HAVE endeavoured, in the following pages, to impress
upon the youthful mind some of the grand and wonder
ful objects of creative excellence in the "Broad, Broad Ocean." The subject is exhaustless. I have been able only to treat upon a few of its most salient and interesting features, such as the young-always ardent and impressionable-would be most likely to appreciate.
A portion of this volume was written at a very sequestered coast of North Devon-Croyde Bay, a few miles from Barnstaple, where I had ample opportunities of witnessing a glorious expanse of ocean in all its features: calm and serene as Wordsworth describes it
"The gentleness of Heaven is on the sea.
Listen! The Mighty Being is awake,
And doth with His eternal motion make
A sound like thunder, everlastingly;"
or in tempestuous gales, when we see
"The ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds."
My youngsters were lively amateur fishers, captors of prawns and