I seemed to be all alone, in our little boat, in the midst of the sea. It was night--and what a night! not a breath of wind rippled the glassy waters. There was no moon, but the sky was cloudless, and the stars were out, in solemn and mysterious beauty. Every thing seemed preternaturally still, and I felt oppressed by a strange sense of loneliness; I looked round in vain for some familiar object, the sight of which might afford me relief. But far, far as the eye could reach, to the last verge of the horizon, where the gleaming sapphire vault closed down upon the sea, stretched one wide, desolate, unbroken expanse. I seemed to be isolated and cut off from all living things: "Alone--alone, all, all alone! Alone on the wide, wide sea; So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be." And there was something in this feeling, and in the universal, death-like silence, that was unutterably awful. I tried to pray--to think of God as present even there--to think of Him as "Our Father"--as caring for and loving his creatures--and thus to escape the desolating sense of loneliness that oppressed me. But it was in vain; I could not pray: there was something in the scene that mocked at faith, and seemed in harmony with the dreary creed of the atheist. The horrible idea of a godless universe came upon me, bidding me relinquish, as a fond illusion, the belief in a Heavenly Father,-- "Who sees with equal eye, as Lord of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall." Language cannot express the desolation of that thought.