For who can watch these brilliant wrecks in all their varying forms Nor feel a yearning wish to reach God’s haven from life’s storms; To quit this scene of weary strife, of turmoil and unrest, Hushed in a deep, eternal sleep on the Redeemer’s breast. * * * * * THE ISLETS OF THE GULF; OR, ROSE BUDD. Ay, now I am in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home I was in a better place; but Travelers must be content. As You Like It. BY THE AUTHOR OF “PILOT,” “RED ROVER,” “TWO ADMIRALS,” “WING-AND-WING,” “MILES WALLINGFORD,” ETC. [Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by J. Fenimore Cooper, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Northern District of New York.] (_Continued from page 192._) PART XIII. The gull has found her place on shore; The sun gone down again to rest; And all is still but ocean’s roar; There stands the man unbless’d. But see, he moves—he turns, as asking where His mates? Why looks he with that piteous stare? Dana. Superstition would seem to be a consequence of a state of being in which so much is shadowed forth, while so little is accurately known. Our far-reaching thoughts range over the vast fields of created things, without penetrating to the secret cause of the existence of even a blade of grass. We can analyze all substances that are brought into our crucibles, tell their combinations and tendencies, give a scientific history of their formation, so far as it is connected with secondary facts, their properties, and their uses; but in each and all there is a latent natural cause that baffles all our inquiries, and tells us that we are merely men. This is just as true in morals as in physics—no man living being equal to attaining the very faith that is necessary to his salvation, without the special aid of the spirit of the godhead; and even with that mighty support, trusting implicitly for all that is connected with a future that we are taught to believe is eternal, to “the substance of things _hoped_ for, and the evidence of things unseen.” In a word, this earthly probation of ours was intended for finite beings, in the sense of our present existence, leaving far more to be conjectured than is understood.