, below, or around, being the ship on which you stand.

Everything else is impalpable, floating, soft, and of a light, bright,
silvery grey. The air is warm, the sea is glass; it is circular, too,
like a disc, and the line where it meets with the sky is imperceptible.
Your little bark is the centre of a great crystal ball, the limit of
which is Immensity!

As we have said, peace, liquidity, luminosity, softness, and warmth
prevail everywhere, and the fog, or rather, the silvery haze--for it is
dry and warm as well as bright--has the peculiar effect of deadening
sound, so that the quiet little noises of ship-board rather help than
destroy the idea of that profound tranquillity which suggests
irresistibly to the religious mind the higher and sweeter idea of "the
peace of God."

But, although intensely still, there is no suggestion of death in such a
scene. It is only that of slumber! for the ocean undulates even when at
rest, and sails flap gently even when there is no wind. Besides this,
on the particular morning to which we call attention, a species of what
we may call "still life" was presented by a mighty iceberg--a peaked and
towering mountain of snowy white and emerald blue--which floated on the
sea not a quarter of a mile off on the starboard bow. Real life also
was presented to the passengers of the noble bark which formed the
centre of this scene, in the form of gulls floating like great
snowflakes in the air, and flocks of active little divers rejoicing
unspeakably on the water. The distant cries of these added to the
harmony of nature, and tended to draw the mind from mere abstract
contemplation to positive sympathy with the joys of other animals
besides one's-self.

The only discordant sounds that met the ears of those who voyaged in the
bark _Ocean Queen_ were the cacklings of a creature in the hen-coops
which had laid an egg, or thought it had done so, or wished to do so,
or, having been sea-sick up to that time, perhaps, endeavoured to revive
its spirits by recalling the fact that it once did so, and might perhaps
do so again! By the way there was also one other discord, in the form
of a pugnacious baby, which whimpered continuously, and, from some
unaccountable cause, refused to be comforted. But that was a discord
which, as in some musical chords, seemed rather to improve the harmony--
at least in its mother's ears.

The _Ocean Queen_ was an emigrant ship. In her capacious hull, besides
othe