While wandering slowly up the river's side,
He meditates on Him whose power he marks
In each green tree that proudly spreads the bough,
As in the tiny dew-bent flowers that bloom
Around the roots; and while he thus surveys
With elevated joy each rural charm,

He hopes-yet fears presumption in the hope—
To reach those realms where Sabbath never ends.

GRAHAME'S Sabbath.

AT THE SEA-SIDE.

ingenious and amusing writer has attempted to explain historically our custom of leaving home at Midsummer for change of air. He traces it back to the depths of a remote antiquity. Our Scandinavian forefathers were compelled to drive their cattle from the plains to the mountains or the seacoast in order to escape the attacks of the gad-fly. The habit, thus formed, was transmitted from generation to generation, and continued to operate long after the necessity for it had ceased. Like the instinct of birds prompting them to emigrate when the season came, the impulse continued when the people of Europe were no longer shepherds and herdsmen. Pilgrimages now took the place of the old wanderings with flocks and herds. The impulse was the same; the outward form only was different. People went to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, or our Lady at Walsingham, just as now-a-days they go to Oban and Chamouni. This is clearly the meaning of Chaucer in the prologue to the "Canterbury Tales:"

"Whanné that April with his shourés sote

The droughte of March hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veine in swiche licour,
Of which virtue engendred is the floure;
Whan Zephirus eke with his soté brethe
Enspired hath in every holt and hethe
The tendre croppés and the yongé sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfé cours yronne,
And smalé foulés maken melodie,
That slepen allé night with open eye,
So priketh hem nature in hir coràges;
That longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strangé strondes,
To servé halweys couthe in sondry londes ;
And specially, from every shirés ende
Of Engelond, to Canterbury they wende."

AT THE SEA-SIDE.

Certainly, if Dan Chaucer is to be credited, there was as much junketing and flirting amongst a troop of pilgrim's as in a party of Cook's excursionists. Canterbury appears to have been a sort of medieval Margate.

Cowper seems to think as little of the modern plea of the pursuit of health as an excuse for travelling as Chaucer did of the pretence of religion in his day

"Your prudent grandmammas, ye modern belles,
Content with Bristol, Bath, and Tunbridge Wells,
When health required it, would consent to roam,
Else more attached to pleasures found at home,
But now alike, gay widow, virgin, wife,
Ingenious to diversify dull life,
In coaches, chaises, caravans, and hoys,
Fly to the coast for daily, nightly joys,
And all, impatient of dry land, agree

With one consent to rush into the sea."

After pointing out how "Ocean exhibits, fathomless and broad, much of the power and majesty of God," he proceeds to censure the frivolity which prevails amongst so many of the frequenters of our sea-side resorts, and concludes by saying

"Mark well the finished plan without a fault,

The seas globose and huge, the o'erarching vault,
Earth's millions daily fed, a world employed

In gathering plenty yet to be enjoyed,
Till gratitude grow vocal in the praise.

Of God, beneficent in all his ways;

Graced with such wisdom, how would beauty shine!
Ye want but that to seem indeed divine."