in romances, and in travels, and many artists are sketching in the picturesque regions opened up to them by earlier students of mountain landscapes. Many lovers of Nature and of poetry have commented with surprise on the slow development of the poetic appreciation of mountains. It is, perhaps, even more strange that English poetry should have been still slower in its discovery of the ocean. It is as if English poets from Dryden to Byron had all lived inland. Even in Wordsworth, in spite of some wonderful lines, there is no treatment of the ocean at all comparable to his study of mountains. In the classical age the ocean was a dreary waste. In the transition poetry we do not find much more knowledge or appreciation. The one quality of the ocean that receives anything like adequate expression is its boundlessness. Characteristic lines are by John G. Cooper. In unconfined perspective send thy gaze Disdaining limit o’er the green expanse Of ocean. Armstrong says that the “floating wilderness” Scorns our miles and calls Geography A shallow prier. Mickle looks upon the awful solitude of ocean and his imagination is stirred by the last dim wave in boundless space Involved and lost. These are the best lines I have found. The chief expressions of pleasure in the ocean are Gay’s mild delight in a sunset across the sea, and subsequent moonlight effects, and Beattie’s pleasing dread as he seeks the shore to listen to the wide-weltering waves. We find in Cowper’s letters a more appreciative passage on the ocean than occurs in any of the poetry. The most sincere ocean enthusiasm is in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances. Travelers, even those who went along the coast of Wales and among the Scottish islands or to the Isle of Wight, say little of the sea. The ocean was, in fact, much such a burden as Sterne’s plain. When the poet had once said that it was big and awful his stock of impressions was exhausted. In painting, the ocean was not entirely ignored, but in this province, too, there was meagerness of conception and expression. The ocean waited for Turner and Byron and Shelley.