



Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections.)








THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

_A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics._

VOL. XV.--JUNE, 1865.--NO. XCII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.




A LETTER ABOUT ENGLAND.


Dear Mr. Editor,--The name of your magazine shall not deter me from
sending you my slight reflections But you have been across, and will
agree with me that it is the great misfortune of this earth that so much
salt-water is still lying around between its various countries. The
steam-condenser is supposed to diminish its bulk by shortening the
transit from one point to another; but a delicate conscience must aver
that there is a good deal left. The ocean is chiefly remarkable as the
element out of which the dry land came. It is only when the land and sea
combine to frame the mighty coast-line of a continent, and to fringe it
with weed which the tide uncovers twice a day, that the mind is saluted
with health and beauty. The fine instinct of Mr. Thoreau furnished him
with a truth, without the trouble of a single game at pitch and toss
with the mysterious element; for he says,--

    "The middle sea contains no crimson dulse,
      Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view,
    Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,
      And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew."

On the broad Atlantic there is no smell of the sea. That comes from the
brown rocks whence iodine is ex