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RUPERT'S COTTAGE.

On the evening of the last day of their journey, Harry and Lucy looked out anxiously at every house they saw; and many times they hoped that cottages, which at a distance peeping between trees looked charming, would be theirs, till, on a nearer view, they were as often contented to let them pass; one with a honeysuckle porch, and another with a trellis, and another with a pomegranate in full flower. Lucy, however, looked back with regret, fearing that theirs could never be so pretty. "Theirs was to be on the sea-shore, but as yet they did not seem to be near the sea. Presently they turned into a lane, which led down a steep hill, with hedges so high on each side that nothing could be seen but the narrow road before them. At the bottom of this lane, to the right, there was a gate, and a road leading through a wood. Harry's father stopped the carriage, and asked an old woman who came to the gate, "Is this the road to Rupert's Cottage?"

"Yes, sir."

"I am glad of it," thought Harry. "We are sure of a wood, that is one good thing."

The gate opened, and they drove in.

"Now we shall see what sort of a place it is," said Lucy.

Rupert's Cottage was at the foot of a high hill covered with trees, which sheltered it at the back. In front was a very small green lawn, surrounded with evergreens. The cottage had a honeysuckle porch, and a bow-window, and a trellis. The outside was every thing that Lucy desired: and within-within it was an odd kind of house, with one long matted passage, and steps up here and down there, and rooms that had been enlarged, with jutting windows, and niches, and nooks, in curious ways; and Lucy liked it all the better for not being a regular house. The rooms in which she and Harry were to sleep, if rooms they could be called, were “ very, very, small," as even Lucy observed; there was but just space for a little bed, and a little table, and a little chair, and for a little person to turn about in. No chest of drawers, or any such luxury, only a press in the corner cut in the wall. But the more difficulties, the more inconveniences, the better; there would be more work for ingenuity in contriving how to settle themselves and their goods. Lucy wanted to have the trunks brought in, and to go to the unpacking and arranging directly; but Harry had other thoughts in his head.

"Lucy," said he, "I am disappointed in one thing, and a great thing."

"What, my dear Harry?" said Lucy, opening her eyes wide..

"The sea," said Harry, looking out of the window. "No view of the sea anywhere. I thought the cottage was to be on the sea-shore."

And so it was, but the sea was hidden from the view of the windows of the house by a sand-bank, which had been thrown up by the tide, and which was now covered by a plantation of evergreens.. Harry persuaded Lucy to put off unpacking their trunk till morning, and to go out with him in search. of the sea. He led the way, and, as they went round the little lawn, she, delighted with the new place, and with every new flower and shrub, would have often stopped to admire.

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Oh, Harry, look at this myrtle taller than I am! Oh, Harry,

this myrtle, taller than mamma!"

Harry looked back, but ran on to find the way down to the sea shore. "This is the way, this is the way!" he shouted joyously to Lucy, bidding her, "Follow ! follow! follow!"

But suddenly he stopped, and was silent, struck by the first sight of the ocean.. Lucy followed, and, turning abruptly the corner of the rock which had hid the view from her, exclaimed, "The sea!

She stood for some moments in silence beside her brother, looking at the vast extent of water, far as her sight could reach, bounded only by the sky. They were now standing on the sands of the

shore.

It was a still evening, the tide was ebbing, the sun setting, and there was a long bright light upon the water; while the green and white waves, curling gently over each other, moved on continually. "How beautiful it is!" exclaimed Lucy. "How grand! Harry, is not it more beautiful and grander than you expected? Is not it, Harry?"

"Infinitely," said Harry. to look, and to listen to it."

"But hush, I want

Lucy stood beside her brother a little while longer, and then ran back to the house to call her mother to look at it, before the red sun should be quite set. Her mother came, and they found Harry still on the same spot, fixed in admiration. His mother seemed to know what he felt and thought, and to sympathize with him just as he wished; at first in silence, then expressing for him in words that for which he could not find utterance the ideas of boundless extent, duration, power; the feelings of admiration, astonishment, and awe, which create the sense of the sublime. While his soul was under this strong impression, his mother seized the proper moment to raise his thoughts still higher, from the ideas of immeasurable extent, duration, and power, to that Power by which the ocean, the sun, the earth, and we ourselves were created, and are preserved.

The impression made on the minds of Harry and Lucy was never effaced.

By sunrise next morning, Harry was on the seashore. At the stated hours he was constantly there to watch the coming in and going out of the tide. This regular ebbing and flowing of the sea excited such astonishment in his mind, that it seemed insatiable. A fisherman, who lived by the sea-side, asked him if he had never before heard of the coming in and going out of the tide every day.

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'Yes, I had heard of it, but I never saw it before," said Harry. That was quite another thing, The sea and the tides took such possession of his imagination, that he could think of nothing else, not even of steam-boats or steam-engines. During the first day, he did not even think of crossing the sea in a steam-vessel: he was completely absorbed in viewing this great spectacle of nature, and in considering its wonderful phenomena.

His mother was surprised to find that he was susceptible of this kind of enthusiasm, of which she had not till now seen in him any symptom. All his enthusiasm had seemed to be for mechanics; his mind had, indeed, opened during his travels to other objects, but still these had been introduced, or had interested him, by their connexion with the steam-engine, to which he had traced every thing good or great. So that, as she had once told his father, she was afraid that Harry's head would be quite turned by his dear