em to lie deeper even than the mind and
the soul, a message from the heart of the world, bidding one wait and
wonder, rest and be still.

XXVI

Portland

I will put another little sketch side by side with the last, for the
sake of contrast; I think it is hardly possible within the compass of a
few days to have seen two scenes of such minute and essential
difference. At _Cerne_ I had the tranquil loneliness of the
countryside, the silent valley, the long faintly-tinted lines of
pasture, space and stillness; the hamlets nestled among trees in the
dingles of the down. To-day I went south along a dusty road; at first
there were quiet ancient sights enough, such as the huge grass-grown
encampment of _Maiden Castle_, now a space of pasture, but still
guarded by vast ramparts and ditches, dug in the chalk, and for a
thousand years or more deserted. The downs, where they faced the sea,
were dotted with grassy barrows, air-swept and silent. We topped the
hill, and in a moment there was a change; through the haze we saw the
roofs of _Weymouth_ laid out like a map before us, with the smoke
drifting west from innumerable chimneys; in the harbour, guarded by the
slender breakwaters, floated great ironclads, black and sinister bulks;
and beyond them frowned the dark front of _Portland_. Very soon the
houses began to close in upon the road,--brick-built, pretentious,
bow-windowed villas; then we were in the streets, showing a wholesome
antiquity in the broad-windowed mansions of mellow brick, which sprang
into life when the honest king George III. made the quiet port
fashionable by spending his simple summers there. There was the king's
lodging itself, Gloucester House, now embedded in a hotel, with the big
pilastered windows of its saloons giving it a faded courtly air. Soon
we were by the quays, with black red-funnelled steamers unloading, and
all the quaint and pretty bustle of a port. We went out to a
promontory guarded by an old stone fort, and watched a red merchant
steamer roll merrily in, blowing a loud sea-horn. Then over a
low-shouldered ridge, and we were by the great inner roads, full of
shipping; we sat for a while by the melancholy walls of an ancient
Tudor castle, now crumbling into the sea; and then across the narrow
causeway that leads on to _Portland_. On our right rose the _Chesil
Bank_, that mysterious mole of orange shingle, which the sea, for some
strange purpose of its own, has piled up, cent