of greatness into obscurity, we see not a trace in Napoleon. Though clothed with the power of a God, the thought of consecrating himself to the introduction of a new and higher era, to the exaltation of the character and condition of his race, seems never to have dawned on his mind. The spirit of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice seems not to have waged a moment's war with self-will and ambition.

His ruling passions, indeed, were singularly at variance with magnanimity. Moral greatness has too much simplicity, is too unostentatious, too self-subsistent, and enters into others' interests with too much heartiness, to live an hour for what Napoleon always lived, to make itself the theme and gaze and wonder of a dazzled world.

Next to moral comes intellectual greatness, or genius in the highest sense of that word; and by this we mean that sublime capacity of thought, through which the soul, smitten with the love of the true and the beautiful, essays to comprehend the universe, soars into the heavens, penetrates the earth, penetrates itself, questions the past, anticipates the future, traces out the general and all comprehending laws of nature, binds together by innumerable affinities and relations all the objects of its knowledge, rises from the finite and transient to the infinite and the everlasting, frames to itself, from its own fullness, lovelier and sublimer forms than it beholds, discerns the harmonies between the world within and the world without us, and finds in every region of the universe types and interpreters of its own deep mysteries and glorious inspirations. This is the greatness which belongs to philosophers and to the master-spirits in poetry and the fine arts.

Next comes the greatness of action; and by this we mean the sublime power of conceiving bold and extensive

plans; of constructing and bringing to bear on a mighty object a complicated machinery of means, energies, and arrangements, and of accomplishing great outward effects.

To this head belongs the greatness of Bonaparte, and that he possessed it, we need not prove, and none will be hardy enough to deny. A man who raised himself from obscurity to a throne; who changed the face of the world; who made himself felt through powerful and civilized nations; who sent the terror of his name across seas and oceans; whose will was pronounced and feared as destiny; whose donatives were crowns; whose antechamber was thronged by submissive princes; who broke down the awful barrier of the Alps, and made them a highway; and whose fame was spread beyond the boundaries of civilization to the steppes of the Cossack, and the deserts of the Arab, a man who has left this record of himself in history has taken out of our hands the question whether he shall be called great. All must concede to him a sublime power of action, — an energy equal to great effects.

LXII. — THE USES OF THE OCEAN.

SWAIN.

THE following extract is a portion of a sermon of striking eloquence and beauty by the late Rev. Leonard Swain, of Providence, Rhode Island, published in the "Bibliotheca Sacra."

TH

HE traveler who would speak of his experience in foreign lands must begin with the sea. God has spread this vast pavement of his temple between the hemispheres, so that he who sails to foreign shores must pay a double tribute to the Most High; for through this temple

he has to carry his anticipations as he goes, and his memories when he returns. The sea speaks for God; and however eager the tourist may be to reach the strand that lies before him, and enter upon the career of business or pleasure that awaits him, he must check his impatience during this long interval of approach, and listen to the voice with which Jehovah speaks to him as, horizon after horizon, he moves to his purpose along the aisles of God's mighty tabernacle of the deep.

It is a common thing, in speaking of the sea, to call it "a waste of waters." But this is a mistake. Instead of being an encumbrance or a superfluity, the sea is as essential to the life of the world, as the blood is to the life of the human body. Instead of being a waste and desert, it keeps the earth itself from becoming a waste and a desert. It is the world's fountain of life and health and beauty; and if it were taken away, the grass would perish from the mountains, the forests would crumble on the hills, the harvests would become powder on the plains, the continent would be one vast Sahara of frosts and fire, and the solid globe itself, scarred and blasted on every side, would swing in the heavens, silent and dead as on the first morning of creation.

Water is as indispensable to all life, vegetable or animal, as the air itself. From the cedar on the mountains to the lichen that clings to the wall; from the elephant that pastures on the forests, to the animalcule that floats in the sunbeam; from the leviathan that heaves the sea into billows, to the microscopic creatures that swarm, a million in a single foam-drop, — all alike depend for their existence on this single element and must perish if it be withdrawn.

This element of water is supplied entirely by the sea.

The sea is the great inexhaustible fountain which is continually pouring up into the sky precisely as many streams, and as large, as all the rivers of the world are pouring into it.

The sea is the real birthplace of the clouds and the rivers, and out of it come all the rains and dews of heaven. Instead of being a waste and an encumbrance, therefore, it is a vast fountain of fruitfulness, and the nurse and mother of all the living. Out of its mighty breast come the resources that feed and support the population of the world. Omnipresent and everywhere alike is this need and blessing of the sea. It is felt as truly in the center of the continent, where, it may be, the rude inhabitant never heard of the ocean, as it is on the circumference of the

wave-beaten shore.

We are surrounded, every moment, by the presence and bounty of the sea. It looks out upon us from every violet in our garden-bed; from every spire of grass that drops upon our passing feet the beaded dew of the morning; from the bending grain that fills the arm of the reaper; from bursting presses, and from barns filled with plenty; from the broad foreheads of our cattle and the rosy faces of our children; from the cool dropping well at our door; from the brook that murmurs from its side; and from the elm or spreading maple that weaves its protecting branches beneath the sun, and swings its breezy shadow over our habitation.

It is the sea that feeds us. It is the sea that clothes us. It cools us with the summer cloud, and warms us with the blazing fires of winter. We make wealth for ourselves and for our children out of its rolling waters, though we may live a thousand leagues away from its shore, and never have looked on its crested beauty, or listened to its eternal

anthem. Thus the sea, though it bears no harvest on its bosom, yet sustains all the harvests of the world. Though a desert itself, it makes all the other wildernesses of the earth to bud and blossom as the rose. Though its own waters are as salt and wormwood, it makes the clouds of heaven to drop with sweetness, opens springs in the val leys, and rivers among the hills, and fountains in all dry places, and gives drink to all the inhabitants of the earth. The sea is a perpetual source of health to the world. Without it there could be no drainage for the lands. It is the scavenger of the world. Its Its agency is omnipresent. Its vigilance is omniscient. Where no sanitary committee could ever come, where no police could ever penetrate, its myriad eyes are searching, and its million hands are busy exploring all the lurking-places of decay, bearing swiftly off the dangerous sediments of life, and laying them a thousand miles away in the slimy bottom of the deep.

The sea is also set to purify the atmosphere. The winds, whose wings are heavy and whose breath is sick with the malaria of the lands over which they have blown, are sent out to range over these mighty pastures of the deep, to plunge and play with its rolling billows, and dip their pinions over and over in its healing waters. There they rest when they are weary, cradled into sleep on that vast swinging couch of the ocean. There they rouse themselves when they are refreshed, and lifting its waves upon their shoulders, they dash it into spray, and hurl it backwards and forwards through a thousand leagues of sky. Thus their whole substance is drenched, and bathed, and washed, and winnowed, and sifted through and through, by this glorious baptism. Thus they fill their mighty lungs once more with the sweet breath of ocean, and, striking their wings for the shore, they go breathing health and