BY DR. REYNELL COATES. SUNDAY AT SEA—A REVERY. “We could not pray together on the deep, Which, like a floor of sapphire, round us lay, Soft, solemn, holy!” Hemans. ’Tis Sunday!—Far to the westward lie the regions of the Amazonians, and, in the east, the Caffre hunts the ostrich. From the south, the lonely island of Tristan d’Acunha looms high above the horizon. Although twenty-three miles of water intervene between us and the base of this extinct volcano, the spray of the long billows of the southern ocean rises in misty clouds above the perpendicular and rocky shores, shading the mountain with a pearly veil, widely different in color from the soft blue tint of distance.—Even from the mast-head, whither the desire of solitude has led me, the summits of three or four billows complete the range of vision; for, around the entire circuit of the earth, the eternal west winds sweep, with scarce a barrier to their action. To those who are familiar with the Atlantic only—that comparatively diminutive expanse, which Humboldt has appropriately called “an arm of the sea,”—the extent of these mountain swells must appear almost incredible. It is not their height—for this is fixed within narrow limits by an immutable law—but their vast, unbroken magnitude, that awes the observer with the consciousness of infinite power. What are the proudest monuments of human strength and skill, dotting the surface of creation, when compared with these majestic waves, which are themselves but the ripple of a passing breeze? Reclining in the main-top, above all living things except the wild sea bird—an antiquated volume on the Scandinavian mysteries in hand—I give myself up to solitary reflection.—Dark dreams of superstition!—and must the order and loveliness of this glorious world be terminated in one wild wreck—one chaos of hopeless ruin!—shall all the labors of creative goodness sink beneath the power of the unchained demon of destruction! We move upon the hardened crust of a volcanic crater!—The solid pillars of the earth have given way once and again!—The stony relics of a former world forewarn proud man himself, that he too, with all his boastful race is hurrying to his doom!—All things have their cycles. “This huge rotundity we tread grows old!”