By the way, how exceedingly timid are our poets and poetasters generally of the open sea--_la pleine mer_. They linger around the shores thereof, in a vain attempt to sit snugly there _a leur aise_, while they 'call spirits from the vasty deep'--that never did and never would come on such conditions, though they grew hoarse over it. We all remember how Sandy Smith labors with making abortive _grabs_ at its _amber tails_, _main_, etc. (rather slippery articles on the whole)--but he is not 'A shepherd in the Hebrid Isles, _Placed far amid the melancholy main!_' Hail shade of Thomson! But hear how the exile sings it: 'La mer! partout la mer! des flots, des flots encor! L'oiseau fatigue en vain son inegal essor. Ici les flots, la-bas les ondes. Toujours des flots sans fin par des flots repousses; L'oeil ne voit que des flots dans l'abime entasses Rouler sous les vaques profondes.'[2] This we, for our part, would 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.