ad a singular effect. The clouds
would interpose in such a manner that some objects were shaded from it,
while others were strongly illuminated. Some of the islands lay in the
shade, dark and gloomy, while others were bright and favored spots. The
white light-house sometimes very cheerfully marked. There was a schooner
about a mile from the shore, at anchor, laden apparently with lumber.
The sea all about her had the black, iron aspect which I have described;
but the vessel herself was alight. Hull, masts, and spars were all
gilded, and the rigging was made of golden threads. A small, white
streak of foam breaking around the bows, which were towards the wind.
The shadowiness of the clouds overhead made the effect of the sunlight
strange, where it fell.

* * * * *

_September._--The elm-trees have golden branches intermingled with their
green already, and so they had on the first of the month.

* * * * *

To picture the predicament of worldly people, if admitted to paradise.

* * * * *

As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures,
American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The
Egyptian is so of the cavern and mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the
Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.

* * * * *

"Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it,"--an
extempore prayer by a New England divine.

* * * * *

In old times it must have been much less customary than now to drink
pure water. Walker emphatically mentions, among the sufferings of a
clergyman's wife and family in the Great Rebellion, that they were
forced to drink water with crab-apples stamped in to relish it.

* * * * *

Mr. Kirby, author of a work on the History, Habits, and Instincts of
Animals, questions whether there may not be an abyss of waters within
the globe, communicating with the ocean, and whether the huge animals of
the Saurian tribe--great reptiles, supposed to be exclusively
antediluvian, and now extinct--may not be inhabitants of it. He quotes a
passage from Revelation, where the creatures under the earth are spoken
of as distinct from those of the sea, and speaks of a Saurian fossil
that has been found deep in the subterranean regions. He thinks, or
suggests, that these may be