Yes, this well-worn lesson shall be the first that the waves shall teach us--the vanity and disappointment of human aspirations and early hopes and dreams. See now how glad and gleeful and bright and energetic they come on, twinkling with a myriad laugh, line behind line, eager ridge chasing eager ridge; all setting towards the cold sullen shore of the unsympathetic earth. Oh the clear pure curve, and the unsullied transparency; and the glancing crest of feathers and diamonds, and the rainbow tints as at last the longed-for shore is reached, and the eager plunge made! Oh the dis-illusion, the broken enchantment, the check, the change, the fall, when the white glittering spray lies now, lost and sullied and broken, upon the defiling earth; and the wave--amazed, daunted, shattered, quickly changing from over-hope to over-despair--flees back with a wild cry to the great Sea. Another and another and another, the warning is not taken; it is true that earth scattered this bright hope, this strong purpose, this brave design, this gleaming ambition; it is true that the yellow sands have been busy, ever since the Fall, inviting and then defeating the eager waves; receiving, marring, and sucking in the trembling snowy spray, the rainbow-tinged bubble dreams that the heart lavished upon them; and changing joyous onsets into moaning retreats. Yet who will expect the young heart to believe in the destiny of all its mere earth-dreams, _so long as, within it, the tide is coming up_? You almost smile, though with no scorn, to hear that momentary despairing sigh. For _you_ stand now on a point from which you can see a seemingly exhaustless and endless array of ever-new schemes, and hopes, and fancies, and purposes, and ambitions and dreams, line chasing line, towards that magic disenchanting shore. Those behind cry “Forward!” Vain for those before to cry “Back!” Yea, themselves soon pick up their broken forces, and swell the energy and join in the advance of the crested lines that chase one another to the shore.