We had been about four days at sea, when the ugly Capes of Hatteras loomed up in the distance, and as usual there, the sky began to look heavy and threatening.

It seems as if all the hurricanes of the Atlantic gather in these latitudes, and growl at every ship that passes, as if begrudging them the free use of the water-as if there was some gigantic spirit sitting on that promontory, anxious for the supremacy of the ocean. I saw our skipper look long and hard all around the horizon, a dozen times in as many minutes; and from the curl of the lip and the fast settling expression on his broad brow, I saw, as sailors say, there was something in the wind. We could not yet see the Capes; that is, we could not see the water mark on the shore, but there was a sound coming from them louder and louder every moment, which I cannot better express than by calling it home-made thunder. Just such a sound, perhaps, as a thousand rocks of a ton's weight apiece would make, when raked about by some huge Titans, on a bed of trapstone or granite. The sound was harsh and heavy.

By the middle of the afternoon we came so near the Capes as to see them distinctly. The reader who has not been there will hardly credit their sublimity. Let him imagine to himself, a high bank of bald rocks stretching out into the sea, rough and ragged at top, presenting a broad front, rendered smooth by the action of the waters; let him imagine the clouds hanging thick and murky over them, so low indeed as to sit upon them like a cap, changing each moment, now presenting huge and rolling folds of black vapor, as if a host of serpents were knotting and twining round each other, and now presenting their wild edges, like the fissures of the solid rock itself; let him imagine something of the low heavy roar, I have before spoken of, lessening as the high wind swept the sound away, and freshening again as the wind dies; and then let him imagine the waves, huge, dark, and angrily green, tumbling over each other and making right towards these rocks, like so many fiends; where they swing, and strike, and split, and by the concussion with the face of the rock, are dashed in broad sheets into the air, fifty and sometimes a hundred feet, and falling back like the descending thunder of a cataract; let him add to all this, the fear that the wind will drive his ship on to those very rocks, and he will have something of the picture. As good a substitute as can be found for it any where, is got by standing below Niagara, and watching its amazing wealth of waters as they come tumbling from the precipice, except the immeasurable distance in point of the horror they inspire in the beholder. Niagara is huge, almost oppressively so; but there is a sense of security as you stand by it, which is not felt as you go by the Capes of Hatteras; here you are filled with a dread sense of danger, and are glad to leave them behind you.

CHAPTER IIL

'Nature is at fault, and this good guest of ours (the soul) takes soil in an imperfect body, and so is slackened from showing her wonders; like an excellent musician, which cannot utter himself on a defective instrument.'-Lord Bacon.

The sun had not yet set. As yet there was nothing to frighten a landsman. The dark sky on our right, hanging over the Capes, was now some distance behind us; and the wind began to blow on the other tack, so it seemed there was nothing to fear. Our captain however did not suit me, I could not fathom his motions. He kept stretching his long neck to windward every few moments, and then hurrying aft to hold converse with the mate at the wheel. He sent his boy below too, to fetch up his night coat; brought out his speaking trumpet and laid it on the capstan, and every now and then looked hard in the wind, and then ran his eye aloft over the rigging, as if to assure himself that his gallant vessel was as she should be, and prepared for every emergency.

Still he stood scowling windward. I looked in that directionthere was nothing there that I could see. The broad sun had dipped his disc in the ocean, flinging back upon the sky a broad sea of rosy and flame colored light, which, reflected down upon the heaving and high topped waves, made them look like molten gold. High above them the evening star twinkled in the distance, and if I had been told a storm was coming up, I should as soon have thought it coming out of a soft summer heaven, as from that one before me. The wind had now died away, scarcely sufficient indeed to keep the sails bent was perceptible, and there was something so sweet and quiet gathering over us, we could not think of danger. The vessel made but little headway, the roaring sound of broken and disparted waves was no longer heard, she swung gayly and gracefully in the troughs of the rolling sea, and occasionally, if a wave more heavy than the rest struck against her, there was a start through the whole ship, as if the noise of waves was a thing unusual to us. Such was the quiet of the scene.

'I've sometimes thought,' said I, in a low tone, to Mary, as we stood leaning together over the tafferel, 'I've sometimes thought I should like to go down under these green waves, and trace the wonders of the great deep there. How many fathoms below, think you, are the coral rocks-what splendor there in those crystal realms of perfect solitude-how many hearts, think you, lie there, once beating with animation-what vast treasures for which men fight and murder each other-what horror and yet what magnificence !'

Ah! Henry, at your old tricks again, dreaming!'

'Aye, Mary, there are moments when every body dreams, even the dullest creature that crawls on the earth, and disgraces humanity by bearing the signet of it. Could you stand on the hills of our

home and see a storm come up, without feeling; or hear the roar of a cataract, or gaze into the depths of a clear evening heaven, without being lifted by it? No more can we in such a night as this, with every thing about us to call out and strengthen the natural romance of the heart, think to tie it down to these every day realities. It will rouse itself and be something else than mortal-the immortal within us will assert its superiority-the realities of things become vague and shadowy, and we seem an idea in the boundless universe! It is in such moments that this shell of clay falls offthat we are nearer our true natures-that the gift of second sight seems ours—that we approximate towards the Deity,

'And look into the very life of things.'

