but to laugh and play with the children on the sands; the children
perseveringly making castles with spades and pails, which the waves then
run up to and wash away, over and over and over again, until evening
comes and the children go home, when the Sea makes everything smooth and
ready for the next day's play.

Many are satisfied to admire the Sea from shore, others more ambitious
or more free prefer a cruise. They feel with Tennyson's voyager:

We left behind the painted buoy
That tosses at the harbour-mouth;
And madly danced our hearts with joy,
As fast we fleeted to the South:
How fresh was every sight and sound
On open main or winding shore!
We knew the merry world was round,
And we might sail for evermore.

Many appreciate both. The long roll of the Mediterranean on a fine day
(and I suppose even more of the Atlantic, which I have never enjoyed),
far from land in a good ship, and with kind friends, is a joy never to
be forgotten.

To the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Ocean Northern Europe owes its mild
climate. The same latitudes on the other side of the Atlantic are much
colder. To find the same average temperature in the United States we
must go far to the south. Immediately opposite us lies Labrador, with an
average temperature the same as that of Greenland; a coast almost
destitute of vegetation, a country of snow and ice, whose principal
wealth consists in its furs, and a scattered population, mainly composed
of Indians and Esquimaux. But the Atlantic would not alone produce so
great an effect. We owe our mild and genial climate mainly to the Gulf
Stream--a river in the ocean, twenty million times as great as the
Rhone--the greatest, and for us the most important, river in the world,
which brings to our shores the sunshine of the West Indies.

The Sea is outside time. A thousand, ten thousand, or a million years
ago it must have looked just as it does now, and as it will ages hence.
With the land this is not so. The mountains and hills, rivers and
valleys, animals and plants are continually changing: but the Sea is
always the same,

Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same
Year after year.

Directly we see the coast, or even a ship, the case is altered. Boats
may remain the same for centuries, but ships are continually being
changed. The wooden walls of old England are things of the past, and the
ironclads of to-day will soon be themselves improved off t