been arrayed in a light-blue, or light-green, or in a transparent white bonnet, with blue or pink flowers on the inside—how different, and how much more agreeable, would have been the impression on the spectator! How frequently, again, do we see the dimensions of a tall and embonpoint figure magnified to almost Brobdignagian proportions by a white dress, or a small woman reduced to Lilliputian size by a black dress! Now, as the optical effect of white is to enlarge objects, and that of black to diminish them, if the large woman had been dressed in black, and the small woman in white, the apparent size of each would have approached the ordinary stature, and the former would not have appeared a giantess, or the latter a dwarf.—Mrs Merrifield in Art-Journal.
SITTING ON THE SHORE.
The tide has ebbed away;
No more wild surgings 'gainst the adamant rocks,
No swayings of the sea-weed false that mocks
The hues of gardens gay:
No laugh of little wavelets at their play;
No lucid pools reflecting heaven's broad brow—
Both storm and calm alike are ended now.
The bare gray rocks sit lone;
The shifting sand lies spread so smooth and dry
That not a wave might ever have swept by
To vex it with loud moan;
Only some weedy fragments blackening thrown
To rot beneath the sky, tell what has been,
But Desolation's self is grown serene.
Afar the mountains rise,
And the broad estuary widens out,
All sunshine; wheeling round and round about
Seaward, a white bird flies;
A bird? Nay, seems it rather in these eyes
An angel; o'er Eternity's dim sea,
Beckoning—'Come thou where all we glad souls be.'
O life! O silent shore
Where we sit patient! O great Sea beyond,
To which we look with solemn hope and fond,
But sorrowful no more!—
Would we were disembodied souls, to soar,
And like white sea-birds wing the Infinite Deep!—
Till then, Thou, Just One, wilt our spirits keep.