appearance, for they lay pretty thickly on the shore, and found that there might be. In one of these there were what seemed to be the scales of fishes, and the impressions of a few minute bivalves; in the centre of another there was actually a piece of decayed wood. Of all nature's riddles these seemed to me to be at once the most interesting and the most difficult to expound. I treasured them carefully up, and was told by one of the workmen to whom I showed them that there was a part of the shore about two miles farther to the west where curiously shaped stones, somewhat like the heads of boarding-pikes, were occasionally picked up; and that in his father's days the country people called them thunderbolts. Our employer, on quitting the quarry for the building on which we were to be engaged, gave all the workmen a halfholiday. I employed it in visiting the place where the thunderbolts had fallen so thickly, and found it a richer scene of wonder than I could have fancied in even my dreams. What first attracted my notice was a detached group of low-lying skerries, wholly different in form and colour from the sandstone cliffs above or the rocks a little farther to the west. I found them composed of thin strata of limestone, alternating with thicker beds of a black slaty substance, which, as I ascertained in the course of the evening, burns with a powerful flame, and emits a strong bituminous odour. The layers into which the beds readily separate are hardly an eighth part of an inch in thickness, and yet on every layer there are the impressions of thousands and tens of thousands of fossils. We may turn over these wonderful leaves one after one, and find the pictorial records of a former creation in every page. Shells, twigs of wood, leaves of plants, cones of an extinct species of pine, bits of charcoal, and the scales of fishes are all to be seen. And, as if to render their pictorial appearance more striking, though the leaves of this interesting volume are of a deep black, most of the impressions are of a chalky whiteness. I was lost in admiration and astonishment. But I passed on from ledge to ledge, and at length found one of the supposed thunderbolts I had come in quest of, firmly imbedded in a mass of shale. I had skill enough to determine that it was other than what it had been deemed. A very near relative, who had been a sailor in his time on almost every ocean, and had visited almost every quarter of the globe, had brought home one of these meteoric stones with him from the coast of Java. There was nothing organic in its structure, whereas the stone I had now found was organized very curiously indeed. It was of a conical form and threadlike texture, the threads radiating in straight lines from the centre to the circumference. In its upper half finely marked veins ran transversely to the point, while the space below was occupied by an internal cone. I learned in time to call this stone a belemnite, and became acquainted with enough of its history to know that it once formed part of a variety of cuttle-fish, long since extinct. My first year of labour came to a close, and I found that the amount of my happiness had not been less than in the last of my boyhood. My knowledge, too, had increased more than in former seasons; and as I had acquired the skill of at least the common mechanic, I had fitted myself for independence. The additional experience of twenty years has not shown me that there is any necessary connection between a life of toil and a life of wretchedness. From "The Old Red Sandstone," by HUGH MILLer. 25. THE SEA. To sea! to sea! the calm is o'er, The dolphin wheels, the sea cows snort, To sea! to sea! our white-winged bark The anchor heaves; the ship swings free; T. L. BEDDOES. 26. TRANQUILLITY. Tranquillity thou better name For oh, dear child of thoughtful Truth, To thee I gave my early youth, And left the bark, and blest the steadfast shore, Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine, On him but seldom, Power divine, Thy spirit rests! Satiety And Sloth, poor counterfeits of thee, To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind: But me thy gentle hand will lead At morning through the accustomed mead, Will build me up a mossy seat; And when the gust of autumn crowds, Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune, The feeling heart, the searching soul, To thee I dedicate the whole; And while within myself I trace The present works of present man— COLERIDGE. |