But the unfortunate, though unable to go out, has discovered a subtle means of procuring air and water; in her house, she has little windows, which communicate with her little lungs. Hunger at length compels her to risk something, and towards evening she crawls a little around, and feeds on some sea-weed, her sole nourishment. Here let us remark, that those marvellous shells, not only the Haliotide, but the Widow (black and white) and the Golden Mouth (of mingled pearly and gold color,) are poor herbivori, inoffensive, temperate, feeders. A living, and decisive refutation, that, of those who fancy that beauty is the daughter of Death, of blood, of murder, of a merely brutal accumulation of animal substance. But to these, our beautiful shell-tenants, the merest modicum of subsistence suffices. Their chief aliment is the light which they drink in, by which they are permeated, by which they color and tint, with more than rainbow beauty, and variety of tint, their inner dwelling, in which they conceal and cherish their solitary love. Each of them is double, hermaphrodite; lover and loved, in one. As the palaces of the East are concealed by dark and repulsive outer walls, so, here, also, without, all is rude, within, all is of the most dazzling beauty; the hymeneal seclusion is lightened up by the gleaming and many-hued reflections of a little sea of mother of pearl, which, even when the house is closed to the outer light, create a faëry, a mysterious, and a most lovely twilight. It is a great consolation that when our poor prisoners cannot have the sun, they can at least have a moon of their own, a paradise of soft and trembling lights, ever changing, yet ever renewed, and giving to that sedentary life, that little variety which is absolutely needed by every creature. The poor children who work in the mines, ask visitors, not for food, or sweetmeats, or money, or toys--all they ask for is the means of getting more light. And it is the same with our Ocean children, the Haliotides. Every day, blind though they be, they feel, and greedily welcome, the return of the light, receiving it, and contemplating it, with the whole of their transparent bodies; and when the light has departed, from without, they still preserve and nurse some portion of it within themselves. They watch, they wait, they hope for its return; their whole little soul consists of that hope, that watching, that eager desire, that incessant yearning. Who can doubt that the return of the glad light is as delightful to them as it is to us, nay, even more so than it is to us, who have the manifold distractions of so busy and varied a life?