the fierce rush of the rising tide infallibly suggests the likeness of a fierce and deadly combat; but when the child, or the Savage, observes that the fury of the sea has its inevitable limits, the terror of the child or Savage is turned--true coward-fashion--into an unreasoning compound of hate and rage, and he as fiercely, as impotently, pelts the terrible waves with the very pebbles which without effort, without consciousness, she has cast, heaps upon heaps, by ship loads, at every vast beat of her semi-diurnal pulse! Foaming, roaring, threatening, the waves rush shoreward; the boy observes that though they may kiss, they cannot, at his safe stand-point, submerge his delicate little feet, returns laughter for their roarings, petty pebbles for their impotent threats. I saw a battle of this sort at Havre, in July, 1831. A little boy whom I took thither felt his young courage aroused and his young pride stung, by the loud challenges and fierce threats of the incoming tide, and he returned scorn for threat, feebly-thrown pebble for surging and mighty wave. Greatly, aye, laughably unequal was the strife between that small, white, delicate and feeble hand of the young mortal, and the vast and terrible force which cared not about it, feared it not, felt it not, knew it not. _Laughably_, said I? Ah! no inclination towards laughter remains with us when we reflect upon the fleeting existence, the ephemeral and impotent fragility of our best beloved, our fellows, our Maker's favored, erring, vain-glorious, and, in the last issue, utterly helpless Humanity, when in presence of that tireless and inscrutable Eternity to which we may at any moment be recalled! Such was one of my earliest glances at the Ocean; such the gloomy meditations, only too truly and too sternly realized, that were suggested to me by that combat between the fierce Sea upon which I look so often, and the glad and laughing, and buoyant child upon whom, alas! I shall look, lovingly and anxiously, no more. CHAPTER III. THE BEACH, THE SANDS, AND THE IRON-BOUND COAST, CONTINUED. Look upon the Ocean where and when you may, you everywhere and alway shall find her the same grand and terrible teacher of that hardest of all the lessons man has to learn,--man's insignificance. Take your stand upon some bold headland, from which with earnest and well trained eye, you can sweep the entire horizon; or, wander, with shortened ken, in the sandy desert;--go whithersoever you will, where old Ocean shall lash the shore, and everywhere and alway, I repeat, you shall find Ocean the same--mighty and terrible. True it is, that our finite and dim gaze cannot discern the, humanly speaking, _Infinity_ of the Ocean; but we feel, we instinctively comprehend, that Infinity, and the impression made by that instructive comprehension is even deeper than could be made by Ocean visibly to our material eye, tangibly to our poor human hand.