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protracted parts. The Bristol Channel opens like a funnel, to receive the full shock of the tide wave entering the Irish Sea, and there we have a tide of thirty feet.

What we have said about the Crystal Palace of the sea, may re-assure well-meaning people whom a want of contemplation has betrayed into the fear that we exalt ourselves unduly, in rejoicing at the triumphs of our human handiwork. We have a right so to rejoice, and no man conversant with nature, who permits his heart to warm over the honorable trophy of his race, now raised in London, is at all likely to forget that there is an Architect unutterably above Mr. Paxton. Such notions of comparison could never have occurred to him, were they not first suggested by weak heads that mean well, but think idly.

The tide is breaking very pleasantly upon the shore. You perceive that as the wave runs up to our feet, the lower part of it is retarded by the friction and resistance of the sloping beach, the water on the summit having no such opposition to encounter, shoots ahead; so that the whole wave seems to curl until the upper part is overbalanced, and comes toppling to the ground. It beats air down upon the beach, which soon bursts out again, and makes the music of the breakers.

We have been walking up and down the sunny shore, and gossiping about the world of water, as if storms never blotted its good nature; but the water never storms except when the wind troubles it. Earthquakes disturb its balance, now and then, but air is the arch agitator. Our ocean of water is a peaceful, busy gentleman, who would perform his work like a chronometer if he were not married to an ocean of air, who has the upper hand of him. His wife is fickle; she is kissing him quite prettily to day, to-morrow she may blow him up, and if she do he certainly will foam and fret;

and then, perhaps, she will get up a squall, and he will roar or she will howl, and he will give a sullen growl, and wo be to the ship that interferes too much between the pair while they are quarrelling. On the whole, however, they are certainly a happy couple; and so close is their alliance, and so many are the bonds of sympathy between them, that to understand the water properly, you ought to know his wife. Very well, then; a few pages shall be devoted to the winds.

W

The Wind and the Rain.

E can scarcely choose a better time than this for our projected discourse upon the wind and rain. First, because, at about this season of the year, people are usually mounting into hopeful spirits after a tolerable experience of both; and secondly, because the wind has got into some little notoriety of late, for not having blown down Mr. Paxton's Crystal Palace in Hyde Park-which, it appears, it was bound to do, and ought by all means to have done. We have our misgivings that it is equally bound, by the calculations which convict it of this neglect of duty, to blow away any man of ordinary stature who ventures out of doors when the weather is not calm. But, we have too much respect, even for the failings of the wind, to do more than hint at these its little weaknesses.

Indeed, our readers are already so occupied with the wonders and beauties of the great Exhibition, and already read so much about them, that we purposely avoid the subject for the present. Therefore, if our discourse concerned only the grievous default and bankruptcy of the wind in that connection, it would end here, and take its place in literature by the side of Sancho Panza's untold story, and the

condensed Encyclopædia of information which Mr. Dangle ought to have perused in the nod of Lord Burleigh. We have another range before us, however, and proceed.

The clown in "Twelfth Night" might have been a good geologist when he sang

"A great while ago the world began,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain!”

for the wind and the rain have written illustrated books for this generation, from which it may learn how showers fell, tides ebbed and flowed, and great animals, long extinct, walked up the craggy sides of cliffs, in remote ages. The more we know of Nature, in any of her aspects, the more profound is the interest she offers to us; and even in this atom of knowledge alone, we might surely get something to think about, out of a wet day. We do not defend a wet day. We know that a wet Sunday in a country inn, when the rain falls perseveringly, between the window and the opposite haystack when rustics lounge under penthouse roofs, or in barn or stable door-ways, festooning their smockfrocks with their pocketed hands, and yawning heavilywhen we pity the people sitting at the windows over the way, and think how small and dark their houses look, forgetting that they, probably, pity us too, and think no better of the Griffin, where we have put up is not promotive of cheerfulness. We know that the same Sunday in a town or city, when pattens go clinking by upon the paving-stones -when dripping umbrellas make a dismal dance all down the street—when the shining policeman stops at the corner to throw the wet off himself, like a water-dog-when all the boys in view go slinking past, depressed, and no boy has the heart to fly over a post-when people wait under the archway, peeping ruefully out at splashed and draggled strag

glers fagging along under umbrellas: or at other stragglers who, having no umbrellas, are completely varnished from head to foot with rain-when the chimney-smoke and the little church weathercock fly round and round, bewildered to find that the wind is everywhere-when the flat little church bell seems vexed that the people won't come in, and tinkles discontentedly, while the very beadle at the door is quenched and querulous-does not inspire a lively train of thought. Still, without constantly measuring the rain-fall like the enthusiasts who write to the newspapers about it, or without asserting, like the oldest inhabitant (who has never been right in his life since his promotion to that elevation), that it never rained before as it rains now, we may find matter for a few minutes' talk, even in such weather.

It is raining now. Let us try.

The wind to day is blowing from the northwest, and it flings the rain against our window-panes. That boy, Tom, will be very wet, for he is out in it without an umbrella. Here he comes, glowing like a forge to which the gale has only served as bellows! He enjoys his dripping state, and tells, with enthusiasm, how

"the wind began again with a burst

Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound

From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,

I entered his church-door, Nature leading me."

But we pack him off to change his clothes; and stop his quotation summarily.

We saw, the other day, how winds were caused, like currents of the sea, by inequalities of temperature. The heated air expands near the equator, rises and runs over towards either pole in two grand upper currents, under which there flow from north and south two deluges of colder

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