eory, which we
have made for ourselves, how vast and fathomless the sea of being is!
What undiscovered forces are there; what unknown secrets of power; what
unsearchable possibilities of development and change! How fresh and
new becomes that which we thought outworn with use and touched with
decay! How boundless and untravelled that which we thought explored
and sounded to its remotest bound!

At night, when the vision of the waters grows indistinct, what voices
it has for our solitude! The "eternal note of sadness," to which all
ages and races have listened, and the faint echoes of which are heard
in every literature, fills us with a longing as vast as the sea and as
vague. Infinity and eternity are not too great for the spirit when the
spell of the sea is on it, and the voice of the sea fills it with
uncreated music.

Chapter IX

A Mountain Rivulet

This morning the day broke with a promise of sultry heat which has been
faithfully kept. The air was lifeless, the birds silent; the landscape
seemed to shrink from the ardour of a gaze that penetrated to the very
roots of the trees, and covered itself with a faint haze. All things
stood hushed and motionless in a dream of heat; even the harvest fields
were deserted. On such a day nature herself becomes voiceless; she
seems to retreat into those deep and silent chambers where the sources
of her life are hidden alike from the heat and cold, from darkness and
light. A strange and foreboding stillness is abroad in the earth, and
one hides himself from the sun as from an enemy.

In this unnatural hush there was one voice which made the silence less
ominous, and revived the spent and withered freshness of the spirit.
To hear that voice seemed to me this morning the one consolation which
the day offered. It called me with cool, delicious tones that seemed
almost audible, and I braved the deadly heat as the traveller urges his
way over the desert to the oasis that promises a draught of life. As I
passed along the broad aisle of the village street, arched by the
venerable trees of an older generation, I seemed to be in dreamland; no
sound broke the repose of midday, no footstep echoed far or near; the
cattle stood motionless in the fields beneath the sheltering branches.
I turned into the dusty country road, and saw the vision of the great
encircling hills, remote, shadowless, and dreamlike, against the white
August sky. I sauntered slowly on, pausing here a