something about it so delicate and human. It
seems to bud or bubble out of the low, dark horizon; a moment, and it
is not, and then another moment, and it is. With one throb the
tremulous light is born; with another throb it has reached its full
size, and looks at you, coy and defiant; and almost in that instant it
is utterly gone. You cannot conceive yourself to be watching something
which merely turns on an axis; but it seems suddenly to expand, a
flower of light, or to close, as if soft petals of darkness clasped it
in. During its moments of absence, the eye cannot quite keep the memory
of its precise position, and it often appears a hair-breadth to the
right or left of the expected spot. This enhances the elfish and
fantastic look, and so the pretty game goes on, with flickering
surprises, every night and all night long. But the illusion of the
seasons is just as coquettish; and when next summer comes to us, with
its blossoms and its joys, it will dawn as softly out of the darkness
and as softly give place to winter once more.

OLDPORT WHARVES.

Everyone who comes to a wharf feels an impulse to follow it down, and
look from the end. There is a fascination about it. It is the point of
contact between land and sea. A bridge evades the water, and unites
land with land, as if there were no obstacle. But a wharf seeks the
water, and grasps it with a solid hand. It is the sign of a lasting
friendship; once extended, there it remains; the water embraces it,
takes it into its tumultuous bosom at high tide, leaves it in peace at
ebb, rushes back to it eagerly again, plays with it in sunshine, surges
round it in storm, almost crushing the massive thing. But the pledge
once given is never withdrawn. Buildings may rise and fall, but a solid
wharf is almost indestructible. Even if it seems destroyed, its
materials are all there. This shore might be swept away, these piers be
submerged or dashed asunder, still every brick and stone would remain.
Half the wharves of Oldport were ruined in the great storm of 1815. Yet
not one of them has stirred from the place where it lay; its
foundations have only spread more widely and firmly; they are a part of
the very pavement of the harbor, submarine mountain ranges, on one of
which yonder schooner now lies aground. Thus the wild ocean only
punished itself, and has been embarrassed for half a century, like many
another mad profligate, by the wrecks of what it ruined.

Yet the surges a