusetts Bay.

In "Clarence's Dream: we find Shakespeare's idea of the sights exhibited
far down beneath the ocean waves:

"Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl;
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels;
All scattered in the bottom of the sea.
Some lay in dead men's skulls!"

Although man can fathom the depths of the sea, and may by scientific
experiments, conducted with immense labor and expense, succeed in
mapping out the great ocean basins, and obtaining an accurate idea
of the configuration of that part of the earth which lies beneath
the waters, yet the true character of the scenery, vegetation,
and inhabitants of that region must remain unknown until some new
philosophical and mechanical principles shall be discovered to pave the
way to a system of submarine navigation, and the enterprise confided to
some daring Yankee, with the promise of an exclusive patent right to its
use for a century to come.

In the mean time we may rest assured that no valuable gems or lumps of
gold have yet been brought up by the plummet. Indeed, so far as is shown
by the soundings, the bottom of the ocean is covered with microscopic
shells, so wonderfully minute that thousands may be counted on the
surface of a single square inch. We know also that the bed of ocean, for
at least four hundred years, has served as a repository, a burial-place,
not only for earth's choicest productions and myriads of human beings,
gone to the bottom in sunken ships, but for disappointed hopes, false
calculations, and sanguine schemes for