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Where Satan's prostrate bulk is compared to that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream, the picture that follows of the Norse-pilot mooring his boat under the lee of the monster is completed in a line that attunes the mind once more to all the pathos and gloom of those infernal deeps: while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.
What a change would have taken place in the ocean-stream of history, had the future Augustus been slain or taken by the Republicans on that field on which the Roman Republic fell forever! But the success of Antonius over Cassius more than compensated for the failure of Octavius, and prepared the way for the close of "the world's debate" at Actium.
And rosy-fingered dawn had found them weeping, but a different plan the goddess formed, clear-eyed Athene. She checked the long night in its passage, and at the ocean-stream she stayed the gold-throned dawn, and did not suffer it to yoke the swift-paced horses which carry light to men, Lampus and Phaethon, which bear the dawn. And now to his wife said wise Ulysses,
A new spirit seems to bring them nearer to each other: and, as if literary Europe were intent to form but one people out of the populace of mankind, they offer their reciprocal labours; they pledge to each other the same opinions; and that knowledge which, like a small river, takes its source from one spot, at length mingles with the ocean-stream common to them all.
But guarded by the bounds of their civilization, as by the circumfluent ocean-stream of their olden tradition, they were prompted in all their movements by the spirit of beauty, and philosophers have accounted them the very people whose ideas were adequately and harmoniously represented in sensible forms, unlike the nations of the Orient, where mind is overawed by preponderating matter, and unlike the nations of Christendom, where the current spiritual meanings reach far into the shadowy realm of mystery and transcend the power of material expression.
These alone, however, we hold, would not account for a twentieth part of the effect he has produced: they would have lifted him perhaps out of the mire and slough of sordid obscurity, but would never have launched him into the ocean-stream of popularity, in which he "lies floating many a rood;" but to these he adds uncommon height, a graceful figure and action, a clear and powerful voice, a striking, if not a fine face, a bold and fiery spirit, and a most portentous obliquity of vision, which throw him to an immeasurable distance beyond all competition, and effectually relieve whatever there might be of common-place or bombast in his style of composition.
New York has now the unique opportunity to widen its boundaries to the sea, and around its brilliant civic shield, more stately and manifold than that of Achilles, by the aid of those who have wrought already these twisted bracelets and clasping cables, to set the glowing margin of the Ocean-stream.
"Our beneficent Maker undoubtedly formed it for the benefit of his creatures," returned the captain; "but, as I have often told you, he brings about his purposes by the laws or causes which he himself has established. There may be several causes in operation to form this ocean-stream, though up to this moment learned men have been unable to decide what they are.
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