deep burst the barriers
which were originally appointed for it; and he adds, that there was not
then that need of the ocean for navigation which there is now, as every
place yielded all that was necessary to man's welfare and pleasure. We
answer. The idea that the ocean was given to facilitate communication
between different nations, makes us smile. Suppose there had been no
ocean, should we have had a long way to go to get into the next country,
the country nearest to us? Just the contrary. If there had been no
ocean, there would have been land in its place, and we should neither
have had to cross water nor land to get to it. It would have come up
close to our own country. We have all the same travelling in order to
have communication with the inhabitants of other countries when we have
crossed the ocean, that we should have had, to obtain communication with
neighboring countries, if there had been no ocean at all. The ocean was
intended for _other_ purposes. The use of the ocean, one of its
_principal_ uses at least, is to temper the climates and seasons of the
earth. If the earth were one unbroken continent, the summers would be
intolerably hot, and the winters would be intolerably cold, and the
changes from winter to summer would be so violent, and work such fearful
havoc, as to render the earth uninhabitable. By means of the _ocean_,
those intolerable inconveniences are avoided. The sea, which is never
so cold in winter as the land, tempers the air as it blows over it, and
thus moderates the cold of the land. The sea also, which is never so
warm in summer as the land, tempers the air again, and breathes coolness
and freshness over the heated land. Neither heat nor cold affects the
sea so suddenly or so violently as it affects the land. A few days of
summer heat are sufficient to make the solid earth quite hot,--so hot,
in many cases, that you cannot bear your naked hand upon it long. Yet
this same amount of summer heat will make scarcely any perceptible
difference in the waters of the ocean. Then again, in winter, a few days
severe frost will make the solid earth, and especially the stones and
metals, so cold, that they would blister a delicate skin, if pressed
against them; while they make scarcely any perceptible difference upon
the waters of the ocean. The ocean sits on its low throne like the
monarch of this lower world, controlling the elements, tempering the
heat and the cold, and thus preserving the earth and