orth or south, according to
the tack they are sailing upon. Watching them from one of the
windows of the great mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, and
moralized thus:-

SUN AND SHADOW.

As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green,
To the billows of foam-crested blue,
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
The sun gleaming bright on her sail.

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,--
Of breakers that whiten and roar;
How little he cares, if in shadow or sun
They see him that gaze from the shore!
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,
To the rock that is under his lee,
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,
O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea.

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
Where life and its ventures are laid,
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves
May see us in sunshine or shade;
Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark,
We'll trim our broad sail as before,
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
Nor ask how we look from the shore!

--Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good
mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if
anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or
reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough
to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. We
frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in
consequence of what are called RELIGIOUS mental disturbances. I
confess that I think better of them than of many who hold the same
notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy life very well,
outside of the asylums. Any decent person ought to go mad, if he
really holds such or such opinions. It is very much to his
discredit in every point of view, if he does not. What is the use
of my saying what some of these opinions are? Perhaps more than
one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight
over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any
human feeling in your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel,
heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and
perhaps for entire races,--anything that assumes the necessity of
the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated,
--n