The story left us all melancholy for a while; bright eyes again overflowed, as well they might; and stately bosoms heaved with evident emotion. Yet, after all, the night was wound up with a capital cotillon, danced with as much grace, and as much gaiety too, as if it had been in the Salle d'Opera. * * * * * I rose early next morning, and felt the spirit-stirring power of the sea breeze. In those days, Brighton covered but the borders of the shore. It was scarcely more than a little line of fishermen's cottages, fenced against the surge by the remaining timbers of boats which had long seen their last adventure. Scattered at distances of at least a quarter of a mile from each other, lay some houses of a better description, a few deeply embosomed in trees, or rather in such thickets as could grow in the perpetual exposure to the rough winds and saline exhalations of the Channel. Of those, the one in which I had taken up my present residence was amongst the best; though its exterior was so unpresuming, that I was inclined to give Mordecai, or rather his gay heiress, credit for humility, or perhaps for the refinement of striking their visiters with the contrast between its simplicity of exterior and richness of decoration within. It was a brisk, bright morning, and the waves were curling before a lively breeze, the sun was glowing above, and clusters of vessels, floating down the Channel, spread their sails like masses of summer cloud in the sunshine. It was my first sight of the ocean, and that first sight is always a new idea. Alexander the Great, standing on the shores of the Persian Gulf, said, "That he then first felt what the world was." Often as I have seen the ocean since, the same conception has always forced itself on me. In what a magnificent world do we live! What power, what depth, what expanse, lay before me! How singular, too, that while the grandeur of the land arises from bold irregularity and incessant change of aspect, from the endless variety of forest, vale, and mountain; the same effect should be produced on the ocean by an absence of all irregularity and all change! A simple, level horizon, perfectly unbroken, a line of almost complete uniformity, compose a grandeur that impresses and fills the soul as powerfully as the most cloud-piercing Alp, or the Andes clothed with thunder.