HOME THOUGHTS FROM THE SEA. NOBLY, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the North-West died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; 'Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?'-say. Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa. R. BROWNING. A CORAL ISLAND. IMAGINE a belt of land in the wide ocean, not more than half a mile in breadth, but extending, in an irregular curve, to the length of ten or twenty miles or more; the height above the water not more than a yard or two at most, but clothed with a mass of the richest and most verdant vegetation. Here and there, above the general bed of luxuriant foliage, rises a grove of cocoa-nut trees, waving their feathery plumes high in the air, and gracefully bending their tall and slender stems to the breathing of the pleasant trade-wind. The grove is bordered by a narrow beach on each side, of the most glittering whiteness, contrasting with the beautiful azure waters by which it is environed. From end to end of the curved isles stretches, in a straight line, forming, as it were, the cord of the bow, a narrow beach, of the same snowy whiteness, almost level with the sea at the lowest tide, enclosing a semicircular space of water between it and the island, called the lagoon. Over this line of beach, which occupies the leeward side, the curve being to windward, the sea is breaking with sublime majesty; the long unbroken swell of the ocean, hitherto unbridled through a course of thousands of miles, is met by this rampart, when the huge billows, rearing themselves upwards many yards above its level, and bending their foaming crests, 'form a graceful liquid arch, glittering in the rays of a tropical sun as if studded with brilliants. But, before the eyes of the spectator can follow the splendid aqueous gallery which they appear to have reared, with loud and hollow roar they fall, in magnificent desolation, and spread the gigantic fabric in froth and spray upon the horizontal and gently broken surface.' Contrasting strongly with the tumult and confusion of the hoary billows without, the water within the lagoon exhibits the serene placidity of a mill-pond. Extending downwards to a depth varying from a few feet to fifty fathoms, the waters possess the lively green hue common to soundings on a white or yellow ground; while the surface, unruffled by a wave, reflects with accurate distinctness the mast of the canoe that sleeps upon its bosom, and the tufts of the cocoa-nut plumes that rise from the beach above it. Such is a Coral Island; and if its appearance is one of singular loveliness, as all who have seen it testify, its structure, on examination, is found to be no less interesting and wonderful. The beach of white sand, which opposes the whole force of the ocean, is found to be the summit of a rock which rises abruptly from an unknown depth, like a perpendicular wall. The whole of this rampart, as far as our senses can take cognisance of it, is composed of living coral, and the same substance forms the foundation of the curved and more elevated side which is smiling in the luxuriance and beauty of tropical vegetation. The elevation of the coral to the surface is not always abruptly perpendicular; sometimes reefs of varying depths extend to a considerable distance in the form of successive platforms or terraces. In these regions may be seen islands in every stage of their formation: 'some presenting little more than a point or summit of a branching coralline pyramid, at a depth scarcely discernible through the transparent waters; others spreading, like submarine gardens or shrubberies, beneath the surface; or presenting here and there a little bank of broken coral and sand, over which the rolling wave occasionally breaks;' while others exist in the more advanced state that I have just described, the main bank sufficiently elevated to be permanently protected from the waves, and already clothed with verdure, and the lagoon enclosed by the narrow bulwark of the coral reef. Though the rampart thus reared is sufficient to preserve the inner waters in a peaceful and mirror-like calmness, it must not be supposed that all access to them from the sea is excluded. It almost invariably happens that in the line of reef one or more openings occur, which, though sometimes narrow and intricate, so as scarcely to allow the passage of a native canoe, are not unfrequently of sufficient width and depth to permit the free ingress of large ships. This is a very remarkable instance of the Divine care over the little creatures which rear these solid structures: they appear to be endowed with an instinctive knowledge, that if the reef were carried uninterruptedly along from one point to another, so as completely to shut in the lagoon, the water within would soon become unfit to support their existence, and would ultimately be dried up. The advantage to man of these openings is very great: without them the island might smile invitingly, but in vain ; no access could be obtained to them by shipping, through the tremendous surf by which their shores are lashed; but by these entrances the lovely lagoons are converted into the most quiet, safe, and commodious havens imaginable, where ships may lie, and take in wood and water, and refresh their crews, in security, though the tempest howl without. It is a scarcely less beneficent provision that the position of the opening is in most cases indicated so as to be visible at a great distance. Had there been merely an opening in the coral rock, it could not have been detected from the sea, except by the diminution of the foaming surf just at that spot,—a circumstance that could scarcely be visible, unless the observer were opposite the aperture. But, in general, there is on each side of the passage a little islet, raised on the points of the reef, which, being commonly tufted with cocoa-nut trees, is perceptible as far off as the island itself, and forms a most convenient landmark. THE SHIPWRECK. P. H. GOSSE. HAVING made up my mind to go down to Yarmouth, I went round to the coach-office and took the box-seat on the mail. In the evening I started, by that conveyance, down the road I had traversed under so many vicissitudes. 'Don't you think that,' I asked the coachman, in the first stage out of London, 'a very remarkable sky? I don't remember to have seen one like it.' 'Nor I-not equal to it,' he replied. 'That's wind, sir; there'll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long.' It was a murky confusion-here and there blotted with a colour like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel-of flying clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. There had been a wind all day; and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more overcast, and it blew hard. But as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came |