rash rejection of a jaded editor; so, having got in your hand, it is possible that your head may follow; and so, last not least, ye may fortunately avert those awful mistakes of the press which sometimes ruin a poet’s sublimest effusion, by pantomimically transforming his roses into noses, his angels into angles, and all his happiness into pappiness. THE OCEAN. CONSIDERED PER SE. “A man whom both the waters and the wind, in that vast tennis-court have made the ball for them to play upon, entreats you pity him.”--PERICLES. IT was during a voyage to Margate, many summers ago--before steam _was_--that the little episode occurred which I am going to relate, by way of text, to some observations on the ocean. The importance of the Mariner’s Compass to the sailor is as well known universally as the utility of the little one-eyed instrument, for which Whitechapel is so famous, to the tailor: but its mode of action, and the manner of its application, must be far less generally understood. Whether the plougher of the deep mends his checked shirts with the Needle, or sews the canvas into sails with it, or uses it, after a battle, to extract the splinters from his hard tarry hand, are speculations likely enough to be entertained by the plougher of the land; at least by those clod-_compelling_ turners of the furrows, mid-county born and bred, who, despite of their predilection for such naval ballads as Tom Bowling and Jack Junk, have never set their simple eyes on ship or sailor, or the sea which they subdue. To many Londoners even, who jostle the tar in the streets, and behold tier after tier of masted vessels from their lower Bridge,--who have perchance stood and stared at the Compass itself in some shop-window of Leadenhall, or the still more maritime Minories, the Card with its _Card_-inal Points, is an undeciphered hieroglyphic. It did not violently surprise me, therefore, to see a simple-looking creature of this latter class go and take a long wondering look into the binnacle, like a child peeping at the tortoise in an Italian’s show-box; and doubtless, to his callow apprehension, the veering Guide was as much a thing of life and instinct as the outlandish reptile to the urchin. It was not until after a tedious poring at it--long enough, if there were any truth in animal magnetism, for the Needle and the Man to have understood one another by mutual sympathy--that the wonderer made up to the steersman, and begged for an elucidation of the marine mystery. Fortunately for the querist, the helmsman, along with all the characteristic good-nature of his fraternity, had none of the coyness, as to the secrets of the craft, with which the ripe sailor is apt to treat the raw voyager; perhaps not without cause. The nautical truths, masonic, may deserve to be obtained by degrees of probation: in the present case the unreserved communication of occult knowledge led to anything but a satisfactory result. No one could take more pains--call