action of the water, a mass of granite had been thrown on the top,
where it lodged. At high-water, perhaps during three months in each
year, the stream had caused this mass to revolve on its own axis,
until it has worn itself of a round figure, and worn also the rock
into a cup, now about six feet deep. Still, it revolves when the water
reaches it--nature still plays at this cup-and-ball--the ball weighing
five tons. Talk of this sort brought us to the railway. In due time I
reached home; and I do not remember to have ever been more interested
than by the day spent at Lowell.




THE SEA AND THE POETS.


Of three poets, each the most original in his language, and each
peculiarly susceptible of impressions from external nature--Horace,
Shakspeare, and Burns--not one seems to have appreciated the beauty,
the majestic sublimity, the placid loveliness, alternating with the
terrific grandeur, of the 'many-sounding sea.' Judging from their
incidental allusions to it, and the use they make of it in metaphor
and imagery, it would seem to have presented itself to their
imaginations only as a fierce, unruly, untamable, and unsightly
monster, to be loathed and avoided--a blot on the fair face of
creation--a necessary evil, perhaps; but still an evil, and most
certainly suggestive of no ideas poetic in their character.

It is marvellous, for there is not one of these poets who does not
discover a lively sense of the varied charms of universal nature, and