how strangely, yet how admirably, does it fulfil its
great human object! Its depth and extent seem to render it the very
element of separation; all the armies of the earth might be swallowed up
between the shores of the Channel. Yet it is this element which actually
combines the remotest regions of the earth. Divisions and barriers are
essential to the protection of kingdoms from each other; yet what height
of mountain range, or what depth of precipice could be so secure as the
defence so simply and perpetually supplied by a surrounding sea? While
this protecting element at the same time pours the wealth of the globe
into the bosom of a nation.

Even all this is only the ocean as referred to man. How much more
magnificent is it in itself! Thrice the magnitude of the land, the world
of waters! its depth unfathomable, its mountains loftier than the
loftiest of the land, its valleys more profound, the pinnacles of its
hills islands! What immense shapes of animal and vegetable life may fill
those boundless pastures and plains on which man shall never look! What
herds, by thousands and millions, of those mighty creatures whose
skeletons we discover, from time to time, in the wreck of the
antediluvian globe! What secrets of form and power, of capacity and
enjoyment, may exist under the cover of that mighty expanse of waves
which fills the bed of the ocean, and spreads round the globe!

While those and similar ramblings were passing through my mind, as I sat
gazing on the bright and beautiful expanse before me, I was aroused by a
step on the shingle. I turned, and saw the gallant guardsman, who had so
much interested our party on the night before. But he received my
salutation with a gravity which instantly put an end to my good-humour;
and I waited for the _denouement_, at his pleasure. He produced a small
billet from his pocket, which I opened, and which, on glancing my eye
over it, appeared to me a complete rhapsody. I begged of him to read it,
and indulge me with an explanation. He read it, and smiled.

"It is, I own, not perfectly intelligible," said he; "but some allowance
must be made for a man deeply injured, and inflamed by a sense of
wrong."

I read the signature--Lafontaine, _Capitaine des Chasseurs legers_. I
had never heard the name before. I begged to know "the nature of his
business with me, as it was altogether beyond my conjecture."

"It is perfectly probable, sir," was the reply; "for I understand that
y