in the steel fender and the ugly fire-irons that were never used. A
snowy cloth of linen, finer than ordinary, for there was pride in
the housekeeping, covered the large dining-table, and a company,
evidently a family, was eating its breakfast. But how come these
people THERE?

For, supposing my reader one of the company, let him rise from the
well-appointed table--its silver, bright as the complex motions of
butler's elbows can make it; its china, ornate though not elegant;
its ham, huge, and neither too fat nor too lean; its game-pie, with
nothing to be desired in composition, or in flavour natural or
artificial;--let him rise from these and go to the left of the two
windows, for there are two opposite each other, the room having been
enlarged by being built out: if he be such a one as I would have for
a reader, might I choose--a reader whose heart, not merely his eye,
mirrors what he sees--one who not merely beholds the outward shows
of things, but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them,
whose garment and revelation they are;--if he be such, I say, he
will stand, for more than a moment, speechless with something akin
to that which made the morning stars sing together.

He finds himself gazing far over western seas, while yet the sun is
in the east. They lie clear and cold, pale and cold, broken with
islands scattering thinner to the horizon, which is jagged here and
there with yet another. The ocean looks a wild, yet peaceful
mingling of lake and land. Some of the islands are green from shore
to shore, of low yet broken surface; others are mere rocks, with a
bold front to the sea, one or two of them strange both in form and
character. Over the pale blue sea hangs the pale blue sky, flecked
with a few cold white clouds that look as if they disowned the earth