These strange metamorphoses, which by turns raise and abase the undecided creature, keeping her alternating between two lives so different, are apparently the case of the inferior species, of the Medusa which have not been able to enter decidedly into the irrevocable career of emancipation. For the others, we can easily suppose that their charming varieties mark the interior progress of life, the degrees of development, the sports, the smiling graces of their new liberty. This latter class, admirably artistic, won this so simple theme of a disk or parasol which floats, of a light lustre of crystal which reflects the sun's glowing and coloring lights, has made an infinity of variations, a deluge of little marvels. All these beauties floating on the green mirror of the sea in their gay and delicate colors, and in the thousand attractions of an infantine and unconscious coquetry, have puzzled Science, which to class and to name them, has been obliged to call to its aid both the Queens of History and the Goddesses of Mythology. Here we have the waving Berenice, whose rich hair floats another and brighter flood upon the flood; there we have the little Orithya, the fair spouse of Eölus, who, at the breathing of her husband, displays her pure, white urn, uncertain, and scarcely supported by her fine hair, which she often entangles beneath, or the weeping Dionea, looking like an alabaster cup, from which, in crystalline streamlets, flow splendid tears. Such, when in Switzerland, I saw spreading themselves the wearied and idle cascades, which, having made too many turnings, seemed dropping with drowsiness and languor. In the great faëry of the illumination of the sea on stormy nights, the Medusa has her separate part. Bathed, like so many other beings, in the phosphoric fluid with which they are all penetrated, she returns it in her manner, with a peculiar charm. How dark is the night at sea when we do not see that phosphoric gleam or a fitful flashing! How vast and formidable are those dark depths, on such gloomy nights. On land, the shadows are less dense and impenetrable, we see, if dimly, and make out forms, if imperfectly, so that we get so many directing marks. But at sea, how vast, unbroken, infinitely dense is the darkness of the dark nights. Nothing, still nothing; a thousand dangers to be imagined, but not one to be seen and avoided! We feel all this, even when living on the coast. It is a great gladness, an exciting pleasure, when, the air becoming electric, we see in the distance, a slight line of pale fire. What is it? We see it even at home, on the dead fish, the Herring, for instance. But, living in his great sea, he is still more luminous in the long trains that he leaves behind him. That phosphoric brilliancy is by no means the exclusive privilege of Death. Is it an effect of Heat? No, for you find it at both poles, in the Antarctic Seas, in the Siberian Seas, in ours--in all.