Let the reader picture to himself the advantage of light-houses, when the storm is up—when the bright beacons send forth their refulgent beams through the blackness of tempest, on the dark winter night. Who can say how many mariners owe their lives to their friendly warnings. The vessels that are wrecked through want of light-houses are recorded; but there is no record of the greater number which, no doubt, light-houses have saved. Melancholy indeed would be the consequences were all the lighthouses to be extinguished. What would become of our ships and our sailors? How dreary a scene would be presented,—the hope of the sailor would be wrecked, and dismal despair would sit on the countenances of the navigators of the sea. The swift ship approaches—the mariner looks for the friendly beacon; but it is gone! There is no voice to announce the presence of peril, and, for want of it, the noble vessel strikes the rock, and all the horrors of shipwreck ensue. Shine on, thou brilliant beacon of the perilous path of the mariner! Thou canst not rival the bright luminary of the sky, but a noble office canst thou do for seafaring men.
I love the light that streams afar to save
The storm-tossed seaman from the ’whelming wave;
The ocean-beacon and the river-ranger,
That lures from evil, and that warns from danger.
A STROLL TO THE MOUNTAIN TELEGRAPH.
Placed on this mount, what various views delight
The ravished soul, and captivate the sight!
Lo! yonder mountains high o’er mountains rise,
Each higher than the last, the highest strike the skies.
The beauty of rural scenery has engaged the attention and been the theme of the poet and novelist under every clime and in every nation, from the arctic regions of the North to the burning tropics of the South. It arouses the slumbering energies of the mind, pours delight into the heart, and beguiles the languishing understanding by its smiling, soothing, refreshing loveliness, and wonderful effect. Where is there a man so callous who has not felt the vivifying influence of nature, when the summer’s sun in his meridian glory shoots abroad his dazzling rays over many a fair and beautiful prospect, animating everything with the warmth of his genial fire. The view is not bounded by tall houses and slooping roofs, between which we can only get a bird’s eye view of a narrow strip of sky, but we see across the fields, and meadows, and landscape, for many miles, to a distant horizon, where sky, and earth, and sea seem to meet, strongly reminding one of the following poetic dash:—
God made the country, and man made the town.
In tracing the beauties of old Cambria through its length and breadth, but few spots have given a more pleasing idea of its graces than those seen from the summit of Holyhead Mountain, which is nearly 800 feet above the level of the sea. Though it cannot boast of the wonders of the untrodden glaciers of Switzerland, the mighty Alps, the stupendous Andes, and the Himalaya of other hemispheres, still the mountain partakes sufficiently of the magnitude to impress the beholder with feelings of awe and admiration. If not on the largest scale, it can yet boast almost every variety of the noblest characteristics of mountain scenery, even to the terrible. Let the visitor make up his mind
To face the breeze and catch its sweetness.
Let him, pointing to the pomp of mountain summit, inspire his companions in travel by exclaiming
Now for our mountain sport—up yon hill.