Wherefore tax the past, For memories of sorrow? wherefore ask, Of the dark Future, what she grimly keeps Of terrors in reserve? Enough for us that the Present holds for us delicious compensation; that the moment is our own, exclusively for beauty; that the charm of the prospect before us is beyond question; at once prompting the desire to describe, yet baffling all powers of description. Yet why describe? since, as Byron deplores Every fool describes in these bright days. And yet, the scene is so peculiar, so individual, so utterly unlike that kind of scenery from which the traveller usually extorts his inspiration, that something need be said to make us understand the sources of beauty in a region which so completely lacks in saliency, inelevated outlines, in grand mountainous masses, rugged defiles, and headlong cataracts. Here are none of these. All that you behold sea, and forest-waste, and shore - all lies level before you. As you see, the very waters do not heave themselves into giant forms, wear no angry crests, leap up with no threatening voices, howl forth nothing of their secret rages! We reject, at this moment, all the usual adjuncts which make ocean awful and sublime; those only excepted which harbor in its magnitude, its solemn sterility of waste, its deep mysterious murmurs, that speak to us ever of eternity, even when they speak in the lowest and most musical of their tones. In what, then, consists the beauty of the scene? Let us explain, and catalogue, at least, where we may not be able to describe. You are aware, dear readers, that you may set forth, on a periagua, or, if you like it better, a sloop, a schooner, or a trim little steamer; and, leaving the shores of Virginia, make your way along those of the Carolinas and Georgia, to Florida, almost entirely landlocked the whole voyage; all along these shores, the billows of the sea, meeting