And what, Henry, do you esteem this-this presence, if I may so speak, which seems to fall on us, in such moments, purifying our vision?'

'You err, Mary, you err-this is no presence falling on us, nothing which is extraneous to our natures. Without doubt, it is only a freedom granted to these same powers, those now within us, giving them nobler exercise. It is that action belonging to another stage of being, allowed in this for wise purposes; the which we shall never fully understand, till this clay drops off, and we are entered on it.'

And the thoughts, 'feelings, sympathies of that other stateHenry, what are they?'

"Without doubt, the same which are here, here in such moments as these, when the sublime and great in man are busy, though of course modified and enlarged. If we take these states, such as are strictly mental-if we take that happiness of which these are the fountain, and those feelings and sympathies of which these are the cause and active principle, how different, how degraded, how immeasurably beneath them is the common every-day happiness of the world! As there are no comparisons between the two, so are there no affinities whatever. The man truly and thoroughly an idealist, is a being no more in common with the rest of the world as respects his sources of happiness, than the two most opposite things in nature. They are alike in thing, they differ in thought-they are alike in form, they differ in feeling-they resemble in element, they differ in combination. Yet the peculiarities of this state of idealism-its pleasures, sources, and feelings, such as they are, and such as we feel at this moment they are the immortal in man sometimes sent down from heaven, to give us a glimpse and an anticipation of the state which is to come.

-

There is something strange in this succession of being, and something to support the fanciful theory of a state previous to this.'

'Call it not fanciful, Mary, call not a philosophy, established by one of the proudest minds of antiquity, and subscribed to, with some modifications, by some of the greatest minds of each succeeding age, call it not fanciful. There is something more than poetry in the lines,

'Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its sitting,

And cometh from afar.'
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home-

there is something in this which a sneer will not answer for. If the voice which comes into our souls in its still moments is the voice of truth, if the impressions that write themselves there in the solitude of undisturbed reason be the finger of the Almighty, the denial of which overturns every system of philosophy as well as this, then is an argument of tremendous force gathered from the concurrence of so many voices, the which to attempt to refute with nothing more important than a sneer, savors rather of imbecile assumption than the legitimate deductions of enlightened reason. What is this perception of beauty in the mind-this something which is not learned by study, but which is already there, and comparatively in a state of perfection? what is this but the dawning of a luminary whose occultation was in another world? as in the same way, according to reason and revelation, these faculties shall have a higher degree of perfection in the future world, than they have in this? and as doubtless, that state shall be succeeded by another, and that by another, and that still by another in progressive series, till the soul is merged in the likeness of God himself?'

'But you believe we shall remember this state in a future one?' said Mary.

'Yes.'

And so on to infinity?'

'Doubtless.'

Why then do we not, in this state, have some knowledge of a former one?'

'Because, it may be that this state is so infinitely above the preceding, that all traces of it are lost. That state must have been lower, as the future shall be higher; and such may have been the connection of matter and mind, if matter there was, that impressions writ themselves dimly, or not at all, on the memory. The fact that they are lost is nothing; for a child, a year old, cannot remember the

events six months previous. Yet the impressions were there? Yes. And where are they? Lost. But was it the less immortal?

Again, the former state may have been superior; and if you deny the existence of matter heretofore, it may be that the connection now existing between a former unshackled active principle and matter, has clogged and crippled it. Here the impressions of things are lost likewise. But a comparison between these two states is illustrated not unaptly, by a reference to the two states, of extreme age, and vigorous manhood. The imbecile, in his dotage, cannot remember the events of middle life, and yet that period was a vigorous one; no more can the mind, now shackled and feeble, remember the freedom of an antecedent being.

'I confess the last supposition the probable one, though breaking up the analogy of the series. But whether it is or not; though the subject seem useless, and though we cannot fathom it; yet, that the immense variety in the development of character can be accounted for by education alone, is equally ridiculous. Before education began, character differed; and there is no resolving the phenomenon, but by the doctrine of the idealist.'

Why, Henry, you're a Platonist!'

Well.'

And you'll be one, in love, next, will you not?'

'Not while there's a Mary Latimer, eh!'

We were interrupted in this strange tete a tete, by an incident soon enough putting Plato and his doctrines to flight, and ourselves likewise-which brings me to another chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

-'ponto nox incubat atra;

Intonuere poli, et crebris micat ignibus æther.'

Virgil.

I trust the reader has not forgotten the situation of the vessel, when I ran off to record the previous conversation. He will remember that we were almost becalmed, that the sun was setting, that we had just passed the Capes which I described, and that the captain was on deck, and his motions were matters with me of some speculation. Of course, I was not without suspicions all the while; but we soon enough had a reality to deal with of a more tangible character.

Leaning over the tafferel as we were, and talking in a low tone, we were well calculated to be surprised as we raised our heads, and saw the change which had come over the heavens. We were roused by the captain's calling out in a sharp startling voice,

'Abaft, abaft there!"

'Aye, aye, sir!' was the prompt answer.

'How many points has she?'

Three and a half, sir.'