uld pronounce one of the very best open-sea
sketches we have ever met with; and if the reader will take even our
unequal rendering, he may think so too.

'The sea! all round, the sea! flood, flood o'er billow surges!
In vain the bird fatigued its faltering wing here urges.
Billows beneath, waves, waves around;
Ever the floods (no end!) by urging floods repulsed;
The eye sees but the waves, in an abyss engulphed,
Roll 'neath their lairs profound.'

'Aurora' comes to us as a remnant of that beautiful Grecian mythology
that deified and poetized everything; and even to us she is still the
'rosy-fingered daughter of the morn.' The 'Levant,' 'Orient,' and
'Occident' are all of them poetical, for they are all true translations
from nature. The 'Levant' is where the sun is _levant_, raising himself
up. 'Orient' will be recognized as the same figure from _orior_; while
'occident' is, of course, the opposite in signification, namely, the
declining, the 'setting' place.

'Lethe' is another classic myth. It is [Greek: ho tes lethes
potamos]--the river of forgetfulness, 'the oblivious pool.' Perhaps is
it that all of us, as well as the son of Thetis, had a dip therein.

There exists not a more poetic expression than 'Hyperborean,' _i. e._
[Greek: hyperboreos]--_beyond Boreas_; or, as a modern poet finely and
faithfully expands it:

'Beyond those regions cold
Where dwells the Spirit of the North-Wind,
Boreas old.'

Homer never manifested himself to be more of a poet than in the creation
of this word. By the way, the Hyperboreans were regarded by the ancients
as an extremely happy and pious people.

How few of those who use that very vague, grandiloquent word 'Ambrosial'
know that it has reference to the 'ambrosia' ([Greek: ambrotos],
_immortal_), the food of the gods! It has, however, a secondary
signification, namely, that of an unguent, or perfume, hence fragrant;
and this is probably the prevailing idea in our 'ambrosial': instance
Milton's 'ambrosial flowers.' It was, like the 'nectar' ([Greek:
nektar], an _elixir vitae_), considered a veritable elixir of
immortality, and consequently denied to men.

The Immortals, in their golden halls of 'many-topped Olympus,' seem to
have led a merry-enough life of it over their nectar and ambrosia, their
laughter and intrigues.

But not half as jolly were they as were Odin and the Iotun--dead drunk
in Valhalla over their mead and ale, from