saddens while it delights.  Solitude, verily, was stretched out asleep in the sun upon the length of sandy beach and beetling promontory; and I sat and gazed now over the boundless waters, now into the devouring abysses opened by the bending crests of the billows, and anon into the gloomy depths of the forest or the serene and measureless openings of the sky.  What grandeur in every line transcendent!  Yet what impenetrable mystery too, what menacing ruin to the small remnant of human life still spared from the generations in ages past, already swallowed up!  Peering around in this pensive mood, in which the joy of being mixed with the uneasy doubt of its tenure, my eye fell at last on the spire of a little church, rising like a pencil of light to heaven, out of the fathomless waste.  And there my soul alighted and found rest.  Like some sea mark to the voyager, that slender shaft, reared by the social religion of the world, stood to tell me where in the universe I was; the common Christian consciousness reinforced my own, and dark queries and agitating uncertainties subsided from my spirit, as the deluge from the dove that Noah sent out to pluck the green branch of promise.  From the illimitable reaches of the huge, but dimly responding creation around, the slight, frail temple for God’s praise drew me to its welcome and peaceful embrace.  As I approached it, the tolling of the bell struck on my ear in a touch of gladder tidings than I had received from all the melody of the great wind-harp of the trees, with all the soft accord of the tossing billows.  Stroke after stroke, distinctly falling, seemed to bring to me the echoes of a million holy telegraphic towers all over the surface of the globe; and when I came to stand under the eaves of the small sanctuary, the measured turning, in the belfry, of the wheel, by revolutions such as I had seen long years ago in my childhood, filled my eyes with gracious tokens, that were not drawn from me by the sublime circling of the sun and moon, then moving east and west in their spheres.  The final tone of praise in the great ascription to God is, in its fullness, supplied by a revelation greater than blessed the times of David.  A new and sweeter string is strung upon the lyre his royal fingers so nobly swept, and the voice of thanksgiving is more highly raised for an “unspeakable gift.”  The kingdoms of nature are the chords on the harp we may sound to the Creator of all.  There has been of late much discussion as to the place nature should hold among religious influences and appeals, some super-eminently exalting her, and others putting her in contrast and almost opposition with all spirit, beauty and truth.  This is no place, nor has the present writer inclination, here, to take part in the grand debate, infinitely interesting as it is, on either side.  He would only catch, or repeat and prolong the strain of an old and sacred ode—­he would contribute a meditation.  He would run the matchless ancient verse into a few particulars of fresh and modern illustration, content if he can make no melody of his own, to recall for some, perhaps not enough heeding it, the Hebrew music that has lingered so long on the ear of the world.