Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. The transfiguration of familiar objects is indeed curious and wonderful. The hulk, once gaudy with paint and gilding, has come under the skill of the lapidary and sea-artist. It is crusted with emerald and flossy mosses, and glimmers with diamond, jacinth, ruby, topaz, sapphire and gold. Every jewel-shape in leaf, spore, coral or plume, lying on a greenish crystalline ground, is fringed with a soft radiance of silver fire, and every point is tipped in minute ciliate flames of faint steely purple. It is spotted with soft velvety black wherever a shadow falls, that mingles and varies the wonderful display of color. It is brilliant, vivid, changeable with the interferences of light from the fluctuating surface above, which transmogrifies everything--touches the coarsest objects with its pencil, and they become radiant and spiritual. A pile of brick, dumped carelessly on the deck, has become a huge hill of crystal jewelry, lively with brilliant prismatic radiance. Where the light falls on the steps of the staircase it shows a ladder of silver crusted with emeralds. The round-house, spars, masts, every spot where a peak or angle catches the light, have flushed into liquid, jeweled beauty; and each point, a prism and mirror, catches, multiplies and reflects the other splendor. A rainbow, a fleecy mist over the lake, made prismal by the sunlight, a bunch of sub-aqueous moss, a soap-bubble, are all examples in our daily experience of that transforming power of water in the display of color. The prevailing tone is that soft, golden effulgence which, like the grace of a cheerful and loving heart, blends all into one harmonious whole. But observation warns the spectator of the delusive character of all that splendor of color. He lifts a box from the ooze: he appears to have uncorked the world. The hold is a bottomless chasm. Every indentation, every acclivity that casts a shadow, gives the impression of that soundless depth. The bottom of the sea seems loopholed with cavities that pierce the solid globe and the dark abysses of space beyond. The diver is surrounded by pitfalls, real and imaginary. There is no graduation. The shallow concave of a hand-basin is as the shadow of the bottomless well.